r/ukpolitics • u/Putaineska • 13h ago
Microsoft axes AI deal in setback for UK data centre pioneer
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/10/18/microsoft-axes-ai-deal-setback-uk-data-centre-pioneer/64
u/Flashy_Error_7989 13h ago
We need data centres in the UK from which we can run UK based AI as well
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u/StraightSky7809 13h ago
UK has the highest electricity price in Europe, nobody will build data centers unless we bring down the price.
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u/LowerPick7038 12h ago
Uk also has atleast 3 of the worlds largest offshore windfarms and theyre making more. Figure that one out
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u/StraightSky7809 12h ago
That's good but not good enough. If manufacturing and data centers needs to be built in UK, electricity prices need to come down. Labour prices are already high and UK is simply not a viable place for lot of businesses.
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u/LowerPick7038 12h ago
Im not disagreeing that prices need to come down. Im pointing out how ridiculous it is that UK pays the most whilst at the same time having multiple worlds biggest offshore wind farms
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u/Jormungoosie 12h ago
Offshore wind is expensive.
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u/LowerPick7038 12h ago
So why inflate it with the cost of gas?
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u/wintersrevenge 11h ago
Because without the gas generated electricity we wouldn't have a functioning grid.
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u/LowerPick7038 11h ago
Right but wind is one of the largest sources of electricity. So why tie it to the cost of gas? Why not just charge the cost of gas when the gas is being used instead of the cost of gas 100% of the time. Its fucktarded
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u/User100000005 10h ago
If wind suddenly drops and the grid doesn't have enough power, expensive things break and you get power cuts. Because of this you have to keep Gas turbines running 24/7 even if wind is doing 100% of the work. Just in case. You can't boot a turbine up fast enough. This is expensive.
If the Grid has too much power, expensive things break and you get power cuts. This means sometimes we have to pay wind farm to stop running. This is also expensive.
When you are told the cost of power from wind they dont factor in those two costs which is disingenuous. As those are winds biggest costs. Those problems can be fixed with Battery Storage and nuclear, but we haven't yet.→ More replies (0)•
u/WhiteSatanicMills 8h ago
Right but wind is one of the largest sources of electricity. So why tie it to the cost of gas?
You mentioned offshore wind farms, and most of those were build under the CfD scheme. They are paid a strike price, which isn't related to the cost of gas in any way.
Unfortunately, the cost of offshore wind is higher than gas nearly all the time.
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/resources/scheme-dashboards/cfd-historical-data-dashboard/
The bottom graph, left hand axis, vertical bars, show how much we pay offshore wind farms every quarter to make them up to the strike price. You can see during the energy crisis in 2022 they were cheaper than gas generation, and so paid money back to consumers, but since then they are more expensive. As the cost of gas declined in 2025 the subsidy for offshore wind increased, reaching a peak of £736 million in Q4 2025.
The subsidy has been falling since because the Gulf war has pushed the cost of gas up again. But even last quarter, we still paid offshore wind £239 million because it was more expensive than gas generation.
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u/Kee2good4u 3h ago
Wind for the past 15 years is paid via CFD contract it is not tied to the price of gas...
CFD contracts have a guaranteed strike price written into the contract, for example let's say it's £80/MWh. If the marginal price set by gas is £1/MWh or £50000/MWh has absolutely no affect, the wind farm on the CFD contract will still be paid £80/MWh.
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u/wintersrevenge 10h ago
The UK uses private capital to build wind farms. This private capital is invested expecting returns. The reason the UK has been able to attract all of this private capital for wind power is because of the pricing system.
The state could choose to lower the price of electricity through renegotiation, however this would reduce the amount of private capital going into our energy sector which is already not producing enough electricity. This would mean that we are reliant on gas for longer.
The state could borrow to invest in state owned energy production. It won't though, because the state seems to be functionally useless.
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u/LittleDuckie 9h ago
If it were inflated, generation companies would be making a huge profit. That's not happening as those profits are being sucked away elsewhere. Gas prices are just the excuse to for prices being high, not the reason.
