UK Ups Investment in AI Safety and Celebrities Fight AI Deep Fakes

By: Isha Das

The United Kingdom has announced an increase in funding for two artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers to £300 million (~$363.57 million). Announced on November 1, the increased investment aims to provide researchers and scientific talent with adequate tools to keep advanced AI models safe amidst growing complexity. The announcement came during the first day of the global AI Safety Summit. These supercomputers, also known as the 'AI Research Resource,' will support safer AI model development, a crucial topic at the summit.

Named Isambard-AI and Dawn, these supercomputers are expected to be operational by summer 2024. Isambard-AI, built by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and equipped with 5,000 advanced Nvidia AI chips, will be capable of computing over 200 'petaflops' (200 quadrillion calculations per second). The Dawn, created with Dell and powered by 1,000 AI chips from Intel, is the second machine adding to the research resource. Their development reaffirms the UK's commitment to being a world leader in AI safety, ensuring robust and secure AI models.

In another facet of AI, celebrities like Scarlett Johansson are raising their voices against the prevalence of AI-generated doppelgangers, also known as 'Deep Fakes.' The lack of international laws and cross-platform consensus on AI regulations makes it challenging to counter this issue. AI-generated imagery and videos using celebrities' likeness have raised significant concerns about privacy and copyright issues.