The European Space Agency’s next-generation heavy-lift rocket Ariane 6 successfully completed a full dress rehearsal on Thursday, in preparation for its maiden flight next year.
The so-called hot-fire test at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana “simulated a complete launch sequence and thus validated the entire flight phase of Ariane 6’s core stage,” said the agency.
During the rehearsal, the rocket engine was ignited while securely mounted to a test stand or test platform. The term ‘hot-fire’ refers to the fact that the engine is fired with its propellants, producing actual combustion and exhaust. The only difference from an actual launch was that the boosters were not ignited — leaving Ariane 6 firmly planted on the launch pad.
“The teams from ArianeGroup, CNES and ESA have now run through every step of the rocket’s flight without it leaving Earth,” explained ESA director general Josef Aschbacher, who declared success means “We are back on track towards resecuring Europe’s autonomous access to space.”
Ariane 6 was first scheduled to launch four years ago. However, the rocket has suffered a series of delays, attributed to technical issues, COVID-19, and design changes. The rocket’s previous hot-fire test, in June, ended in failure.
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With its Ariane 6’s predecessor, Ariane 5, officially decommissioned and Italy’s Vega C rocket grounded following launch failure in December, Europe is now without independent access to space satellites.
Until Ariane 6 gets up and running, the EU is forced to contract the work to Elon Musk’s SpaceX — the company’s Falcon rocket is the only viable alternative for hauling large satellites into orbit.
Despite its setbacks, Ariane 6 has a number of institutional launches to carry out, not just for the ESA. It has been attracting commercial contracts, including 18 launches for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband megaconstellation project.
For now, ArianeGroup’s CEO Martin Sion praised the team for the “real industrial feat”, but added that “a few additional tests”, notably fault tolerance, were still needed before the rocket was ready for launch. The next test, of the upper stage, is set to take place this December.
Sandwiched between Germany, France, and Belgium, the tiny country of Luxembourg is one of Europe’s smallest, but also its wealthiest — its residents enjoy the second-highest per capita income in the world.
Key to this success is its thriving financial services sector which has helped draw several big names to the Grand Duchy, including the European Investment Bank and Amazon. It’s no surprise then that fintech has been identified as the tech sector with the greatest growth potential in the region.
Luxembourg was also one of the world’s biggest investors in AI per capita in 2021, surpassed only by Israel, the US, and Sweden (in that order). The National Research Fund has allocated €200mn to AI research projects over the past five years. To help power these advancements is Meluxina, one of Europe’s most powerful supercomputers.
While only home to 600,000 people, Luxembourg’s thriving economy, modern infrastructure, international workforce, and generous government grants, which cover up to 80% of R&D costs, allow it to punch above its weight as a hub for emerging tech startups.
Well-known success stories include social media analytics and monitoring tool Talkwalker, and online jobs board JobToday. OCSiAI, a producer of graphene nanotubes, made headlines in 2019 when it joined Europe’s growing list of tech unicorns.
Located in downtown Luxembourg City, House of Startups is the epicentre of the country’s tech ecosystem. Credit: House of Startups
“Although Luxembourg is a small country, it shares its borders with two of Europe’s biggest economies,” pointed out Kenneth Graham, CEO of Tomorrowstreet, a Luxembourg-based innovation centre that focuses on scaling late-stage deep tech startups.
“Half the population come from somewhere else and many have connections with people all over the world, including Silicon Valley and the UK. This diversity of thought really makes the country a special place to do business,” he said.
Almost 50% of Luxembourg’s workforce commute from neighbouring countries, and 80% of the population speaks English.
A 2022 report from Startup Genome found that startup funding deals in Luxembourg increased five-fold between 2012 and 2021. Notably, the availability of seed funding in the country is considerably higher when compared to peers with similar-sized economies. Although it performs worse when it comes to later-stage investments.
This growth is undoubtedly partly thanks to the emergence of multiple startup initiatives in recent years, such as the government-backed Fit4Star program. Another is House of Startups, a place where incubators, accelerators, investors, and startups are all housed under one roof in the downtown Gare district of Luxembourg City. Funded by the Chamber of Commerce, the centre houses a whopping 200 of the country’s 521 tech startups.
