Enormous investments in artificial intelligence promised to transform Labour’s growth problems, but the reality is much murkier, according to a series of investigations by the Guardian. The findings revealed that a much-trumpeted new supercomputer intended to be up and running by year’s end to help fire up the British economy remains a scaffolding yard.
Guardian reporter Aisha Down, who covers artificial intelligence, said the reporting began with a simple idea: to check the details behind a wave of enormous AI investment announcements. “What seems to have happened is that the reality has been spun – by a government desperate for growth, and by tech companies with a very strong incentive to maximise AI hype,” she told the Guardian.
Down and her colleague Dan Milmo started mapping out all the deals and noticed an “eerie” pattern. Earlier this year, there was enormous excitement about a proposed $100bn investment from Nvidia into OpenAI, a deal that would have seen Nvidia provide funding that OpenAI would largely use to buy Nvidia’s own chips. “A $100bn deal between two of the biggest companies in the world just sort of disappeared,” Down said. “And markets didn’t really move.”
That raised questions, as financial markets have been known to wobble over far smaller developments. The reporting narrowed to two companies that kept appearing in the UK government’s AI plans: the datacentre firms CoreWeave and Nscale, both backed by Nvidia and both associated with major promised investments in Britain’s AI infrastructure. One project in particular caught Down’s attention: a planned “sovereign AI” supercomputer site in Loughton.
