The new Labour government has shelved 1.3bn of funding pledged by the Conservatives for technology and artificial intelligence projects, putting the future of the UK's first next-generation supercomputer in doubt. The projects, announced last year, include 800m for the creation of an exascale supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh and a further 500m for the AI Research Resource, which funds computing power for AI. The government argues that these were "unfunded commitments". The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said the funding had been promised by the previous government but had not been allocated in its spending plans. A spokesperson said: "We are absolutely committed to building technology infrastructure that delivers growth and opportunity for people across the UK. "The government is taking difficult and necessary spending decisions across all departments in the face of billions of pounds of unfunded commitments.

Artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT could play a role in Whitehall and represent a "massive opportunity", the new science secretary has suggested. Michelle Donelan, who took over the new role after the prime minister's departmental reshuffle last month, said the civil service should rely on its own experts but did not rule out a role for artificial intelligence in the future. ChatGPT can generate articles, essays, jokes, poetry and job applications in response to text prompts. OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft, made it available to the public for free in November. It can respond to questions in a human-like manner and understand the context of follow-up queries much like in human conversations, as well as being able to compose longform pieces of writing if asked.