The UK’s new grand plan to become a global AI superpower has been welcomed for its ambition, while drawing flak for being uncoordinated and too dependent on unproven assumptions about future availability and the cost of energy. The latter is important because the plan revolves around major data centers, which underpin what Prime Minister Keir Starmer described as the fourth industrial revolution – where he wants the UK to lead just as it did for the first. But the plan can also be criticized for being too obsessed with AI, with the risk that this will distract from investment in areas of science and technology innovation where the UK is already strong, and which should provide the foundation for the…