The UK’s plan to designate AI Growth Zones may not be beneficial to the wider economy, warned Séamus Dunne, SVP managing director for UK and Ireland at Digital Realty.
AI Growth Zones is a concept that originated from the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan which called for targeted action in a handful of regions to support local and national ambitions.
The zones would allow for the rapid planning approval of relevant infrastructure, including data centres.
The first of these zones, and so far the only to be announced, is in Culham, an Oxfordshire village near Abingdon. The government has invited other regions to express interest in receiving the designation.
In an exclusive interview with UKTN, Dunne accepted that there is “some good value that will accrue” from the Culham growth zone, but warned that a desire to spread these zones across remote areas in the UK may be ineffective.
“Frankly, building large AI training infrastructure in a remote region is not going to do a whole lot for the economy,” said Dunne.
“We are more interested in the value you get from AI.”
Dunne referred to AI inferencing, the process of a trained AI model making decisions and predictions on new data. “You complete AI inferencing near population centres where it is going to be used and the benefits accrue,” he added.
Though not entirely against the concept, he said he is “not sure the policy and the implementation is there yet”.
For Dunne, the policy is not likely to be harmful, but he warned against being too hopeful that it will be a significant economic driver.
“I don’t think remote zones for large language model training is a force multiplier for economic growth,” he said.
“We are trying to bring up regional zones, the so called the industrialised zones, but, there are ways of doing so that are more nuanced.
“It is not going to move the needle with AI adoption for the UK.”
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