MOTHER calls for an end to siloed AI thinking as UK accelerates sector-specific adoption

MOTHER, the AI infrastructure company founded by Lucy Batley and Jon Holden, is calling for organisations to stop treating AI, cyber, data and digital transformation as separate conversations.

The call follows the UK government’s recent announcement of AI Growth Labs, with legal services selected as the first sector to test responsible AI adoption through a regulatory sandbox model. The aim is to help innovators and adopters trial AI products within existing regulatory frameworks, while accelerating growth and building trust.

MOTHER welcomes the ambition. But its founders argue that sector-specific regulation must not lead to siloed thinking.

AI does not operate neatly inside departments, sectors or org charts. It cuts across infrastructure, data, risk, operations, customer experience, security, governance and leadership. Yet many enterprises still separate these functions into disconnected teams: cyber over here, IT over there, digital somewhere else, design invited in at the end with a felt tip pen and a brand guideline.

That approach is no longer fit for purpose.

“AI is not a departmental issue,” said Lucy Batley, Co-Founder of MOTHER. “It is becoming part of the operating model of the business. If cyber, data, digital, design and leadership are not in the same conversation, organisations will build fragmented systems and then wonder why trust, value and control keep slipping through the cracks.”

The government’s AI Growth Lab approach recognises that adoption must happen safely and with regulatory clarity. But MOTHER believes businesses must go further internally by creating cross-functional AI, data and technology task forces that connect strategy, delivery, governance and security from the outset.

This is particularly urgent because technology is still under-represented at board level. For many organisations, the most strategically significant change to the business is being managed beneath the executive line, despite its implications for risk, resilience, productivity, customer experience and long-term competitiveness.

Jon Holden, Co-Founder of MOTHER and CEO of CyberNorth, said:

“Cyber, AI and data are now structurally linked. You cannot govern one properly while treating the others as separate workstreams. The organisations that succeed will be those that build shared understanding across leadership, security, technology and operations, not those that leave teams working in splendid isolation until something breaks.”

CyberNorth, the North East’s cyber security cluster, is already pushing this connected agenda by bringing together businesses, academia and the public sector across cyber, AI, data and quantum. Its work includes building regional collaboration, supporting talent and helping create the conditions for innovation to thrive.

That collaborative model is central to MOTHER’s own philosophy.

MOTHER sits at the intersection of AI, cyber security, sovereign data design and decision infrastructure. The company argues that AI should not be treated as another tool to bolt onto existing systems, but as foundational infrastructure that requires joined-up thinking from the beginning.

Batley added:

“The real opportunity is not just faster AI adoption. It is better organisational intelligence. That means shared knowledge, cross-department collaboration and leaders who understand that technology now cuts across everything. The future belongs to systems thinkers, not silo managers.”

As AI adoption accelerates across the UK, the organisations that thrive will be those that treat collaboration as infrastructure in its own right.

No more silos.

Artificial Intelligence needs a MOTHER.