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The new government in the UK revoked funding worth £1.3 billion meant to supercharge the country’s research in AI and supercomputers.
The UK’s recently formed government has withdrawn funding of roughly $1.6 billion meant for various technology projects. This funding was allocated by the previous Conservative government for projects in technology and AI, The Guardian reported.
The shelved funds include £800 million previously designated for the development of an exascale supercomputer – one capable of performing over a quintillion (one billion-billion or 1 with 18 zeros) floating-point operations per second – at the University of Edinburgh. The funding was announced in October 2023 to help researchers at the University “model all aspects of the world, test scientific theories and improve products and services in areas such as artificial intelligence, drug discovery, climate change, astrophysics and advanced engineering.”
Another project impacted by the budget cuts include a £500 million commitment by the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) for the AI Research Resource (AIRR), a cluster of computers meant for AI-powered research. This initiative was announced in January 2024 as a supplement to the previous £300 million funding for the same project. While the new government has now annulled the committed £500 million, the older grant has already been disbursed.
Grants Labeled “Unfunded Commitments”
The DSIT, now headed by MP and new Science Secretary of State Peter Kyle, noted these multi-million-pound commitments to be “unfunded.” That means while the funding was promised by the former government, no resources were actually allocated for them. The department said revoking these unfunded commitments was “essential to restore economic stability.”
The budget cuts could displace plans to build the UK’s fastest supercomputers. It was meant to replace ARCHER2, which is capable of 28 petaflops – a thousandth of an exaflop. This could put the UK behind the European Union, which aims to release its super energy efficient exascale supercomputer, called Jupiter, later in 2024.
The cuts come just a week after Science Secretary Kyle commissioned the preparation of an “AI Opportunities Action Plan.” Kyle said they were putting AI at the center of the new government’s action plan for improving public services and boosting growth. The initiative is headed by Matt Clifford, chairman of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) and co-founder of a startup accelerator called Entrepreneur First.
The objective of this new action plan is to “identify ways to accelerate the use of AI to improve people’s lives by making services better and developing new products,” though cutting of academic grants could hinder progress in that direction and discourage the research community.
