The new Labour government has shelved £1.3bn of funding promised by the Conservatives for technology and artificial intelligence projects, casting doubt on the future of the UK’s first next-generation supercomputer.
The projects, announced last yearincludes £800m to create an exascale supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh and a further £500m for the AI Research Resource, which funds computing power for AI.
The government says these are “unfunded commitments”. The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology said the previous government had promised funding but it had not been allocated in its spending plans.
A spokesperson said: “We are absolutely committed to building a technology infrastructure that creates growth and opportunity for people across the UK.
“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 on our national mission of growth.”
Around £300 million in funding has already been distributed to the AI Research Resource and is continuing as planned.
However, shadow science secretary Andrew Griffith said that when the election was called, officials had informed ministers that the department was likely to spend less than it had budgeted for the current financial year.
He added: “This is a terrible blow to the UK’s tech sector and could be just the start of Labour’s cuts. During the election, Labour refused to commit to increasing the amount the UK spends on research, even though that is a fundamental part of growing a modern economy. If DSIT cannot get the Treasury funding, this means university research could also be affected.”
Last week, Science Secretary Peter Kyle said he was “putting AI at the heart of the government’s agenda to drive growth and improve our public services,” and He appointed technology entrepreneur Matt Clifford develop an action plan to identify new AI opportunities.
The plan will look at the infrastructure, talent and data access needed to drive AI adoption by the public and private sectors.
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Funding decisions mean the future of Edinburgh’s exascale supercomputer remains unclear.
The UK’s first next-generation supercomputer – 50 times faster than any existing machines – would be based at the University of Edinburgh and would be capable of performing a billion calculations per second. The university is home to the country’s current national supercomputer, ARCHER2.
The University of Edinburgh says on their website“Exascale will help researchers model every aspect 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.”