this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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Government shelves £1.3bn UK tech and AI plans (www.bbc.com)
submitted 1 year ago by MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The new Labour government has shelved £1.3bn of funding promised by the Conservatives for tech and Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects, the BBC has learned.

It includes £800m for the creation of an exascale supercomputer at Edinburgh University and a further £500m for AI Research Resource, which funds computing power for AI.

Both funds were unveiled less than 12 months ago. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said the money was promised by the previous administration but was never allocated in its budget.

Some in the industry have criticised the government's decision. Tech business founder Barney Hussey-Yeo posted on X that reducing investment risked "pushing more entrepreneurs to the US." Businessman Chris van der Kuyl described the move as "idiotic."

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't know if this particular funding is reasonable or not, whether it's cost-effective, but my kneejerk reaction is that I don't really feel that a large parallel compute system for a university is the worst thing that one could get.

I do kind of wonder whether the university needs to actually own the computer, though. Like, there's commercial demand for a large parallel computer. This isn't the Large Hadron Collider or something. Maybe it'd make sense to just do grants for parallel compute time.

EDIT: Plus it sounds like it isn't just owned by the university, but also co-located:

Edinburgh University had already spent £31m building housing for it.

I mean, why? The university presumably isn't aiming to advance the system administration or maintenance of parallel compute clusters, but the software that runs on them.