Daniel Susskind, a professor , writer and speaker from Oxford University has called for growth in the UK, in the FT.
“Three hundred years ago, Britain thundered ahead of its rivals because a fresh spirit took hold — risk-taking, entrepreneurial, aggressive in discovering new ideas about the world, single-minded in putting them to practical use. It is that spirit we need to nurture once again.”
His interest is in the use of AI, it is worth reading the article, he points out how bad we have become in doing the things that other countries do as a matter of course. The link above will take you to Daniel’s article if you are an FT subscriber, but you can get to his article if you aren’t by using linked in’s free read (of FT) service here.
My understanding of AI is very limited. I have this book and I’m not really computer literate. Most of my understanding comes from Ladybirds.
A not very intelligent photo of a very good Ladybird
— Henry Tapper (@henrytapper.bsky.social) January 19, 2025 at 6:15 AM
I cannot claim to lead anyone anywhere on AI. But I want to see Britain grabbing this opportunity as we can and hope that we can do as Starmer calls us to do.
I’m going to try even if I’m frightened. I should not be frightened. We should remember the words of my Superintendent Minister Jenny Smith and not be frightened.
A nation doing something? Let’s pray we are
The Prime Minister said last week
Artificial Intelligence will drive incredible change in our country. From teachers personalising lessons, to supporting small businesses with their record-keeping, to speeding up planning applications, it has the potential to transform the lives of working people.
But the AI industry needs a government that is on their side, one that won’t sit back and let opportunities slip through its fingers. And in a world of fierce competition, we cannot stand by. We must move fast and take action to win the global race.
Our plan will make Britain the world leader. It will give the industry the foundation it needs and will turbocharge the Plan for Change. That means more jobs and investment in the UK, more money in people’s pockets, and transformed public services.
That’s the change this government is delivering.
The Government claims that AI can make an economic impact to the UK by £47bn a year
- the £47 billion estimate is based on IMF figures but derived from separate calculations and assumptions, and as such, is not an official IMF estimate
- estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that while the exact economic impact hinges on the wider development and adoption of AI, and realisation could be gradual, the UK could ultimately see productivity gains of up to 1.5% annually
- if fully realised, these gains could be worth up to an average £47 billion to the UK each year over a decade
- the Vantage Data Centres anticipated investment, some of which is subject to planning permission and agreed connection timelines, is expected to support over 10,000 local construction jobs over the next decade, and create over 1,500 operational roles at its data centres
It comes as three major tech companies – Vantage Data Centres, Nscale and Kyndryl – have committed to £14 billion investment in the UK to build the AI infrastructure the UK needs to harness the potential of this technology and deliver 13,250 jobs across the UK. That’s on top of the £25 billion in AI investment announced at the International Investment Summit.
Vantage Data Centres – which is working to build one of Europe’s largest data centre campuses in Wales – plans to invest over £12 billion in data centres across the UK – creating over 11,500 jobs in the process.
Kyndryl – the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider and a leading IT consultancy – announces plans to create up to 1,000 AI-related jobs in Liverpool over the next three years. This new tech hub will share the government’s ambition to roll AI out across the country to help grow the economy and foster the next generation of talent.
Nscale – one of the UK’s leading AI companies – has announced a $2.5 billion investment to support the UK’s data centre infrastructure over the next three years. They have also signed a contract to build the largest UK sovereign AI data centre in Loughton, Essex by 2026.
The plan includes initiatives that will help make the UK the number one place for AI firms to invest, which is vital if Britain is to be at the forefront of this industry and be a changemaker rather than a change-taker. The key changes include:
- forging new AI Growth Zones to speed up planning proposals and build more AI infrastructure. The first of these will be in Culham, Oxfordshire
- increasing the public compute capacity by twentyfold to give us the processing power we need to fully embrace this new technology – this starts immediately with work starting on a brand new supercomputer
- Matt Clifford has been appointed as advisor to the PM on AI opportunities, bringing together a team across No10 and DSIT to seize the opportunities of AI and build the UK’s sovereign capabilities. Nobel Prize-winner, Sir Demis Hassabis will also provide expertise to the government to help the UK seize the opportunities of AI.
- creating a new National Data Library to safely and securely unlock the value of public data and support AI development
- a dedicated AI Energy Council chaired by the Science and Energy Secretaries will also be established, working with energy companies to understand the energy demands and challenges which will fuel the technology’s development – this will directly support the government’s mission to become a clean energy superpower by tapping into technologies like small modular reactors.
Ladybird, a link to the future for a 63 year old -if I can- you too!
As with many other matters, the UK Government comes late to the AI party and will incur substantial costs in a probably fruitless quest to catch up.
As FD of the former National Computing Centre, I recall AI was one of our major research themes in the 1980s supported by 50% DTI grant funding (with the other 50% coming from industry in a collaborative consortium). This was until Margaret Thatcher’s Government in the form of the then Baron Young, Business Secretary – arbitrarily cancelled all such funding arrangements without notice. So much so that the Government had to pay compensation to meet the redundancy costs of the staff involved and other wind down costs which actually turned out to be greater than the grant funding that would have been paid over the balance of the original funding agreement. Needless to say the research staff involved quickly found other jobs – but most of them were outside the UK, particularly with Microsoft and Apple in the U.S. whose AI offerings have now entered the commercial market place. The industry collaborators were predominantly UK based but did include some EU partners, particularly in Germany and Sweden, with the effect of focusing their activities on the abandoned UK based research.
Hearing the recent announcements on AI, I feel the current Government is falling into the trap once again of announcing high profile “pump priming” funding for physical infrastructure without considering the long term support required to sustain a long term effort, particularly when initial development efforts fail which a high proportion will inevitably do. We need to retain the human capital in the UK, applying the knowledge obtained from the failures, to try again in hope that in 20 or 40 years time their can be commercial exploitation of benefit to the UK.
In terms of the announcement above I am concerned that AI is being used as a “wrapper” to justify other only partly related aspirations – for example is the new “supercomputer” merely just the latest iteration in a long line of publicly funded supercomputers dating back to Harold Wilson’s “white hot heat of technology” in 1966 and probably even before that to Bletchley Park’s Colossus and the Alan Turing’s Mark 1 to MU4 machines at Manchester University? Also do we need to meet the energy needs within the UK, would it not be more efficient to locate the energy consuming facilities close to the source of that energy linked to the UK with resilient low energy consuming data connections, e.g.. purely for example, by agreement using Iceland;s thermal power capacity linked to the UK by multiple data connections rather than importing the energy through a single power cable or putting an increased demand for carbon free generation in the UK?
What we need is human capital not infrastructure!
Edinburgh waits to see where the promised “supercomputer” is to be sited and part funded …
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24853622.edinburgh-university-issues-statement-labours-supercomputer-u-turn/
I agree absolutely BUT do not underplay the amount of power all this needs. We need to double down on our commitment to net zero. Ditch fossil fuels asap.
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