The UK’s AI minister has told the Financial Times that building chips and drones will be at the core of Andy Burnham’s push to “reindustrialise” the UK.

However, Kanishka Narayan, newly promoted to a cabinet-level position, added that the government would work to limit the harmful effects of artificial intelligence, telling the paper it poses “material risks” to jobs and national security.

Narayan, now working within both the cabinet office and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, said he is “learning the lessons of the past” and wants to maintain control of crucial emerging technologies and the companies that build them.

He said Burnham’s vision was not “backwards-looking”, and that AI was “the way to reindustrialise this country.”

His focus is on developing the UK’s hardware manufacturing, he told the FT, as it is “where most of the economic value, most of the leverage and most of the supply chain constraint is. It’s also what the British public wants to reindustrialise”. Alongside chips, AI-powered drones will form a key part of the country’s reindustrialisation “in the defence context”, he added.

For Burnham, “AI is going to be pretty front and centre,” he said.

The UK has “amazing strengths in chip design”, Naryan said, and while a change will not come “overnight”, he is hopeful that the country will be able to develop its capabilities.

He also told the paper he would use his cabinet position to push for state investment into AI, visas for top engineers and planning reform to speed up the building of technology infrastructure.

In response to Burnham’s controversial abolition of the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology on the first day of his premiership, Narayan said that “human agency” was more important than structures, and insisted that the prime minister was set on developing AI capabilities.

“We are going to be the best, fastest partners to tech investors and others wanting to do business and create jobs in the UK,” he added.

On Friday, the government announced the launch of a new AI taskforce chaired by Lord Vallance and led by Naryan. The taskforce will be directly accountable to the prime minister in the hopes that it will accelerate delivery of the UK’s AI strategy.

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