David Richards

David Richards argues that artificial intelligence will become an ubiquitous layer across devices, generating temporary, task-specific software instead of relying on traditional apps and app stores. Drawing on Sheffield’s former saw-doctor trade, he compares maintaining conventional software with sharpening durable saws: as AI lowers the cost of creating bespoke code, many applications will no longer be worth owning or maintaining. Software tied to proprietary data, physical machinery, games, banks and established distribution will remain valuable, while companies whose main advantage is difficult-to-write code may lose their protection. Businesses will increasingly need to identify assets that cannot simply be recreated through a natural-language request.

Tommy Flowers built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, and used it to help Britain read German communications during the Second World War. Despite its importance, the machines were dismantled, the designs destroyed and Flowers was bound to secrecy, preventing Britain from turning the breakthrough into a commercial computing industry. By contrast, the United States shared and developed comparable technology through ENIAC, helping create a powerful domestic industry. The piece argues that Britain repeats this failure when homegrown companies such as DeepMind and ARM operate under foreign ownership, and warns that the country must ensure it retains ownership and economic value from its ambition to lead in artificial intelligence.