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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, the United States, on September 25, 2024.
Leon Neal | Via Reuters
LONDON — Britain is looking to create a homegrown rival to OpenAI and dramatically increase its national computing infrastructure as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government aims to become a world leader in artificial intelligence.
Starmer is set to visit Bristol, England, on Monday to announce the pledge, which stems from work by British tech investor Matt Clifford to develop an “Action Plan for AI Capabilities”. The plan aims to help the UK take advantage of the potential of AI.
The government is primarily looking to increase data center capacity across the UK to encourage developers of powerful artificial intelligence models that rely on high-performance computing equipment located in remote locations to train and run their systems.
A target has been set to increase the computing power of the UK ‘sovereign’ or public sector twentyfold by 2030. As part of the pledge, the government will begin opening up access to the AI Research Resource, an initiative aimed at strengthening the UK’s computing infrastructure.
Starmer administration last year scrapped £1.3bn of taxpayer-funded spending commitments to two significant computing initiatives to prioritize other fiscal plans. The projects, an artificial intelligence research resource and next-generation “exoscale” supercomputer, were promised by Starmer’s predecessor Rishi Sunak.
Sovereign AI has become a hot topic for politiciansespecially in Europe. The term refers to the idea that technologies critical to economic growth and national security should be created and developed in the countries where people use them.
To further strengthen the UK’s computing infrastructure, the government has also committed to creating several AI ‘growth zones’, where planning permission rules will be relaxed in certain locations to allow new data centres.
At the same time, an “Artificial Intelligence Energy Council” made up of energy and artificial intelligence industry leaders will be established to explore the role of renewable and low-carbon energy sources such as nuclear.
Building a contender for OpenAI
The latest major initiative proposed by the UK government was to create homegrown AI ‘champions’ a on a similar scale to the US tech giants responsible for the foundational 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 connect government agencies — such as universities — to boost the country’s ability to create “sovereign” AI models independent of Silicon Valley.
It should be emphasized that the UK faces serious challenges in its attempt to create an effective alternative to OpenAI. First, several entrepreneurs in the country have complained about funding challenges that make it difficult for startups in the country to raise funds available for AI success stories.
Many UK founders and venture capitalists have called for the country’s pension funds to allocate more of their portfolios to riskier, growth-oriented start-ups – a reform the government has pushed through tried to click earlier.
“The UK has $7 trillion in that pocket,” Magnus Grimland, CEO and founder of venture capital firm Antler, told CNBC last year. “Imagine if you take just 5% of that and allocate it to innovation—you’ll solve the problem.”
However, British tech leaders have generally praised the government’s AI action plan. Zahra Bahralolumi, UK head of Salesforce, told CNBC that the plan is a “forward-looking strategy,” adding that she was encouraged by “the government’s bold vision for AI and its focus 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 critical for the UK to achieve its ambitions to become an AI superpower and a leading destination for AI investment,” he said.
There are no formal rules for artificial intelligence in Britain yet. This was previously stated by the Starmer government plans to develop legislation for AI — but the details remain thin.
Last month, the government announced a consultation on measures to regulate the use of copyrighted content for training artificial intelligence models.
More generally, the UK sees a differentiated regulatory regime from the EU post-Brexit as a positive – meaning it can introduce regulatory oversight of AI, but in a less stringent way than the EU, which has adopted more a tough approach to regulating the technology with the Artificial Intelligence Act.
