There is no doubting the ambition of the PMâs launch of more growth in and through AI. He urges public and private sectors to greatly expand their computing capacities, and to  use the extra for a wide range of new applications. He sets out a vision of many more datacentres. He expects AI to  improve healthcare diagnosis, tighten up on tax avoidance and boost GDP.
The paper the officials wrote is long on enthusiasm and on how important much more computing is. It is short on practical policies to bring it about. Here are some thoughts on what the government will need to ask itself to make some of this reality.
The paper envisages a bigger role for the public sector, with government putting in more of the investment and adopting more of the benefits. There is no mention of how much extra money will be available for this. They revive the  idea of supercomputers after cancelling the Bristol one the previous government backed. Where will the hew one be and how much will it cost?
When it comes to the private  sector they will find the US giants of AI and the digital world are central to success. Why not take our corporation tax rate down to Irelandâs to tempt more of the US digital investment in future here? Ireland gas attracted so much with a tax rate half ours.
The strategy needs plenty of datacentres  which need plenty of cheap electricity. Will the government adopt some of the ideas around for more and cheaper energy?
January 15, 2025
The idea of applying AI to find better solutions to problems is both good and obvious. But it depends on access to data, data centres, abundant energy and human intelligence to frame the questions in a way that enables relevant data searches to be made and relevant answers to be provided to secure the desired insights. Are these all readily available to departments of government? Based on experience
to date I am wary of Starmer word salads delivered without the substance of a coherent plan of action and the cash to fund it.
January 15, 2025
His first job should be to remove Milibrain. Data centres require an abundance of cheap, reliable energy. Exactly the opposite of where we’re heading. SMRs could be a solution but no doubt the government would rather import them than use local talent.
A speech from 2TK is cheap. Actions are required.
Cancelling the Edinburgh Super Computer doesn’t bode well.
January 15, 2025
Ian,
Absolutely without energy security national AI is not going to happen
January 15, 2025
Others are making hay!
Reuters,14/1/25:”Vietnam signs nuclear co-operation deal with Russia’s Rosatom”:-
“Vietnam and Russia signed an agreement on nuclear energy and several co-operation deals on Tuesday during a visit to Hanoi by Russian PM.Mikhail Mishustin.Vietnam aims to re-start its nuclear energy programme,having suspended it for years,as it needs to boost power generation to feed its growing industrial sector,a major driver of its economy.Also signed were deals on co-operation in the digital economy and wireless communication.”
Africa Report,30/4/24:”Russia’s Rosatom floats small nuclear reactors as answer to Africa’s (power) woes”.At time of writing deals had been signed with Mali and Burkina Faso.Since then:
World Nuclear News,7/6/24:”Republic of Guinea signs floating nuclear plant MoU with Russia”.
And in Asia:Reuters, 27/5/24:”Russia to build central Asia’s first nuclear plant in Uzbekistan….up to six mini-reactors.”Kazhakstan has also recently held a referendum to approve the start of a nuclear power programme(it passed) to replace its coal fired power stations.Russia,with its fully vertically integrated offering, is well placed for the pitch here too.
January 15, 2025
AI data centres require huge electrical power, so in the UK you will only be able to use it when the wind is blowing – hard enough.
January 15, 2025
Indeed cheap, reliable, on demand energy is vital for AI but Ed Miliband is doing his best to kill any hopes of this. Sensible tax levels too to encourage investment but Hunt and now Reeves is doing he best to kill this. “Growth is the number on mission of this Labour Government” Reeves said yesterday. So what policy does she have to encourage growth or investment – not a singe one.
But we have people dying due to long waits for ambulances, then waits in ambulances, then in A&E and then in corridors often dying before they even get proper medical treatment perhaps correct these appalling failures first. They should certainly kill the policy to switch to electric ambulances (and even fire engines etc.) this is a vast waste of money which will make them system even less efficient.
Google the “German Fire Station destroyed by fire caused by an EV battery fire”.
Politicians trying to save money is very expensive thing.
