The idea of this second headquarters is to be closer to the epicenter of AI development, as the San Francisco Bay is home to companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta, which are major investors in AI today.
“By having staff in San Francisco, they will have access to the headquarters of a lot of these AI companies,” Michelle Donelan, the UK’s secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, said in an interview with TechCrunch. “A lot of them are based in the UK, but we think it would be really useful to have a base there as well, and access to additional human resources, and to be able to work more collaboratively with the US.”
One reason is that being closer to the epicentre not only helps to understand what is being built, but also gives the UK more visibility into these companies. This is important because the UK sees AI and technology as a huge opportunity for economic growth and investment.
What is the UK AI Safety Institute?
This a government organization which has only 32 employees. One of its most notable developments was the launch of Inspect, its first set of tools for testing the security of AI models.
This is because companies are not legally required to submit their models for evaluation and not all companies are willing to do so before launch. This means that if a risk is identified, the damage has already been done and this is what the tool is trying to prevent.
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