Nick Clegg: US-UK tech deal is ‘sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley’
A multibillion-dollar transatlantic tech agreement announced to coincide with Donald Trump’s state visit represents “sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley”, Nick Clegg, Meta’s former president of global affairs, has said,The former deputy prime minister said the deals, heralded with great fanfare by the government as it tries to foster growth in the UK, were “mutton dressed as lamb” and would make the country ever more reliant on US tech firms,The announcements have included some of the biggest companies in the tech world, such as chipmaker Nvidia and the ChatGPT developer OpenAI,One announcement featured a Microsoft investment that was said to be worth $30bn (£22bn),However, speaking at a Royal Television Society conference in Cambridge, Clegg said the relationship between the UK and the US tech sector was “all one-way traffic” and that the announcements suited the companies.
He warned Britain was being “defanged” by simply fostering a greater reliance on the US tech sector, rather than building its own,“These companies need those infrastructure resources anyway,” he said,“They’re building datacentres all over the world,Maybe they were pushed a bit forward just to meet the timetable with this week’s state visit,But … it’s all one-way traffic.
“We’re a kind of vassal state technologically, we really are.The moment our companies, our tech companies, start developing any scale or ambition, they have to go to California, because we don’t have the growth capital here.”He also revealed former US ambassador Peter Mandelson had asked for his advice on the tech sector before the Trump visit.Clegg said he advised the peer to be cautious about US-UK tech tie-ups.“In a sense, this US-UK tech deal is just another version of the United Kingdom holding on to Uncle Sam’s coat-tails,” he said.
“We just have to be a little bit more realistic about our predicament and a little bit firmer about what we can do ourselves, rather than what I think we’re seeing with this US-UK tech deal – which is basically just taking sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley.”His intervention will frustrate ministers, as attracting investment from big tech has formed a major part of their search for growth.The deals have been used as an example of Britain’s success in building a close US relationship.Sign up to Headlines UKGet the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morningafter newsletter promotionIt came after Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of the US AI chipmaker Nvidia, predicted “the UK is going to be an AI superpower” as he announced a new £500m investment in a British firm.Huang, who was due to join Donald Trump at Wednesday night’s state banquet with the king, said he was taking an equity stake in Nscale, a UK cloud computing company, and predicted it would earn revenues of up to £50bn over the next six years.
“We’re here to announce that the UK is going to be an AI superpower,” he told a press conference in London.Huang cited as evidence of Britain’s potential its universities and several companies founded in the UK, ranging from the AI giant DeepMind to the driverless car startup Wayve.“You just don’t appreciate it.Your universities.Come on.
You’re too humble,” he said.
Temu’s UK operation doubles revenues and pre-tax profits
The UK operation of the Chinese online marketplace Temu doubled revenues and pre-tax profits last year, as British consumers snapped up products offered by the super-budget retailer.Temu UK reported revenues of $63.3m (£46.4m) last year, almost double the $32m in 2023, while pre-tax profits similarly surged from $2m to $3.9m, accounts show
Memes and nihilistic in-jokes: the online world of Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer
On the day that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson shot and killed rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, prosecutors say, he texted his roommate to confess what he’d done. While appearing to admit to the murder and describe how he was planning to retrieve his gun, he pivoted to mention why he had carved messages into the ammunition.“Remember how I was engraving bullets? The fuckin messages are mostly a big meme,” Robinson texted, according to authorities.Robinson’s shooting of Kirk has put the spotlight on the intersection of political violence and an increasingly nihilistic online world that promotes misinformation and extremism. It’s a confluence that raises fundamental questions about how internet culture influences both extremist attacks and how we understand them, at a time when some of the biggest online spaces are increasingly more divisive and less moderated
ChatGPT developing age-verification system to identify under-18 users after teen death
OpenAI will restrict how ChatGPT responds to a user it suspects is under 18, unless that user passes the company’s age estimation technology or provides ID, after legal action from the family of a 16-year-old who killed himself in April after months of conversations with the chatbot.OpenAI was prioritising “safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens”, chief executive Sam Altman said in a blog post on Tuesday, stating “minors need significant protection”.The company said that the way ChatGPT responds to a 15-year-old should look different to the way it responds to an adult.Altman said OpenAI plans to build an age-prediction system to estimate age based on how people use ChatGPT, and if there is doubt, the system will default to the under-18 experience. He said some users “in some cases or countries” may also be asked to provide ID to verify their age
How memes, gaming and internet culture all relate to the Charlie Kirk shooting
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Dara Kerr here, filling in for Blake Montgomery, who promises he’ll come back from vacation. Meanwhile, I’m looking at the memes, gaming and internet culture behind the shooting of Charlie Kirk.The bullet that killed conservative activist was inscribed with a message: “Notices bulge OwO whats this?” The online world quickly recognized the reference. It’s a phrase used in internet culture to troll people in online role-play communities, specifically furries (a subculture that cosplays as anthropomorphic animal characters)
How AI is undermining learning and teaching in universities | Letter
In discussing generative artificial intelligence (‘It’s going to be a life skill’: educators discuss the impact of AI on university education, 13 September) you appear to underestimate the challenges that large language model (LLM) tools such as ChatGPT present to higher education. The argument that mastering AI is a life skill that students need in preparation for the labour market is unconvincing. Our experience is that generative AI undermines teaching and learning, bypasses reflection and criticality, and deflects students from reading original material.Student misuse of generative AI is widespread. Claims that AI helps preparation or research is simply cover for students taking shortcuts that do not develop their learning skills
Top UK artists urge Starmer to protect their work on eve of Trump visit
Leading British artists including Mick Jagger, Kate Bush and Paul McCartney have urged Keir Starmer to stand up for creators’ human rights and protect their work ahead of a UK-US tech deal during Donald Trump’s visit.In a letter to the prime minister, they argued Labour had failed to defend artists’ basic rights by blocking attempts to force artificial intelligence firms to reveal what copyrighted material they have used in their systems.Senior figures in US tech are accompanying the US president on his state visit, where an announcement is expected on a UK-US tech pact covering areas including AI.Elton John, one of the letter’s signatories, said government proposals to let AI companies train their systems on copyright-protected work without permission “leaves the door wide open for an artist’s life work to be stolen”.“We will not accept this,” he added
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