Seeing some bad takes on British Government AI funding: some notes. 1. The Government has announced a tranche of funding for a number of different AI-related organisations and initiatives. It comes to roughly £600m (excluding private sector input.) This has led to a series of partisan bad takes by people who don’t really follow this conversation. That is annoying because only I can have partisan bad takes. 2. Two common takes: “this is nothing, AI labs spend hundreds of millions every day/month etc! We can’t compete! Common British L” Or “Government is terrible at picking winners and investing, should be left to the private sector.” These takes reflect usually partisan pre-existing notions, neither actually understands what this money does or doesn’t do, and neither actually examines what the money is going towards either. Apples to oranges type stuff. 3. Let’s break down two of the more significant sets. The first is more funding for AISI (+£120m), and the second is for a new AI Biosecurity Lab (£100m, + around £200m from frontier companies). 4. AISI is the world’s best resourced institute doing this work and leading in its class. Don’t take my word for it - feel free to read MI5 Chief’s recent speech, or any number of expert statements from frontier companies. IT IS NOT a frontier AI company competitor. IT IS NOT designed to produce cutting edge LLMs or agents or consumer applications. It is, effectively, a research organisation staffed by clever people whose job is to analyse what frontier AI companies are working on and test their stuff. So if you’re measuring this announcement of investment and saying “it’s nothing compared to what AI firms spend”, you’re comparing totally different things. Instead, look how much spending Britain’s AISI gets relative to its international counterparts on getting access and insight into this frontier. 5. The UK’s AI Biosecurity Lab (AIBL) is even newer than AISI, and a world first. IT IS NOT a competitor to private sector biolabs. IT IS NOT an example of Government intervening and ‘picking a winner.’ Its job - modelled after AISI - is to “develop technical capabilities that help the UK better understand, prevent, detect and respond to biological threats.” It will do this by attracting best in class talent + working with frontier companies + working with the UK’s wider biosecurity landscape + other agencies. 6. Both of these organisations represent continuity in British Government thinking: ‘AI brings with it a whole bunch of positive things, but also risks. We should create organisations that attract top talent to help us analyse and understand this technology.’ You see this in MI5’s recently launched AI Threat Assessment Centre (AITAC) and the AI Economics Institute (AIEI) launched earlier this year. You can absolutely think this is the right or wrong approach btw but that’s the broad strategy. 7. So the comparisons to frontier companies’ spending is just misplaced. You’re working yourself into a tizzy over a misunderstanding of why the state is allocating resources. You shouldn’t compare these to frontier companies, but instead to other AISIs or other foreign govt AI investments I guess. Finally, if I asked many of those commenting what they would do differently, I would guess they wouldn’t really know.

Marking the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster in Aberfan. / Nodi 60 mlwyddiant trychineb Aberfan yn Aberfan.

At 9:15am today, Wales will fall silent to remember those who were taken from us in the Aberfan disaster. 60 years may have passed, but we will never forget them.

"The driver of Britain’s water shortages isn’t data centres, it is a 30 year failure to build the reservoirs we need to meet demand" open.substack.com/pub/samdum… @Sam_Dumitriu

What an amazing moment. There's a lot of doomerism around AI at the moment. So much so that it's easy to forget how amazing the technology is and the opportunity it presents us. @ElevenLabs "has now been used to restore the voices of more than 11,000 people who have lost their voices through injury or illness" This must be truly life-changing for those who've been able to get their voice back.

How much water do data centres use? A lot less than you might have heard.

Successful AI adoption could reduce UK borrowing by *£50bn* by 2030-31, says AI minister Kanishka Narayan, citing an OBR projection. The dramatic economic gains AI could produce still aren’t appreciated enough in Westminster.

Standing room only at our techUK members only fireside with @KanishkaNarayan (who I can exclusively reveal will have some Arctic Monkeys on his set tonight...!)

NEW: Electricity prices in the UK are among the highest in the G7. Why is this? And what can the government do about it? Our new IFS Green Budget chapter explains: [THREAD] ⬇️

It's good that MPs want to discuss long tail risks, and engage with what is certainly a technology that presents both a huge opportunity and challenge for Britain. But it is wholly irresponsible to say on the one hand 'we think this is really important' and on the other block the UK's ability to build AI capabilities here and support British AI companies. In the event that neither our allies nor foes listen to the proposed international agreement and that in fact a 'kill switch' is impossible, every single one of these MPs should be fighting to strengthen Britain's hand in this critical technology by supporting local datacenters, so we're not exporting our data abroad, reforming regulations so that AI models like cyber defenses can be trained here, so we're not entirely reliant on foreign technology and supporting British AI companies, so we see the economic benefits here too. We're doing our small bit at SovAI, but this should be a national level debate, and I hope this MP champions the UK scaling those ambitions just as passionately.