It’s like putting them in charge of combatting a pandemic, changing the weather, running a health service, state monopoly schools or running anything at all.
January 15, 2025
Or putting them in charge of regulating water or vaccines or almost anything.
See the excellent Clare Craig substack for all the covid vaccine disasters and stats. Has Sunak corrected his (dishonest?) statement to the house yet?
January 15, 2025
Merseyside Tunnel, recently spent ÂŁ11million on replacing perfectly good lights with ‘LED’ lights ….they destoryed perfectly good lights in the name of net-zero
January 16, 2025
But a box got ticked … so it’s a win. (You obviously don’t have a Civil Service mindset).
January 15, 2025
âGrowth is the number on mission of this Labour Governmentâ Reeves said yesterday.”
She means growth of the public sector.
January 15, 2025
You have described a standard search engine, not a computer that programmes its own specified systems.
January 15, 2025
@David Andrews, @Ian Wragg, @Know-Dice and many more
How come so many clear thinkers understand reality and how we get to a future, while those with headline grabbing speeches make the speeches then ignore the deed to get there. Ideological Terrorism of destroy, destroy, destroy can be their only true objective
January 15, 2025
Let us all beware of papers “… long on enthusiasm …. short on practical policies” for treating them with seriousness is often folly.
The notion that there should be “.. a bigger role for the public sector, with government putting in more of the investment…” indicates nothing worthwhile has been learnt from Health Secretary Hancock’s immense folly of trusting IT people demanding tremendous sums to deliver a tracking system as novel as it was huge.
As a Starmer initiative, let us perhaps ignore it for a while (AI is of course a ridiculously overblown, over-hyped phenomenon), rather await the re-set when it might be more refined, although only a bit.
January 15, 2025
Second para. prescient warning on Government investment in …well, anything, but the Test and Trace fiasco was ludicrous.
The one thing we do expect from AI is that all the paper shuffling jobs in both public and private sectors should be eliminated. Now, how is Labour going to handle those unemployables? Perhaps AI can figure out how to redeploy those unnecessary CO2 emitters…..
Be careful what you wish for..
January 15, 2025
I’m glad you pointed out that ‘more AI’ will need more data centres and therefore much more electricity. This simple fact doesn’t seem to have percolated into the might brains residing in Whitehall.
Moreover, I wonder why the current government, allegedly socialists, are so proud of pushing Net Zero at all costs. Have they never heard of Lenin’s saying, that ‘communism is Soviet power (nowadays ‘community groups’) plus electrification of the whole country’? And here they are hard at word to un-electrify our country …
January 15, 2025
I have mentioned that point before(and that famous quote of Lenin’s!).An inconvenient truth for those who maintain the government/establishment is somehow socialist.
January 15, 2025
Quite disastrous. If we think this eastern bloc-style government is going to help us adopt AI efficiently we are mistaken. To paraphrase Elon Musk, while East Germany built the Trabant car, West Germany built the Porsche.
January 15, 2025
+1
January 15, 2025
Your wish list is the very antithisis of what this lumbering about government has done to date.
They cannot think beyond the introduction of 1984 rules to pub discussion. The latest YOUGOV poll suggest they are fast losing the support of those who voted them in. Next comes the internal fighting leading to implosion.
People with human intelligence will move out with their wealth and means of creating further. Under current government the UK has no future.
January 15, 2025
â Will the government adopt some of the ideas around for more and cheaper energy?â
No, unfortunately itâs just more wishful thinking from our current clown government, who can be guaranteed to blunder into another Fujitsu type situation. Indeed probably worse in terms of the cost to taxpayers.
January 15, 2025
AI is akin to importing immigrants.
Better to train our own and insist that they work and don’t sit at home on benefits.
January 15, 2025
As so often happens with labour policies they lack a certain amount of reality to get them pushed through and functional. Labour have always been keen on fancy technology to solve problems mostly of their making.
They want investment and many more datacentres but therein lies the bug.