All of this puts Luxembourg’s tech ecosystem on track to continue its upward growth trajectory in coming years, not just in fintech but also SaaS, climatetech, spacetech, and manufacturing.
Five startups to watch
1. Circu Li-ion
Founded just two years ago, this climatetech startup has developed an automated upcycling solution that enables the sustainable recycling of lithium-ion cells for reuse at scale. Last month, the company raised €8.5mn in seed funding.
Circu Li-ion’s services come at an opportune moment for the company (and the planet), following the EU’s new battery regulation, which aims to ensure a circular economy and will require mandatory minimum levels of recycled elements for EV batteries.
2. Salonkee
Founded in 2016, Salonkee has developed an online reservation platform to streamline the booking of hair or beauty appointments. The startup has raised €35mn so far and is already profitable. It currently has 110 employees across offices in Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands.
3. Next Gate Tech
Next Gate Tech is a data-driven fintech that provides SaaS solutions for the asset management industry. Basically, it helps banks and the like automate the boring and repetitive aspects of data management (I thought it was all boring!). Since launching in 2020, the startup has raised €17mn, and is valued at close to €50mn, according to data from Dealroom.
4. OQ Tech
This spacetech startup has developed a constellation of satellites that allow IoT devices on Earth to stay connected even when there is no cellphone reception. It can also support bi-directional communication to machines such as banking ATMs in poor connectivity areas. Five of the company’s satellites are already in orbit. Oil and gas giant Saudi Aramco is OQ Tech’s largest customer and invested €13mn into the startup last year.
5. nZero
Last but not least is nZero, a carbon management platform that gives NGOs, government agencies, and organisations accurate data on their carbon emissions. It offers insights across all three emissions scopes, including embodied carbon which is often left out from many carbon calculating tools. So far the company has raised €15mn and racked in almost €8mn in revenues last year.
Ed Newton-Rex had reached a breaking point. As the vice president of audio at Stability AI, the 36-year-old was at the vanguard of a revolution in computational creativity. But there was growing unease about the movement’s strategy.
Stability was becoming an emerging powerhouse in generative AI. The London-based startup owns Stability Diffusion, one of the world’s most popular image generators. It also recently expanded into music generators with the September launch of Stable Audio — a tool developed by Newton-Rex himself. But these two systems were taking conflicting paths.
Stable Audio was trained on licensed music. The model was fed a dataset of over 800,000 files from the stock music library AudioSparx. Any copyrighted materials had been provided with permission.
Stable Diffusion had gone in a different direction. The system was trained on billions of images scraped from the web without the consent of creators. Many were copyrighted materials. All were taken without payment.
These images had taught the model well. Diffusion’s outputs pushed Stability to a valuation of $1bn in a $101mn funding round last year. But the system was attracting opposition from artists — including Newton-Rex.
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GenAI’s ethical dilemma
A pianist and composer as well as a GenAI pioneer, Newton-Rex was at odds with the unsanctioned scraping.
“I’ve always really wanted to make sure that these tools are built with the consent of the creators behind the training data,” he tells TNW on a video call from his home in Silicon Valley.
Stability was far from the only exponent of this method. The image generators MidJourney and Dall-E apply the same approach, as do OpenAI’s ChatGPT text generator and CoPilot programmer. Visual arts, written works, music, and even code are now constantly being reworked without consent.
In response, creators and copyright holders have launched numerouslawsuits. They’re angry that their work is being taken, adapted, and monetised without permission or remuneration. They’re also worried that their livelihoods are at stake.
“It’s in the AI industry’s interest to make people think that only the big players can do this.
Artists say that generative AI is stealing their work. The companies behind the systems disagree. In a recent submission to the US Copyright Office, Stability argued that the training was “fair use” because the results are “transformative” and “socially beneficial.”
Consequently, the company asserted, there was no copyright infringement. The practice could therefore continue without permission or payments. It was a claim that had become common in GenAI, but one that Newton-Rex disputed.
