UK government appoints first chief AI officer
The UK government has hired Kalbir Sohi to the newly-created role of chief artificial intelligence officer (CAIO) – the most senior AI leadership role in the country’s public sector.
Sohi will oversee the AI teams at the Government Digital Service, within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), and lead testing and scaling exercises across government.
The demands of the role align with the government’s six-point plan for public service reform, which it set out in its Blueprint for Modern Digital Government early last year.
Sohi’s CV includes stints in both the public and private sector. He has held senior roles at HM Revenue & Customs, Facebook and software firm Weaveworks, and most recently served as product director for core infrastructure at Spotify, where he led teams that built and scaled the platforms that underpin the company’s global services.
He also has experience as a startup founder and CEO, and his expertise includes cloud infrastructure, practical use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, data governance, and product strategy, with a leadership focus on the responsible use of advanced technologies.
Global Government Forum reported in May last year that the government was looking to hire a chief AI officer. At that time, a LinkedIn post from the government’s recruitment partner described the search for a CAIO as a “landmark” move.
Kalbir Sohi is a judge for Global Government Forum’s Civil Service AI & Data Challenge – find out more here
UK government’s digital transformation drive in 2025
In 2025, the UK government made several announcements of its intention to put digital transformation and AI at the heart of its plans to reform public services, and introduced ‘Humphrey’, a suite of new AI tools for use by civil servants.
It published its AI Playbook, which provided government departments and public sector organisations with technical guidance on the safe and effective use of AI, and revealed plans to invest £42m (US$57m) of its £3.25bn (US$4.2bn) ‘transformation fund’ in three DSIT-led ‘Frontier AI Exemplars’.
These would “test and deploy AI applications to make government operations more efficient and effective and improve outcomes for citizens by reducing unnecessary bureaucracy”, the government said.
Other developments include the creation of a new directorate at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government tasked with working to identify the best ways to scale AI in local government services, and the development of the ‘Extract’ tool which is designed to help councils make better and faster planning decisions. The government also announced that £8m (US$10m) would be spent on procuring technology for the Ministry of Justice to relieve probation officers from administrative tasks such as form filling.
As well as harnessing AI to make efficiencies in government and improve public services, the UK government is also working to create an enabling environment for AI to drive innovation and growth across the economy.
Early last year it launched its AI Opportunities Action Plan, which prime minister Keir Starmer said would “mainline AI into the veins” of the UK, and in October it set out its blueprint for AI regulation.
This includes its AI Growth Lab sandbox, which allows new AI products to be tested under more relaxed rules to help drive growth and innovation in key sectors such as healthcare, transport and manufacturing.
Read more: UK prime minister reveals plan for AI to ‘turbocharge every single element’ of government
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
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