More than 1,000 people attended Milton Keynes City Council’s Artificial Intelligence Festival last week which brought together tech experts and businesses to showcase cutting-edge technologies that the city will benefit from in the coming years.
The Milton Keynes AI Festival 2024 followed the UK Government’s AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park last year which saw global leaders attend to discuss the future of AI. A year on, working alongside industry leaders, Milton Keynes City Council hosted a range of thought-provoking exhibitions which attracted a diverse audience determined to learn about the opportunities presented by modern technologies.
The week started off at Bletchley Park where Cabinet Member for Economy, Sustainability, and Innovation, Cllr Shanika Mahendran chaired a panel discussion with the Chief Executive Officer of Bletchley Park, Iain Standen and Erika Lewis who served as Chief Executive Officer of the AI Safety Summit last year. The panel took part in an insightful discussion looking back on the world’s first event which brought together international governments and leading AI companies to consider how AI can benefit society through internationally coordinated action.
Throughout the Festival, attendees took part in events, conferences and hackathons hosted by major organisations, including Bletchley Park, The Open University, His Majesty's Government Communications Centre, Santander and Protospace.
The final event marked the opening of the UK’s first Smart City Experience Centre in centre:mk. The centre is a joint initiative between private sector partners and the city council, serving as a shop window for customers to experience and interact with robots and digital technologies. Passersby stopped to engage with the technologies, including Pepper, a robot designed to provide information and solutions to visitors in a highly interactive humanoid form, and a robotic dog serving as an alternative to real animals, such as for surveying particularly inaccessible areas of buildings or supporting emergency services. There are also currently two autonomous vehicles in the shopping centre, which residents can expect to see operating in the city later this year.
The Festival also highlighted the ongoing work to boost the city’s position as a leader in the tech ecosystem and deliver on the city council’s Technology, Smart City, Digital and Creative Industries Strategy, cementing Milton Keynes’ global reputation as a smart city and the home of innovation. Already one in three jobs in the city are in tech, and the city council is determined to encourage further local tech investment, creating more skilled jobs for local people.
“We’re incredibly proud of our very first Milton Keynes Artificial Intelligence Festival, which attracted a diverse audience and enabled us to begin breaking down the barriers between emerging tech and everyday life. It’s not always easy for everyone to understand how advances in tech benefit our communities, but this is our priority as a council in our smart city work. We’re already thinking about next year’s event and how to make it even more engaging for our residents.
“Milton Keynes is leading the way on AI and is the home of innovation. We will continue supporting the businesses already working in this area, and also want encourage other tech businesses to speak to us to see if we can work together to help them bring their products to market by using MK as a testbed. Our message is clear: if your smart city tech will benefit residents, we want to hear from you.”