Pretty rubbish".That's howBank of Englandeconomist Will Abel described the UK's record on automation naspeech last year. This is the age of the Fourth IndustrialRevolution. Or at least it is if your business is headquartered in Seoul or Singapore. In the UK there are some 74 robots for every 10,000 people employed in the manufacturing sector. Singapore has close to 500 robots for every 10,000 employees, while South Korea has more than 600. Even by European standards, the UK has been slow on the uptake when it comes to embracing technology in manufacturing. British firms have a lower robot to human ratio than countries across Europe from Sweden in the north to Italy in the south. Germany invests 6.6 times more than the UK in automation, although its manufacturing sector is only 2.7 times larger. Indeed, Dell Technologies revealed in 2018 that across the economy, just 16 percent of UK businesses are actively investing in advanced artificial intelligence, compared to 26 per cent in Germany, and almost a third in France.
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