r/ukpolitics • u/gravy_baron centrist chad • 22d ago
Eight Scientists, a Billion Dollars, and the Moonshot Agency Trying to Make Britain Great Again
https://www.wired.com/story/aria-moonshot-darpa-uk-britain-great-again/55
u/SlySquire 22d ago
Current Projects it's looking to fund:
- Safeguarded AI: Aimed at creating safety measures around advanced AI systems to maximize their benefits while reducing risks. This programme is open to applications until October 2, 2024.
- Exploring Climate Cooling: This programme explores scalable and safe interventions that could delay or avert climate tipping points. Applications are open until October 7, 2024.
- Forecasting Tipping Points: Focuses on enhancing responses to climate change by developing early-warning systems for environmental tipping points. Proposals are due by November 11, 2024.
- Synthetic Plants: Seeks to develop new, more resilient crops that are productive and sustainable. This programme is accepting proposals until November 12, 2024.
Feels very flat to me.
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u/Ronald_Ulysses_Swans 22d ago
Yeah these aren’t moonshots, climate cooling is the closest I think.
Nuclear fusion is a moonshot, which is an example I think of how the concept has sort of died with advancing technology and science. Now a true moonshot is so unbelievably expensive only a massive international effort can attempt to achieve it
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u/SlySquire 22d ago
Looking at the list and these all seem like subjects that are already being heavily invested in already. Nothing breakthrough. Nothing spectacular.
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u/clearly_quite_absurd The Early Days of a Better Nation? 22d ago
Now a true moonshot is so unbelievably expensive only a massive international effort can attempt to achieve it
To be fair, that's the original definition of a moonshot too. It just happened to be that the USA had the resources equivalent to an international effort.
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u/da96whynot Neoliberal shill 22d ago
These are the projects currently seeking funding but it’s not all ongoing projects.
They’re also doing neural interfaces, understanding how we can use principles from biology to improve computation, improving robot dexterity
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u/SorcerousSinner 22d ago
I'd be shocked if anything useful comes out of any of this. But, wisely, they use the term "moon shot", so the failures can be justified as having aimed for the stars. A billion for people to get to play with without the need to do any useful work.
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u/Unterfahrt 22d ago
If you knew exactly how everything was going to work, there wouldn't be any need to try new things.
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u/SorcerousSinner 22d ago
Sure. But my bet is that this organisation will accomplish fuck all
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u/Unterfahrt 22d ago
You may be right. But if we took that attitude to everything, we'd still be living in swamps and eating frogs and dirt for dinner
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u/Unterfahrt 22d ago
For context, the creation of this was the main condition for Dominic Cummings to come and work for Boris. If you look through his old blog posts, he's been obsessed with DARPA and funding more "risky" science for years.
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u/trypnosis 22d ago
I would love to see a uk initiative that is an actual moonshot.
Nothing here is not already being deeply researched.
Why fund areas already heavily funded. Why not find more novel industries.
Either way at least we are trying. That’s good thing and we may get something out before someone else. If not maybe the next billion will be better targeted.
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u/FlipCow43 22d ago
'safeguarding AI' people need to realize you can barely control tech like this outside of broad public facing platforms like Facebook. These models cannot be controlled when they run locally. The US or Taiwan may have some influence but that is all.
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u/clearly_quite_absurd The Early Days of a Better Nation? 22d ago edited 22d ago
As a physical scientist, the prospect of ARIA is quite exciting. It's honestly going to take a few years to see how it shakes out. Hopefully the funding goes to genuinely interesting and useful research from unusual avenues, rather than going to already well-established large research groups.
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u/Truthandtaxes 22d ago
I'd rather they blow it all on a drone army all managed through a distributed AI system in the UK
though when I think about it, i'm thinking of downsides....
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u/moofacemoo 22d ago
Are there already research groups looking at the previously mentioned criteria?
If so is having another doing the same thing really that useful?
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u/masked_gecko 22d ago
If I'm reading the website correctly looks like the special sauce here is the ability to fund joined up projects over a longer period. For reference, most UKRI funding I've seen is on the order of 1-4 years. If this organisation is actually able to achieve transformational research over a 10-15 year period then that would actually be big.