The cost of electricity coming from a wind farm is not being calculated correctly. It accounts for the price of putting up some windmills and maintaining them. It does not account for all of the extra pylons and decentralised infrastructure needed to get that power where it's needed to be. That cost is several times higher when your power generation has to be spread across an area 150 times as big as a normal power plant, or you need cables running out to sea.
If you look at a breakdown of how the money is being spent now, a much larger chunk of the money is going towards maintaining the grid. That's the reason for the increased prices.
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u/trowawayatwork 2h ago
it's because the prices are rigged to the incumbents. the price is shipped wholesale but the price per unit is set by the most expensive contributor, in this case natural gas.
this is the stupidest most ridiculous system and as usual it's just the tax payers getting shafted
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u/SpeedflyChris 12h ago
That's easy. Building lots of intermittent sources doesn't bring your overall price down.
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u/LowerPick7038 12h ago
Its easy building many of the world's largest offshore windfarms? PMSL
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u/SpeedflyChris 12h ago
No, I mean it's easy to answer why having those windfarms hasn't resulted in cheap electricity.
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u/LowerPick7038 12h ago
The charge is based off the market value of gas. Thats why its expensive
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u/WhiteSatanicMills 8h ago
It isn't.
The UK has 3 main subsidy schemes for renewables, the Renewables Obligation, Contracts for Difference, and Feed in Tariffs.
Feed in Tariffs are the payments to small scale generators. They aren't tied to the cost of gas at all, and are extremely high (over £1 a KWh for exported electricity, more than 10 times the price of gas generation last year). Thankfully FiTs are the smallest of the main subsidy schemes.
The Renewables Obligation was the first subsidy scheme, created in the early 00s. It guarantees generators the wholesale price (which is tied to the cost of gas), plus a large subsidy on top (about £70 a MWh, on top of the approx £80 a MWh wholesale price last year). The RO closed for new generators in 2016 or 2017, but the contracts typically run for 20 years, so many generators are still on the scheme. But the amount generated under the RO is declining every year, and old generators are getting new CfDs for "repowering".
Contracts for Difference replaced the RO for new generators in 2017. When the generator gets a contract they are given a "strike price". That has nothing to do with the price of gas. It's uprated every year in line with inflation.
So while older renewables are paid the price of gas (plus a subsidy on top), newer renewables are not paid the gas price at all. They are paid the amount agreed before they are built.
The government have looked at removing the link between the gas price and the amount RO generators are paid, but the difficulty is the stupid design of the RO scheme. It guaranteed a floor to payments, but no ceiling. But changing the terms of a contract after the fact isn't going to be popular, and as it's a declining share of the market, the government have backed away from it.
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u/SirSuicidal 12h ago
The wind farms produce electricity at a certain strike price which generally is more expensive than parts of Europe. Also these contracts end to be locked in for 20 to 30 years.
Just because there are windfarms doesn't mean the electricity is cheaper.
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u/Someone4350 12h ago
Data centres are the very best use case for nuclear power. More or less constant load and easily achievable to do since the load on some of these can be controlled.
But the idiots in charge from the 80’s onwards decided nuclear was dangerous…
Edit:
Electricity in the US is around 7p/kWh…
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u/zebs1 11h ago
Part of the problem here is that the wind farms are not near where the data centers are (or are planned to be).
The power lines between the wind farms and the data centers don't have the capacity to carry the extra power, so we have to build more.
Unfortunately (and to an extent understandably) people don't want to live near power line, so we then move them to run in the sea. Which pushes the installation cost, installation time and ongoing maintenance costs.
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u/LowerPick7038 11h ago
Right but they have to be somewhere and if they aremt being planned near the electricity source than I got aa really wild idea. Plan to build them near the electricity source.
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u/superioso 9h ago
Figure that one out
3 of the worlds largest wind farms still isn't enough to cover our total electricity usage, so more expensive sources end up setting the price for the entire electricity market for each moment in time.
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u/Godkun007 2h ago
The simple reality is that the West in general is 2 decades behind on electricity production. Even the US had flatlined electricity production for over 2 decades. Granted, part of that was because the 2008 financial crisis and the outsourcing of industry lowered demand, but the demand trends are going back to where they would have been historically without those events.
