- British supercomputing to be boosted 30-fold with a new
Cambridge computer and Bristol site
- the 2 computers will form the government’s ‘AI Research Resource’,
which helps researchers discover how to make the most advanced
models of AI safe and drive other
breakthroughs
- this comes as the UK opens its AI Safety Summit at
Bletchley Park, to consider the risks of AI and discuss their
mitigation through international action
The government’s Frontier AI Taskforce and leading British
researchers will be equipped with cutting-edge supercomputers to
analyse the safety of advanced AI models, thanks to new
investment in the ‘AI Research Resource’.
The tool will build and connect 2 new supercomputers across the
UK, giving researchers access to resources with more than
30-times the capacity of the UK’s current largest
public AI computing tools. They
will be able to use the machines, which will be running from
summer 2024, to analyse advanced AI models to test safety
features and drive breakthroughs in drug discovery and clean
energy.
The investment into the AI Research Resource has
been tripled to £300 million, up from £100 million announced in
March 2023, in a bid to further boost UK AI capabilities.
This will bolster Isambard-AI, which will be Britain’s most
advanced computer and based at the University of Bristol, is set
to be 10 times faster than the UK’s current quickest machine.
The investment will also connect Isambard-AI to a newly announced
Cambridge supercomputer called ‘Dawn’. This computer – delivered
through a partnership with Dell and UK SME StackHPC – will be
powered by over 1000 Intel chips that use water-cooling to reduce
power consumption. It is set to be running in the next 2 months
and target breakthroughs in fusion energy, healthcare and climate
modelling.
Chaired by Ian Hogarth, the Frontier AI Taskforce will have
priority access to the connected computing tools to support its
work to mitigate the risks posed by the most advanced forms
of AI,
including national security from the development of bioweapons
and cyberattacks. The resource will also support the work of
the AI Safety Institute, as it
develops a programme of research looking at the safety of
frontier AI models and supports
government policy with this analysis.
Announcing this investment at the AI Safety Summit at
Bletchley Park, Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary
said:
Frontier AI models are becoming
exponentially more powerful. At our AI Safety Summit in
Bletchley Park, we have made it clear that Britain is grasping
the opportunity to lead the world in adopting this technology
safely so we can put it to work and lead healthier, easier and
longer lives.
This means giving Britain’s leading researchers and scientific
talent access to the tools they need to delve into how this
complicated technology works. That is why we are investing in
building UK’s supercomputers, making sure we cement our place as
a world-leader in AI safety.
Bristol’s Isambard-AI computer,
first announced in
September, will be backed by a £225 million investment and
include 5,000 advanced AI chips from Nvidia
in a supercomputer built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The supercomputer, 10 times faster than the UK’s current fastest
machine, will deliver over 200 ‘petaflops’, meaning it can make
200,000,000,000,000,000 calculations (that’s 200 quadrillion)
every second. By comparison, the newest smartphones today deliver
only trillions of calculations per second, and a human would have
to make a decision every second for 6.3 billion years to match
what this computer can calculate in one second.
