This week, two stories that look very different but share a similar problem: we are deploying AI faster than we can honestly assess what it is doing.
On autonomous weapons, we pulled apart the government's £5 billion drone commitment (real money, though modest against the £64 billion nuclear renewal) and sat with a genuinely uncomfortable finding: in war game simulations run by Kenneth Payne at King's College London, advanced AI models reached for nuclear weapons in 95% of scenarios.
Recent research from the UK's Environment Agency revealed some worrying trends around water use in data centres: it surges during times of peak general demand and is highly concentrated in just six sites. But how significant is water use at data centres really? And might the real problem be one of good, old-fashioned transparency?
AI takes 44% of all UK smaller-business equity investment — Record £5.4 billion flowed to AI companies in 2025, reshaping the structure of UK venture finance entirely. Read more
29% of UK businesses now use at least one AI tool — ONS data shows adoption up eight percentage points year on year, with large employers at 49%. Read more
HSBC signs multi-year Google Cloud deal targeting 200 AI use cases — The bank is deploying Gemini models across wealth management and its billion-transaction-a-month fraud monitoring operation. Read more
NCA warns that AI-generated child abuse videos rose from 13 to 3,440 in a single year — The National Crime Agency and Internet Watch Foundation have issued new guidance for parents as the scale of the problem accelerates sharply. Read more
Nine councils tested AI for homelessness casework — The Ministry of Housing ran a proof of concept for drafting housing plans and surfacing similar cases, with officers reviewing every output. Read more
StirlingX raises $20 million for sovereign intelligence platform — The British defence and infrastructure company, chaired by a former GCHQ director, is expanding into Five Eyes-aligned markets. Read more