I am increasingly frustrated about the state of conversation about AI in the UK. It feels like we are in never ending cycles of deluded thinking. Under current trends, Britain will be defenceless against the transformative effects of AI and have no leverage over development at the frontier. We are the most exposed economy to AI in the world. We have very little data centre capacity and few credible plans to expand – and our high energy costs mean we would struggle to even if we tried. I am publishing a paper today on what the UK should do to build that leverage, let the economy capture value from AI and prepare the state to adapt, however AI develops. The three strategies are as follows: 1. Build the infrastructure that gives us leverage. Fix the grid, fix planning, make Britain a place frontier AI can run. 2. Let the economy capture the value of AI. Reform the regulatory, labour and talent barriers that stop British firms adopting AI. 3. Build a state that can adapt to a changing world. Build a tax base that survives the labour market changing, public services that use AI to deliver better, and capacity to weather the upcoming geopolitical storms. Two years ago, we published a similar report on AI - many recommendations of which ended up in the action plan. I remember feeling hopeful, but sadly the fundamental problems facing the country on AI have not shifted. I truly hope that this week of momentum culminates in action. There’s still a narrow path for the UK, but everyday that path is narrowing.

Since its launch two weeks ago, over 700 British companies have applied to the @UKSovereignAI procurement scheme - a scheme we designed to remove as many of the blockers start-ups face when bidding on Government contracts as possible. To get a sense of the interest we have had, we hit the hard cap of 1000 attendees for the launch webinar - Brits want to build! Responses on eligibility will be sent out this week, and invites to bid on the challenges covering AI security, compute efficiency and better health services, will arrive soon too. Of course we are still a very small team at SovAI, and we only have 4 bids open ( but hope to have many more live by end of year! ), so naturally we will have to turn many applicants down. I know this will be disappointing, our decision making will not be perfect and it's a difficult process, thank you to everyone for bidding. And as a reminder, I personally do not see any applications and have no role in the decision process, that is led by our expert IC and mission champions, so while I appreciate the many reach-outs I really can do nothing to help specific companies. SovAI are working with other Departments to share what we've learned from this process to fix our procurement system, and will be launching more requests for cheaper, better and more innovative services for Government in the coming months.

A UK Space startup has just raised a huge €300m Series C. It is one of the greatest British deep-tech success stories out there. The company has grown from a UK startup into one of Europe’s leading satellite companies, and has delivered: > Five consecutive years of profitable growth > 100% mission success rate and more than >$370 million in contracts booked over the past five years. @Open_Cosmos is now capable of manufacturing one satellite a day from its current four factories across Europe. Through its various platforms it provides governments, institutions and enterprises with secure communications, Earth observation and real-time intelligence services. It has just announced a €300m Series C backed by Lightrock (Ashish Puri) ETF Partners, @join_ef, @phxcrt (@cape) and others. LETS GO

It's good that MPs want to discuss long tail risks, and engage with what is certainly a technology that presents both a huge opportunity and challenge for Britain. But it is wholly irresponsible to say on the one hand 'we think this is really important' and on the other block the UK's ability to build AI capabilities here and support British AI companies. In the event that neither our allies nor foes listen to the proposed international agreement and that in fact a 'kill switch' is impossible, every single one of these MPs should be fighting to strengthen Britain's hand in this critical technology by supporting local datacenters, so we're not exporting our data abroad, reforming regulations so that AI models like cyber defenses can be trained here, so we're not entirely reliant on foreign technology and supporting British AI companies, so we see the economic benefits here too. We're doing our small bit at SovAI, but this should be a national level debate, and I hope this MP champions the UK scaling those ambitions just as passionately.

1/ The UK Space Strategy has launched! 🇬🇧🚀🛰️ The strategy outlines our plan to make the UK a competitive space power, backed by over £7.8bn in funding. Read more 👉 gov.uk/government/news/new-s… Read the UK Space Strategy 👉 gov.uk/government/publicatio…

Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.

I don’t support calls to ban innovation or scientific endeavour. It’s a false choice that undermines some of our greatest strengths as a country. But the pace of AI development highlights how slow our institutions are - be that parliaments, governments or regulators. Instead of calling for technology to be turned off or banned, we should rise to challenge of shaping the future in our interests. 👇 theguardian.com/technology/2…

One of the UK's AI infrastructure companies has just signed a $3.5bn deal with @Figure_robot. The company is only two years old and it has $51 billion of total contracted revenue and is planning to IPO this month. Now @adcock_brett and @JoshPayneNscale have partnered up to deploy up to 100,000 GPUs on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin Platform. Figure has committed $3.5 billion, with plans to scale beyond $6 billion. @nscale is one of the craziest companies to come out of the UK in the past few years. It's great to see UK companies playing a key role in the AI stack. NICE

London, meet your newest way to ride. 🇬🇧 Autonomous rides powered by @wayve_ai are now on Uber. British-built AI. London roads. Same Uber app. Off we go.