UK's Darpa clone faces tough test next spring as government considers future funding
- Reference: 1731497587
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/11/13/uks_darpa_clone_faces_tough/
- Source link:
The Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or AIRA, was announced in 2021, but was not formally established until January 2023. A product of the Conservative Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit government, the agency is designed to fund transformational research, with a so-called high risk, high reward approach.
However, Lord Drayson, aka Paul Drayson, electric world land speed record holder and member of the Lords Science and Technology Committee pointed out this week that while Aria's initial £800 million ($1 billion) funding would see it through to the end of the 2025/26 financial year, the Labour government is set decide on any future spending next spring, when it announces the multi-year spending review, setting out plans for 2026–27 to at least 2028–29.
[1]
Drayson said the Committee was supportive of Aria and wanted it to succeed, but questioned how it would secure its further when the government is set to decide its future well before its Parliamentary review, due in 2033.
[2]
[3]
Speaking before the Committee, Matt Clifford, ARIA chair, said: "The multi-year spending review will be a really important moment for ARIA. I think we're starting from a position of strength in having broad cross-party support right from inception."
Clifford pointed out that the Labour science minister Patrick Vallance was one of the founding board members of ARIA.
[4]
But last month, UK finance minister Rachel Reeves was forced to raise taxes and consider spending cuts in her budget as she struggled to balance the government books, boost the economy, and minimize public debt.
In such a climate, political leaders must weigh up the public's appetite for funding high-risk research with no immediate returns.
Before the Lords' committee, Clifford said: "We recognize that Aria, over the long run, has to provide great value for money, just as any use of public funds needs to, but that that value for money will obviously be measured in a different way, with a different risk appetite, and over a different time frame from the way that many other uses of public funds would. That's why we're so keen to establish core ideas about what failure and success mean for ARIA, what proportion of our programs we expect to succeed, because what we don't want to do is end up in a situation a couple of years where people say, 'When [the] ARIA program failed, does this mean Aria is failing?'"
[5]
Ilan Gur, ARIA CEO, told the Lords' committee about projects the organization hoped would bear fruit.
They included a planned biology platform built on the UK's "extremely cutting edge" synthetic biology expertise.
"The power of plants as a technology platform is just unbelievable. What really differentiates that program is its boldness in terms of the target. It aims to create, for the first time, a synthetic organelle [subcellular structure] within a plant system that can be maintained and transferred within species. There is related research, but the community seems to believe this is really out there," he said.
Another project of note is a system that interacts with neural circuits to address neurological disorders. "There is the potential to develop a technology, a single technology insertion point, that could address this broad range of disorders, which, in an integrated way, represent about three times heart disease in terms of the burden," he said.
[6]DARPA pays $6M to see fully autonomous Black Hawk helicopters
[7]Labour wins race to lead UK, but few would envy the load in its tech in-tray
[8]Politicians call for ban on 'killer robots' and the curbing of AI weapons
[9]Britain's Ministry of Defence accused of wasting £174M on 'external advice'
Aria is often seen as the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of the Conservative "Vote Leave Brexit" campaign and, later, chief advisor to former prime minister Boris Johnson. Reports suggested his WhatsApp handle once said: "Get Brexit Done, then Arpa (Darpa's predecessor)."
The Lords are not the first to scrutinize Aria's funding pipeline. Even before Aria was launched, Sir John Kingman, former chair of UK Research and Innovation, [10]told Commons Science and Technology Committee, Aria was a good example of departmental research spending that could be cut, sidelined or delayed.
"A very high-profile example would be ARIA, which has been this big plan for the Boris Johnson government, and yet here we are a few years into the Johnson government and it still hasn't even begun to happen," he told MPs in 2021. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZzTbOu8-7pcEO11KTVVjXgAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZzTbOu8-7pcEO11KTVVjXgAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZzTbOu8-7pcEO11KTVVjXgAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZzTbOu8-7pcEO11KTVVjXgAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZzTbOu8-7pcEO11KTVVjXgAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/15/black_hawk_autonomous_tech/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/05/labour_tech_challenges/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/30/kill_killer_robots_now/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/mod_external_advice_spending/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/20/uks_aria_innovation_body_has/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Wads for the Boys...
Probably the best that could happen is for ARIA to be merged with Qinetiq, given the increasing overlap particularly in cyber security.
Re: Wads for the Boys...
And then nationalised it. Perhaps even give it a royal warrant
.
Then you could have a Royal Science and Research Establishment (RSRE) that could profitably sold off to the next PM's chums.
Re: Wads for the Boys...
We could, alternatively, subsidise nationally important science and technology at universities ...
