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Introducing Stargate UK

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Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#41

Post by 00deadbeef »

torginus wrote: post #24
tomwphillips wrote: post #3

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.

From 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)

Green 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?

Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#42

Post by ycombigators »

argsnd wrote: post #29
jaccola wrote: post #14

This 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…

This 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 ru…

The 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.

Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#43

Post by trenchpilgrim »

robotswantdata wrote: post #35

Why 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.

Isn'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.

Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#44

Post by Nursie »

torginus wrote: post #24
tomwphillips wrote: post #3

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.

From 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)

The UK didn't exactly get left out, it just failed to invest in growth and productisation. Some great research comes out of there and then moves overseas or gets bought up (like ARM).

If there are any chips on shoulders, it's more to do with the government talking itself up, throwing around some feel-good bullshit, usually entirely mis-targeted (see for example Sunak talking about making a safe space for blockchain companies) and then failing to get out of the way when the country actually does produce something amazing.

Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#45

Post by OhioMan2943 »

ares623 wrote: post #26
OhioMan2943 wrote: post #19

The AI grift is so obvious now. The smart are abusing the dumb.

Yeah I’ve definitely started to see the winds change. It’s gonna hurt everything.

Especially 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.

Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#46

Post by ycombigators »

torginus wrote: post #24
tomwphillips wrote: post #3

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.

From 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)

I'm assuming you are a hunter because your gathering skills suck.

Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#47

Post by argsnd »

ycombigators wrote: post #42
argsnd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 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 ru…

The 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.

But 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.

Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#48

Post by testdelacc1 »

physicsguy wrote: post #23
testdelacc1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok 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/ , see All-Time). How does hosting AI data centres help with that?

Well, 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.

Yeah 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.

Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#49

Post by steinvakt2 »

Only 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.

Re: Introducing Stargate UK

#50

Post by [deleted] »

ycombigators wrote: post #46
torginus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From 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)

I'm assuming you are a hunter because your gathering skills suck.

[deleted]
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