Home / News / Technology / Labour Government Axes £1.3bn AI and Tech Funding, Including Edinburgh Supercomputer Project
Technology
4 min read

Labour Government Axes £1.3bn AI and Tech Funding, Including Edinburgh Supercomputer Project

Last Updated
James Morales
Last Updated

Key Takeaways

  • The UK government has cancelled £.1.3 billion of planned technology funding.
  • Casualties of the spending cuts include an £800 million supercomputer project and a £500 million AI research fund.
  • Parliament has warned that regulators are underfunded for AI challenges.

Less than a year after the previous UK government announced plans to build a new £800 million supercomputer and invest £500 million in AI research funding, the new administration has axed them.

The decision comes after a Treasury audit found the Labour government had inherited £22 billion of unfunded pledges from their predecessors, prompting charges of financial mismanagement and a slew of spending cuts. 

Tech Funding Victim of Labour Spending Cuts

Faced with a major funding shortfall, the government is desperately trying to find £5.5 billion of savings this year and £8.1 billion next year.

Speaking in Parliament on Monday, July 29, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said : “This is not the statement I wanted to give today, and these are not the decisions I wanted to make. But they are the right decisions in difficult circumstances.”

In a statement , the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology said it had made the “difficult and necessary” decision to cut technology funding as part of the government’s wider efforts to reign in spending.

The announcement leaves the Edinburgh University-based supercomputer project in limbo. 

Slated to be one of the most powerful machines in Europe capable of performing a billion calculations per second, the exascale supercomputer would have been 50 times faster than the UK’s current most advanced machine. At the cost of £31 million, the university has already built a new wing at its Advanced Computing Facility to house it.

Alongside the Edinburgh exascale project, a £500 million AI research fund has also been scrapped.

The latest spending cuts come as the government is under pressure to find more money for regulators as it looks to take a leading role in the global conversation on AI governance.

Committee Warns: £10m Government Support ‘Clearly Insufficient’

In May, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report  on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI).

One of the concerns raised in the document is that regulators don’t have the necessary resources to take on the challenge and that the £10 million the government has pledged to help support them is “clearly insufficient.”

While the UK doesn’t have a dedicated AI regulator, the responsibility for ensuring AI safety largely falls on communications regulator Ofcom, which has a remit to protect people from online harms. 

Within their respective jurisdictions, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA), and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) also have a role to play.

As part of its initiative to develop “pro-innovation” AI regulation in February, the government committed £10 million  “to jumpstart regulator’s AI capabilities”. But now, MPs have concluded that much more is needed:

“We believe that the announced £10 million to support regulators in responding to the growing prevalence of AI is clearly insufficient to meet the challenge, particularly when compared to even the UK-only revenues of leading AI developers.”

However, funding isn’t the only issue where regulators face difficulties.

Trouble Accessing Unreleased Models

Alongside underfunding, the Science and Technology Committee flagged issues the AI Safety Institute has had accessing foundation models ahead of their public release.

While not a regulator itself, the Institute’s inability to review models before their release suggests AI developers may inhibit effective oversight. 

Although the report acknowledged the value of testing already-available models, it added that “the release of future models without the promised independent assessment would undermine the achievement of the Institute’s mission and its ability to secure public trust.”

Next Steps for AI Regulation in the UK

The Committee’s findings indicate that the existing AI governance structures in the UK are inadequate to cope with the rapid pace of AI development. 

A key focus of the report is the government’s AI White Paper published in March 2023. 

In its initial response  to the White Paper, the Committee called for the government to announce a dedicated AI Bill in the November 2023 King’s speech. However, that request was rebuffed as the government sought more time to consider its options.

However, after June’s general election, the new government committed to establishing  “appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models.

Was this Article helpful? Yes No

James Morales

Although his background is in crypto and FinTech news, these days, James likes to roam across CCN’s editorial breadth, focusing mostly on digital technology. Having always been fascinated by the latest innovations, he uses his platform as a journalist to explore how new technologies work, why they matter and how they might shape our future.
See more