UK prime minister Theresa May will use the stage at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland to say that she wants the UK to lead the world in the deployment of AI, as well as demanding that tech companies do more to stop promoting illegal and harmful content.

May will use the platform confirm that the UK will join WEF’s council on AI, while a new advisory body – which was announced during the Autumn Budget – will co-ordinate AI efforts with other nations.

The UK’s desire to position itself as a leader in the ‘safe and ethical’ deployment of AI may, however, fall on deaf ears – with other leading nations staking their claims to taking up the mantle. As expected, the US and China are the two nations taking it to the next level, but France is also in with a sniff. Google has chosen France as the base for an AI research centre dedicated to its applications in health and environment, while Facebook is expanding it’s AI lab in Paris.

On the topic of Facebook, May will call out tech firms for their failures in “dealing with harmful and illegal online activity” and urge these companies to “focus their brightest and best” to address the problems.

The prime minister is also expected to mention cloud-based private messaging app Telegram directly – calling it out as a smaller platform that has “quickly become home to criminals and terrorists”.

In order to force these tech firms, big and small, to clean up their platforms, May will also call on investors to help apply pressure by threatening to remove their investments from the companies.