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There may be another casualty of the chancellor’s efforts to shore up what she called a fiscal black hole. Having ditched the universal distribution of the winter fuel payment and paused a number of large infrastructure projects on the roads and rails, the treasury is about to scrap plans to spend around £1.3bn on a number of technology projects mainly centred around AI.
The cuts centre around two funds that the previous government had announced in 2023 as part of their commitment to developing the UK’s tech industries. Announcing the launch of a new £500m investment in AI last year, science, innovation and technology secretary, Michelle Donelan said the money “will support the UK’s world leading scientists and AI researchers to continue delivering extraordinary new discoveries benefiting us all – giving AI start-ups and other businesses access to cutting edge compute that boosts productivity and innovation and helps make our country the best place in the world to create an AI start-up.”
However, having announced a £22bn black hole in the public purse due to unfunded government spending commitments, the Treasury has decided that the funding will now be withdrawn.
One of the flagship programmes that was set to go ahead – but is now being shelved – was to build an exascale supercomputer at Edinburgh University, a project that had been allocated £800m in the 2023 Budget. The project was initially funded following the recommendations of the Future of compute review for an exascale supercomputer.
According the university’s website, “exascale will help researchers model all aspects of the world, test scientific theories and improve products and services in areas such as artificial intelligence, drug discovery, climate change, astrophysics and advanced engineering.”
A university spokesperson said: “The University of Edinburgh has led the way in supercomputing within the UK for decades, and is ready to work with the government to support the next phase of this technology in the UK, in order to unlock its benefits for industry, public services and society.”
Alongside that, funding in the region of £900m had been announced for the AI Research Resource. And while that project has already received £300m, with the previous government pledging a further £500m in the 2023 Autumn Statement, instead that funding has been cancelled.
Despite the funding cuts, the government has reiterated its commitment to investing in AI, however. A spokesman said: “The government is taking difficult and necessary spending decisions across all departments in the face of billions of pounds of unfunded commitments. This is essential to restore economic stability and deliver our national mission for growth.”
“We have launched the AI Opportunities Action Plan, which will identify how we can bolster our compute infrastructure to better suit our needs and consider how AI and other emerging technologies can best support our new Industrial Strategy.”
