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United Kingdom AI Technology

UK Needs Culture Shift To Become AI Superpower 72

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, believes that for the UK to become an AI superpower, it needs to foster a culture of risk-taking and encourage large-scale investments. The BBC reports: Mustafa Suleyman added that he does not regret selling DeepMind to the US giant in 2014. "The US market is not only huge, but also more predisposed to taking big shots," he told the BBC. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants the UK to be a global hub for AI. He has pledged 1 billion pounds in funding over the next 10 years, and founded a UK taskforce with a remit of maximising the benefits of the tech while keeping it safe. This week BBC News is focusing on AI, how the technology affects our lives and what impacts it may have in the near future.

Mr Suleyman said the UK had "every chance" of becoming an AI superpower and praised its research facilities, but added there were not the same opportunities for businesses to grow as there are in the US. "I think the culture shift that it needs to make is to be more encouraging of large scale investments, more encouraging of risk taking, and more tolerant and more celebratory of failures," he said. "The truth is, the US market is not only huge, but also more predisposed to big risk taking, taking big shots and having big funding rounds." Mr Suleyman has chosen to base his new company, Inflection AI, in Palo Alto, California, which is also home to the headquarters of Google, Facebook and Tesla.

Mustafa Suleyman's views represent one of the challenges facing Ian Hogarth, a British entrepreneur and investor who has been appointed to lead the UK's AI taskforce. He took up the position five weeks ago. In his first interview since getting the job, Mr Hogarth told the BBC that while the UK was a good place for start-ups, it should also be easier for them to grow. "We've had some great [tech] companies and some of them got bought early, you know - Skype got bought by eBay, DeepMind got bought by Google. I think really our ecosystem needs to rise to the next level of the challenge."
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UK Needs Culture Shift To Become AI Superpower

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  • Not legislate against AI or sue AI techbros like the rest of the world is?

    • it needs to foster a culture of risk-taking and encourage large-scale investments.

      Isn't that what the UK government does? It engages in high-risk stuff and anyone shorting the pound has a good investment.

  • any machine more intelligent than they are. Thus AI will have to be kept really, really dumb.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday July 17, 2023 @08:08PM (#63695072)

    Who there is deranged enough to believe such nonsense?

    • If it requires a few politicians to wear their underwear on the outside I'm all for it!

      "It's SuperAI! Able to leap to conclusions in a single keystroke".

    • by khchung ( 462899 )

      Who there is deranged enough to believe such nonsense?

      Those British who are still dreaming they were in the British Empire of 1850s.

    • by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @12:26AM (#63695468) Homepage Journal

      The article kept bothering me, until I had a chance to actually sort it out.

      Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, has a lot of experience with AI but not a lot with creativity. I mean, if you know anything about creativity a) his statement seems completely random and ineffectual, and b) Sunak's 1 billion funding and taskforce are ill formed and ineffectual. It will come to nothing.

      Creativity has been studied, there are guidelines for fostering it in the psychology literature, and you want to start with those guidelines.

      Then you can look at highly creative situations of the past, such as Bell Labs, and try to find out what made them so creative. In the case of Bell Labs it was that researchers from different disciplines were able to take lunch together, so that if a physicist had a problem a chemist might know a way to solve the problem. This was coupled with management that allowed for interesting areas of research, but kept the focus on the overall goals of the lab. (ie - management would generally allow new research, but would shut down projects that weren't likely to pan out.)

      Then you want to get as many people as possible looking into the problem, and the way to do that is to make innovation lucrative for the innovator. You do this with a legal system that has strong protections for IP, property ownership, and the ability to keep business profits. Maybe change the tax burden on AI related discoveries: US tax burden is 24%, while UK it is 33% and will rise to 35% soon. Maybe make government funds and facilities (ie - computers) available for experimental research, maybe have a governmental commitment to vigorously and politically help strengthen IP laws on individual cases (ie - putting the political weight of the country behind complaints of another country stealing secrets, and such like).

