AI Update: Billions and Bytes - The UK's Half Full Cup in the Global AI Race

Midjourney v6.1 the UK’s half full cup in the global AI race

The UK AI plan launched by the PM and its need for money is covered here, UK has half of what it needs to be an AI hub, and the cost of AI is a bit of a theme this week. Basically, the UK is good at unicorns but poor at scaling. Defence is also guilty here, it scales poorly but could be a major player on the investment and funding aspects. The potential benefits, and how AI can help build a better society, are well covered here, How we can use AI to create a better society.

The cost of AI, especially environmentally, is blown up here Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment where it points out that a ChatGPT query uses the same energy as 2 emails (and globally there are 160Bn spam emails sent EVERY DAY), that a hamburger uses 660 gallons of water to produce, one hour of US TV consumes 4 gallons, and 300 queries uses 1 gallon. If we’re going to reduce energy or water consumption, there are more beneficial (and easier) areas to focus on. Leaking pipes in the US wastes 10,600M gallons of water every day. 😮

A quick update on how industry are using GenAI covered here State of Generative AI: 5 Takeaways and 5 Actions to Help Drive Progress - WSJ with 40% of organisations saying that they are already achieving their expected benefits in this area.

Finally, Stargate and the $500Bn US investment is huge news, Trump announces private-sector $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure | Reuters provides a good summary, and this is mostly centred on Texas. The Guardian neatly summarises the subsequent spat between Musk and Altman here Tech titans bicker over $500bn AI investment announced by Trump | Elon Musk | The Guardian with Satya Nadella politely just saying, “All I know is, I’m good for my $80bn. I’m going to spend $80bn building out Azure.”