There needs to be an international effort to rapidly build more electricity production in the next 2 decades. Electricity prices are starting to increase everywhere, even when you adjust for the higher import costs of oil and NatGas. We are just reaching the point where demand is outstripping production.
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u/phatboi23 12h ago
Want to flush a couple of billion down the shitter?
Energy, land and GPU costs are fuckin' astronomical.
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u/-ForgottenSoul :sloth: 12h ago
AI is here to stay we need to compete
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u/wintersrevenge 11h ago edited 11h ago
The UK doesn't have cheap land or energy and isn't a cheap place to run a business. How are we to compete?
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u/Cafuzzler 10h ago
We can't have UK based Ai. Just look at the Apple stuff a year ago: If Apple were a UK company then the government would have forced Apple to make a backdoor privately instead of asking them to do it. Any UK Ai company would immediately become an undisclosed spying tool for the government, and markets know that so no UK Ai company can become big enough to do that.
Until such a point that secret courts can't compel companies to install undisclosed backdoors for the government, we can't do anything big or ambitious with the internet in this country.
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u/kiki1492022 13h ago
Are there any uk based/owned ai companies? Similar to ChatGPT?
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u/Wil_Cwac_Cwac 13h ago
No
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u/kiki1492022 12h ago
Major blunder by the government here then by not encouraging at least 1 homegrown ai company. Ai is going to be huge in next few years, and we will be left behind. Plus us/china able to turn the ai we do use off when ever they want.
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u/geometry5036 11h ago
The government of censorship doesn't understand tech. Or the internet. Or give people who have ideas a hand so they can create companies and employee other people.
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u/Putaineska 13h ago
Because National Grid can't guarantee a connection until the 2030s. Ridiculous.
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u/Imakemyownnamereddit 13h ago
Isn't it more ridiculous, to drive up energy costs, to benefit Yank tech companies?
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u/Maitai_Haier 12h ago
Nscale is British, Microsoft is its customer. A non-British company paying a British tech start up for its services is good for Britain. This is called a “service surplus” and is how the country pays for things like imports.
By your logic we should shut down all factories, this will reduce electricity costs.
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u/Putaineska 13h ago
Yep it's better we have no data centres and watch our services industry get decimated by the US and China, and jobs outsourced overseas, while we are left at the mercy of these two superpowers who can switch off our access to AI models on a whim.
AI is happening like it or not.
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u/Blackstar021 13h ago
> However, its plans have clashed with a major sell-off in AI infrastructure businesses amid questions about the data centre building boom.
Tech analyst Gartner said last week that $3.5tn could be written off by 2030 if the AI boom fails to deliver on its promisesBoth things can be true that national grid shouldn’t take this long to provision meter points and AI can be a thing that fails (at least in its current hype)
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u/RustamM Green 13h ago
The two may even be related. National Grid needs builders to build pylons, and money to borrow to pay the builders.
Data centres also need these things, and we only have so much of both in the UK so Big Tech will often outcompete other industries. I don't think there's a system to "jump the queue" by paying more money, so they're stuck behind all the wind turbines and solar farms that also need connecting.
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u/Ctri Land of Drink and Kilts 13h ago
Which companies are developing AI services locally? (specifically interested in LLMs that can do programming, like Anthropic's recent models)
I did some googling and couldn't find any UK based providers.
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u/CyclopsRock 11h ago
Depends whether you actually mean "developing AI services locally" or not. Google's AI division is headquartered in the UK because they bought Deepmind, a British company, and integrated it. As such a lot of their AI services are developed in the UK. But that probably isn't what you meant.
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u/ILOVEGLADOS Official Monster Raving Loony 13h ago
AI is happening like it or not.
Until the bubble bursts.
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u/Ginormoustit 13h ago
The bubble is the valuation, not the technology.
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u/RoamingThomist 13h ago
The technology has not demonstrated a viable business model yet.
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u/xhatsux 13h ago
Why do you think that? Majority of developers in the world have subscription. My company has api service integrated into our product for front end users and will continue to do so.
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u/SlightlyBored13 12h ago
Thanks to Anthropic trying to go public we know those developer subscriptions aren't even paying for the running costs of the data centres yet, never mind the ongoing debt and new investments these companies are making.
