The fellows have been appointed to lead AI research in collaboration with partners from other sectors, and will be supported by a £15m from UKRI.

The fellows include Professor Subramanian Ramamoorthy at the University of Edinburgh, who is aiming to create assistive autonomous systems that are person-centred and teachable at the individual user level.

Potential uses are robots that can help with activities such as personal care, autonomous surgery and automated driving.

Professor Stefanos Zafeiriou at Imperial College London has also been awarded a fellowship and is working on giving smart assistants the ability to understand and work with any kind of data, no matter how complex.

Applications for the research include creating normative data for parts of the body to help doctors to plan surgeries or diagnose cancer and predicting climate change.

The final fellow is Professor Steve Benford at the University of Nottingham, whose project focuses on helping AI to support humans in making meaning of the world by combining art and the body.

Through artistic collaborations, Benford will explore how AI systems could handle ambiguous demand interpretation and embrace failure as a source of improvisation.

EPSRC executive chair Professor Charlotte Deane said: “To ensure that we capitalise on the enormous potential of AI and also ensure that it serves the needs of society we need to support bold thinking.

“That is what the UKRI Turing AI world-leading researcher fellowships are all about, allowing adventurous thinkers from the UK and across the world to thrive and develop ideas that will benefit us all.”

Secretary of state for science, innovation and technology Peter Kyle added: “This programme highlights the very best of British innovation as we back new research in areas which will deliver truly transformative innovations for people not just in the UK, but across the globe.

“Whether that’s new avenues for tackling climate change, improving how we diagnose horrendous diseases like cancer, or rolling out cutting edge tools in our hospitals to support our healthcare professionals, we’re leaving no stone unturned in harnessing AI to improve our health, modernise our public services, and face down some of society’s biggest shared challenges.”