The Labour government has announced that £1.3 billion of funding initially promised by the Conservatives for the development of new technology, including artificial intelligence, is to be shelved indefinitely.

The funding cuts, first reported by the BBC, include scrapping the £800 million plans for the creation of an exascale supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh. The ‘game-changing’ supercomputer was designed to drive breakthroughs in AI, medicine, and clean low-carbon energy, and was announced only in October 2023.

A further £500 million in funding for the AI Research Resource has also been shelved, putting support at risk for advanced research into building supercomputers for developing artificial intelligence. 

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said that the money was promised by the previous government but never allocated in its budget. 

In a statement, the DSIT said: “The government is taking difficult and necessary spending decisions across all departments in the face of billions of pounds of unfunded commitments. 

“This is essential to restore economic stability and deliver our national mission for growth.”

The University of Edinburgh’s exascale machine would have been 50 times faster than any current computers in the UK, able to perform 1 billion billion calculations each second, and considered the next frontier in computing power, where systems are built to carry out extremely complex functions with increased speed and precision.

The exascale machine was due to be housed in a new £31 million wing of the University’s EPCC Advanced Computing Facility, which was purpose-built as part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.

Recommended reading

• UK Aims to Be Scale-Up Powerhouse
• AWS: UK on Track to be an AI Superpower
• UK May Be Missing Fundamental Key to AI Innovation

According to the university, exascale research through its £45.7 million ExCALIBUR programme is fundamental to breakthroughs in areas such as drug and vaccine research, climate and weather prediction, and fusion power and green energy sources. 

A spokesperson for the university told the BBC that “[It] is ready to work with the government to support the next phase of this technology in the UK, in order to unlock its benefits for industry, public services and society.”

This reversal of promised funding comes only days after the new UK Science Secretary, Peter Kyle, committed to putting AI at the heart of the government’s agenda to deliver change. On 26th July, the government appointed tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford to deliver a new AI Opportunities Action Plan to identify ways to accelerate the use of AI to improve people’s lives.

The Action Plan is being set up to help drive productivity and kickstart economic growth, with estimates from the IMF showing that the UK could ultimately see productivity gains of up to 1.5% annually through the development and use of AI technology.