4 ms·

Is there a world where frontier labs move to somewhere else like London to escape the business hurdles of the US? There are trillions at stake, is it a plausibl

Is there a world where frontier labs move to somewhere else like London to escape the business hurdles of the US? There are trillions at stake, is it a plausible scenario?

eamag 4mo ago
They already have offices in London and Zurich, but it doesn't let them to escape anything
- goldenarm 4mo ago
  I know, but what about leaving the US entirely to escape the export bans ? Like ByteDance and Shein left China for Singapore.
theplumber 4mo ago
London sucks, not to mention the UK’s political future seems even more nationalistic than MAGA
merek 4mo ago
Why London of all places?
- cherryteastain 4mo ago
  It's the place outside US and China with the greatest concentration of AI talent. Deepmind was founded in London for instance. Sadly UK is fully into nanny state "safetyism" culture so I am not convinced it'd be better.
- goldenarm 4mo ago
  Talent concentration, little tech regulation, English speaking, decent funding, close to GMT. There's a reason why a big chunk Google deepmind is already there.
  - dansquizsoft 4mo ago
    > Talent concentration Lol
    - xpct 4mo ago
      To my knowledge there's still talent left in London, even after the wage stagnation.
- ascorbic 4mo ago
  Deepmind is based there. Anthropic's biggest research base outside the US is there. OpenAI has just announced a big new office there.
ben_w 4mo ago
A world, yes. Plausible, no. The US is already seeing energy market distortions from the power use of AI; the UK has a much smaller total electricity supply, both from a lower population and the baseline per person being lower. Total UK demand in 2023 was 316.8 TWh[0], or an average of about 36 GW. The US currently has 33 GW of data centres, and the AI boom plan, so far as discern actual plans from AI hallucinations in the modern web, is about ten times that. From the scales people talk about, my expectation is that even the smaller additional supply needed for the constant churn of newly trained frontier models would probably exceed what London alone can manage. [0] generation less than that, it has imports; chapter 5: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a7e14da3c2a28abb50d922/DUKES_2024_Chapters_1-7.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a7e14da3c2a... [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=316.8+TWh+%2F+year https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=316.8+TWh+%2F+year

Is there a world where frontier labs move to somewhere else like London to escape the business hurdles of the US? There are trillions at stake, is it a plausible scenario?

eamag 4mo ago

They already have offices in London and Zurich, but it doesn't let them to escape anything

goldenarm 4mo ago
I know, but what about leaving the US entirely to escape the export bans ? Like ByteDance and Shein left China for Singapore.

theplumber 4mo ago

London sucks, not to mention the UK’s political future seems even more nationalistic than MAGA

merek 4mo ago

Why London of all places?

cherryteastain 4mo ago
It's the place outside US and China with the greatest concentration of AI talent. Deepmind was founded in London for instance. Sadly UK is fully into nanny state "safetyism" culture so I am not convinced it'd be better.
goldenarm 4mo ago
Talent concentration, little tech regulation, English speaking, decent funding, close to GMT. There's a reason why a big chunk Google deepmind is already there.
- dansquizsoft 4mo ago
  > Talent concentration Lol
  - xpct 4mo ago
    To my knowledge there's still talent left in London, even after the wage stagnation.
ascorbic 4mo ago
Deepmind is based there. Anthropic's biggest research base outside the US is there. OpenAI has just announced a big new office there.

ben_w 4mo ago

A world, yes. Plausible, no. The US is already seeing energy market distortions from the power use of AI; the UK has a much smaller total electricity supply, both from a lower population and the baseline per person being lower. Total UK demand in 2023 was 316.8 TWh[0], or an average of about 36 GW. The US currently has 33 GW of data centres, and the AI boom plan, so far as discern actual plans from AI hallucinations in the modern web, is about ten times that. From the scales people talk about, my expectation is that even the smaller additional supply needed for the constant churn of newly trained frontier models would probably exceed what London alone can manage. [0] generation less than that, it has imports; chapter 5: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a7e14da3c2a28abb50d922/DUKES_2024_Chapters_1-7.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a7e14da3c2a... [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=316.8+TWh+%2F+year https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=316.8+TWh+%2F+year