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 as usual. Alongside that I hear MPs, government ministers and commentators alike saying things like "when AI allows us to make vast efficiency gains in that government department...", "AI will obviously help to reinvigorate the Welsh economy...", "with AI we will be able to transition our industry to clean energy quicker..." (?!)
The fact that this very much feels like the country is lucky to have Nvidia/OpenAI rather than vice versa just demonstrates how badly managed the UK is.
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 run than the UK at the moment given that since Trump’s inauguration the UK has grown faster than you (and every other G7 economy).
This isn't party political. The tories have been worse than Labour in many respects but it's a shit show all round imo.
What was the per capita GDP of Wessex?
The fact you don't know about them isn't my problem.
Dividing the kings wealth by the number of serfs in his kingdom doesn't make the serfs any richer.
What economy indicator exactly are you referring to?
I also wish we were attracting industries that weren't going to significantly push up electricity consumption on windless days, which will have an outsized effect on electricity prices everyone else pays. At least this says the datacentres will be up north, hopefully not exacerbating transmission issues.
“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.
- very non committal verbiage
- very light on details, but enough to entice new -marks- investors (“please bro we’re so close to AGI just $20B more”)
[Daily Mail]
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.
It made me laugh when Nicola Sturgeon, who was the leader of the SNP for a long old time and who has been at the forefront of the Scottish Independence movement for many years, one of its most recognisable voices, recently announced she might retire to London because Scotland was now feeling a little bit suffocating.
So I think the idea of Scotland splitting from the UK is on the back burner for the forseeable future. It had a real moment in 2014 but didn't make it over the line. I don't think the UK government will be allowing another vote any time soon.
See: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/06/25/scottish-ind...
You can hear Richard Brooks summarise the situation (in 2023) here: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/podcast/76
The Norwegian deployment will be cheap to run and so easy to sell. It's clearly intended for people outside of Norway to use. So it's big.
The UK deployment will be expensive to run and only people who are limited to UK for regulatory reasons will want it. There are few such customers so it's small.
Then they announce one for middle east, and perhaps the assumption is $ being thrown at them but surely they dont need that much capacity.
Now the UK? Confirming superintelligence.
tomwphillips•4mo ago
FirmwareBurner•4mo ago
Dilettante_•4mo ago
testdelacc1•4mo ago
The UK is suffering from persistently expensive electricity (https://grid.iamkate.com/, see All-Time). How does hosting AI data centres help with that?
hmottestad•4mo ago
So if OpenAI is hosting their services within the borders of the UK, then they would also be beholden to UK law. Makes it easier for the financial sector, government and healthcare to use their AI models than if they would have to send their data to a datacenter in the US.
tempodox•4mo ago
physicsguy•4mo ago
testdelacc1•4mo ago
The chips in these data centres would have been EOL-d by then.
t0lo•4mo ago
simianwords•4mo ago
testdelacc1•4mo ago
And I’m perfectly happy to spend the energy as well! It’s just unclear what the benefit is to hosting within the UK.
ycombigators•4mo ago
derektank•4mo ago
You've gotta help us doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out ideas
oncallthrow•4mo ago
It’s all irrelevant to the fundamental economic problems the country is facing, which do not have an easy solution.
torginus•4mo ago
walthamstow•4mo ago
kybernetikos•4mo ago
argsnd•4mo ago
00deadbeef•4mo ago
Chips like those designed by Arm that can be found in almost everything these days?
AI like DeepMind?
xorcist•4mo ago
Britain has managed to be at the forefront of all those revolutionary technologies, but when the real break out happens somehow the Americans swoop in and buy the winners. That's shaky ground for future ingenuity.
ARM seems to have been very important to Cambridge at large, but it's not Silicon Valley. I can sort of understand why politicians would look back at things and ponder what could have been done differently.
torginus•4mo ago
I assure you I've heard these sentiments from real Brits.
While I'm not going to question the contributions of UK people and companies to these fields, but with the exception of RR, none of these companies are actually still in the hands of Britons, DeepMind is Google, ARM has been brought out by SoftBank (and Imagination that used to do the GPUs for the iPhone has been kind of sidelined).
The UK is not percieved as a mover and shaker in the rocketry industry like the USA is with SpaceX and the like, and not even to the extent other players like Russia/China are.
Sota AI is made today by US and Chinese firms, while the UK might have an extensively built out green infrastructure, it's made out of foreign-made equipment, no UK company makes EVs like the way Tesla or VW does etc.
Nursie•4mo ago
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.
ycombigators•4mo ago
mike_hearn•4mo ago
1. USA
2. Russia
3. China
4. Britain
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-of-obje...
Not bad for a small country that's never been involved in a space race and which stopped trying to be a global Great Power before the space age even started.
I'm from Britain and can't think of anyone I know who has a chip on their shoulder about technology, largely because most of us either went to work for successful American firms the moment we graduated, or in the case of my brother, made a successful tech startup, grew it to be a profitable business and then sold it for a large sum of money (to the Americans again). Many of us have managed to achieve great life success by taking part in the tech industry, and were rewarded with small ownership stakes in those firms as a result. The fact that we didn't found those companies is a pity and a genuine source of relative weakness, but the reality is that the internet makes for global markets in which for any given product category there can only be a few winners. People can't really handle more than about four or five brands vying for attention simultaneously, which means it's just not mentally possible for every country to have a successful tech company in every category. The places that managed to grow competitors to the big US success stories all relied on either language barriers or government interference.
As for the rest, note that the USA is holding onto chip manufacture by its fingernails right now, an obsession with green tech is exactly the reason there aren't many AI datacenters in the UK to begin with, and Britain birthed one of the world's top AI labs. Yes, owned by Google because only great powers can invest the sums required, but that's OK. The collaboration between Britain and America on AI has been superb nonetheless.
Don't get me wrong. The UK is in a terrible state right now, the result of decades of leftward drift after the 1980s that consistently prioritized everything except economic success. Just turning around the Titanic would take years even if the process were to start tomorrow, which it won't, and the cultural gap is real. But there are still some strong foundations there. A whole generation of Brits have learned what great companies look like by working for the Americans. That's not reflected in their politics yet because politics is in both countries dominated by the old, and currently revolves around the issue of mass immigration. Economic success is on the backburner for now. But it'll come back. And when it does, there will be people who are ready to lead.
Lio•4mo ago
Going someway towards that would boost almost all sectors of the economy.