Britain seeks to build homegrown rival to OpenAI in bid to become world leader in artificial intelligence
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives a media interview while attending the 79th United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, U.S. September 25, 2024.
Leon Neal | Via Reuters
LONDON — The U.K is looking to build a homegrown challenger to OpenAI and drastically increase national computing infrastructure, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government sets its sights on becoming a global leader in artificial intelligence.
Starmer is set to visit Bristol, England, on Monday to announce the pledge, which follows work done by British tech investor Matt Clifford to establish an “AI Opportunities Action Plan.” The plan aims to help the U.K. take advantage of the potential of AI.
The government is primarily seeking to expand data center capacity across the U.K. to boost developers of powerful AI models which rely on high-performance computing equipment hosted in remote locations to train and run their systems.
A target of increasing “sovereign,” or public sector, compute capacity in the U.K. by twentyfold by 2030 has been set. As part of that pledge, the government will begin opening access to the AI Research Resource, an initiative aimed at bolstering U.K. computing infrastructure.
Starmer’s administration last year canceled £1.3 billion of taxpayer-funded spending commitments towards two significant computing initiatives in order to prioritize other fiscal plans. The projects, an AI Research Resource and a next-generation “exascale” supercomputer, were pledges were made under Starmer’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak.
Sovereign AI has become a hot topic for policymakers, particularly in Europe. The term refers to the idea that technologies critical to economic growth and national security should be built and developed in the countries people are adopting them in.
To further bolster Britain’s computing infrastructure, the government also committed to setting up several AI “growth zones,” where rules on planning permission will be relaxed in certain places to allow for the creation of new data centers.
Meanwhile, an “AI Energy Council” formed of industry leaders from both energy and AI will be set up to explore the role of renewable and low-carbon sources of energy, like nuclear.
Building a challenger to OpenAI
The last major initiative the U.K. government proposed was to create homegrown AI “champions” of a similar scale to American tech giants responsible for the foundational AI models that power today’s generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Britain plans to use the AI growth zones and a newly established National Data Library to connect public institutions — such as universities — to enhance the country’s ability to create “sovereign” AI models which aren’t reliant on Silicon Valley.
It’s worth highlighting that the U.K. faces serious challenges in its bid to create an effective OpenAI alternative. For one, several entrepreneurs in the country have bemoaned funding challenges that make it difficult for startups in the country to raise the kind of cash available to AI success stories.
Many U.K. founders and venture capitalists have called for the country’s pension funds to allocate a greater portion of their portfolios toward riskier, growth-focused startups — a reform the government has committed to pushing previously.
“In the U.K., there’s $7 trillion in this pocket,” Magnus Grimeland, CEO and founder of venture capital firm Antler, told CNBC in an interview last year. “Imagine if you take just 5% of that and allocate it to innovation — you solve the problem.”
U.K. tech leaders have nevertheless generally praised the government’s AI action plan. Zahra Bahrololoumi, Salesforce’s U.K. boss, told CNBC the plan is a “forward-thinking strategy,” adding she’s encouraged by the government’s “bold vision for AI and emphasis on transparency, safety and collaboration.”
Chintan Patel, Cisco’s chief technology officer in the U.K., said he’s “encouraged” by the action plan. “Having a clearly defined roadmap is critical for the UK to achieve its ambition to become an AI superpower and a leading destination for AI investment,” he said.
Britain doesn’t yet have formal regulations for AI. Starmer’s government has previously said it plans to draw up legislation for AI — but details remain thin.
Last month, the government announced a consultation on measures to regulate the use of copyrighted content to train AI models.
More generally, the U.K. is pitching a differentiated regulatory regime from the EU following Brexit as a positive factor — meaning, it can introduce regulatory oversight for AI but in a way that’s less strict than the EU, which has taken a more hard-line approach to regulating the technology with its AI Act.
Technology
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This photo illustration created Jan. 7, 2025, shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.
Drew Angerer | Afp | Getty Images
Meta is seeking to stop the promotion of a new memoir by a former staffer that paints the social media company in an unflattering light, including allegations of sexual harassment by the company’s policy chief.
An emergency arbitrator ruled Thursday that Sarah Wynn-Williams is prohibited from promoting “Careless People,” her book that was released Tuesday by Flatiron Books, an imprint of publisher Macmillan Books.
The memoir chronicles Wynn-Williams’ tenure at Facebook from 2011 through 2017. During that time, she became a high-level employee who interacted with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, then-COO Sheryl Sandberg and Joel Kaplan, the company’s current policy chief. In the book, Wynn-Williams alleges that Kaplan made a number of inappropriate comments to her, which she then reported to the company as sexual harassment.
