A report from a cross-sector event has set out practical priorities for UK and Scottish governments on AI infrastructure, sovereignty, and democratic governance
The UK Government should establish a standing citizens’ assembly on AI and society – a permanent, properly resourced mechanism through which members of the public have a genuine and continuing voice in shaping decisions around AI.
This call is one of the central recommendations of Governing the Future: Recommendations from the Edinburgh Data and AI Exchange, published today. The report draws on a day-long event held at the Edinburgh Futures Institute this Spring, which saw the University of Edinburgh bringing together participants from central and local government, the NHS, finance, academia, civic society and the wider public to work through the practical implications of the UK Government’s AI ambitions.
The recommendation reflects a growing body of evidence that the pace of AI deployment is outrunning public scrutiny. A 2025 Ada Lovelace Institute survey found that 60% of UK adults do not feel they have meaningful input on government decisions about AI. Without sustained democratic oversight, the report argues, government risks advancing an AI agenda that lacks the public trust it will ultimately need to succeed.
It sits alongside a broader set of asks from the attendees directed at Westminster. On sovereignty and international positioning, the report warns that the AI models that increasingly underpin public services, healthcare and civic infrastructure are being developed overwhelmingly by overseas technology companies, with little meaningful input from UK or European institutions. A key recommendation in the report calls on the UK Government to co-fund the development of a European foundational model to ensure British values, priorities and legal standards are built in from the ground up, rather than imported by default.
On national compute infrastructure, attendees also called for long-term funding commitments that match the UK’s designation of its national supercomputer – based at the National Supercomputing Centre at EPCC at the University of Edinburgh – as critical national infrastructure. An independent evaluation cited in the report shows the current national supercomputer, ARCHER2, has delivered £4.3 billion to the UK economy against a total project spend of approximately £105 million.
Professor Michael Rovatsos, Chair of Artificial Intelligence and Dean of Research and Innovation in the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, said:
“We are at a defining moment for AI policy in the UK. The decisions made in the next few years – on infrastructure, on governance, on who gets a voice in shaping these technologies – will determine whether AI delivers on its potential for public good.
“The University of Edinburgh has been at the forefront of AI research and development for over sixty years. That history comes with a responsibility to help get this right, particularly as we are living in a time of great change. Working to create a dialogue between government and the public underlines the University’s commitment to playing its role as a civic institution in shaping how we will collectively navigate a future that may well be transformed by these technologies.”
Additionally, the report sets out what the UK Government must do to ensure that AI adoption and regulation in health keeps pace with the speed of deployment. Greater clarity on where legal accountability sits when AI is involved in clinical decision-making is also needed.
Professor Julie Jacko, Professor of Health Informatics and Data Science and Dean of Innovation & Engagement, College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, said:
“The clinical case for AI in health is already proven. The real question is no longer what these tools can do – it is whether our health systems have the agility, the governance, and the accountability structures to actually use them well. That means being clear about where a human must remain in the loop, and establishing clear accountability for when AI-informed clinical decisions cause or contribute to harm. Those are questions for government, not just for clinicians. And they need answers now, not after the technology has moved on.”
Professor Oliver Escobar, Chair of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation at the University of Edinburgh and designer of the Stakeholder Assembly, said:
“AI is reshaping public services, democratic institutions and everyday life at a pace that has outrun meaningful public input. The Data and AI Exchange was designed to start changing that – to show that when citizens and practitioners are given the time and structure to deliberate seriously, they produce the kind of grounded, cross-sector thinking that government needs to act with confidence. The recommendations in this report are the result of that process. Now it is for government to act on them. A standing citizens’ assembly on AI would be a significant step towards ensuring the public has a genuine role in the governance of AI for the common good.”
Governing the Future: Recommendations from the Edinburgh Data and AI Exchange is published by the University of Edinburgh with support from its Data-Driven Innovation initiative and Generative AI Laboratory.
The full report is available at https://www.ed.ac.uk/ai/data-and-ai-exchange.