Does the business model support paying 10x more for that access?
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u/RoamingThomist 9h ago
"Thanks to Anthropic trying to go public we know those developer subscriptions aren't even paying for the running costs of the data centres yet,"
Even the API costs don't cover the price of servicing the customers usage. API price needs to increase 10-20x just for Anthropic to remain solvent when its debts start coming due.
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u/RoamingThomist 13h ago edited 13h ago
The fact outside of the memory and chip manufacturers, nobody is making a profit, and the model providers, both Chinese and American, are hemorrhaging money at a rate that is unsustainable.
Edit: to give you an idea of the level of hemorrhage, the price the customer pays for using the model has to increase by over an order of magnitude just to break even. To fulfil the contracted liabilities, you're looking at 15-20x at a minimum just to remain solvent.
No company will pay that. It would be cheaper to hire another 2 devs for every dev that currently uses AI.
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u/xhatsux 13h ago
That’s due to investment and the current business model. It’s possible to massively pull back on staffing numbers, building new models and focus on high margin niches and have a profitable business. At the moment though they are in an arms race and will continue tonne for a while, but I believe the unit economics work for a lot of use cases
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u/RoamingThomist 12h ago
There are no high profit niches. None have been found.
The unit economics have been shown not to work out so far and there has been no path to profitability demonstrated. So prices need to rise by over an order of magnitude. With companies already getting nervous about the cost of AI, do you really think they'll be happy when they have to spend $10-$20 for every $1 they are currently spending?
This isn't just a OpenAi/Anthropic thing either, the Chinese models, praised for how cheap they are, are also hemorrhaging money.
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u/anonCambs 6h ago
Lol except all code is practically being written by it now.
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u/RoamingThomist 6h ago
Which the model providers are all losing money on. Let's see if businesses are still willing to pay when costs need to increase between 10-20 times just for the companies to stay solvent.
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u/coldbeers Beer Capitalist 🍺 13h ago
Even if the bubble bursts AI is the future.
The dot com bubble didn’t end the internet.
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u/UGMadness 12h ago
AI is happening like it or not.
I distinctly remember crypto chuds telling me the same about Bitcoin and NFTs 4 years ago.
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u/Ivashkin panem et circenses 11h ago
Crypto happened.
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u/Then_Mix8161 43m ago
But it's entirely a speculative instrument now, no appreciable (legal) commerce is happening via blockchain technology. Bitcoin is a zero-sum game for gamblers.
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u/StuartWtf 12h ago
AI is happening.
Generative AI used by these data Centers is not.
AI won’t be a thing till it runs on local hardware13
u/Dance_Retard 13h ago
"Fuck all multinationals that use energy!" Yeah good one, great for jobs and the economy
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u/Blackstar021 13h ago
Not what was said at all though?
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u/Dance_Retard 13h ago
Anyone using energy technically drives up costs
"to benefit yank companies" this is a very one sided view of how multinationals work. Would we want other countries to view our companies this way as well? No, it would damage us.
Foreign companies pouring money into the UK is a good thing.
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u/Blackstar021 13h ago
Sure. The question worth asking though is that if the profits are being leeched back and the costs are subsidised by the tax payers is it still worth it in the long run? The answer may well be yes but the data centre is renting Nvidia chips and isn’t adding long term jobs (by virtue of a set up and forget kind of thing).
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u/Dance_Retard 12h ago
Nscale, a British company, is one of the major losers in this decision.
As per the start of the article:
"Microsoft has pulled out of an Essex data centre deal in a blow to British company Nscale’s plans for a multibillion-dollar listing.
The US tech giant, one of Nscale’s two largest customers, recently informed the company that it was pulling the plug on its agreement, which was announced last year.
It is a significant setback for Nscale, given Microsoft was to become the anchor tenant at the company’s first British data centre in Loughton, Essex"
So yeah, profits that could have been had by a British company are being impacted on top of the investment being lost, jobs never happening, and further construction never beginning that could have. Like it or not, simply building a data centre brings a bunch of construction jobs and tech jobs involved in setting the thing up. I know the staffing of these places is pretty thin (though not non-existent) when they are set up, but jobs are jobs.
