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This 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 growt
by tomwphillips 1y ago
This 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.