“It really showed where the industry as a whole stands right now — and it’s not it’s not a place I’m happy with,” he says.
Newton-Rex considers the practice of exploitation. Last week, he resigned from Stability in protest.
The departure doesn’t mean that Newton-Rex has quit generative AI. On the contrary, he plans to continue working in the field, but following a fairer model. It’s not the impossible mission that the GenAI giants might depict. In fact, it’s already been accomplished by a range of companies.
Alternatives are available
Newton-Rex has a long history in computational creativity. After studying music at Cambridge University, he founded Jukedeck, a pioneering AI composer. The app used machine learning to compose original music on demand. In 2019, it was acquired by TikTok owner Bytedance.
Newton-Rex then had spells as a product director at Tiktok and a chief product officer at Voicey, a music collaboration app that was acquired by Snap, before joining Stability AI last year. He was tasked with leading the startup’s audio efforts.
“I wanted to build a product in music generation that showed what can be done with actual licensed data — where you agree with the rights holders,” he says.
That objective put him at odds with many industry leaders. GenAI was edging into the mainstream and companies were rushing to ship new systems as quickly as possible. Scraping content from the web was an attractive shortcut.
It was also demonstrably effective. At that time, there were still doubts that the licensed datasets were large enough for training state-of-the-art models. Questions were also raised about the quality of the data. But both those assumptions are now being disproved.
“What we call training data is really human creative output.
Stable Audio provided one source of counter-evidence. The system’s underlying model was trained on licensed music in partnership with the rights holders. The resulting outputs have earned applause. Last month, Time named Stable Audio one of the best inventions of 2023.
“For a couple of months, it was the state-of-the-art in music generation — and it was trained on music that we’d licence,” Newton-Rex says. “To me, that showed that it can be done.”
Indeed, there’s now a growing list of companies showing that it can be done. One is Adobe, which recently released a generative machine-learning model called Firefly. The system is trained on images from Creative Commons, Wikimedia, and Flickr Commons, as well as 300 million pictures and videos in Adobe Stock and the public domain.
As this data is provided with permission, it’s safe for commercial use. Adobe also stressed that creators whose work is used will qualify for payments.
The pictures in this collage were generated by Adobe Firefly, which was trained on licensed images. Credit: Adobe
Another alternative model comes from Getty Images. In September, the company launched Generative AI by Getty Images, which is trained solely on the platform’s enormous library. Craig Peters, the firm’s CEO, said the tool addresses “commercial needs while respecting the intellectual property of creators.”
Nvidia has also developed GenAI in partnership with copyright holders. The tech giant’s Picasso service was trained on images licensed from Getty Images, Shutterstock, and Adobe. Nvidia said it plans to pay royalties.
These approaches won’t work for everyone. As mega-corps with deep content pools, the companies behind them have resources that few businesses can match. Yet startups are showing that licensing can also be done on a budget.
GenAI for the people
Bria AI has provided one example. The company has developed a new commercial open-source model for high-quality image generation. All the training is done on licenced datasets, which were created in collaboration with leading stock photo agencies and artists. A revenue-sharing model provides creators and rights-holding with compensation for their contribution
It’s a similar approach to the one Newton-Rex used at Stable Audio — but it’s not the only one.
Companies can also provide upfront payments to artists, create joint ventures that give rights holders equity in the business, or use content with a Creative Commons license, which can be freely re-used without explicit permission. GenAI firms may dismiss these efforts, but they have ulterior motives.
“It’s in the AI industry’s interest to make people think that only the big players can do this — but it’s not true,” Newton-Rex says.
“You might need to get a little inventive. You certainly have to do some negotiations and be willing to spend the time. But ultimately, what we call training data — and what is really human creative output — is a resource for tech companies. They need to work to get that in the same way they need to work to get any resource.”
If they’re willing to do that, GenAI can work in harmony with human artists. And hopefully, let all of us enjoy the creativity unleashed by them both.
Construction is a tough job, and in Europe there is a chronic shortage of workers to build the homes, schools, and roads we use every single day. So why not get a robot to do the hard work so we don’t have to?
