CNBC reports that the British government has canceled projects to develop computing infrastructure worth 1.3 billion pounds ($1.7 billion). Which, as noted, was a serious blow to the country's ambitions to become a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence. A government official confirmed to CNBC that two large taxpayer-funded commitments of £500m and £800m respectively have been scrapped to prioritize other financial plans. The sum of £500 million was promised by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government last year and was to go to the AI Research Resource – a development initiative aimed at strengthening the UK's computing infrastructure. Meanwhile, £800 million, also announced last year, was to go towards building a next-generation exafloppy computer capable of 1 trillion calculations per second at the University of Edinburgh. These initiatives would increase the UK's ability to build high-performance infrastructure capable of running advanced AI models that consume a lot of energy and require huge amounts of training data. The newly elected Labor government has said that none of these promises will now be kept. “We are absolutely committed to building the technology infrastructure that will deliver growth and opportunity for people across the UK,”, – said a representative of the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) in an email interview with CNBC. The spokesman added that the government was making “difficult and necessary spending decisions across all departments in the face of billions of pounds of unfunded liabilities”. “This is necessary to restore economic stability and fulfill our national growth mission”, – a DSIT spokesperson added. Last month, the government launched an Action Plan on AI Capabilities. It will aim to identify how the UK can upgrade its computing infrastructure to better meet emerging needs. It will look at the ways in which AI and other new technologies can best support the UK's industrial strategy.