Cambridge University has launched a new institution with a department attempting to facilitate business growth using AI.

The Bennett School of Public Policy, opening later this year, will have a specific focus on investigating the use of AI in boosting the economy. It marks the first opening of a new academic department in Cambridge University this century.

The school will prioritise research examining how to use AI in both the private and public sectors. It will also work alongside the Civil service to develop AI workflow and create a generation of “tech-savvy” and socially aware policy makers, the school’s leadership said.

The school will also help continue research to tackle geographical inequality and work on bringing mayors and devolved leaders together to help create effective policy.

Prof Deborah Prentice, the University’s vice-chancellor, stated: “The new school will harness Cambridge expertise from across the social, physical and medical sciences to take on the most urgent policy challenges of our age.”

Professor of public policy at the University Michael Kenny said: “With its place at the heart of Cambridge, experts on everything from sustainable economics to quantum computing will come together at the Bennett School.”

“We aim to train government thinkers committed to advancing good growth- fairly shared, inclusive and sustainable - who can set the policy agency for a rapidly changing world,” he continued.”

Dame Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of public policy at the University, said: “The era of making policy in silos, where an issue is either just an education or an economic problem, for example, needs to be put behind us,” adding that “today’s challenges, from effective uses of AI to reviving towns and regions, demand solutions that reflect expertise across disciplines and sectors.”

She noted that the UK and EU needed to “skill-up a generation of policymakers to be smart data consumers who understand data governance”.

Last month, Lord Vallance, the recently appointed Oxford-Cambridge Innovation Champion announced the decision to trial AI in peer review work as part of a government-funded project. 

In 2023, the University of Cambridge stressed the importance of better understanding the “double-edged sword” of AI when it launched the Institute for Technology and Humanity.