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IT Home reported on August 3rd that according to CNBC,UK authorities have shelved a £1.3 billion computing infrastructure project, which means the UK's ambition to become a world leader in artificial intelligence has suffered a major setback.

A government spokesman confirmed that two major taxpayer-funded spending commitments worth £500m and £800m would be put on hold in order to prioritise other financial plans.

Last year, the UK pledged £500 million for an AI Research Resource, in addition to an £800 million announcement to fund the creation of a next-generation supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh capable of performing 1 trillion calculations per second.

These initiatives will increase the UK’s ability to build high-performance infrastructure capable of running advanced AI models, which consume large amounts of electricity and require large amounts of training data.

A spokesperson for the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said via email:

We are absolutely committed to building the technology infrastructure that delivers growth and opportunity for people across the UK, making difficult but necessary spending decisions across all departments in the face of a multi-billion pound funding gap.