The UK's data centre rollout is, ahem, gathering steam, and some of the numbers are genuine head-scratchers. The National Wealth Fund has guaranteed 80% of the debt on two DataVita sites in North Lanarkshire, with all capacity locked up by Coreweave for 15 years. Nearby, a proposed 600-megawatt facility in Auchtertool would, according to Action to Protect Rural Scotland, consume 20% of Scotland's entire electricity use. But might the real problem be that nobody is measuring or reporting this stuff consistently?
Meanwhile, the Medical Research Council is backing a £20 million organoid and AI hub in Cambridge, which is hoping to step into a space where the big pharma players have largely walked away.
NCSC publishes interim guidance on autonomous AI agents — Practical controls for agentic AI deployments, covering sandboxing, human oversight and emergency shutdown. Read more
Yorkshire patients struggle with AI GP receptionist — The system, called Emma, reportedly misunderstood broad Yorkshire accents, leaving some patients hanging up or visiting in person. Read more
Fractile in talks to raise $600m at $6.5bn valuation — The British chip startup's proposed valuation is six times what it commanded at its May fundraising round. Read more
UK and Ukraine sign AI defence partnership — Britain gains access to Ukraine's Avengers AI Labs and a dataset of roughly five million annotated battlefield images. Read more
Plymouth AI model detects bladder cancer up to five years early — Trained on nearly 70,000 patient records, the PRECISE-AGZ system identified 85% of cancer cases before formal diagnosis. Read more
Solicitors Regulation Authority warns over AI hallucinations in court — The SRA received 42 reports of potential AI wrongdoing in a year and issued a formal warning on fabricated legal citations. Read more