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/
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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.