Companies are unlikely to invest in high grade technology when the economic prospects are so gloomy. Why should people risk their own money when HMG gets it all so wrong economically. Simply ‘wishing’ for more investment will get us nowhere.
The other issue is that the servers that would run AI use a lot of power. Most datacentres use more electricity than small towns. So with the country constantly on the brink of blackouts, just where would the energy come from to power all of these small-town datacentres?
January 15, 2025
Good morning.
Political rhetoric and theatre. The new ‘White heat of technology’ nonsense. He is saying something without actually having to do something.
But it does provide a platform for this government to waste more money.
January 15, 2025
Two-Tier’s droning speech setting out the Government’s AI “ambitions” reminded me of another Socialist, Harold Wilson, and his “white heat of technology” speech back in the early ’60s.
That didn’t work out too well for Labour and this “ambition” will fail even more spectacularly. Wilson was, whether you supported him or not, at least a good political operator and we had the skills and the energy sources essential to develop technologically .
Starmer has the political nous of a gnat, we have insufficient people with the required skills with many leaving the country thanks to his punitive tax regime, and he is doing his level best to destroy the essential energy sources it will require.
So it was just hot air and an attempt to shift the media narrative about his failing administration. Which has also failed.
January 15, 2025
The Government’s AI ambition is in direct opposition to its energy policy of producing the most expensive and least reliable electricity on the planet. Supercomputer AI centres will be built overseas and the Brits will have to pay the charges without making the profits, as with all other manufacturing.
January 15, 2025
None of Starmer’s Gang has ever had a serious job in private industry. The idea that they might have a clue about stimulating the development of, innovation in and adopting of advanced computing is highly fanciful. They know only how to flood the public sector with cash so departments can, if not taking it all in pay and allowances, buy better kit. Given the Gang’s level of ignorance and experience it is better they do nothing apart from giving a free hand to someone outside government who does. Oh No! not more consultants!
I have been a consultant advising companies and government departments on software projects. Customers always want to be shown what it can do. Suppliers can’t show them until it is built and suppliers can’t build it until it is funded. So the process has to proceed incrementally, including funding, to avoid enormous risks. It requires developers to understand the end users and the end-users to understand the essence of their business and to have the imagination to exploit something they didn’t know they needed. Bureaucrats insist on paperwork before a penny is spent on the project. Bureacracy is death to such processes. The best client I had was special forces. Paperwork was done after the project was completed! But we had trust. That is essential for innovation to succeed in a public-private arrangement and it depends on the individuals involved. The Government’s best contribution is not to drive it, not to pick winners but to do all it can to remove barriers – regulations and funding – to innovation in the realms of innovation, technical development and customer/user experimentation and investment.
January 15, 2025
The current government hasn’t cancelled the Bristol supercomputer. The one announced in 2023 is now up and running (it went live back in April/May) and has replaced an older system (which has been retired). What was cancelled was an investment to be based in Edinburgh which, I have seen it reported, was an unfunded spending commitment by the previous government.
January 15, 2025
bristol.ac.uk 13/05/2024 âGround-breaking for science, innovation and technologyâ as UKâs most powerful supercomputer is officially online and debuts in global leagueâ.
January 15, 2025
AI is in the first instance driven by energy, electrical energy. Once you have the hardware all costs relate to energy pricing. In the UK our electricity prices are at least 100% dearer than the UK’s Industrial Competitors. It leaves the prolific spending public sector, as they donât have to find the money, as the only one in a position to use the technology.
AI hardware requires GPU type processors to function. The UK’s World Leading manufacturer of these processors was allowed to be sold to the Chinese by the UK Government – meaning the Chinese now have a head start on the use of the technology and infinity cheaper energy prices to run it
January 15, 2025
“When it comes to the private sector they will find the US giants of AI and the digital world are central to success” The same company above supplied the technology to Apple for their AI drive. Now its in the hands of the PM’s favourite nation China.
