- UK government announces millions in funding for cyber protections upgrade
- £200 million will be invested in a new AI biosecurity lab, while a further £160 million will be funneled into a National Cyber Shield and National Exposure and Real-Time Vulnerability Centre
- AI is helping researchers discover new critical software vulnerabilities, and AI leaders have warned that AI tools could be used to develop new biological threats
The UK government has earmarked £100 million for a “world first” national AI Biosecurity Lab (AIBL) tasked with protecting the nation from emerging biological threats.
Leading AI firms, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have committed an additional £200 million worth of AI credits to be spent on their AI models.
The government is also planning to spend millions of pounds to ensure the UK is equipped to meet other emerging threats such as rapidly evolving AI-enabled cyber threats.
AI lab to host ‘world-leading scientific expertise’
The investment comes as part of the government’s budget announced on Wednesday. “AI will transform daily life,” Chancellor of the Exchequer Jon Healey said, “every firm, community, hospital, school, and every aspect of our economy can benefit.”
“I understand and share the concerns of working people, so I am setting out a distinctively British approach to AI. One that doesn’t leave workers behind and defends our national interest, while ensuring the benefits of AI-enabled growth are felt right across the country.”
Further details on the AIBL are yet to be revealed, but AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said that the facility would be a “major new global institution” home to “world-leading scientific expertise” that will help protect the UK against a range of threats “from cyber attacks to biological risks.”
“By backing British science, advanced chips and our own AI companies, we can strengthen our national security, rebuild Britain’s industrial strength and create good, skilled jobs across the country,” Narayan said.
Numerous leaders in AI, such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman, have warned of the potential dangers of advanced AI models falling into the wrong hands. “No company can sufficiently mitigate these on their own; we will need a society-wide response to things like novel bio threats, a massive and fast change to the economy, extremely capable models causing complex emergent effects across society, and more,” the OpenAI CEO said.
Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis warned earlier this year that “threats including nuclear and bio risks may soon emerge as capabilities continue to advance,” adding that “urgent action” needs to be taken to secure the world against these threats.
More funding for UK cyber protection
The latest budget will also see the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) receive an additional £120 million in funding. The AISI operates as an AI testing lab to determine the risks of frontier models.
A further £60 million will be invested in government plans to develop an AI-powered “National Cyber Shield” to shore up the nation’s AI defenses, alongside £70 million to be put towards the founding of a National Exposure and Real-Time Vulnerability (NERV) Centre that will use AI to hunt for critical vulnerabilities in infrastructure and the economy.
Researchers recently uncovered a critical flaw in the server-side scripting language PHP, upon which much of the internet is built. The researchers warned that the flaw could expose millions of websites to hacking, prompting numerous governments to take official websites offline while the flaw was patched.
The discovery of the flaw was credited to Ryan Austin, a researcher at cybersecurity firm Calif, who said that OpenAI’s systems helped uncover the flaw – highlighting the rapid increase in AI-assisted vulnerability discovery.