“This is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” a Meta spokesperson previously said about both her book and complaint.
Wynn-Williams also details in her book the company’s various attempts to enter the Chinese market, including building tools that would censor content to appease the Chinese Communist Party. Wynn-Williams addressed some of these China-specific claims in a whistleblower complaint that she filed in April with the Securities and Exchange Commission, NBC News reported.
The emergency arbitrator ruled in favor of Meta after watching a podcast appearance of Wynn-Williams in which she discussed her memoir and her allegations that Meta was attempting to “shut this book down.”
“The Emergency Arbitrator finds that, after reviewing the briefs and hearing oral argument, (Meta) has established a likelihood of success on the merits of its contractual non-disparagement claim against Respondent Wynn-Williams, and that immediate and irreparable loss will result in the absence of emergency relief,” the filing said.
Additionally, the arbitrator ruled that so much as Wynn-Williams can control, she is prohibited from further publishing or distributing the book and from further disparaging Meta and its officers or repeating previous disparaging remarks. The arbitrator also ruled that Wynn-Williams is to retract her previous disparaging remarks.
The company has previously dismissed Wynn-Williams’ claims as “out-of-date” and said that she was fired for “poor performance and toxic behavior.”
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone shared the emergency arbitrator’s ruling in a post on Threads, saying that it “affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published.”
“This urgent legal action was made necessary by Williams, who more than eight years after being terminated by the company, deliberately concealed the existence of her book project and avoided the industry’s standard fact-checking process in order to rush it to shelves after waiting for eight years,” Stone said.
Meta alleged that Wynn-Williams violated the non-disparagement terms of her September 2017 severance agreement, resulting in the company filing an emergency motion on Friday. The emergency arbitrator then conducted a telephone hearing involving legal representatives of Meta and Macmillan Books, but not Wynn-Williams who did not appear though she was given notice, the filing said.
Wynn-Williams, Flatiron Books and Macmillan Books did not respond to requests for comment.
Lip-Bu Tan appointed chief executive officer of Intel Corporation
Courtesy: Intel
Intel said on Wednesday that it had appointed Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO, as the chipmaker attempts to recover from a tumultuous four-year run under Pat Gelsinger.
Tan was previously CEO of Cadence Design Systems, which makes software used by all the major chip designers, including Intel. He was an Intel board member but departed last year, citing other commitments.
Tan replaces interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and MJ Holthaus, who took over in December when former Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger was ousted. Tan is also rejoining Intel’s board.
The appointment closes a chaotic chapter in Intel’s history, as investors pressured the semiconductor company to cut costs and spin off businesses due to declining sales and an inability to crack the booming artificial intelligence market.
Intel shares rose over 12% in extended trading on Wednesday.
Tan becomes the fourth permanent CEO at Intel in seven years. Following Brian Krzanich’s resignation in 2018, after the revelations of an inappropriate relationship with an employee, Bob Swan took the helm in Jan. 2019. He departed two years later after Intel suffered numerous blows from competitors and chip delays. Swan was succeeded by Gelsinger in 2021.
Gelsinger took over with a bold plan to transform Intel’s business to manufacture chips for other companies in addition to its own, becoming a foundry. But Intel’s overall products revenue continued to decline, and investors fretted over the significant capital expenditures needed for such massive chip production, including constructing a $20 billion dollar factory complex in Ohio.
Last fall, after a disappointing earnings report, Intel appeared to be for sale, and reportedly drew interest from rival companies including Qualcomm. Analysts assessed the possibility of Intel spinning off its foundry division or selling its products division — including server and PC chips — to a rival.
In AI, Intel has gotten trounced by Nvidia, whose graphics processing units (GPUs) have become the chip of choice for developers over the past few years.
In January, Intel issued a weak forecast even as it beat on earnings and revenue. The company pointed to seasonality, economic conditions and competition, and said clients are digesting inventory. The prospect of tariffs was adding to the uncertainty, Zinsner said.
Intel said that Zinsner will return to his previous role of CFO. Holthaus will remain in charge of Intel Products.
Intel was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in November and was replaced by Nvidia, reflecting the dramatic change of fortune in the semiconductor industry. Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, while Nvidia’s stock price soared 171%. At Wednesday’s close, Intel’s market cap was $89.5 billion, less than one-thirtieth of Nvidia’s valuation.
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