AI ‘hit squad’ set up to drive Whitehall efficiency struggles to hire top talent

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A UK government artificial intelligence unit charged with targeting £45bn in savings across the civil service spent less than half of its budget last year because of recruitment challenges as global companies compete to attract top talent.

The Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI) spent £5mn of its £12mn budget in the financial year ending March 31 2025, of which £3.7mn was spent on staffing.

The shortfall was “primarily driven by delays in recruitment”, said the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), which oversees i.AI, in response to a freedom of information request by the Financial Times.

The incubator had 46 staff at the beginning of June, against a target of 70 set by former deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden in February 2024, when it had 38 employees.

Recently advertised i.AI jobs have attracted almost 250 applications, said a person familiar with the matter.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is banking on AI and automation across government to deliver a “major overhaul . . . in productivity and efficiency”.

However, the House of Commons public accounts committee in March warned the public sector was unprepared for an AI overhaul partly because of staff recruitment and retention issues.

The median staff salary offered by i. AI was £67,300 in 2024-25, almost double the £35,680 of the civil service.

But the pay offer is far lower than in the private sector where a poaching war for AI talent has led wage packets to soar.

The best AI engineers attract annual salaries of more than $10mn. Software engineer wages at OpenAI start at about $238,000, rising to $1.34mn, while those at Meta receive between $212,000 and $3.7mn, according to salary-tracking website Levels.

The previous Conservative government launched the incubator in November 2023 to develop AI tools that would drive civil service efficiency.

Announcing the unit in 2023, Dowden said: “This is about trying to get a hit squad, a sort of crack squad, that is going to go out there and bring a high level of expertise to try and identify innovative solutions to projects.”

Labour has since expanded the plan and has said i.AI would be used in “targeting” efficiencies of up to £45bn a year.

During the past financial year, more than 3,100 civil servants had access to “Red Box”, which condenses information from official sources such as Hansard. At the beginning of April, Red Box had a little more than 2,000 monthly users.

A “Consult” tool i.AI developed triages and summarises government consultation responses, which would typically take three months involving 25 civil servants. A pilot trial showed its work required no alteration in 60 per cent of cases.

DSIT said: “We don’t recognise these claims [about hiring issues]. The incubator for AI has been ahead of leading AI labs in using new technology to make public services more efficient.”

Its tools were speeding up government consultations, cutting admin and transforming the planning system, it said, adding: “We want the very best talent and that means recruitment can take time.”