The UK government has announced a significant boost to its artificial intelligence (AI) prowess, with a tripling of the previously announced £100 million investment in its ‘AI Research Resource’.
The £300 million investment, as the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology says reported, will power Britain’s most advanced computer, Isambard-AI, along with a newly announced Cambridge supercomputer, ‘Dawn’. The investment follows the country’s public commitment to AI safety, as the country hosts the world’s first ever AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park.
Aiming to improve AI capabilities and drive breakthroughs in several areas including drug discovery and clean energy, the investment will significantly increase the capacity of the UK’s current largest public AI computing tools.
Based at the University of Bristol and built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Isambard-AI will be equipped with 5,000 advanced AI chips from Nvidia, making it ten times faster than the UK’s current fastest machine.
To understand the supercomputer’s processing power, consider this: It will deliver well over 200 petaflops, performing 200 quadrillion calculations per second. This dwarfs even today’s fastest smartphones, capable of only trillions of calculations per second.
Perhaps even more mind-boggling, a human would have to make one decision every second for 6.3 billion years to match what this supercomputer can calculate in just one second. Its processing capabilities eclipse anything else currently available in Britain, with speeds ten times faster than the country’s fastest existing machine.
At the same time, the Cambridge-based ‘Dawn’ supercomputer, the result of a collaboration between Dell and British SME StackHPC, will be powered by more than 1,000 water-cooled Intel chips to minimize energy consumption. ‘Dawn’ is expected to be operational within the next two months and will focus on breakthroughs in fusion energy, healthcare and climate modelling.
The UK Frontier AI Taskforce, chaired by Ian Hogarth, will be given priority access to these state-of-the-art computing tools. The focus of the task force’s activities will be on analyzing the security of advanced AI models to mitigate AI risks, including national security concerns due to the potential development of bioweapons and cyber-attacks.
This initiative was announced by Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan at the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park. She emphasized that
“Frontier AI models are becoming exponentially more powerful. We have made it clear that Britain is seizing the opportunity to lead the world in safely adopting this technology so we can put it to work and live healthier, easier and longer lives.”
This strategic move, she continued, will ensure that Britain’s leading researchers and scientific talent have the resources they need to research and understand this complex technology.
At the first-ever AI Safety Summit, ministers from around the world emphasized the need to ensure the safe and ethical development of AI. The summit highlights the international concern and urgency to limit the potential risks of AI that exceed human capabilities, and underlines the need for such substantial investments in AI safety.
The UK’s investment in these supercomputers provides a tangible demonstration of its commitment to leading the way in AI safety as the world grapples with the implications of AI’s rapid advances.
As these supercomputers come online in the coming years, the cutting edge of AI security research and analysis will accelerate significantly.