Britain Aims to Become Global Leader in Artificial Intelligence
The United Kingdom is looking to build a homegrown challenger to OpenAI and drastically increase its national computing infrastructure, according to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government. The initiative is part of an “AI Opportunities Action Plan” aimed at helping the country take advantage of the potential of artificial intelligence.
The government is seeking to expand data center capacity across the UK to boost developers of powerful AI models, which rely on high-performance computing equipment hosted in remote locations to train and run their systems. The goal is to increase “sovereign” or public sector compute capacity by twentyfold by 2030.
To achieve this, the government will open access to the AI Research Resource, an initiative aimed at bolstering UK computing infrastructure. It will also establish several AI “growth zones,” where rules on planning permission will be relaxed in certain places to allow for the creation of new data centers.
Furthermore, the government plans to set up an “AI Energy Council” formed of industry leaders from both energy and AI to explore the role of renewable and low-carbon sources of energy, such as nuclear.
Britain is also seeking to build a challenger to OpenAI, creating homegrown AI “champions” of a similar scale to American tech giants responsible for the foundational AI models that power today’s generative AI tools.
The UK government faces challenges in its bid to create an effective OpenAI alternative, including funding challenges for startups in the country. However, UK tech leaders have generally praised the government’s AI action plan, calling it a “forward-thinking strategy.”
The UK government has not yet formalized regulations for AI, but it has announced a consultation on measures to regulate the use of copyrighted content to train AI models. It is also pitching a differentiated regulatory regime from the EU following Brexit, which it claims will allow for more flexible oversight of AI technology.
