{"id":826830,"date":"2025-02-14T01:12:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T07:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/14\/uk-drops-safety-from-its-ai-body-now-called-ai-security-institute-inks-mou-with-anthropic\/"},"modified":"2025-02-14T01:12:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T07:12:01","slug":"uk-drops-safety-from-its-ai-body-now-called-ai-security-institute-inks-mou-with-anthropic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/14\/uk-drops-safety-from-its-ai-body-now-called-ai-security-institute-inks-mou-with-anthropic\/","title":{"rendered":"UK drops \u2018safety\u2019 from its AI body, now called AI Security Institute, inks MOU with Anthropic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The U.K. government wants to make a hard pivot into boosting its economy and industry with AI, and as part of that, it\u2019s pivoting an institution that it founded a little over a year ago for a very different purpose. Today the Department of Science, Industry and Technology announced that it would be renaming the AI Safety Institute to the \u201cAI Security Institute.\u201d (Same first letters: same URL<\/a>.) With that, the body will shift from primarily exploring areas like existential risk and bias in large language models, to a focus on cybersecurity, specifically \u201cstrengthening protections against the risks\u00a0AI\u00a0poses to national\u00a0security\u00a0and crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside this, the government also announced a new partnership with Anthropic. No firm services were announced but the MOU indicates the two will \u201cexplore\u201d using Anthropic\u2019s AI assistant Claude in public services; and Anthropic will aim to contribute to work in scientific research and economic modeling. And at the AI Security Institute, it will provide tools to evaluate AI capabilities in the context of identifying security risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI has the potential to transform how governments serve their citizens,\u201d Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement. \u201cWe look forward to exploring how Anthropic\u2019s AI assistant Claude could help UK government agencies enhance public services, with the goal of discovering new ways to make vital information and services more efficient and accessible to UK residents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anthropic is the only company being announced today \u2014 coinciding with a week of AI activities in Munich and Paris \u2014 but it\u2019s not the only one that is working with the government. A series of new tools that were unveiled in January were all powered by OpenAI. (At the time, Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for Technology, said that the government planned to work with various foundational AI companies, and that is what the Anthropic deal is proving out.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s switch-up of the AI Safety Institute \u2014 launched just over a year ago<\/a> with a lot of fanfare \u2014 to AI Security shouldn\u2019t come as too much of a surprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the newly installed Labour government announced its AI-heavy Plan for Change in January<\/a>,\u00a0 it was notable that the words \u00a0\u201csafety,\u201d \u201charm,\u201d \u201cexistential,\u201d and \u201cthreat\u201d did not appear at all in the document.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was not an oversight. The government\u2019s plan is to kickstart investment in a more modernized economy, using technology and specifically AI to do that. It wants to work more closely with Big Tech, and it also wants to build its own homegrown big techs. <\/p>\n

In aid of that, the main messages it\u2019s been promoting have been development, AI, and more development. Civil servants will have their own AI assistant called \u201cHumphrey<\/a>,\u201d and they\u2019re being encouraged to share data and use AI in other areas to speed up how they work. Consumers will be getting digital wallets<\/a> for their government documents, and chatbots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So have AI safety issues been resolved? Not exactly, but the message seems to be that they can\u2019t be considered at the expense of progress.<\/p>\n

The government claimed that despite the name change, the song will remain the same. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe changes I\u2019m announcing today represent the logical next step in how we approach responsible AI development \u2013 helping us to unleash AI and grow the economy as part of our Plan for Change,\u201d Kyle said in a statement. \u201cThe work of the AI Security Institute won\u2019t change, but this renewed focus\u00a0will ensure our citizens \u2013 and those of our allies \u2013 are protected from those who would look to use AI against our institutions, democratic values, and way of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Institute\u2019s focus from the start has been on security and we\u2019ve built a team of scientists focused on evaluating serious risks to the public,\u201d added Ian Hogarth, who remains the chair of the institute. \u201cOur new criminal misuse team and deepening partnership with the national security community mark the next stage of tackling those risks.\u201c<\/p>\n

Further afield, priorities definitely appear to have changed around the importance of \u201cAI Safety\u201d. The biggest risk the AI Safety Institute in the U.S. is contemplating right now, is that it\u2019s going to be dismantled<\/a>. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance<\/a> telegraphed as much earlier this week during his speech in Paris.<\/p>\n

TechCrunch has an AI-focused newsletter!\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ingrid is a writer and editor for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London.<\/p>\n

Before TechCrunch, Ingrid worked at paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect.<\/p>\n

When it comes to work, she feels most comfortable speaking in English but can also speak Russian, Spanish and French (in descending order of competence).<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n\t\tView Bio <\/svg><\/a>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n Ingrid Lunden<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.K. government wants to make a hard pivot into boosting its economy and industry with AI, and as part of that, it\u2019s pivoting an institution that it founded a little over a year ago for a very different purpose. Today the Department of Science, Industry and Technology announced that it would be renaming the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":826831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2163,3166,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-826830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-drops","category-safety","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}