British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives an interview to the media while attending the 79th United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations headquarters in New York, USA, September 25, 2024.
Leon Neal | Via Reuters
LONDON — The United Kingdom is looking to build a domestic challenger to OpenAI and drastically boost its national computing infrastructure as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government aims to become a global leader in artificial intelligence.
Starmer will visit Bristol, England, on Monday to announce the pledge, which follows work by British tech investor Matt Clifford to create an “AI Opportunities Action Plan”. The plan aims to help the UK take advantage of the potential of AI.
The government is primarily looking to expand data center capacity across the UK to encourage developers of powerful AI models that rely on high-performance computing devices located in remote locations to train and run systems of theirs.
A target has been set to increase “sovereign” or public sector computing capacity in the UK twenty-fold by 2030. As part of this pledge, the government will begin opening up access to the AI Research Resource, an initiative aimed at strengthening UK computing infrastructure.
The Starmer administration last year scrapped £1.3bn of taxpayer-funded spending commitments towards two key IT initiatives in order to prioritize other fiscal plans. The projects, an AI Research Resource and a next-generation “exascale” supercomputer, were promises made under Starmer’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak.
Sovereign artificial intelligence has become a hot topic for policymakers, especially in Europe. The term refers to the idea that technologies critical to economic growth and national security must be built and developed in the countries where people are adopting them.
To further strengthen Britain’s computing infrastructure, the government also committed to the creation of several AI “growth zones”, where planning permission rules will be relaxed in certain locations to allow the creation of new data centres. .
Meanwhile, an “AI Energy Council” formed by industry leaders from both energy and AI will be set up to explore the role of renewable and low-carbon energy sources such as nuclear.
Building a challenger to OpenAI
The latest major initiative the UK government proposed was to create artificial intelligence “champions” in the country or on a similar scale to the US tech giants responsible for the fundamental AI models that power today’s generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Britain plans to use AI growth zones and a newly created National Data Library to link public institutions – such as universities – to boost the country’s ability to create “sovereign” AI models independent of Silicon Valley .
It is worth noting that the UK faces serious challenges in its attempt to create an effective OpenAI alternative. First, some entrepreneurs in the country have complained about funding challenges that make it difficult for startups in the country to raise the kind of cash for AI success stories.
Many founders and venture capitalists in the UK have called for the country’s pension funds to allocate more of their portfolios to riskier, growth-focused startups – a reform the government has previously pledged to push back.
“In the UK, there’s $7 trillion in this pocket,” Magnus Grimeland, CEO and founder of venture capital firm Antler, told CNBC in an interview last year. “Imagine if you take just 5% of that and allocate it to innovation – you solve the problem.”
UK tech leaders, however, have generally praised the government’s AI action plan. Zahra Bahrololoumi, UK head of Salesforce, told CNBC that the plan is a “forward-thinking strategy,” adding that she is encouraged by the government’s “bold vision for AI and emphasis on transparency, security and collaboration “.
Chintan Patel, Cisco’s UK chief technology officer, said he was “encouraged” by the action plan. “Having a clearly defined roadmap is essential for the UK to achieve its ambition to become an AI superpower and a leading destination for AI investment,” he said.
Britain does not yet have formal AI regulations. The Starmer government has previously said it plans to draft AI legislation – but details remain scarce.
Last month, the government announced a consultation on measures to regulate the use of copyrighted content to train AI models.
Overall, the UK is establishing a regulatory regime differentiated from the EU post-Brexit as a positive factor – that is, it may introduce regulatory oversight for AI, but in a way that is less strict than the EU , which has taken a tougher approach to regulating technology with its AI Act.