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Introducing Stargate UK
- huflungdung 1y ago[dead]
- tomwphillips 1y agoThis kind of science/tech investment is and has been catnip for UK government, regardless of political party, for years. They're out of ideas to stimulate growth, and AI is their hail Mary. No one involved seems to be able to explain why it will work.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoMaybe they think it's like Peter Pan, if enough people believe in it, it will work.
- Dilettante_ 1y agoEverytime somebody denies the AI revolution, a Bored Ape loses its value
- testdelacc1 1y agoOk let’s assume that AI will be a game changer. How does hosting it in the UK change anything? Just feels like something to brag about, but doesn’t have any impact. The UK is suffering from persistently expensive electricity (https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/, see All-Time). How does hosting AI data centres help with that?
- simianwords 1y agoI don't know much about this but do these prices reflect electricity costs for a datacenter? Maybe the infra is different than for general public use.. maybe the last mile problems don't exist for data centers.
- testdelacc1 1y agoThis is true. Data centres usually sign deals with power plants. But for the country as a whole, it does exacerbate the problem with a lack of energy. And I’m perfectly happy to spend the energy as well! It’s just unclear what the benefit is to hosting within the UK.
- hmottestad 1y agoIn Norway I've noticed that stringent requirements for privacy make it much easier to run things in the cloud if the physical location of said cloud is actually in Norway. So if OpenAI is hosting their services within the borders of the UK, then they would also be beholden to UK law. Makes it easier for the financial sector, government and healthcare to use their AI models than if they would have to send their data to a datacenter in the US.
- tempodox 1y agoBut as a US company it’s also under US jurisdiction. So the alphabet agencies still get their data handed on a silver platter.
- physicsguy 1y agoWell, they're aiming to do the power via SMR reactors, and they have a large government supported company (Rolls) making those. I think there's a bit of a hail mary that that will be a successful export story.
- testdelacc1 1y agoYeah it’ll be great when it happens. But work on the SMRs was only approved in June this year. It will take 10+ years of development and construction according to their current estimates. Every nuclear project usually takes twice as long and thrice as costly. So we could see those SMRs start to come online in like 2040. The chips in these data centres would have been EOL-d by then.
- OhioMan2943 1y agoI love small modular reactor reactors
- ycombigators 1y agoRoyal Dutch Shell for the win!
- derektank 1y ago>They're out of ideas to stimulate growth You've gotta help us doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out ideas
- oncallthrow 1y agoYes, all the usual suspects (politicians and political pundits of all stripes) have moved seamlessly from “the green revolution” to AI. It’s all irrelevant to the fundamental economic problems the country is facing, which do not have an easy solution.
- torginus 1y agoFrom what I gather the UKians have a real chip on their shoulders from being left out of every tech revolution of the recent decades (chips, EVs and assorted green energy tech, rockets and now AI)
- walthamstow 1y agoPeople of the UK are referred to collectively as Britons or Brits.
- kybernetikos 1y agoAre you saying this with an awareness that both DeepMind and ARM were founded in the UK?
- argsnd 1y agoI am convinced that a lot of people have developed a completely distorted view of the UK by spending too much time on x.com where Elon Musk pushes his “come on, have a civil war already” bullshit and paints a picture of a country in its death throes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 00deadbeef 1y agoGreen energy like the world’s largest offshore windfarms which are in the UK? Or the SMRs Rolls-Royce are developing? Chips like those designed by Arm that can be found in almost everything these days? AI like DeepMind?
- xorcist 1y agoWell, there's something to be said about the inability to capitalize long term. Britain has managed to be at the forefront of all those revolutionary technologies, but when the real break out happens somehow the Americans swoop in and buy the winners. That's shaky ground for future ingenuity. ARM seems to have been very important to Cambridge at large, but it's not Silicon Valley. I can sort of understand why politicians would look back at things and ponder what could have been done differently.
- Lio 1y agoIf they really wanted to stimulate growth the UK government would concentrate of giving us the cheapest electricity in the world. Going someway towards that would boost almost all sectors of the economy.
- dan-robertson 1y agoHopefully not too hindered by the high energy prices.
- hkt 1y agoI expect they'll bypass our sickeningly broken energy market pricing mechanisms by just producing their own power.
