UK authorities are ready to invest in the development of sovereign AI using nuclear energy

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as reported by leading foreign media, today is due to make a policy statement on the launch of a government initiative that will help the country increase computing power in the field of AI by 20 times by 2030, as well as increase labor productivity in economy.

Image source: Unsplash, Mahmudur Rahman

The essence of the program for the development of “sovereign AI” in the UK will come down to the creation of a simplified regulatory system and financing of the necessary infrastructure, including energy. It was decided to start with regions where nuclear power plants are concentrated in the UK, and in the future it is planned to place computing clusters in close proximity to nuclear power plants and other new generation energy facilities. The ambitions of the British authorities extend to the level of creating “success stories” comparable to the appearance of OpenAI on the market.

The current plan involves the formation of several “growth zones” in the UK, which will contribute to the rapid development of “sovereign AI”. The country’s economy should have its own “AI champions”, not inferior in scale to the same OpenAI. Language models taught in the UK should not depend on the activities of companies from the United States, since the Kingdom’s authorities classify this activity as a national priority. UK companies developing AI will have access to national data banks used to create models tailored to the UK’s economy and traditions. Some market participants are calling on British pension funds, which have a total of $7 trillion in cash, to use some of it to finance startups in the field of artificial intelligence.

The accompanying development of energy infrastructure in the UK will be facilitated by a specially created council, including officials and business representatives. The project involves connecting powerful data centers to modular nuclear reactors that rely on nuclear fission technology. The program will also be financed by attracting private capital. The UK government expects that the widespread introduction of artificial intelligence systems will increase labor productivity in the national economy by 1.5% annually and increase GDP by $57 billion annually within ten years.