Speaking at the AWS Summit in London yesterday, VP and managing director at AWS UKI Alison Kay said moving to advanced AI could enable the UK to unlock £35 billion (US$47.26 billion) in productivity gains by 2030.

However, she was quick to highlight that this could only happen if businesses modernise their infrastructure and confront the significant skills gap preventing innovation at scale.

“The question now isn’t whether to adopt AI, it’s how you accelerate your use of advanced AI,” she said during her keynote speech. “Science [is] only powerful when it’s in the hands of people who know how to use it.”

Creating the conditions to advance AI

Closing the gap between basic and advanced AI adoption could unlock substantial economic growth for the UK – the equivalent of the economy of the City of Manchester, according to a new AWS report.

The report, Unlocking the UK’s AI Potential, found that the UK is at a moment of flux. AI adoption is accelerating rapidly, but many organisations are still using it at a basic level. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of organisations now use AI, the equivalent of one new business adopting the technology every 40 seconds – but half (49%) cite AI and digital skills shortages as the main challenge from AI adoption, a figure AWS said has increased from last year.

“You can’t build advanced AI on outdated foundations,” Kay said. “Cloud adoption has fundamentally helped change how businesses operate and build resilience for the future, but real transformation is not in the migration, it’s the modernisation.”

She added: “It’s about breaking down monolithic barriers … modernisation makes systems faster, more resilient, secure and cost efficient. And importantly, it unlocks the transformative power of AI.”

AWS said it seeks to create the conditions for organisations in the UK and Ireland to succeed in AI, through investments in skills, training and support programmes. Its AWS Skills to Job Tech Alliance, announced last year, has prepared more than 60,000 students on cloud skills and AI – with a mission to prepare 100,000 by 2030.

“We know that skills initiatives are critical and we are continuing to invest in training to unlock the full potential of this technology,” Kay added.

The essentials of teamwork

In addition to AWS’s three building blocks, the technology giant is has also cited teamwork as foundational to success in AI and innovation. In the UK, the company said that a critical priority is to invest in public-private partnerships to close digital skills gaps and help organisations move from adoption to transformation.

In Capacity’s recent State of the Sector: Data Centres report, data centre executives cited strong partnerships are important, but that AI in the UK is perhaps not moving as quickly as expected. The government is eager to innovate and build a stronger economy, positioning AI as critical to that success.

However, AWS said momentum alone isn’t enough. Its research revealed regional strengths as the country’s competitive edge, with acceleration happening outside of the capital in the North West (28% YoY growth), the North East (26%) and Wales (25%) all outpacing London’s 16% growth.

Kay explained during her keynote that, to enable innovation at scale, partners and customers should work together to translate technology into real business outcomes.

“Many of you are already pushing the boundaries, distilling imagination into tangible form and making what seemed impossible entirely achievable,” she said. “But we can’t settle for the successes that we are seeing today.”

She continued: “The organisations that define the next decade aren’t going to be the ones that play it safe, they will be the ones that have the courage to reimagine what’s possible – and then build it.”

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