The UK government has set aside £1.3bn of funding for AI and technology innovation. This includes £800m to create an exascale supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh and £500m for the AI Research Resource, another supercomputing facility that includes Isambard at the University of Bristol and Dawn at the University of Cambridge.
The funding was originally announced by the then Conservative government as part of its November Autumn Statement. However, on Friday, a Department of Science, Innovation and Technology spokesman revealed to the BBC that the Labour government, which came to power in early July, was redistributing the funding.
He claimed the money was promised by the Conservative administration but was never allocated in its budget. In a statement, a spokesman said: “The government is taking difficult and necessary spending decisions across departments in the face of billions of pounds of unfunded liabilities. This is essential to restoring economic stability and delivering on our national growth mission.
“We have launched an AI Enablement Roadmap that will outline how we can strengthen our computing infrastructure to better meet our needs, and we will also consider how AI and other emerging technologies can best support our new industrial strategy.”
A £300 million grant for AIRR has already been awarded and will continue as planned. Part of it has already been allocated to the first phase of the Dawn supercomputer. However, the second phase, which would increase its speed by a factor of 10, is now in jeopardy, according to The Register. The BBC reported that the University of Edinburgh has already spent £31 million on building housing for its exascale project and that the previous government had made it a priority project.
“We are absolutely committed to building a technology infrastructure that delivers growth and opportunity for people across the UK,” added a DSIT spokesperson.
AIRR and exascale supercomputers were supposed to enable researchers to analyse advanced AI models for safety and drive breakthroughs in areas such as drug discovery, climate modelling and clean energy. According to The Guardian, the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, is urgently seeking a meeting with the technology secretary to discuss the future of exascale.
The cessation of funding goes against commitments made in the government’s AI Action Plan
The money set aside appears to contradict a statement by Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle on 26 July, in which he said he was “placing AI at the heart of the government’s agenda to boost growth and improve our public services”.
He made the statement on the occasion of the announcement of a new Artificial Intelligence Action Plan, which, once developed, will determine the best way to expand the country’s AI sector.
Next month, Matt Clifford, one of the lead organizers of November’s AI Safety Summit, will release his recommendations for accelerating the development and adoption of useful AI products and services. An AI Opportunities Unit will also be created, staffed by experts to implement the recommendations.
The government’s announcement identified infrastructure as one of the “key enablers” of the Roadmap. If properly funded, exascale supercomputers and AIRR would provide the massive processing power required to run complex AI models, accelerating AI research and application development.
SEE: 4 ways to accelerate the UK’s digital transformation
The Artificial Intelligence Act will have a narrow scope for further innovations, despite changes in financing
Even though the UK Labour government has withdrawn investment in supercomputers, it has made some steps to support innovation in artificial intelligence.
On July 31, Kyle told executives from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta and other top tech companies that the AI bill would focus on large, ChatGPT-style baseline models built by just a few companies, according to the Financial Times.
He assured the tech giants that it would not become a “Christmas Tree Bill” where more regulations would be added through the legislative process. Restricting AI innovation in the UK could have a significant impact on the economy, with a Microsoft report finding that adding five years to the time it takes to implement AI could cost more than £150 billion. According to the IMF, the AI roadmap could deliver an annual productivity increase of 1.5%.
FT sources have learned that Kyle confirmed the AI bill will focus on two issues: making voluntary agreements between companies and the government legally binding and transforming the AI Security Institute into an independent government body.
Artificial Intelligence Act, Section 1: Make Voluntary Agreements Between Government and Big Tech Legally Binding
At the AI Security Summit, representatives from 28 countries signed the Bletchley Declaration, committing to jointly manage and mitigate the risks of AI while ensuring safe and responsible development and deployment.
Eight AI companies, including ChatGPT creator OpenAI, have voluntarily agreed to work with the signatories to evaluate their latest models before they are released so the pledge can stand. The companies also voluntarily agreed to the Frontier AI Safety Commitments at May’s AI Seoul Summit, which include halting development of AI systems that pose significant, unmitigated risks.
According to the FT, UK government officials want to give the deals legal force so that companies cannot withdraw from them if they lose commercial viability.
Artificial Intelligence Act, Section 2: Transforming the AI Security Institute into an Independent Government Body
The UK-based AISI was established at the AI Security Summit with three main goals: assessing existing AI systems for risks and vulnerabilities, conducting fundamental research into AI security, and sharing information with other national and international entities.
According to the FT, a government official said making AISI an independent organisation would give companies confidence that the government was “not digging in their heels” while also strengthening its position.
UK government’s position on AI regulation and innovation remains unclear
The Labour government has shown evidence of both restricting and supporting the development of artificial intelligence in the UK.
Along with the redistribution of AI funding, it has been suggested that it will severely restrict AI developers. In July’s King’s Speech, it was announced that the government “will seek to establish appropriate regulations to impose requirements on those working to develop the most powerful AI models.”
This is confirmed by Labour’s pre-election manifesto, which pledged to introduce “binding regulation for the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models”. After the speech, Prime Minister Keir Starmer also told the Commons that his government would “harness the power of AI as we work to strengthen the security framework”.
On the other hand, the government promised tech companies that the AI bill would not be overly restrictive and has apparently held off on introducing it. The bill had been expected to be included in the named legislation that was announced as part of the King’s Speech.