- incone123 1y agoAt last, a local AI for Tubbs and Edward.
- _joel 1y agoFinally, a can of can't
- ares623 1y agoIs the “Stargate” naming here just another attempt to mislead/allude to the Stargate Project that was announced a couple of months ago?
- tpetry 1y agoAbsolutely. Exactly like the Stargate datacenters being built in the US have no affiliation with the Stargate project because Oracle is not involved in them. Just another way trying to make that big announcement credible without anything being done for that 500B project.
- franky47 1y agoAnd ruin a good 90’s film & series’ SEO in the process.
- NitpickLawyer 1y agoIndeed.
- exac 1y agoIt isn't "sovereign" if the parent organization is controlled by a foreign company.
- torginus 1y agoYeah weird, I thought the company called OpenAI is all about naming things in a way that accurately represents their real status.
- jaccola 1y agoThis is so sad. Like an addict who is hoping for that easy win to get them out of the terrible hole they are in... This government (as the last, to be fair) is betting on unproven technology they barely understand and sometimes horribly misunderstand rather than making tough policy decisions. The parts of this that actually materialise are very probably a good thing for the country, but this should really be business as usual. Alongside that I hear MPs, government ministers and commentators alike saying things like "when AI allows us to make vast efficiency gains in that government department...", "AI will obviously help to reinvigorate the Welsh economy...", "with AI we will be able to transition our industry to clean energy quicker..." (?!) The fact that this very much feels like the country is lucky to have Nvidia/OpenAI rather than vice versa just demonstrates how badly managed the UK is.
- argsnd 1y agoThis just feels to me like you’re starting from a conclusion (“the UK is being badly managed”) and working backwards in a somewhat nonsensical manner. Yes AI is new but it has contributed to something like 1/6th of total US economic growth over the last year and of course any government will be courting more investment of that type. To the Americans I would note that your country is currently being even more badly run than the UK at the moment given that since Trump’s inauguration the UK has grown faster than you (and every other G7 economy).
- ycombigators 1y agoThe UK has been badly managed for as long as I've been alive, which is half a century. This isn't party political. The tories have been worse than Labour in many respects but it's a shit show all round imo.
- argsnd 1y agoBut then where hasn’t been? When I was born we were poorer than all of France, Japan, and Italy on a per capita basis and now we are not. We have broadly kept pace with US growth since the end of world war 2. We have failed to figure out strategies to close the gap with the US by growing faster but we are doing no worse.
- fancyfredbot 1y agoOpenAI seem very non-commital about the whole thing. They will "explore offtake", which effectively means they'll think about it. This lack of commitment in a world where we seemingly can't build new data centers fast enough is a bit worrying. They clearly anticipate scenarios in which they won't want this capacity either because of poor pricing or lack of demand.
- mutkach 1y agoThey seem to be betting on multiple things happening at once - as indicated by recent projections by their CFO, following Oracle's own insane projections. They are betting on demand rising exponentially and somehow keeping up with it using a consistent monetization model - which is not there yet. I am not a finance person, but I wish more people with qualifications - and hopefully unaffiliated with any party - scrutinized all those claims and projections.
- flipbrad 1y agoGiven https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukusa-agreement-on-access-to-electronic-data-for-the-purpose-of-countering-serious-crime-cs-usa-no62019 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukusa-agreement-o... , what does sovereignty even mean here? I also wish we were attracting industries that weren't going to significantly push up electricity consumption on windless days, which will have an outsized effect on electricity prices everyone else pays. At least this says the datacentres will be up north, hopefully not exacerbating transmission issues.
- OhioMan2943 1y agoThe AI grift is so obvious now. The smart are abusing the dumb.
- ares623 1y agoYeah I’ve definitely started to see the winds change. It’s gonna hurt everything.
- OhioMan2943 1y agoEspecially when you see that the entire economy is leveraged on AI- and will likely cause another gfc (within the silent depression we're already in) “We’re now locked into a particular version of the market and the future where all roads lead to big tech,” says Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, which studies AI development and policy. Indeed, the success of major stock indexes—and perhaps your 401(k)—is resting on the continued growth of AI: Meta, Amazon, and the chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom have accounted for 60 percent of the S&P 500’s returns this year. " People wont be able to handle this. Small scale community is the only way to get through what is coming.
