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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

#51

Post by graypegg »

DrScientist wrote: post #49
graypegg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent, there is actually an incentive to have low-value paperwork in a health system. There's only so many resources, and adding friction to the process is a form of "how serious is your issue, really?" triage. It obviously falls apart where the doctor is doing the same thing they normally would, just now with more paperwork, but it may make them think twice about doing two blood tests when they have a hunch…

You seem to be under the assumption that Doctors aren't interested in triaging, and the optimal allocation of resources. Of course they are - they want to be spending their time the most effectively in helping patients. They don't need a paperwork hurdle to decide whether a blood test is needed. Another reform that causes endless problems is the idea of patient choice/patient voice - which means vocal patients who ar…

No I do agree with that! I assume doctors are working in the best interest of their patients. That includes not running arbitrary tests. But I can also imagine a bureaucrat thinking an explanation for each test to be promoting "transparency". (Read: discourage spending as transparency in this case means you're being audited, reflecting that distrust of professionals from non-professionals.)

Not saying it's a good thing! Just that one team has been told the forms are important by another team, so they pitch automating the filling of the form, rather than the obvious solution of: no form.

The patient choice aspect is interesting. These processes becoming a game played by people wanting to take advantage of the system is another aspect where this form-heavy process fails, but a bureaucrat could argue that it still (however badly) discourages overconsumption of the system from patients.

Edit, I should mention: I am Canadian, though we have similar issues with our provincial health systems. If there is a specific British/NHS aspect to this I am missing, that will be why.

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

#52

Post by milliams »

elric wrote: post #41
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 should already be investing in computational resources for a huge number of government projects and services From what I see, governments are massively shifting to Azure and AWS (moreso the former).

They're already investing in non-cloud GPU-heavy supercomputers designed for AI research (i.e. into- and using-AI). For example the Isambard-AI supercomputer at Bristol University (https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2023/november/supercomputer-a...) and this report seems to be talking about doing a lot more of that - in addition to non-"AI".

Disclaimer - I work at Bristol on Isambard-AI

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

#53

Post by milliams »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #42

Everyone is getting into a "hah, not enough money", or "what about money for this other problem", without keying in on the key phrase. "Sovereign AI". That's doing a lot of work. Right now the UK government (HMG), is relying mostly on US companies to provide AI workloads, even the simplest workloads. Across the EU this is a problem to the extent that hyperscale cloud providers are having to address digital sovereignt…

Indeed, Bristol's Isambard-AI and Cambridge's Dawn are already funded from previous investments in this area and it sounds like the Government will continue to invest a lot more going forwards. The value for money by building these as locally-hosted and run data centres compared to the cloud is massive - and it creates jobs for the UK rather than outsourcing to the US.

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

#54

Post by DrScientist »

graypegg wrote: post #50
DrScientist wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting an offshoot of British Energy - as a lot of the costs are energy costs anyway? Note the same logic as above applies for centralised services whether it be British Compute or AWS versus having your own - any central service is going to have overheads around managing the shared resources - virtualisation, scheduling, availability, security, billing etc. As in the real world - sometimes a renting mode…

That is my thinking, yes. Plus also simply the government has access to a lot of capital and land. Overhead from running your own datacentres is a factor, but (taking this report at face-value) it seems like there will be some modicum of government owned computer resources built. I feel like the cost difference between standing up a small datacentre capable of what they are pitching, versus standing up an over-alloca…

Shared resources add complexity - perhaps a middle ground would be a government run data centre ( modular nuclear reactor etc, reuse of wate heat etc ) which various organisations can host their own hardware.

This already exists in the private sector ( but without the dedicated nuclear reactors ).

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

#55

Post by graypegg »

DrScientist wrote: post #54
graypegg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is my thinking, yes. Plus also simply the government has access to a lot of capital and land. Overhead from running your own datacentres is a factor, but (taking this report at face-value) it seems like there will be some modicum of government owned computer resources built. I feel like the cost difference between standing up a small datacentre capable of what they are pitching, versus standing up an over-alloca…

Shared resources add complexity - perhaps a middle ground would be a government run data centre ( modular nuclear reactor etc, reuse of wate heat etc ) which various organisations can host their own hardware. This already exists in the private sector ( but without the dedicated nuclear reactors ).