January 15, 2025
ARM Holdings was originally sold to the Japanese SoftBank in Summer 2016. Since then it was bought by the US NVidia. It is a decision of ARM to go independent from ARM China to benefit from the Chinese market (techradar.com 18/10/2024 âARM wants to go direct Chinese market, no more ARMChina middlemanâ)
And BTW ARM is only one of several international companies producing GPUs (techovedas.com 18/01/2024 â10 largest GPU companies in the worldâ)
January 15, 2025
“There is no doubting the ambition of the PMâs launch of more growth in and through AI.”
Really ? Did he set any measurable targets so we can monitor the success of his strategy ?
The problem is that almost all of the apparent cost benefits of AI are in replacing people for all or part of their roles and so it cannot be targeted at the public sector where Labour’s union chums will resist it very strongly. Best for the government not to interfere and to simply step back and create a business environment where AI developments can flourish – that can’t be the UK under Labour of course, or indeed in the EU which is even worse.
January 15, 2025
Government should have nothing to do with ‘AI’, no laws, no subsidy, no intervention, ….its just a computer program, leave it to business and industry to develop
January 15, 2025
“The strategy needs plenty of datacentres which need plenty of cheap electricity.” – Exactly. The same electricity that is needed to power AI hardware. The same electricity for the BoE’s dream of Crypto Currency, crypto is created by mining (just a phrase) in reality its an electricity thing, the cheaper the electricity supplied the more availability to create crypto – at 100% penalty that not going to happen.
You can run the same conversation on electric cars (Norway has more(EV’s) as its power is supplied at around half of what is available in the UK), then you have the electricity guzzling air sourced heat pumps – the same answer.
The UK needs an energy policy a cheap energy policy. It can then start funding the machine(the Country) so it can grow, create wealth – fund a future to cope with what ever is thrown at it.
But the UK in recent years has had Parliaments that have sort to destroy the UK’s future, topped of now with personal religious ideology.
January 15, 2025
Mark Zuckerberg is preparing to sack thousands of low performers at Meta as part of a productivity drive that âcelebrates aggressionâ. The US billionaire has unveiled plans to cut and replace 5pc of the companyâs lowest performers â equivalent to around 3,600 staff â in the coming months.
In a memo to staff on Tuesday, first reported by Bloomberg, Mr Zuckerberg said: âIâve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster.
âWe typically manage out people who arenât meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now weâre going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.â
Will AI offer more efficient and solution based strategies than lower performing staff?
January 15, 2025
@Mickey Taking – the main driver in the US is coming from ‘Litigation’ someone has just woken up to the fact DE&I (Diversity,Equalities & Inclusion) means quotas are created that automatically means ‘Discrimination’ on a large scale. As such some State are now suing those that practice it.
In a similar vein Mark Carney’s ESG(Environmental, Social and Governance ) has come up against unethical market manipulation practices Laws – all major Banks and Financial institutions in the US have baled out, leaving just a couple of UK Banks signed up and penalising their customers and clients
January 15, 2025
“Why not take our corporation tax rate down to Irelandâs to tempt more of the US digital investment in future here? Ireland has attracted so much with a tax rate half ours”
I completely agree that we should be reducing Corportion Tax Sir John but your statement doesn’t really explain what is happening here. The large US Corporates are investing in the UK but the real profits are declared elsewhere (often in Ireland as you say)
The (US) multinational I worked for had a large UK HQ, employed many people here and made a third of it’s total European revenue in the UK. Indeed we were the largest sub outside of the US at that time. However all “goods and services” were billed from the Distribution Centre in Ireland, even though they were delivered in the UK. So there was a large cost base here but the UK (declared/taxable) ‘profit’ was usually tiny – almost break even. A very large software sale often involved just the shipment of a single CD (with right to copy) accompanied by an invoice from Ireland for very large amounts of money..
I read about the “success” of Ireland but much of it is just a simple accounting trick, without which the Irish economy would be reduced to Guinness and agriculture exports. The same thing now seems to occur when ordering from Amazon. I’ve noticed that items are increasingly ‘fulfilled’ from their “European Centre” but are they shipped from there or just billed from there? Solely UK based businesses can’t access this form of
avoidance and get hammered by increased corporate taxes.