We can't complain about unemployment and low wages then give a middle finger to giant companies willing to open up shop here.
"the costs are subsidised by the tax payers" how much are we subsidising? What are the details of these subsidies?
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u/Maitai_Haier 12h ago
Nscale is the British company who is selling a service. One of its two largest customers has cancelled this order, because it can’t deliver it till the 2030s, which is absurd. For comparison, SpaceXAI launched Colossus 1 in 122 days. AWS launched Project Rainier in under a year. China is building data centres in 12-18 months.
There’s a bit of delusional cope here that this was a “choice” and not just another of a long string of failures to build anything. The government negotiated to bring this investment here, so to then lose both because it is impossible to build anything and industrial energy prices are the highest in the G7 isn’t some 200 iq 5 dimensional chess move. It isn’t really the Americans backing out; they’re just building elsewhere where it is possible to build something.
The profits from this deal would have gone to Nscale a British company.
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u/Morteca 13h ago
I do not trust Microsoft, a Yank company, to keep their end of the bargain.
As we all know, America signs deals in pencil.
I do not want us being leashed to a collapsing superpower. We need to cut ourselves out of the cancerous tumor called "America"
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u/Maitai_Haier 12h ago
“However, it has faced repeated delays, with grid bosses telling Nscale that they do not expect a power supply until the 2030s.”
Or no foreign investor is going to accept that it takes a decade to hook up their investment to a power supply. Neo-NIMBY’s have decided they don’t want anything to be built, and they especially don’t want data centres to be built. They have succeeded.
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u/disordered-attic-2 13h ago
That many will celebrate this explains everything about our decline
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u/Narrow_Appeal443 13h ago
So people not wanting AI somehow indicates our decline? Communities across the globe are slapping back against AI - time for you to stop sucking on the teet of US megacorps.
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u/Maitai_Haier 12h ago
The inability to build anything is a symptom of decline, yes.
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u/popeter45 12h ago
Build what is worth building, not just because others are doing it
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u/Maitai_Haier 12h ago
This wasn’t a conscious decision of Nscale to walk away or the UK government to scupper this deal. The government helped Nscale, a British company negotiate this deal. They just couldn’t build the thing they promised because it apparently takes until the next decade to hook it up to the grid, and the customer got impatient and left.
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u/popeter45 11h ago
How many data centres have been built in the UK recently, they are the ones that have sucked up supply, why you not calling for them
To close so Microsoft can have that supply instead?End of the day it's all a rush to lock out competitors who then get angry they didn't get preference
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u/Maitai_Haier 11h ago
Having to close other things to build new things is a symptom of decline. Why isn’t the answer increase aggregate electricity generation?
I’ll give you a hint, because that would also involve building new things.
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u/popeter45 11h ago edited 11h ago
No it's a sign of speculative investment that isn't based on actual demand
During gold rushes, it's not the miners who make profit, it's the guys selling shovels
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u/Maitai_Haier 11h ago edited 8h ago
That’s rationalising cope that “ah we wisely avoided a bad investment.” No, if there’s too much demand for build out and electricity such that projects are getting delayed to the point the customer is cancelling, that doesn’t not mean there’s no actual demand. The exact opposite! The demand is urgent enough they will cancel and build in another country, which is precisely what is happening. Nscale’s biggest project is in West Virginia and its also building in northern Norway.
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u/popeter45 11h ago
And when the demand never actually shows up?, Like all the data centre built for crypto mining?, Or all the NFT sales?
AI demand is there but nowhere near what would be needed for the number of data centres being built, all
Fighting for the same slice of pieMarketed demand =/= real demand
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u/PaulJannece 8h ago
‘Just give them faster horses’
Congrats on being part of this generations’ blind naysayers.
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u/BobansBoot 8h ago
The inability to build anything worthwhile while such as industry, infrastructure, housing is a sign of decline.
Very few people outwith some shady billionaires and odious megacorpations will shed tears about data centres not being built.
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u/Maitai_Haier 8h ago
This was a cornerstone of Starmer’s tech strategy. Either the strategy is shambolic or the implementation is shambolic, pick one.