Re: Wads for the Boys...
I've yet to find out where the profit from DSTL goes. Seeing as it's projects are seeded by taxpayers money, once it's developed and sold to someone else does any of that profit feed back into the public coffers?
Per Ardua ad Mega Meta Data Astra .... Killer AIMaster Pilot Licensed to Thrill
Instead it will just hand out wads of public money to anyone with a good idea the right connections... ..... cyberdemon
That is an absolutely terrible idea, cyberdemon, but sadly a most persistent and pernicious default situation which afflicts and destroys any incompetent and wannabe be thought enabling, incumbent government body ...... new magic broom ..... exercising common free and easy use of the same pathetic formula.
However, anyone with a great idea having made all of the right connections and able to enable the machinery of command and control to guarantee against failure in any present or subsequent future ACTion or APPLication of the novelty [previously untried and untested experience] is quite something else and completely different ....... and would be also extremely troubling and troublesome to ignore and try to deny being floated offshore or further developed in an alien land or hostile environment grateful for a great and novel and noble idea able to deliver so much sterling promise and stellar progress.
You might think that such things are as rare as hen's teeth, and who would be fool enough to argue, but they are out there if you know where to look and what you are looking for.
Is the following just the right sort of thing to be looking for and ensuring it isn't lodged and logged with any fierce contemporary competition or virile and venerable opposition. Would ARIA recognise the undisclosed stealthy potential of anything great and new and unique and rush to secure it with the meaningful punt of an entirely appropriate sum ..... or would they stumble and bumble and fall at the first hurdle to overcome in order to have any chance of winning a sure bet prize ‽ . .......
amanfromMars [2411121621] ........ shares an intelligent educative view on [1]https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/geopolitics-ai-infrastructure-becomes-next-debate
Cohen penned an article in [2]Foreign Policy titled "The Next AI Debate Is About Geopolitics," in which he explores the geopolitical importance of AI infrastructure, particularly the global race to establish data centers.
On Monday, Cohen provided clients with an executive summary of the note that explained data might be the "new oil," but nations - not nature - will determine where data enters (sic) are built.
One would do well to realise nations will definitely not be collectively solely determining the information entering data centres for subsequent processing and media presentation of affected targeted narrative/disputed contentious live realities.
There will be all manner and a great expanding number of alternative voices and renegade rogue spirits exploring that opportunity to create worlds unburdened by petrified and stagnant and terrified and terrifying groupthink ...... and sharing the ways and means by which the best of future goals and rewarding destinations can be accomplished and reached without having a punitive price to pay to failed systems of former remote virtual command and fiat currency control.
Such is just the natural progression of that which is inexorably evolving and resolved to not fail and fall into any of the many honeyed bear traps of the past which surely linger on to clearly also foul up the present.
[1] https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/geopolitics-ai-infrastructure-becomes-next-debate
[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/10/28/ai-geopolitics-data-center-buildout-infrastructure/
QuintiQ is a *private* company owned by a (IIRC) a US investment fund.
The result of a management buy out of what was DERA.
Which the UK Govt now pays to use facilities that it used to own.
It might also helps to consider that DARPA projects are relatively low cost/high failure rate operations.
People recall the development of packet switching devices (let's call them IDK "Routers"), the TCP/IP suite, "blackboard" systems and AI applied to improving the loading of cargo ships (which delivered cost savings to the DoD that covered all the AI projects they sponsored from roughly 1970)
But what about the VHSIC programme to inject GaAs microprocessors running at the unheard of speed of 200MHz? By the time they deployed Intel was doing better than that.
What DARPA does have is a high tolerance for risk (or failure depending on your PoV) because they understand one simple truth.
They don't win often, but when they do they win huge. I don't think any UK Govt organisation is that comfortable with saying "No it didn't work out, but we learned a bunch of stuff for next time."
"But last month, UK finance minister Rachel Reeves was forced to raise taxes and consider spending cuts in her budget as she struggled to balance the government books, boost the economy, and minimize public debt."
Did she? I recall them claiming there was austerity and it was unnecessary and more money should be splurged. Then she gave money to unions and decided to raise tax on everyone else while trying to carve exceptions for the public sector.
Surely to have such expensive programs we need to have the excess cash. First innovation should be the government learning how to manage money.
Wads for the Boys...
The trouble with ARIA, is that as far as I can see it is just a "funding agency", no different to DSTL except perhaps with less oversight and due process
It will not have its own research labs / employees (unlike DARPA which it is supposed to emulate)
Instead it will just hand out wads of public money to anyone with a good idea the right connections...
A typical Boris Johnson / Dominic Cummings scheme indeed!