Miliband Blamed as OpenAI Pulls Out of £31 Billion Investment Plans Over High Energy Costs
Ed Miliband has been blamed today after OpenAI – the tech giant behind ChatGPT – pulled out of £31 billion UK investment plans citing high energy costs in a huge blow to Labour’s bid to make Britain an “AI superpower”. The Mail has more.
The California-based firm pointed to high energy costs and regulatory uncertainty for its decision to pause its Stargate UK project.
Stargate UK was announced in September last year as part of a combined £31 billion investment in Britain by US tech firms.
The announcement of the investment, as well as a UK-US tech prosperity deal, was made during US President Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain.
Stargate UK is a data centre planned for the North East in partnership with British firm Nscale.
The delay to the project is a huge blow to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s bid to turn the UK into “one of the great AI superpowers”, as Labour scrambles for economic growth.
The Tories heaped blame on the “Net Zero” agenda of Mr Miliband, the Energy Secretary, for harming Britain’s AI ambitions.
Senior Conservative MP Andrew Griffith, the Shadow Business Secretary, said: “Ed Miliband’s suicidal energy policy has just cost us another huge investment.”
Griffith added: “The UK has top AI talent and labs but huge energy costs because of Labour’s mad Net Zero agenda.
“If Labour let us fall behind on AI, British businesses will lose out to competitors.”
Mel Stride, the Shadow Chancellor, said OpenAI’s decision was a “damning verdict” on Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ “economic mismanagement”.
“Britain should be leading the AI revolution”, Sir Mel said.
“Instead, Labour are delivering high costs and lost opportunity.
“The message to investors is clear: under Keir Starmer, Britain isn’t open for business.
“We need cheaper energy, smarter regulation, and a Government that actually understands how to attract jobs and investment.”
Ofgem, the energy regulator, recently warned that vast data centres needed for AI systems will require more energy than is currently used by the whole country.
It revealed that a “significant portion” of projects in the queue for connections to the UK’s electricity grid are data centres.
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It might be Miliband’s fault. It might also have to do with the fact that things may not be going all that well for OpenAI.
Possibly, I don’t know about the company but any such organisation is going to be concerned about the cost of the power needed to run the servers.
And the ongoing availability of it…
Any type of intelligence would be beneficial to the Labour government (and the mugs who voted them into office).
I’ve forgotten, what was the Conservative policy on expensive renewables?
Just five back benchers voted against the Climate Change Act. The May government turned the screw tighter on Net Zero.
Mel Stride is probably not the worst of the Tories in this regard but his opposition is probably ‘performative’ party politics
They were keen on it.
All the legacy parties have been brainwashed by the green slime and their lackey running dogs, detoxification of the public energy policy sphere is essential and long overdue.
As I recently wrote in a donation comment: The natural stupidity of people who believe in artifcial intelligence is amazing.
And their blind trust in its performance.
Milioband is following Labour policy which was inherited from the Cameron-Clegg Tory government and only ever made more rigorous throughout the past couple of decades.
The Camoron government inherited its energy policy from the B.Liar/Brown era where it was set up by one Ed Miliband under instruction from George Soros.
This is great news. Our farmland is for food, and we don’t need this drain on our water and electricity supply.
OpenAI are in serious trouble anyway, this is well known.
Milliband is the UK Dictator now and Starmer is his bitch
No great surprise that an energy hungry business has second thoughts about the UK with the world’s most expensive energy.
All Labour had done is double down on Conservative Net Zero policies. The Conservatives are hypocrites and are just much to blame as Miliband.
“The Tories heaped blame on the “Net Zero” agenda of Mr Miliband, the Energy Secretary, for harming Britain’s AI ambitions.”
Thus conveniently omitting to mention that it was they who brought all the net zero scam into the statute books. Just another reason why any vote for the uniparty is a vote for your own demise.
This is always going to be the case as CO2 emissions reduction comes FIRST and everything else comes LAST. It is totally irrational. ——It takes no account of ones own economy or Industrial Base or the suffering of millions forced into energy poverty. It forces favoured technologies on people who knowing best how to spend their own money would choose better alternatives and probably want to keep their gas central heating and petrol car etc etc. It demonises the very fossil fuels that provide 85% of the worlds energy and tries to con people into imagining that wind and sun can replace them. —–They cannot. Wind and sun only provide electricity and electricity is only 20% of energy needs. But fossil fuels are required for every other thing we do. eg Fertilisers, plastics, medicines and on and on and on.
So the hypocritical Tories are furious …. when THEY are just as responsible for the outrageous cost of energy as Labour, if not more so since they had 14 years to inject some sanity into energy provision and failed to do it.
Nice work Ed, showed one AI open AI the door, indirectly. Will Palantir be next?
Good points. Let’s hope so.
AI, the biggest con since we landed on the moon.
I don’t understand this link between ‘being an AI superpower’ and running a load of data centres – the money, if there is any, will be in who owns the IP, not in who does the processing. In a way the running of the data centres is like mining, ore processing etc – you are simply turning the handle… you aren’t making the end result – it’s a highly commoditised area, and it won’t employ hardly anyone… so why the crazy push for it?
I suspect the answer is likely something to do with our politicians brain power, or lack thereof…
The Answer My Friends is Blowing in the Wind ( or more often not ) 😵💫