The DCMS Minister watch continues 👀. A few weeks ago I posted the DCMS Ministerial briefs that were shared by the Dept with me, but then there was radio silence. Now the Ministerial titles have been published but no portfolios yet. We have some clarity, but still waiting for the detail. In a letter to Chi Onwurah, the gov has confirmed the following: - The Rt Hon Ian Murray, Minister of State for Creative Industries, Media and Online Safety (DCMS) - Vicky Foxcroft, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Youth, Gambling, Digital Inclusion, Civil Society and Loneliness (DCMS) - Stephanie Peacock, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Sport, Tourism, Place and Digital Government (DCMS) - Baroness Lloyd CBE, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Space, Cyber and Regulatory Reform (Lords) (joint BIST-DCMS What's notable to me: - Digital ID has brought into the "Digital Government" brief - Online safety is back (there was a time where it was titled Online Harms) - Data and data protection isn't named anywhere - Telecoms (and spectrum) is also missing, which is notable because the stated rationale for folding these functions back into DCMS as explicitly to give "coherent and strategic oversight across telecoms, media and online safety" I know I sound like a broken record but clarity is critical for the sector that delivers such significant economic growth to the UK economy.

He's quite obviously not just referring to AI data centres. The Green party press release from today mentions data centres 10 or so times before it mentions AI. And even so, is Zack now objecting to people using google search which auto-generates an AI response? Is he now supporting a Chatgpt ban? Would he like to stop AI generating cures for disease? A weird attempt to import US progressive talking points into the UK debate, without reckoning with the problems we face as a country.

Modern data centres require less water than leisure centres or restaurants - so it’s sad to see politicians spread conspiracy theories about them like this. I shared some of this data in an Economist article this week. However an even bigger issue is the sheer hypocrisy in the Greens’ position here. The Greens are adamantly against Britain’s reliance on international tech companies like Palantir. Fair enough, let’s support British entrepreneurs to compete with them. But then they campaign furiously against Britain’s ability to build its own software, which requires things like UK-based DCs. You have to conclude their policy is to ban the use of all software and have our hospitals go back to paper and pencils for health records, use moon-cycles to treat cancer patients, and rob a generation of young people the chance to benefit from these new technologies. Britain can re-industrialise and become less reliant on international partners. New industries like automated labs, robotics, SMNRs, and datacentres can improve our defence capabilities, create jobs and bring down costs. But you can’t campaign on both lowering our own strategic capabilities by blocking datacenters ( especially using conspiracy theories ) and arguing we should be less dependent on foreign technologies.

Haven't had time to look at this in detail, but just on the face of it - 6.6m litres a day is 0.25% of England's non-household potable water supply, a little bit more than the amount consumed by the postal and courier sector Add in households and data centres account for around 0.05% of the total public water supplied By comparison, leaks account for 19% Somewhat confusing why data centres that use 0.05% are unforgivable but leaks that consume 400 times that amount are forgiveable - but I guess that's what you expect from the trade body for water companies 🤷

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝. Main message and a deep commitment from @jreynoldsMP and me this morning.

The Government's published a WMS about the abolishment of DSIT and where briefs are moving. Here's what we know...

Scrapping @SciTechgovuk is a bad call. linkedin.com/posts/matthew-e…

In recent days, there have been strong rumours that the new administration will abolish @SciTechgovuk and scatter tech across Whitehall. We've written to Andy Burnham with @techUK to say this is the wrong move at the wrong time. Read our letter here 👇

A fairly outrageous error on data centre water consumption by the Guardian, found and corrected by the noble @BristOliver The “it is by now fairly well-known” is the real tell here

EXCLUSIVE: Leading industry groups including defence body ADS, TheCityUK and MakeUK, will release a joint statement tomorrow accusing the government of "crippling" confidence in the defence sector by delaying and curtailing, the Defence Investment Plan. news.sky.com/story/mark-klei…