The AI Council, an independent expert committee set up to provide advice to the UK government and high-level leadership of the artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem, has published an AI Roadmap with recommendations to help the government develop a national AI strategy. The independent report outlines 16 recommendations across four pillars: (a) research, development and innovation; (b) skills and diversity; (c) data, infrastructure and public trust; (d) national and cross-sector AI adoption. The AI Council suggests that the UK government needs to scale up and make sustainable public sector investment in AI, while ensuring that research and development programmes are both advancing and leveraging AI. It also recommends the scaling up of an ongoing 10 year programme of high-level AI skill-building, along with a commitment to achieving AI and data literacy for everyone, and making diversity and inclusion a priority. Some of the other recommendations include consolidating the infrastructure needed to increase access to data for AI; enabling safe data sharing for valuable uses; developing appropriate standards to frame the future governance of data; enabling public scrutiny of, and input to, automated decision-making; supporting the UK's AI startup community; using AI to meet the challenges of net zero carbon emissions; and using AI to keep the country safe and secure.