UK spends £100 million on AI Biosecurity Lab, presented as a world premiere

Announced with the budget, this national laboratory must strengthen British defences against biological threats; OpenAI and Anthropic bring 200 million pounds of credit to use their models.

The UK government will create a national laboratory dedicated to AI and biosecurity, AI Biosecurity Lab (AIBL), with £100 million in the budget presented on Wednesday. Its mission: to help the country anticipate and counter new biological threats, in a context where the most powerful AI models could facilitate certain dangerous uses. AI Minister Kanishka Narayan describes him as a future major international institution with leading scientific expertise.

Calculation credits provided by AI laboratories

The major developers participate in the project: OpenAI and Anthropic provide the equivalent of 200 million pounds of credit usable on their models. The exact role and scope of the laboratory have not yet been detailed.

The same budget adds £120 million to the AI Security Institute (AISI), the public body created in 2023 to assess the risks of the most advanced models, as well as several envelopes for resilience to cyber, biological and AI-related threats.