UK plans £100m AI Biosecurity Lab in Budget

The UK government will commit £100m to a national AI Biosecurity Lab in Wednesday's Budget, the government's statement of tax and spending plans, BBC News reported. The lab is described as a "world first" institute and is intended to help strengthen UK defences against emerging biological threats.

Two AI companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, will provide £200m worth of AI model credits to support the lab's creation, the BBC reported. A government news story, "Introducing the AI Biosecurity Lab", says the lab is backed by up to £300m in government funding and company commitments.

The government will also commit an additional £120m to the AI Security Institute (AISI). The former Conservative government set up the institute in 2023 to evaluate the risks of the most advanced AI models.

Separately, the government will invest £60m in a "National Cyber Shield" that uses agentic AI, a term for AI systems that can carry out tasks with limited human direction, to boost cyber-defences. It will also provide £70m towards a National Exposure and Real-Time Vulnerability (NERV) Centre. The centre is to use AI tools to detect cyber vulnerabilities across critical infrastructure, the networks and systems that essential services depend on, and the wider economy.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the United States had reversed course to allow American AI developers to give the British government early access to AI models for safety testing. On 12 October, Reuters reported that the AI Security Institute had been given access to the latest advanced AI models.