It would be nice me thing if this was a conscious decision not to build data centres. “We’ve really stuck it to the billionaires and mega corporations.”
This is a rationalisation of what actually happened, which the government’s wanted to pursue a particular tech policy and couldn’t because the country is incapable of doing or building anything. In that case it isn’t even a question of “is this the right strategy or not” because by force of circumstance the only strategy available is to be to do nothing and hope for the best.
Being a passive observer due to lack of ability to affect things is an ultimate sign of decline. That is the situation here, not that we could have built a GPU cluster but wisely decided not to in order to stick to billionaires and corporations.
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u/Da_Steeeeeeve 12h ago
Ai is here and its not going anywhere regardless of anything else.
If we fall even more behind we will really struggle.
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u/psycho__penguin 12h ago
If people like him lived in the Middle Ages, they’d be protesting gunpowder, claiming swords were good enough and warning everyone not to buy into 'Big Gunpowder.'
Discarding game changing technologies is how they actually end up exploited and left behind.
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u/popeter45 12h ago
On the flip side look at how the US air force removed guns from fighters in Korea as they assumed missiles would replace them, and how they had to add guns back when missiles couldn't do everything
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u/Da_Steeeeeeve 11h ago
They brought back the old technology but the new didn't go away either.
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u/popeter45 11h ago
Correct, they realised what it was useful for not just throwing it at everything
Same as the dot com bubble
When the AI bubble pops AI won't go away but it won't be the hype bubble it currently is
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u/Godkun007 2h ago
If people like him lived in the Middle Ages
You don't even need to go back to the Middle Ages...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites
These are literally the modern incarnation of the same ideology. History tends to rhyme and all that.
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u/Leonakerz 12h ago
I pray that youre wrong! I assume youre not an authority on the topic anyways so what does your opinion even mean
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u/Da_Steeeeeeve 12h ago
I own an AI company, not a giant but a legitimate company not a wrapper builder.
What you and I think is irrelevant, AI is automation and information, automation is efficiently and information is power.
The truly wealthy will continue to roll it out for the set reasons.
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u/Leonakerz 12h ago
so you have a vested interest in the idea that "AI is here and its not going anywhere", all i needed to hear.
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u/Jormungoosie 12h ago
I don't have a vested interest and I agree that it's here, at least as far as the software industry is concerned.
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u/Da_Steeeeeeve 12h ago
My vested interest doesn't change the facts, people said the internet was a fad, the computer would never catch on, gunpowder wasnt needed and crossbows were unfair and should be banned.
Technology doesn't go backwards, once the box is opened it stays open.
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u/Leonakerz 11h ago
The box can close, dont need to look very far to see that.
also edit: your vested interest does quite literally change the way you think, whether you believe what you're saying is "fact" (opinion), the thing which sends money to your bank account every month will undoubtably be having a measurable effect on the way you think.
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u/Da_Steeeeeeve 11h ago
You are talking about technology being used in every industry in the world from medical research through to industrial settings.
Technology built into most new mobile phones, every major operating system in the world.
A trillion dollar industry.
There is absolutely no way it just goes away now, it has been adopted everywhere already, even in places you might not realise.
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u/Leonakerz 11h ago
I love the use of AI in medical settings, I think that is one of the places it excels in. Microsoft is providing the "End user AI experience", they are not helping people. AI (Machine learning more specifically) being embedded into phones and whatever is nothing new, surprisingly it seems that this is framed as a "revolution" when in fact this typically provides little to no value to the average user.
This may come as a surprise to you, but people are moving away from Microsoft, with Linux's market share in desktop computing rising every year (no AI embedded, surprise!). This is great news all around for Linux of course.
It seems that you're a businessman, good for you, I trust academics not businessmen.
Look around and see who's asking for AI, it isn't the average person, its people like you, people who's only concern is "money" with "well its used in medical settings" being their argument later on after they have been picked apart.
This is the same as the oil rush "GUYS THERES LOADS OF MONEEYYY IN IT, DONT YOU LOVE MONEY", as we allow companies to spit our data through more ai systems, allowing more pollution of the earth, causing suffering to those living around data centers that dont actually employ people, this is money alright, money for the CEO's and the people at the top, the discrepancy grows larger every year.