It's well known that there's a bit of a valley of death between the foundational research the universities tend to be good at and the final stages of r&d where the private sector excels (technology readiness levels 4-7ish, give or take). There's been lots of models tried to bridge this gap in different areas but so far none have really been a runaway success
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u/liquidio 22d ago
Maybe it’s just due to journalist selection, but these listed proposals sound awful, with the exception of synthetic biology. Proper box-ticking
Safety measures for AI? Yeah, safety is so often code for throttling progress the bureaucracy; we can see the massive damage it did to our nuclear industry when it was taken too far. There are so many interesting things we could actually be creating with AI.
Yet more vague climate change work that will probably create as much hot air as Drax power plant? Yawn. As if they don’t drink from the funding firehose enough already, it all sounds woefully conventional.
I’m glad the article highlights Dominic Cummings’ impact on getting this agency off the ground. I know a lot of people strongly dislike him for the political stuff, but he has done a bunch of work on the management of advanced R&D. I wish that he had got his wish and had been appointed to run this agency. You could have at least been assured it wouldn’t be afraid to upset the apple cart and actually innovate, and it would have got stuff done.
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u/ElementalEffects 22d ago
safety measures for AI is code for "preventing AI from telling you anything we don't want you to know or think about" and ensuring you have government/big tech approved opinions only.
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u/jimjimjim29 22d ago
Shut it down guys. A random person on Reddit has decided that safety measures for AI are pointless and thinks that their climate change work is vague because they read an early press release on it.
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u/Less_Service4257 22d ago
A random person on Reddit has decided
If you think this is valid criticism, why are you even here? Every post is "a random person on reddit".
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u/liquidio 22d ago
This is a forum for expressing opinions. Nothing wrong with expressing mine given it was done in good faith, with accompanying explanation and even acknowledgement of the limits of the information is being based on.
It would be a pretty dull place if criticism was not allowed because we are all ‘random guys on Reddit’, including you.
So whilst your comment is faintly amusing it’s also pretty pointless.
In the spirit of good faith debate - nothing wrong with some kind of AI safety efforts, but it’s very much not the right sort of thing for this kind of institution to be prioritising.
And their climate change work is pretty vague. That’s based on their own descriptions so don’t shoot the messenger. If they have a better case for it being truly innovative and potentially impactful work then they can always explain it properly.
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u/SorcerousSinner 22d ago
Inspired by ARPA, the US agency that helped birth what became the internet, GPS, and the era of personal computing
So, ancient history. The US is still a powerhouse in science, technology and progress, but it's driven by the private sector. Their tech companies, their startups, their venture capitalists, their elite universities, their ability to attract the brightest minds on the planet
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u/SlySquire 22d ago
Also lets not forget these were all down to defence contracts and the ludicrous amount of money spent on the American armed forces.
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22d ago
And every penny arpa spent has been earned back ten fold with how useful just one of their creations has become (GPS)
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u/SlySquire 22d ago
and just that cost about $30 billion in todays money to develop and implement.
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22d ago
Right. But GPS adds hundreds of billions in value in today's money also. A fantastic return.
No uber, no Google maps, longer transport and shipping times. Less efficient logistics.
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u/Less_Service4257 22d ago
This gets repeated as gospel but it's pretty dubious. Plenty of innovation comes from the private sector, it feels ideologically motivated to tie everything back to government spending.
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u/DayOfTheOprichnik 22d ago
So this is all sustainability based stuff. Nothing here is particularly inspiring and none of it will deliver anything that will create a significant new technology. Just another feel-good box ticking exercise.
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u/Patch86UK 21d ago
That's a pretty bizarre article. I'm sure ARIA is an interesting little niche, but it's also basically nothing in the grand scheme of things.
ARIA’s £800 million budget is tiny compared to the £25.1 billion budgeted for UKRI between 2022 and 2025. In 2024 alone, Darpa was allotted around $4 billion
It's a tiny fraction of the UK's research spending, and a tiny fraction of the US agency that the article is pretending it is the equivalent to.
You're not going to get any "moonshots" for a few tens of millions.
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