Hello from The National and welcome to the View from London – your weekly guide to the big stories from our London bureau
AI promises
All artificial intelligence promises deliverance. Only one operator at London Tech Week has it in the title.
Welcome to our London AI special edition. Kensington Olympia is the headquarters for most of Tech Week’s activities and one of the exhibitors was Mick McNeil, chief executive and founder of UK-based Deliverance AI, which stepped into the spotlight this week, intent on building operating systems for sovereign enterprise AI. Mr McNeil told The National of his plans to expand to Abu Dhabi later this year.
It is in the forefront of the sovereign AI issue and will run agentic AI within client systems that is independent of the US cloud. As we will see, this is something in demand.
Highlighted Tech Week speakers included Prime Minister Keir Starmer, former chancellor George Osborne, now of Open AI, Perplexity co-founder Aravind Srinivas and dozens of other business leaders.
Mr Srinivas adapted a phrase of Steve Jobs' about computers being the “bicycle for the mind”, to say that AI was the “Ferrari for the mind”, empowering people beyond previous abilities.
“IBM owned the mainframe but missed the PC. Microsoft owned the PC, completely missed mobile. Nokia owned mobile, but missed the smartphone,” said Mr Srinivas. Don’t miss what AI can do for you, was his message.
What was holding back the UK in particular, according to Mr McNeil and countless others, was the cost of energy. He was looking to the UAE for opportunities for businesses like his on a global scale.
Idle hands
An encounter with John Caudwell, the phone retailer turned property magnate, was a chance to see up close the spectacular restoration of the historic Riviera hotspot Le Provencal.
As a politically facing entrepreneur, Mr Caudwell 73, is also well placed to talk about the implications of technology transformation.
"AI is incredibly exciting on the one hand and especially in this moment in time in the next couple of years,” he says, with caveats for the future. "Long-term, I think it's hugely frightening and was going to create huge challenges. The real sceptics about AI will say, well, the robots will take over the world. AI will rule the world.
"AI is taking us away from reality and into a false world that doesn't really exist. So, I think there's those threats and, of course, associated with that threat, is also the fact that there is going to be a tsunami of young unemployed people around the world because they went to university to get a degree to do something that's no longer going to be valuable.
"It could be devastating because there is an adage, which is that idle hands make work for the devil.”
Fast pace
Massively scaleable, cheap, attritable, integrated and shareable systems. Not AI, but the changing face of war.
London's defence business community has been on point for the government to deliver its investment plans that would increase spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP in a decade. But decisions mean choices and the government has found those hard.
For a sense of the changing nature of war, I talked to one of Ukraine's battlefield pioneers, Oleg Rogynskyy, chief executive of drone maker Uforce.
The company's range has played a key role in Ukraine's supremacy in the Black Sea. It is now growing across a handful of countries in Europe and in talks with Middle East nations.
Expansion in Britain is progressing rapidly. "We're already creating a lot of manufacturing jobs in the UK,” he said. "The UK with its maritime tradition, with a lot more naval architects per capita now, with 10 out of 11 Formula One teams, which are some of the best engineering teams on the planet, being within an hour from London, with universities with the best AI talent in the European region. There's nothing like London to compete with Silicon Valley or El Segundo.”
Settler harms
More pressure on the far-right Israeli ministers most responsible for settler violence in the West Bank.
The UK said it would impose new sanctions on six entities and one person, while France said it was aiming for Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, as well as four leaders of settler organisations and 21 violent settlers.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has already been banned for involvement in enabling Israeli settler violence in the occupied territory.
In all, six countries took new co-ordinated measures in the action, including Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Canada.
Canada said it had listed Harel David Libi and Eliav Libi of Libi Construction and Infrastructure. It also aimed for the Regavim movement, Coco's Farm, Micha's Farm and the settler organisation Nachala.
Israel's Foreign Ministry said it rejected "disgraceful measures adopted by foreign governments against Israeli citizens, entities and a government minister”.
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