Britain’s AI hopes are falling apart
In January last year, Nscale, an AI company whose board includes Nick Clegg and Sheryl Sandberg, announced that a supercomputer site in Loughton, Essex was ‘scheduled to be live in Q4 2026’. Well, here we are, Q4 2026, and I am at the supercomputer site in Loughton, Essex. I don’t know what a ‘live’ supercomputer site is meant to look like, but I don’t think it is this: a barren canvas of rubble, enclosed by fencing, with weeds poking through the concrete. No one I ask has seen anything happen here, but a passer-by tells me he did see a digger once. The company has promised that the £2 billion investment will result in 250 jobs, but there seems to be just one at the moment: a man on his phone sitting in a VW Golf by the entrance.