      Make it easy to start a business, and have strong business protections. Googling "how easy is it to start a business in the UK" comes up with:

      Starting a business in the United Kingdom can be difficult [...]

      Starting a business in the US is a simple as filling out a form and sending in the $50 fee. You need to know how to keep it legal, but that's not especially hard. (When your business gets big enough to have a lot of employees and issue stock you hire a CFO to do the legal work, but small shops can get by quite easily with 5 employees and an informal annual corporate meeting.)

      Nothing Mustafa Suleyman has any bearing on any of the actual fundamentals of fostering creativity or fostering innovation or incentives for that innovation, and Sunak's taskforce will eat up a lot of money and result in nebulous directions instead of specific suggestions to implement. (And at the end of the final report, two years from now, will be the statement "but more research is needed". Because task force reports always say that.)

      So no, none of this will have any effect on AI dominance in the UK. It will simply be a way to spend lots of money on a goal that won't pan out.

      • To be fair starting a business in the UK is easy. It requires a £12 fee and a load of personal information. The reason you see that reply from google is most likely services selling their incorporation packages. The most difficult bit of starting a business in the uk is if you want to retain any privacy you need a âoecompany addressâ which unless you have an office has to be the home address. Otherwise thereâ(TM)s not much in the way of funding available(not necessarily a bad thi
      • Make it easy to start a business, and have strong business protections. Googling "how easy is it to start a business in the UK" comes up with:

        Starting a business in the United Kingdom can be difficult [...]

        Starting a business in the US is a simple as filling out a form and sending in the $50 fee.

        You just got screwed by poor AI, or are really REALLY dishonest. Read the source, not what the machine tells you. What you've quoted is how to start a business in the UK AS A FOREIGN CITIZEN. Good luck starting a business in the USA with a green card - what this article is about in the UK equivalent. The UK makes that process far easier than the USA does.

        The process in the UK is no more difficult than the USA for starting a normal business. You fill out of form and send a *significantly smaller* fee.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The legacy of brexit. If you believe it hard enough, it will become reality. The only reason the UK is failing is because of all the remoaners talking it down.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Well, there is "talking it down" and realizing the UK has fucked itself. With a wire-brush. And they refuse to stop.

        To be fair, if you can "talk it down", it cannot have been very good in the first place. And a lot of people think that believing things hard enough changes reality. Of course, in actual reality is never does.

    • Who there is deranged enough to believe such nonsense?

      ChatGPT

    • I actually listened to this interview on the radio. What the UK needs is a much larger population of people with the requisite skills, a more attractive work environment with salaries competitive with other countries (especially Silicon Valley), much, much more investment capital available, and to encourage UK startups to not always sell any technology-related business the very first time an American or Chinese acquisitior comes knocking.

      In other words, several things that will never, ever happen in this un

      • Brits have traditionally been quite good at inventions, ie the tinkering in the shed that yields breakthroughs. Not so good at scaling it up. Companies have also succumbed to outsourcing, which is a great way to gut your technical knowledge, or just selling out early
    • Who is asking for more other people's money and for people to be more "celebratory of failures".

      Can YOU tell that AI is a scam?

  • UK has chance to show integrity, where many will attempt mind automation.

    • by youngone ( 975102 ) on Monday July 17, 2023 @09:06PM (#63695198)
      Integrity? If you've been following the news from the UK over the past few years you'll be aware of how hilariously corrupt and incompetent their ruling party is.
      Sunak is a placeholder until they have an election and anything he promises is mere words.
      • by edis ( 266347 )

        Even better. I speak for UK, not some party, taking more conservative stance on mind automation, than many others, eager to flush this dumbing down their socium. Pick what's good, when it's good. Leave the noise to settle. AI for analysis, modelling - yes. AI as a replacement for human capabilities, creativity - no, thanks.

