'Mainlined into UK's veins': Labour announces public rollout of AI | Hacker News Reader

'Mainlined into UK's veins': Labour announces public rollout of AI

theguardian.com

20 pointschrisjj29 comments

This is a bold plan, but there are real risks here. Opening NHS data for AI research sounds great in theory, but we’ve seen what happens when privacy safeguards fail. The Post Office scandal is a clear warning about relying too much on tech without accountability.

That said, the investment in sovereign compute capacity and miniature nuclear reactors is worth celebrating on its own. More nuclear energy is a win for everyone.

Let's hope they get it right.

> Let's hope they get it right.

There's no right way of doing this. The only good thing here is the UK will be gifting to the rest of world a canary - dead.

It wouldn't even be the first time we've done that.

The UK already has sovereign compute capacity. Just it's excessively expensive, mostly legacy and expensive to run and maintain. Crown hosting initiative 5 - 10 years ago was an attempt to solve some of that but not heard much positive about it.

Recently one of the more successful UK hosting partners went bust as it's really not possible to compete against the offerings of AWS etc for a lot (most) government uses. There are obvious exceptions where cost Vs functionality Vs security trade-offs kick-in and security wins.

> The Post Office scandal is a clear warning about relying too much on tech without accountability.

No, it is just the drop in the ocean.

I bet nobody reads Orwell in Britain anymore. /s

> Artificial intelligence could be used to help spot where potholes are occurring.

I am fairly sure that job is already being done well for free by millions of genuine intelligences.

Also, appears to miss the point that pothole spotting isn't solving the actual problem.

Surely, preventing, or at least optimising the fixing of potholes is closer to what is valuable?

> appears to miss the point that pothole spotting isn't solving the actual problem.

The Govt. is here making a good case for AI... in the form of a prime ministerial laptop running Copilot to help a user that knows even less than it.

Doesn't AI need a lot of cheap electricity?

https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/09/30/uk-has-worlds-high...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/26/britain-burd...

They can't use datacenters outside UK due to privacy laws.

My understanding is that hardware and labour costs vastly outweigh energy costs, even in the UK.

Are those other costs low in UK?

No. I’ve built and maintained data centers for FAANG. I’m familiar with power requirements of Ai.

The amount of power needed to train and operate AI are staggering. You literally wouldn’t believe me if I told you. If you are curious I recommend that you start slow and ease into it. Jumping right to the answer will just cause your brain to bonk.

We regularly throw out millions of dollars worth of equipment that is still perfectly good because the new stuff is 15% more efficient. Which means we’re spending labor and equipment costs to depreciate working infrastructure early due to power cost concerns.

Energy costs add up fast when you're using 120kW per rack at £0.24/kWh, not including the cost to cool it.

Do we need AI to spot potholes? Give people a way to report those with their gov account and see how many of them are more than happy to do the work for you, if it means a chance to have a better road.

Did you even check if this is a thing already before asking "if there could be a way" ?

I did, and:

https://www.fixmystreet.com/

https://www.gov.uk/report-pothole

https://www.fillthathole.org.uk/

It's a farsicle example as the bottleneck is getting the council to fix the potholes.

It takes time to build and run the AI infrastructure to check the road infrastructure for potholes so they have some extra time not fixing potholes meanwhile, which is more like an actual job than a foggy idea and nervous brainstorming, so being harder than talk bells and whistels, pure old boring work only.

What materialised from the AI Safety Summit in nov 2023 under previous government?

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-speec...

Good question. Nothing AFAICS.

Since Brexit I can't think what would make the UK attractable for investments, especially AI.

No idea where UK AI legislation is going to go. Follow the EU or the US, probably the former but the skip and dance with the EU isn't any kind of solid base that companies can rely upon.

Keir Starmer is not helping Britain's AI businesses. He is again following orders from his new Washington overlords.

This recent grooming scandal brought up by Musk etc. is just theater to distract. Seems to be the new thing: Insult Starmer, then cooperate. Insult Netanyahu (with the Jeffrey Sachs tape posted by Trump), then cooperate. Just to maintain the illusion of disagreement.

So the data is supposed to be anonymized. That is a false promise and seems to be a research topic:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-19045-3

Wasn’t NHS data anonymised, split into sets and sold a decade ago, then some corp bought multiple sets of the data and combined them easily, de-anonymising it?

The "solution" to this is to criminalise de-anonymising the data, like the geniuses in the Australian government.

https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/29/researchers_crack_oz_...

This research seems to show that two X-rays can be identified as being from the same person, rather than identifying the person directly.

However, I have no doubt that AI could easily de-anonymize data fully given enough data points.

Eh, I suspect he's just looking for a distraction from Britain's problems, which are basically intractable (deep-seated economic issues, now exacerbated by Brexit). The previous government also trumpeted a lot of AI bullshit (and to some extent metaverse bullshit and crypto bullshit before that: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/04/rishi-sun...), for similar reasons; the desire to be seen to be doing something.

Ultimately, the UK will likely have to move towards reversing Brexit, in part or whole, but that's probably too politically explosive to seriously touch for five or ten years, so I think we'll be seeing plans for salvation through nonsense for a while yet.

They are so desperate and clueless how to dig out the country from the hole it is headed that it is scary. Holding on to anything that promises the stars and heavens and an additional 13k jobs (... really?, not even 14k or perhaps 55k?). If it was 10 years ago they were having a National Blockchain Initiative to dazzle the public with hope I believe.

Techno-solutionism. Grasping at straws of a "quick fix". Bandwagoning the latest fad. Rather than doing the detailed work needed to get the services working.

It's very disappointing. It's the kind of gimmick that PM Johnson used to suggest, but we expected better from the new administration. It's embarrassing. It won't age well.

I liked those: "A bridge to Ireland" had me rolling on the floor ...

Mr Johnson was elected PM because of that whole shtick. He was elected by people who wanted that level of flippant, facile gimmickry.

However, the current UK administration was elected by people who had finally grown sick of the gimmicks, and wanted adults in the room again to do the work in a boring but competent way. And now they are offered ... the AI gimmick?

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