Pearse Keane

UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, Institute of Ophthalmology, UCL @UCLEye and Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust @Moorfields; Director @INSIGHTEyeHub 🇮🇪

[Pearse Keane @pearsekeane]

Check out #MyYearInBooks @goodreads to discover the 64 books I read in 2024!
https://t.co/yzlyqMRXeo

[Kanishka Narayan MP @KanishkaNarayan]

We have today appointed my brilliant colleague, Lord Vallance, to chair the PM’s AI Taskforce.

Patrick and I worked closely together before. We will now do so again, with the urgency and importance of the Vaccines Taskforce, applied to the central question of artificial intelligence.

https://t.co/rCDWoBNkrO

[Pearse Keane @pearsekeane]

@ersatzben It makes me despair…

[Pearse Keane @pearsekeane]

@rowlsmanthorpe @Discoplomacy @SkyNews Another brilliant, important video Roland 👌

[Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh @S_OhEigeartaigh]

Rather than a 'focus on making it work for local communities' etc, my advice at this point for an incoming PM would be:
- Make the UK as attractive as possible an environment for companies like Anthropic et al to set up operations.
- Build, build, build compute capacity - do NOT end up overdependent on the US or others when this becomes a real bottleneck.
- Focus on sovereign UK capacities in the AI supply chain where we can have an edge, and cutting edge applications of frontier AI (like the DeepMind spin-offs)
- Focus on government-wide awareness of frontier AI capabilities and direction of travel
- Focus on forward-looking adoption in the economy
- Do whatever can be done to ensure access to the top frontier models, especially for organisations like UK AISI and organisations using these models to strengthen digital infastructure.
- Above all, double down on the UK's world-class position in AI safety, evaluation, and red-teaming. The world needs this, and we can make it a real advantage.

The point is (a) to ensure AI properly benefits the UK economy (b) to ensure the UK retains and further develops leverage in the global AI landscape, and (c) uses that leverage to continue raising standards on frontier AI safety, rather than allow itself to be made irrelevant.

Supporting local communities is of course good, but we need to look head on at the situation we're in right now, not the situation we'd prefer to be in.

[Rowland Manthorpe @rowlsmanthorpe]

In his speech today Andy Burnham promised to turn Britain into an "Innovation Nation" through decentralisation

But in AI - arguably the most innovative technology of all - he may find he is swimming against the tide

My analysis today for @SkyNews

[Financial Times @FT]

How the DeepMind mafia brought the AI boom to London https://t.co/ziOYpXD1cO

[Pearse Keane @pearsekeane]

@MihaelaVDS @TheCrick Great news Mihaela 🙌

[INSIGHTeyehub @INSIGHTeyehub]

Congratulations on behalf of everyone from INSIGHT at @Moorfields to @profadmorris on being Knighted in the King's Birthday Honours.

[Ben Johnson @ersatzben]

Today @Lyan82 and I launch SCIENCE WORKS – a new policy and research studio for accelerating progress in British science and tech.

The UK is fundamentally a scientific nation. Our place in the world was built on our creativity and imagination.

[Ronan @Ronanchamberss]

Don't think people are prepared for the influx of neo-labs being HQ'd in Kings Cross London right now.

Researching/Product talent from Deepmind is flowing out of the mothership to highly specific/virticalised neo-labs who seem to be channelling their inner Demis and focussing on the intersection of Biology/Chemistry and AI.

Another huge value prop to keeping these large incumbents domestic instead of selling them off to the US is that they train talent, and then re-distribute them - fly wheel effect with big impacts.

[Michael D Abramoff @MichaelAbramoff]

we had an exciting discussion how autonomous AI enables healthcare through the eye.

@pearsekeane @drhew

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

Our retina image is so rich with information, a gateway to the whole body, well beyond the eye. Today add osteoporosis to the list.
https://t.co/wUUsOziecv
This adds to what I recently wrote about at Ground Truths https://t.co/fOsjLgAyvU

[David Galbraith @daveg]

The Kings Cross AI hub is the biggest economic opportunity for the UK in my lifetime.

[Jack Clark @jackclarkSF]

I've spent the past few weeks reading 100s of public data sources about AI development. I now believe that recursive self-improvement has a 60% chance of happening by the end of 2028. In other words, AI systems might soon be capable of building themselves.

[Pearse Keane @pearsekeane]

@skoularidou @KahleKristopher @RoyalStatSoc Wonderful news Maria 🙌

[Matt Clifford @matthewclifford]

Really enjoyed recording this with @FinnMurphy12 and @soundboy and fanning the flames of British optimism!

[Pearse Keane @pearsekeane]

Shows reason I love @scmallaby books, whether hedge funds, VC or AI. On first read, you get a page-turning story... on second, you get concrete lessons.

@speedrun highlights some key lessons from THE INFINITY MACHINE that will be useful for anyone leading a creative team

[Sebastian Mallaby @scmallaby]

This is a very smart take from @a16z's @speedrun : An attempt to extract lessons for company founders from my new book, THE INFINITY MACHINE. Founders need vision, but @DemisHassabis blew up his first startup by having too much vision. With his next startup, DeepMind, Demis learned how to balance vision and realism. https://t.co/pmFuwjCYXS

[INSIGHTeyehub @INSIGHTeyehub]

Researchers at @tohoku_univ and @UCLeye have developed a more precise AI model for measuring retinal age gap - a biomarker indicating the difference between a person’s biological age and their chronological age. #Oculomics @TohokuUniPR
https://t.co/I1La0FMp9O

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

London tech has just had one of the greatest 7 days of all time:

- Anthropic announced a huge expansion
- OpenAI signed its first permanent office here
- @UKSovereignAI launched at the Wayve offices
- Elevenlabs announced signing 100m ARR in Q1
- A new AI company raised $500m at a $4bn valuation

London is RISING

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

If you're interested in how AI grew up over the past 15 years, and where it's headed, this new book tells the story in a riveting, page-turner way. In the new Ground Truths with @scmallaby