- simianwords 1y agoCan you explain how this is a grift?
- ares623 1y ago- using the “stargate” name to make it sound related to the Stargate Project (which itself is vaporware) - very non committal verbiage - very light on details, but enough to entice new -marks- investors (“please bro we’re so close to AGI just $20B more”)
- OhioMan2943 1y agoBecause none of our most advanced llm models need more than a few h100s or whatever. They would be better building exascale computing not centred on llms. It's blatantly promising undeliverable results.
- ycombigators 1y ago"Labour struggling to get handle on Goa'uld immigration" [Daily Mail]
- incone123 1y agoLord Hermer says Lord Ba'al is entitled to refugee status. [Guardian]
- _joel 1y agoDoes this mean everyone will have to delete their photos so it'll have enough cooling water to run? https://www.theverge.com/science/758275/drought-delete-files-email-data-center-water-uk https://www.theverge.com/science/758275/drought-delete-files...
- robotswantdata 1y agoWhy not have this located in northern Scotland taking advantage of the surplus wind power being wasted due to north-south grid capacity, instead it’s likely going to be powered by gas generators. In general the UK government talks growth but so far has delivered anti growth. Tech outsourcing seems to have really picked up since the NI changes.
- loliver666 1y ago[flagged]
- trenchpilgrim 1y agoIsn't there a half-decent changes Scotland votes for independence from the UK in the foreseeable future? Seems like that is in opposition to the goal of data and compute soverignty.
- walthamstow 1y agoNot really. Scotland's status is in the gift of the UK government. They've given them one vote already, they won't get another for a long time.
- politelemon 1y agoEven if it does somehow happen, there would need to be agreements in place for these cross border transactions to continue. It would shatter the economies to draw a hard line between the two nations.
- Nursie 1y agoTo add to the other replies, the SNP have been the biggest political driver of the independence efforts and they seem to be falling out of favour at the moment. It made me laugh when Nicola Sturgeon, who was the leader of the SNP for a long old time and who has been at the forefront of the Scottish Independence movement for many years, one of its most recognisable voices, recently announced she might retire to London because Scotland was now feeling a little bit suffocating. So I think the idea of Scotland splitting from the UK is on the back burner for the forseeable future. It had a real moment in 2014 but didn't make it over the line. I don't think the UK government will be allowing another vote any time soon.
- pfannkuchen 1y agoVery disappointed OpenAI isn’t actually producing a generated tv show, and for that project choosing to make a UK version of the US tv show Stargate, a la the US version of the UK tv show the office. I feel like if tech companies were run by people with a sense of humor such things would sometimes happen.
- shellac 1y agoIt sounds like this will include Teesworks, one of the dodgiest land deals of recent years. For a small investment two people essentially held the entire thing to ransom and secured options on an astonishing amount government money. You can hear Richard Brooks summarise the situation (in 2023) here: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/podcast/76 https://www.private-eye.co.uk/podcast/76
- steinvakt2 1y agoOnly 8,000 GPUs to start and potentially 31,000 over time. This is very small compared to Stargate Norway (announced almost 2 months ago), which starts out with 100,000 GPUs and planned (!) to have 250,000.
- fancyfredbot 1y agoNorway has advantage of lots of power and lots of investment from Aker who are presumably involved in supplying said power.
- steinvakt2 1y agoYes. But interesting that Stargate Norway is so much more significant. Not that it should be directly connected, but UK has more than 10x the population of Norway. So given a very simplified glance at the situation, Norway seems to have a strong position for the coming years in AI.
- fancyfredbot 1y agoIt's maybe simpler than I thought at first. The Norwegian deployment will be cheap to run and so easy to sell. It's clearly intended for people outside of Norway to use. So it's big. The UK deployment will be expensive to run and only people who are limited to UK for regulatory reasons will want it. There are few such customers so it's small.
- incomingpain 1y agoOpenai is handling their demand without any stargates. Then they announce a mega facility in the USA saying they are future planning. Then they announce one for middle east, and perhaps the assumption is $ being thrown at them but surely they dont need that much capacity. Now the UK? Confirming superintelligence.