January 16, 2025
Largest European Amazon warehouse is in Tilbury, Essex (2 m sq.feet).
expertbeacon.com 08/05/2024 âThe biggest Amazon warehouses worldwideâ.
Where the invoice is actually produced is rather complicated and depends on where the item was originally produced. You can get information on that exploring sellercentral.amazon.co.uk.
As far as I can see (but I may be wrong) it appears to be governed by âUpdate to Amazon UK and EU agreements and VAT treatmentâ (08/2024).
January 15, 2025
AI is not a universal panacea it will be useful for medical use to spot abnormalities in scans much quicker than a human, but the public section will use it as a “Gate Keeper” – “Computer Says No” i.e. to replace the current “noreply” emails that we see too often from the public sector.
I already see it as the way that our GP’s use a pseudo-AI called Amina it to distance themselves from their potential patients.
And Elon Musk can’t even control the adaptive/dynamic headlights on his Tesla’s such that they don’t blind on coming traffic.
January 15, 2025
I hate the misuse of language for political gain
Prove to me that AI is ‘real’ and not just really clever computer code/programmimg
January 15, 2025
@glen cullen – the correct term is Large Language Model, a big database where decisions can be derived at from by those that contribute the most.
January 15, 2025
+1
January 15, 2025
Read about âneural networkâ (NN). It is a very old idea (Leibniz, 17th c) but it with the arrival of electronic computer in the 1940s-50s then the exponential computer development from the 80s-90s it came of age, with various self-learning âalgorithmsâ (backpropagating, âconvolutional NNâ, ârecurring NNâ, âŠ), the idea being to find relationships between various âelementsâ that the usual statistical methods could not or would not readily establish because of levels of uncertainty.
AI is neural network to the power of 10 (100?) dealing not only with numbers as NNs were originally doing but with texts, images, and obviously numbers.
If one looks on the web there are multiple sources of info, some basic, some very specialised.
Relatively basic ones are âNeural Network (Machine Learning)â and âArtificial Intelligenceâ on wikipedia.
Next time HMRC will send you a letter saying you have not paid enough tax, it might be their AI system that will have checked your previous returns against your declared sources of income and found them questionable given, say, your diet (from your day-to-day shopping), your expenses (from the other outgoings from your bank and debit/credit card), your lodging, your consumption of utilities, your medical history, âŠ
January 16, 2025
Indeed it might, Hefner. Let’s keep cash.
January 15, 2025
– pnas.org 04/05/2021 âAI-assisted superresolution cosmological simulationsâ.
– sciencedirect.com 09/2019 âAI and clinical decision support for radiologists and referring providersâ.
– sciencedirect.com 03/2024 âA comprehensive analysis of the role of AI and ML in modern digital forensics and incidentresponseâ.
– saiwa.ai 21/12/2024 âAI in Forestry: Transforming sustainability and conservationâ.
– ibm.com 24/09/2024 âAI and the future of agricultureâ.
BTW just a question: do you know anything about âclever computer code/programmingâ or do you consider yourself an enlightened proponent of GIGO?
January 15, 2025
Lets be negative and celebrate No 10’s latest BooBoo. Like bowel movements they happen every day.
On a technicality, as to whether it was a minister or secretary of state who signed the order to incarcerate Jerry Adams during the troubles, he will be entitled to compensation. That which applies to the godfather of terrorism will of course apply to other IRA terrorists.
Forget about what is owed to postmasters, contaminated blood recipients, female pensioners, and possibly any thalidomide survivors, the legal lizard will bow to terrorism.
I wonder what he has in mind for tomorrow.
January 15, 2025
INEOS closes last remaining synthetic ethanol plant in the UK with the loss of several hundred jobs.
https://www.ineos.com/news/ineos-group/chemicals-coming-to-an-end-in-the-uk/
Long Live Artificial intelligence (AI)
January 15, 2025
It’s the cost of energy, as in all other manufacturing. What a great job Miliband is doing.
