AI startup Anthropic has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to develop AI technologies that enhance public services.
The collaboration will focus on the potential for Anthropic’s advanced AI model, Claude. The aim is to enhance how people in the UK access and interact with government information and services online. It also said will also establish best practices for the responsible deployment of frontier AI capabilities in the public sector.
DSIT and Anthropic plan to explore additional opportunities across several areas of shared interest that will help support AI innovation and economic development in the UK, including:
- Advancing scientific progress with AI, combining Anthropic’s capabilities with existing UK strengths in R&D and data
- Securing the supply chain for advanced AI and the UK’s future infrastructure
- Supporting the UK’s startup community as well as universities and other organisations
The collaboration will also draw on Anthropic’s recently released Economic Index. This uses anonymised conversations on Claude.ai to understand AI’s effects on labour markets and the economy over time. The company said it aims to provide insights to help the UK “adapt its workforce and innovation strategies for an AI-enabled future.”
Anthropic also said it will work closely with the UK AI Security Institute to research and evaluate AI capabilities and potential security risks.
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Governments and public institutions are already using Claude across a variety of services, including The European Parliament, which uses Claude to make its archives more easily accessible, reducing document search and analysis time by 80 percent.
Additionally, Swindon Borough Council has launched ‘Simply Readable’, a free tool powered by Claude on Amazon Bedrock that transforms complex documents into accessible formats with larger fonts, increased spacing, and supporting images to help people with learning disabilities better understand important information.
“Both Anthropic and the UK government recognise this defining opportunity. Our shared intention is to work together on the most consequential opportunities presented by advanced AI: to foster the continued responsible development and deployment of AI that aligns with our societal values and principles of shared economic prosperity, improved public services and increased personal opportunity,” said Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle MP, in the MoU notice.
Anthropic was co-founded by former OpenAI executives and siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, and is backed by Amazon and Alphabet.
