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( UK ) Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI

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Re: ( UK ) Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI

#21

Post by bArray »

> £14 billion and 13,250 jobs committed by private leading tech firms following AI Action Plan

Maybe this is where the £22 billion black hole comes from [1]? Maybe freezing 10 millions pensioners helped pay for it [2]? In the background, bare in mind that the UK government is currently paying 4.8% interest to borrow [3], which is a massive problem because it means the UK is borrowing more than the predicted growth is expected to yield.

> 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.

They recognise that an industry needs to move fast...

> The plan puts an end to that by introducing new measures that will create dedicated AI Growth Zones that speed up planning permission and give them the energy connections they need to power up AI.

Then immediately come up with arbitrary regulation as to what zones investment should be spent in. If you want something to move fast, cut the strings. How much of this money will be spent on bureaucracy? How many of the 13k jobs will be government based?

> First – laying the foundations for AI to flourish in the UK.

Zones are a terrible idea, just cut the strings.

> Second – boosting adoption across public and private sectors

> A new digital centre of government is being set up within DSIT. This will revolutionise how AI is used in the public sector to improve citizens lives and make government more efficient.

Prediction: Government becomes larger, and therefore less efficient. Large amounts of the pledged money simply gets eaten by government overhead and taxes.

> Third – keeping us ahead of the pack

The UK does not have the resources to compete like this, we cannot outspend those with deeper pockets. The UK has historically done well by using the resources it does have more effectively, then completely losing control over what they invent to the likes of the US. There was a document published a few months back (cannot find it now) with the EU complaining about how tonnes of their Unicorn start-ups end up going to the US. There's probably a lesson to be learned there, but who reads these documents anyway?

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e12j4gz0o

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gv632d05lo

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c897vw5w7p8o

Re: ( UK ) Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI

#22

Post by scrlk »

ljm wrote: post #12
scrlk wrote: post #7

> We can learn from the US’s and EU’s approach - delivering the dynamism, flexibility and long-term stability that we know businesses want. At least for AI regulation, the EU is the last place I'd want the UK to learn from.

As opposed to the US, which is famous for its hands-on, consumer-friendly attitude to business? The challenge for the UK is actually building this stuff to a non-zero level of competence. The usual suspects in the IT consulting industry must be collectively having seizures over the prospect of being paid another 7 figure sum to deliver absolute slop several years behind schedule. Sunak beating himself up over the mis…

I'm not saying all EU regulations are terrible. The impact of their AI regulations have resulted in Europeans either receiving new models or features later than other regions, or not receiving them at all.

There has to be a balance between a complete free for all and potentially snuffing out Europe's ability to compete.

Re: ( UK ) Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI

#23

Post by fredley »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #15

> feed AI through cameras to spot potholes and help improve roads. This example only makes sense if we're in a position where all the potholes we know about are fixed, and all of the pothole fixing masterworkers are sitting idle, waiting to leap into action at the next report. But the reality is there are many, many potholes that are known about, but we can't/won't fix them due to things like budgets and staffing con…

This is absolutely insane. If they want to know where potholes are, throw up a basic site with a map for reporting, people are very motivated by issues on the roads. Or just ask Google to share Waze data - many potholes on major roads are tagged there. "Feeding AI through cameras" makes so little sense it's laughable, in the most depressing way.

As you've pointed out, I might let it slide if issues were actually being addressed, but they aren't. There are potholes that have been sitting in major city roads where I live for years, and nearly all the street markings around the whole city have completely eroded - junctions are becoming scarier as nobody knows what lane to be in. But I'm sure throwing money at AI can solve these problems.

Re: ( UK ) Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI

#24

Post by throwawayfks »

janice1999 wrote: post #5
miohtama wrote: post #3

Starmer has a very socialistic approach to innovation: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0n14ywzqpo

> "the regulators, the blockers and bureaucrats" were part of an "alliance of naysayers" who mean that "we can't get things done in our country." Promising investors widespread deregulation to allow energy hungry data centers be built with less oversight is not what I would call "socialist".

Don't confuse them with facts: everyone knows that "socialist" means "left-ish thing I don't like". And in Starmer's case, the key word is "left-ish". Maybe "left-ish-ish-ish".

Re: ( UK ) Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI

#25

Post by cameronh90 »

fredley wrote: post #23
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #15

> feed AI through cameras to spot potholes and help improve roads. This example only makes sense if we're in a position where all the potholes we know about are fixed, and all of the pothole fixing masterworkers are sitting idle, waiting to leap into action at the next report. But the reality is there are many, many potholes that are known about, but we can't/won't fix them due to things like budgets and staffing con…

This is absolutely insane. If they want to know where potholes are, throw up a basic site with a map for reporting, people are very motivated by issues on the roads. Or just ask Google to share Waze data - many potholes on major roads are tagged there. "Feeding AI through cameras" makes so little sense it's laughable, in the most depressing way. As you've pointed out, I might let it slide if issues were actually bein…

Such a site already exists: fixmystreet.com. Most councils already use it (or an instanced version of it), and every time I've found an issue in public, it has already been reported on there. Often multiple times.

The issue is, as you say, the council doesn't have the budget to actually fix the reported problems.

Re: ( UK ) Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI

#26

Post by bArray »

gazchop wrote: post #16

I await JobCentre being filled up with prompt engineers in about 2 years.

£14 billion divided by 13,250 jobs = £1,056,604

50% gets spent on hard assets like AI super computers, buildings, infrastructure: £528,302

You lose 50% to operating overheads: £264,151

Each employed person averaging £60k a year gives you 13,250 people employed for 4.4 years.

What's left at the end of 4.4 years? A 4.4 year old super computer that is twice as slow as the best and costs twice as much to run, 13,250 people scrambling for funding/work, a few nice papers, a tonne of failed start-ups with questionable IP and very little value to the tax payer.

Re: ( UK ) Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI

#27

Post by fredley »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #17
graypegg wrote: post #8

> Sovereign AI compute, owned and/or allocated by the public sector, will enable the UK to quickly and independently allocate compute to national priorities. [...] Sovereign AI compute will almost certainly be the smallest component of the UK’s overall compute portfolio. > NB: this review has not considered the requirements of non-AI high-performance computing, for which there is already a well-established case, incl…

> The government, or at least who ever is writing this report, seems to imagine "AI" as a uniform and distinct process, where you turn on the AI machine, electricity goes in and AI comes out This is how a large chunk of the general public think of "AI" as well. They're just waiting for someone to flip the AI switch or add a bunch of `from ai import magically_do_everything` to products and services they use.

Don't blame them, this is how products are marketed and sold now, e.g. AI washing machines, AI microwaves, AI features in cars, AI home lighting. Of course, most of these things don't have anything a software engineer or computer scientist might reasonably call AI in - they're just using sensor data and (conventional) algorithms, the same way they have for decades, but AI is the buzzword now.

Re: ( UK ) Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI

#29

Post by segasaturn »

graypegg wrote: post #8

> Sovereign AI compute, owned and/or allocated by the public sector, will enable the UK to quickly and independently allocate compute to national priorities. [...] Sovereign AI compute will almost certainly be the smallest component of the UK’s overall compute portfolio. > NB: this review has not considered the requirements of non-AI high-performance computing, for which there is already a well-established case, incl…

> seems like this isn't really a plan, more so just a vibes-based promise for innovation

To be fair, that description lines up with a lot of what I hear from other AI startups.

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