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.
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 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.
OpenAI seem very non-commital about the whole thing. They will "explore offtake", which effectively means they'll think about it. This lack of commitment in a world where we seemingly can't build new data centers fast enough is a bit worrying. They clearly anticipate scenarios in which they won't want this capacity either because of poor pricing or lack of demand.
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.
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.
Very disappointed OpenAI isn’t actually producing a generated tv show, and for that project choosing to make a UK version of the US tv show Stargate, a la the US version of the UK tv show the office. I feel like if tech companies were run by people with a sense of humor such things would sometimes happen.
It sounds like this will include Teesworks, one of the dodgiest land deals of recent years. For a small investment two people essentially held the entire thing to ransom and secured options on an astonishing amount government money.
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.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 39.4 ms ] threadGoing someway towards that would boost almost all sectors of the economy.
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.
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.
[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.
You can hear Richard Brooks summarise the situation (in 2023) here: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/podcast/76
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.