        On the other hand, I am all-in for fostering human creativity, mentioned here around - this is where we had results from, and gonna have yet some. UK may be good at that.

  • by OpenGLFan ( 56206 ) on Monday July 17, 2023 @08:28PM (#63695102) Homepage

    More importantly, their engineers are generally paid like shit, comparatively. I've known a lot of British engineers who have come to the states for the better stock options and compensation. If you want world-class feats of engineering, you need world-class engineers.

    • It pays more than restaurant or factory work, but people are willing to do restaurant and factory work instead.

      • But pays at same level as plumbers and jail officers. and Engineer is a very broad term in the UK, the guy who fixes the elevator is an engineer, the guy who model and design a rocket control law straight to embedded is also an engineer. I left the UK because the salary couldn't afford a family of 4. Being an engineer in the UK was the poorest part of my life as a whole, except as an intern maybe.
    • I'd say that actually circles back to creating a culture that takes risks. Engineering isn't valued as a consequence; betting big is what creates an environment where exceptional engineering can be appreciated.

      • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @04:03AM (#63695742) Journal

        I'd say that actually circles back to creating a culture that takes risks. Engineering isn't valued as a consequence; betting big is what creates an environment where exceptional engineering can be appreciated.

        Partly but not entirely. I mean don't get me wrong, the investment culture is both risk averse and greedy, to the point where it feels like investors resent any more money going to the founders than the equivalent of a minimum wage salary even if the company is a success.

        But also, there's a nice big streak of good, old-fashioned anti intellectualism when it comes to technical matters. Look at how many MPs have one. And the UK doesn't have anything like silicon valley which is essentially the polar opposite in both cases and large enough to stand against the prevailing culture.

    • More importantly, their engineers are generally paid like shit, comparatively. I've known a lot of British engineers who have come to the states for the better stock options and compensation.

      Speaking as an Engineer who gets paid far less than my peers in the USA there are many reasons why there are highly competent and capable engineers who *don't* go chasing stock options and compensation. Not everything in the world is about money, and not every idiot goes chasing the biggest paycheck.

      Personally I turned down a job in the USA for $60k/year more. Actually I turned down my job. The same job I have now. Literally the same department working for the same person just in a different location for mo

  • Why do difficult work when there is no need? There's only so much a person would do for money.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The problem with both the UK and the US is that there isn't any real vision from leadership. We have either reactionary stuff, "lets undo what was done before", or "Lets put back what the previous people had". No real actual "forward" direction... just backwards, or maybe in a direction to kowtow to some political dogma pushed by a select few that nobody wants in the mainstream.

    Both countries need someone who can say they have a vision for the nation. Even a five year plan or a promise of a man on the mo

    • There are a lot of tough choices that doesn't play well in a soundbite-driven populists political system. The people themselves are to blame for the feckless leadership we have today. Your average American and average Briton are not willing to compromise on their current standard of living. We're unwilling to adapt to a changing world. And we're unwilling to accept responsibilities for the massive wrongs we have committed in our past and present. Thus the only people we will elect to represent use are peopl

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        When people reliably make stupid choices in a situation, you shouldn't blame the people, but rather the situation. When all people are told about a problem is sound bites, their decisions will reliably be shallow and short-sighted, looking only for immediate gain.

        The problem is that the "news media" thinks it's in the entertainment business. I've dropped all my newspaper subscriptions because none of they told me what was going on, they told me what they thought I should think about what was going on. Th

      • First of all, project that guilt someplace else. Secondly, wtf does any of that have to do with AI research in the UK? Nothing, that's what.

        • Nobody in the UK is going to "foster a culture of risk-taking and encourage large-scale investments." unless the UK government leads the charge. Banks would need to be freer with money. Bankruptcy courts would need to be easier and more lenient. And some central region where lots of highly educated people live would need to evolve into this tech hub, maybe Bristol, I don't know. And finally, something that really closes the door on this possibility. The UK would need to open their doors to immigration and s

      • The people themselves are to blame for the feckless leadership we have today.