January 15, 2025
Reported today, Lloyds Bank data center to close in 2025 losing 500 jobs
Long Live Artificial intelligence (AI)
January 16, 2025
And nothing to do with AI, (ft.com, 16/01/2025 âBP axes 4,700 jobs in cost-cutting drive).
4.7k BP jobs and 3k contractors lost from pressure from shareholders.
January 15, 2025
Does AI have the potential to work from home like all the other Public Sector employees, or does it have to work from an office?
Just curious.
Also, if we are to believe the hype surrounding AI, one of the key benefits is the ability to make better more economic decisions because it can look at all the data before advising what to do.
With that being the case, where does the additional GDP come from?
Surely if a more efficient computer working 24/7 rather than a three day week can make better decisions at lower cost than currently employed office workers, won’t the effect of that be a reduction of office workers and a lowering of cost and a lowering GDP?
January 15, 2025
So the Government is talking about AI again… Just like they did in the 1960s (remember Cybernetics) and then again in the 1980s (Remember the Alvey report) – and for all I know in the 2000s. There is nothing like an Exponential scalable problem to keep the next generation of Arts Graduate SPADs excited…
A little technical detail: As I see AI, the core issue is the exponential increase in the ‘dimensionality’ of the problem when you move it out of the ‘toy’ laboratory situation . In its time the ‘Eliza’ interactive conversational programme convinced quite a few with what we now consider meagre computing power. So, since then, we have moved up in computing power by, say, a factor of 1000 – but will the AI programme be 1000 times more capable? – more likely by a factor of 3 to 10. I reckon this will be true for both ‘programmed’ AI programmes using labels (eg LISP) as well as Neural Network connectionist type AI programmes.
January 15, 2025
Given that one has to submit a ârequestâ to the AI system it can be done from any part of the world provided one has the access codes to the relevant system (and obviously a working connection).
HMRC has its developers scattered allover the country âŠ
January 15, 2025
“AI” is the fashion of the day.
As always with these fads, there are good aspects. However, marketing people will rope just about anything that is computer-related (and many things thta are not) under the “AI” banner simply beause that is what the media is talking about.
The danger is government ministers ask for more “AI” without having much idea what they are asking for,
Computers are very good at doing things fast. As it has always been since the 1940s, we should get computers to do things where they can work faster than humans, reglardless of what we call it and regardless of the latest buzz phrase.
January 15, 2025
Agree
January 15, 2025
âWill the government adopt some of the ideas around for more and cheaper energy?â
No, because it will be against the Net Zero religion to provide cheap, plentiful, reliable electricity.
Data centres need electricity which is not only cheap and plentiful but also reliable which why all the AI companies are ditching any ideas of using expensive, chaotically intermittent renewables and switching to nuclear, even resurrecting old nuclear reactors.
The UKâs electricity supply however is moving in the opposite direction. In 1997 nuclear generated 26% of our electricity. NESOâs plan for âclean powerâ by 2030 is for 11-12% with no new build. NESOâs Holistic 2050 Future Energy Scenario is for just 8%.
Instead of ordering 14 RR SMRs (the equivalent to 2 Hinkley Point Cs) for delivery the beginning of the 2030s followed by a competition for a second SMR supplier the Net Zeros simply used a competition to delay ordering nuclear by 5 years or more.
January 15, 2025
Data centres need there own electric and water supply, anyway by the time it is built it will be out of date.
January 15, 2025
AI will never be the “Magic Wand” nor Holy Grail in the hands of politicians, least of all Labour desperate to get any credit well before it arrives just like the illusive perpetual energy from new “not-invented-yet” but widely acclaimed electrical and battery tech.
Based on their previous heralding the “White-hot technical revolution” decades ago for Britain it triggered a brain drain to the USA not least because of their high taxation core beliefs.
January 15, 2025
Alan Turing on AI 1947
âWhat we want is a machine that can learn from experience,â and that the âpossibility of letting the machine ‘alter’ its own instructions provides the mechanism for this.â
I nolonger want to be a toaster, I’m now a mircowave …..