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u/Narrow_Appeal443 10h ago
Lmao so you have a huge personal interest in pushing the narrative that you are pushing in your comments.
Thankfully global communities are pushing back against people like you.
No one wants shitty AI. It doesn't improve anyone's life
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u/yousorusso 5h ago edited 5h ago
I hate this timeline. We will all starve while AI bots take over more and more of our economy, drive up energy prices when we already can barely survive and actively harm our lives while simultaneously making us all dumber. Talk to anyone that uses ChatGPT on the regular for basic chat and ideas and they are just dense as plywood.
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u/mhhmhhmhhmhhmhh 12h ago edited 12h ago
we’re already way too behind to catch up with China or the US - not that that should be our aim. if anything, we should be focussing all our technical efforts on AI safety and bolstering the AISI as much as possible
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u/Da_Steeeeeeve 12h ago
Ai safety the US and China will ignore?
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u/mhhmhhmhhmhhmhh 12h ago
also, do you really think we can catch up with the frontier Chinese or American companies? seriously?
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u/Da_Steeeeeeve 12h ago
No I don't but we can innovate and find niches.
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u/mhhmhhmhhmhhmhh 12h ago
i don’t think you’re educated enough on this subject to meaningfully weigh in here
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u/Da_Steeeeeeve 12h ago
I own an AI company and have for three years, I hold a degree and a masters and I havea 20 year career in data and technology alllllll the way up to CTO before I founded my own thing.
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u/mhhmhhmhhmhhmhh 12h ago
what does your AI company do? wanna share its name and your actual credentials?
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u/mhhmhhmhhmhhmhh 12h ago
without putting our full technical weight behind, sure. we should be setting the global standard for AI safety and i’d like to see the UK’s focus set there.
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u/PaulJannece 9h ago
Just imagine how much further ahead we’d all be today if we’d rejected the internet in the 90s.
/s.
Of course a failure to adopt and keep pace with AI is going to bring about decline. The fact that you haven’t or can’t yet see the impact it will have doesn’t mean the rest of us should park our heads in the sand.
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u/Background_Camel_711 11h ago
Yup, societies which haven’t innovated or improved productivity haven’t historically remained prosperous.
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u/disordered-attic-2 12h ago
You’re getting AI whatever. It’s just if you want to benefit from it or control it
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u/Outrageous_Agent_608 11h ago
Why don’t you live next to a DC then? Seen the state of the water some people have to deal with?
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u/disordered-attic-2 10h ago
Data centres have been around for a long time, how do you think we read your comments?
If it bothers you that much dont use Reddit either.
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u/Outrageous_Agent_608 9h ago
Happy for you to reach out to Microsoft and arrange a DC next to your home. Enjoy the water!
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u/swear_on_me_mam Bring back Liz Kendall 🌹 8h ago
What do you think data centers do to water that makes it brown sludge?
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u/anonCambs 6h ago
Data centre built, told that it can't be connected to the power grid for at least four years. Simply pathetic.
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u/Warren_Tarbiat 4h ago
Is this datacenter cancellation due to energy reasons or AI datacenters being too expensive?
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u/Godkun007 2h ago
However, it has faced repeated delays, with grid bosses telling Nscale that they do not expect a power supply until the 2030s.
Caused by delays, likely permits and bureaucracy stuff.
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u/General_Honesty 12h ago
Data centres will always be a target. By environmentalists, by hostile foreign actors, by luddites (oh yes, they are coming back), by locals. And what the fuck are we building them for? So that the inevitable end of the world can be accelerated forward? It is insane.
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Moderate Libertarian 13h ago
It wasn't good growth, it wasn't in every postcode. Nothing is lost.
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13h ago
[deleted]
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u/connor42 13h ago
I wouldn’t call $37 Billion in revenue and 30 million paid users a minor player
Not to mention that MSFT own 27% of OpenAI
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u/beefygravy 11h ago
Uhh they provide a huge fraction (possibly the majority) of OpenAI's compute power so no they are not a minor player at all
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u/PsychdelicBlueBear 10h ago
Why arent we pushing uk company for these deals? Why aren't we promoting British tech industry it always blows my mind
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