UK pledges £100m for AI Biosecurity Lab

The UK government says it will invest £100m to establish a national AI Biosecurity Lab, intended to strengthen the country’s defences against emerging biological threats. The announcement is part of Wednesday’s Budget, but the lab’s role and remit have yet to be set out in full.

The government describes the institute as a “world first”. AI Minister Kanishka Narayan called it a “major new global institution” that would bring together scientific expertise as AI develops.

OpenAI and Anthropic are also providing £200m worth of credits for the use of their AI models, the BBC reports. The announcement does not specify how the lab will use those credits.

The Budget includes other technology and security spending: a further £120m for the UK’s AI Security Institute, £60m for a proposed National Cyber Shield and £70m for a National Exposure and Real-Time Vulnerability Centre. The government says the latter would use AI tools to identify cyber vulnerabilities across critical infrastructure and the economy.

The plans come amid concerns that AI could help expose and exploit software weaknesses. The BBC reports that researchers warned a recently identified flaw in PHP could put systems using the language at risk, although there had been no reports of successful exploitation at the time of its report.