Good idea. Co-location does let the government's current expertise shine (energy, land access)

My point is there's something there I think! This report buries the lede with AI keyword drivel, but there's an opportunity beyond just hype in there.

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

#56

Post by cameronh90 »

gpderetta wrote: post #33
cameronh90 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The catch is that if your car is damaged by a pothole you have a chance to claim damages from the council only if you can prove that the council knew about the pothole. So even if most reports do not result in an action, they still have some values and are an incentive for the council to fix the road.

If only the councils were as good at fixing potholes as they are at coming up with excuses as to why the road surface is within acceptable limits[0].

Even when they do bother to fix the pothole, they seem to just dump a bit of cold lay asphalt in the worst bit and hand tamp it down rather than properly preparing the surface and levelling the repaired section. As soon as another lorry goes over it, it just breaks up again.

[0] https://www.boredpanda.com/pothole-measure-50mm-darren-twitt...

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

#57

Post by elric »

DrScientist wrote: post #44
elric wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The government should already be investing in computational resources for a huge number of government projects and services From what I see, governments are massively shifting to Azure and AWS (moreso the former).

As long as you have decent utilisation then buying and running your own hardware is typically a lot cheaper than using AWS etc al. Cloud shines for dynamic loads, global resilience etc - but if you just want to run a lot of computational jobs for a long time, then running your own kit is likely to be much much cheaper. The other advantage of your own kit is you can guarantee it will be available when you want it, and…

> As long as you have decent utilisation then buying and running your own hardware is typically a lot cheaper than using AWS etc al.

The cynic in me suspects that some government consultant (I used to be one) is making a lot of money from peddling AWS/Azure.

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

#58

Post by voidr »

janice1999 wrote: post #2

>the AI industry needs a government that is on their side, one that won’t sit back and let opportunities slip through its fingers. And in a world of fierce competition, we cannot stand by. We must move fast and take action to win the global race. This sounds like desperation more than anything else. I think a rush to use AI in public services without thorough planning and a critical mindset will inevitability lead to…

> one that won’t sit back and let opportunities slip through its fingers

Maybe they should fix the economy to attract more AI companies and researchers instead, while they are at it they can fix the police force as well to give confidence to said companies and researchers.

The lack of data centers is not the reason I'm not researching AI at the moment, I can buy the hardware or rent a US data center, the reason is that the UK economy is dead, borrowing is insanely expensive and taxes are so high that most of the profits would go to the government, which would be fine if it would spend it on things that matter, but it's not doing that, it's just buying votes.

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

#59

Post by netdevphoenix »

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.

Can't blame them. OpenAI, Alphabet and co have been pushing this AI magic marketing in the last 3 years or so. This AI magic seems to be also fed to their investors if Sam Altman's statements are anything to go by. At some point, the AI musical chair game will end and many players will lose everything

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

#60

Post by DrScientist »

graypegg wrote: post #51
DrScientist wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be under the assumption that Doctors aren't interested in triaging, and the optimal allocation of resources. Of course they are - they want to be spending their time the most effectively in helping patients. They don't need a paperwork hurdle to decide whether a blood test is needed. Another reform that causes endless problems is the idea of patient choice/patient voice - which means vocal patients who ar…

No I do agree with that! I assume doctors are working in the best interest of their patients. That includes not running arbitrary tests. But I can also imagine a bureaucrat thinking an explanation for each test to be promoting "transparency". (Read: discourage spending as transparency in this case means you're being audited, reflecting that distrust of professionals from non-professionals.) Not saying it's a good thi…

I am talking about the NHS - but challenges around balancing trust v. bureaucracy is universal - public/private, large and small.

The problem of politicians without a small amount of knowledge enough to be dangerous being led astray by consultants with whiteboard/napkin level simplistic visions I suspect also crosses national boundaries.

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