        Fuck youuuuuuuuu

        The Tories won a strong 80 seat majority off 43.6% of the votes. "the people" didn't vote for these idiots.

        • The people are responsible for their own nation's political system. Build some guillotines if the majority of you don't like it. I'm pretty sick of people blaming the rich and power and in the same breath going: oh well, there's nothing to be done about it.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            You might have a point there. We were offered Alternative Vote back in 2012, and while not perfect it was better than FPTP. People seemed to be lining up to go on TV and proudly proclaim that they didn't understand what was a very simple concept.

            Brexit was little better. We all remember Gove's famous "people have had enough of experts", and he was right. Ignorance and stupidity had become badges of honour.

            • I don't think you're right.

              AV is maybe slightly better in theory, but it wouldn't have changed much: labor is very concentrated in cities, conservative majorities are big but not huge and spread around and the lib dems are spread thin. AV would have affected marginal seats a bit but the Tory dominance with labor in second wouldn't have changed significantly because it's still all local.

              Furthermore, AV doesn't have a great history of breaking two party holds.

              AV was only ever a sop in place of meaningful refo

              • Representative democracies as implemented in the US and UK still give an advantage in elections to the land holding class. The modern twist is we do it a bit more indirectly compared to feudalism. But as long as it keeps the "right" people in power then the system works as designed.

                I feel like AV was more of a distraction. It allowed "the people" to choose the direction of future government only superficially while at the same time satisfying (for some) that urge to feel like the people are still in control

    • Eh? Nobody's actually moving backwards in the United States when it comes to AI research. No meaningful restrictions exist. There's plenty of visionary leadership, just not in government.

  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Monday July 17, 2023 @10:53PM (#63695358) Homepage Journal

    Or ground zero for the Singularity? A superintelligence will be hard to control and will likely result in human beings serving the machine's interest before their own. It doesn't have to be an explicitly malevolent machine, but if its deductive reasoning is peerless then changing its mind using a rational argument that it would accept might be impossible. We as a species will no longer decide our future and can only stand by as observes while events sweep us up with it.

  • Why are they even in the news anymore?
  • ...Not some kind of AI? Check videos of him waving; LOL.
  • Maybe worrying about bullshit grifters should come after making some progress on the corrupt government and ignorant populace?

    Besides, by then this wave of overhyped garbage will be as dead as shitcoins, VR, and the previous dozen wastes of energy, so it won't even need a "culture shift" to deal with it...

  • "Risk-taking" and "large-scale investments", does one need to read anymore than a single sentence? "Give us money and we'll make you powerful". Ok, not to him now/directly as he seems to be now based in the US. Empty promises riding on the hype train. Superpowers are not made by the "me too, here's some money". This is the approach for a client buying services. They are looking for shoppers, promising them the world. "They" meaning the AI companies at this point in time, but replace AI with whatever gets th
  • low taxation , low regulation crap they sprouted about brexit.
  • from the old 17th century attitude of gentle men don't get their hands dirty and if you do (some engineering and other jobs etc) then its not a profession and the trades mans entrance is that way, Don't expect an Eton educated tory elite to chage that any time soon.
  • You can't "ground up" the industry fast enough. Everything is moving too quickly. If you really want to go from a non-participant to an "AI Superpower" you have exactly one option - pay a whole lot of money to poach it from somebody else.

    I'm working with a small company on a very niche AI-based initiative right now, and even though it's a tremendous corner case, suddenly three competitors with deep pockets have emerged in recent weeks.

  • If the UK does become a superpower, it will have nothing to do with the Tories - unless you count their open door policy on immigration as useful to this goal. Education and living standards have been eroded in their 13 years in charge and oddly for a free market party, they have managed to stifle investment and upset business. In other words, they've managed to upset both left and right by their sheer incompetence and the chances of a measly billion being intelligently managed is close to zero.

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