bleeding edge: In case you haven’t noticed, AI technology has been rampant among kids lately. If it’s not Dall-E or Stable Fusion; It’s ChatGP, Bart, Bing Chat, or another company’s big language model. Not wanting to be left in the dust, the UK sank a huge investment into building the next exascale supercomputer.
The United Kingdom has announced plans to invest £900 million (US$1.1 billion) in a new supercomputer to create a GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) AI model. Tentatively called “BritGPT,” it will be one of the most powerful computing devices in the world, capable of performing over a billion billion simple computational operations per second (exaflops). Currently, the only supercomputer built to this scale isborderat Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the decision Wednesday, saying: “Because AI needs horsepower, today I am committing around £900m of funding… to an exascale supercomputer.”
The Guardian notes that the UK Objectives To use the supercomputer to develop artificial intelligence technology that can be used in various industries, from healthcare to finance. The nearly £1 billion investment is part of a broader push to establish the UK as a leader in artificial intelligence technology. Officials and industry leaders fear being left behind in the AI industry, which is currently dominated by the United States and China.
“We think there is a risk that, in the UK, we lose out to big tech, perhaps China, and fall behind… in areas of cyber security, healthcare and so on,” said BT Group head of data and synthetic intelligence officer Adrian. Joseph. “It’s a massive arms race that’s been going on for some time, but it sure has been heating up lately.”
This heat is the recent developments and large-scale releases of OpenAI chat and Other Company’s Large Language Models (LLM). The UK government has already invested heavily in research and development and initiatives to support the growth of AI-related businesses in the country.
One of the significant advantages of BritGPT is its ability to process huge amounts of data quickly and accurately. This power will enable researchers to train AI models more effectively, resulting in more accurate predictions and better decision making. It will also allow companies to analyze large data sets more quickly, improving efficiency and reducing costs.
“[This investment will] Allowing researchers to better understand climate change, promoting the discovery of new drugs, and maximizing our potential in artificial intelligence,” said a UK Treasury spokesperson.
The £900m investment includes £10m (US$12m) earmarked for annual AI innovations. Each year for the next 10 years, the research groups could compete for a £1m prize from the Treasury dubbed the “Manchester Prize”, named after the Manchester Kid – a computer built early at the University of Manchester in 1948 The grant goes to the most outstanding AI achievements of the year.
Image credit: OLCF at ORNL
