Britain plans to spend up to £60 million over six years to support two new AI research labs at Oxford and UCL. These labs want to create AI that does not depend on Big Tech’s data centres.
The Science of Fundamental AI Research lab at UCL and the British Open-ended Learning and Discovery lab at Oxford will develop open-source models that run on affordable, widely available hardware. This should help reduce dependence on just a few major AI providers.
The government changed its original plan from one lab with £40 million to two labs, with up to £60 million in total, between the draft and the final announcement.
Britain has top AI researchers but lacks the financial resources of the companies that hire them. Earlier this week, the government recognised this gap and announced a plan to tackle it.
Oxford University and University College London will each get part of up to £60 million in public funding over six years, with support from UK Research and Innovation and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Instead of building bigger models, both labs will look for ways to make advanced AI more affordable, open, and less dependent on the large computing resources that many organisations cannot access.
