The AI deal, Will it be Boom or Bust
Whilst those with the big bucks might applaud the recent US/UK deal, it could well be the ordinary mass of UK citizens that ultimately pay the price, see this comment by David Roberts from his blog volts.
‘So basically, this rush of data centers is crashing into our conventional way of running utilities and regulating utilities and setting rates in such a way as to make a mess. And the danger in that mess is that ordinary ratepayers are going to end up stuck with the bill for a lot of the new expenses required by these big data centers.’
I am no expert, but I cant help feel that the prospect of the ordinary tax payer ultimately paying the cost has a sad ring of the truth.
Comment from your editor Lyn
US Tech Giants Invest £31bn In UK In ‘Prosperity Deal’
Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, others boost UK’s AI economy with data centre infrastructure, research as US and UK foster tech ties
Microsoft has announced a $30 billion (£22bn) investment package in the UK, its largest-ever outside the US, as part of a broader range of £31bn in spending around technology and artificial intelligence timed with a state visit by US president Donald Trump.
The investment will go to expand cloud and AI infrastructure and will also go toward Britain’s largest AI supercomputer, set to be established in Loughton, in Essex north-east of London.
The Loughton project was announced by the government in January as part of plans to make the UK an “AI superpower”, but Microsoft’s involvement is new.
AI infrastructure
Nvidia, meanwhile, said it would deploy 120,000 of its advanced graphics processing units across the UK, its largest commitment in Europe to date.
Up to 60,000 of Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell Ultra chips are to go to UK-based Nscale, which is working on the Loughton supercomputer.
Nscale is also partnering with OpenAI to launch a data centre project in Northumberland called Stargate UK, in reference to the Stargate data centre project in the US backed by OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and others.
OpenAI, Nvidia, Nscale and chip design company ARM are all working on the project in Cobalt Park, Northumberland.
The government said there was potential for more than 5,000 jobs and billions in private investment in north-east England, which has been designated as a new “AI growth zone”.
Cloud computing company CoreWeave has pledged £1.5bn to fund energy-efficient data centres in partnership with Scotland’s DataVita, bringing its total UK investment to £2.5bn.
Google announced £5bn of investments, including a new data centre in Waltham Cross, north of London, and funding for its London-based DeepMind AI unit.
Bilateral ties
Other companies including Salesforce, Scale AI, BlackRock, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and AI Pathfinder said they would invest hundreds of millions to several billion pounds in the UK.
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella told the BBC he expected AI investments to fuel growth in the UK, but acknowledged the comments of analysts that AI investments have become a financial bubble that is likely to lead to a significant correction.
Nadella said that “all tech things are about booms and busts and bubbles” and that AI should not be “over-hyped or under-hyped”.
The investments are part of what was officially called the Tech Prosperity Deal between the UK and the US, which seeks to strengthen ties between the two countries on AI, quantum computing and nuclear power.
Nadella, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and OpenAI chief Sam Altman accompanied Trump to a state banquet hosted by the Royal Family at Windsor Castle on Wednesday evening.
Source: Silicon
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