OpenAI puts Stargate UK on ice, blames energy costs and red tape (theregister.com)

by Bender 35 comments 60 points
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35 comments

[−] krunck 36d ago
"It[Stargate UK] was hailed by the British government at the time as a boost for its own ambitions to make the country a world leader in AI."

How does having an AI heat farm in the UK help with that? It's still owned and controlled by a US entity. Or is "being a leader" synonymous with "being a customer?"

[−] rchaud 36d ago
How else do you propose selling the idea of giving a foreign company years of tax breaks in exchange for a minuscule number of jobs while slashing public budgets because there isn't enough tax revenue coming in?
[−] Ardon 36d ago
No no, you see, for a government 'leading in AI' is just spending the most money on it.
[−] kypro 36d ago
Arguably this aligns with their decision to discontinue Sora.

If we assume they are trying to rapidly free up compute then the UK is a pretty stupid place to be building out new datacenters... Any project here overruns both in time and budget – if it even goes ahead at all.

Then you have energy costs which makes the UK one of the most expensive places in the world to build a datacenter. If you want to bring compute online fast and at a competitive price, then you're far better off building somewhere else in Europe like Norway.

[−] mellosouls 36d ago
Already being discussed (disclaimer: my submission):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704137

[−] zb3 36d ago
Good, RAM to the people!
[−] givemeethekeys 36d ago
They have more than enough money to build an off the grid data center.
[−] lucisferre 36d ago
Man I thought this was about the new Stargate show which they are filming in the UK. I was trying to square why OpenAI would be in charge of that.
[−] avazhi 36d ago
[flagged]
[−] PunchyHamster 36d ago
lucky UK
[−] Rover222 36d ago
Elon called it when this was announced. Sam never had the money. Interesting to contrast those two characters.

I think Sam is somewhat sociopathic, smooth salesman, not very technical, will say whatever needs to be said to get what he wants.

Elon is on the spectrum and has bad social judgement and is just immature in a lot of ways, is very direct and means what he says when he says it, even if it's often unrealistic or misguided. Is extremely technical, and honestly I think has better intentions, just gets in his own way a lot.

Dario is an odd duck but seems stable and good intentions, very technical (I think?).

Hasib, wow what a normal, likable guy, extremely technical.

Zuckerberg seems to finally be entering the chat in terms of big AI models.

I think Altman scares me the most, in terms of having control of this tech. Hasib probably seems the best to control it. Just in terms of if I had to pick one.

[−] johnwhitman 36d ago
[dead]
[−] verdverm 36d ago
I wonder if Claude will get the deal in the next few months. It's what everyone is asking for, brand is much stronger.