Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 1:31 pm on 20 March 2019.
Thank you for the question. The Member is preaching to the converted on this one—I fully recognise the benefits of artificial intelligence, both at the high, cutting-edge end, but also in the more mundane, everyday end of running a business and running organisations. And I've been impressed, since coming into the brief, with the amount of activity that there is going on, not just directed by the Welsh Government, but by universities and by businesses themselves. I think this is a space where we do need to have a discussion about what the role of Government is, because this innovation is happening despite Government in many cases and not because of it. But there are important things the Welsh Government are doing to try and increase the uptake of these technologies, and we're expecting the report of the review by Professor Phil Brown shortly to make us focus on what it is we can do.
But I just want to quote one example to the Member, to assure her that there is good practice existing within her region already, and that's Aurora International Consulting in Port Talbot, who are using AI for construction management. They have developed a project, which was launched last month, to use AI for the risk assessment and method statement analysis, which are now automatically generated, which is not only producing improvements in safety and accuracy, but is saving 95 per cent of the cost of compliance, and they're now looking at how they can roll this out internationally. So, we need to look at how we can apply this domestically, but also how domestic firms can develop this here and export it abroad.