That’s exactly what researchers at ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab in Switzerland are working on. They’ve trained an autonomous excavator to construct stone walls using boulders weighing several tonnes — without any human interference. In the machine’s first assignment, it built a six metre-high and 65 metre-long loading bearing wall. If scaled, the solution could to pave the way for faster, more sustainable construction.
Using LiDAR sensors, the excavator autonomously draws a 3D map of the construction site and identifies existing building blocks and stones for the wall. Specifically designed tools and machine vision (the ability of a computer to see) enable the excavator to scan and grab large stones in its immediate environment. It can also register their approximate weight as well as their centre of gravity.
An algorithm then determines the best position for each stone, and the excavator places each piece in the desired location to within a centimetre of accuracy. The autonomous machine can place 20 to 30 stones in a single consignment – about as many as one delivery could supply.
The researchers designed digital blueprints for the robotic digger to follow. Credit: ETH Zurich
The digger, named HEAP, is a modified Menzi Muck M545 developed by the researchers to test the potential of autonomous machines for construction. Because HEAP is so precise, it opens up the possibility of using locally sourced stones and rubble for the construction of walls, instead of new material like bricks.
The wall was constructed at an industrial park next to Zurich Airport, managed by Eberhard construction company. The firm is using the site, and various ETH Zurich technologies, to demonstrate ways to make construction more circular — by minimising waste to the greatest extent possible.
The use of autonomous diggers has been on the cards for a while now, not just in Switzerland. In 2017, US startup Built Robotics was founded to bring robot diggers into the mainstream. At the time, CEO Noah Ready-Campbell predicted that fully autonomous equipment would become commonplace on construction sites before fully autonomous cars hit public roads. But the idea has yet to advance beyond the prototype stage.
Automation is easiest to implement on repetitive tasks with predictable outcomes — like in manufacturing assembly lines. But a construction site is a complex, messy environment where safety if paramount. Similar to autonomous cars, the world is simply not yet ready for the widespread deployment of autonomous diggers, cranes, and trucks.
However, there are other applications of robotics technologies in construction that are being implemented right now. For instance, UK startup hyperTunnel combines swarm robotics and AI to excavate tunnels up to 10 times faster than conventional methods. The proposed process involves injecting the lining of a tunnel into the ground and then removing the waste using a swarm of small autonomous robotic vehicles.
Another area of rapid growth is the construction of homes using giant 3D printers, like those developed by Danish company COBOD. In the UK, a 36-home housing development is currently being built this way. Its proponents claim the huge robots will build the homes faster, safer, and more sustainably than traditional methods.
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Pavlov is a team-based multiplayer VR shooter with over 65 fully interactable weapons and limitless game modes is supported by a passionate and extensive modding community. On November 14th, 2023, Vankrupt Games released multiplayer FPS tactical shooter game Pavlov Shack onto the official Meta Quest store for the Quest 3, 2, and Pro for $19.99. This official release is bringing a lot more to the table than just 3 new official maps, bug fixes, and voice chat fidelity improvements. It also brings a new and improved mod kit: Pavlov Mod Kit 3.0.
With the new and improved mod kit on the official Quest Store version of Pavlov Shack, content creators can more easily share and implement their modded creations for the game. Now, content can be broken up into different content types such as Maps, Gamemodes, and Mods. It essentially decouples the content into more appropriate categories. More importantly, it allows more cross-pollination for multiple creators to implement each other’s work.
Modding is arguably the heart and soul of the Pavlov Shack community. Pavlov exploded on the PC scene in 2017 on Steam and was one of the first titles in the VR market to embrace User Generated Content. Players could download Unreal Engine 4 and create content easily. This original implementation spawned an explosion in content, from custom maps to custom game modes.
Custom sci-fi weapon being configured in the mod kit
Downloading content, however, used to be a pain with Pavlov’s early versions. You had to manually install the maps or rely on community servers for delivering the downloads to your headset. This isn’t ideal, as different servers would have different versions of the maps. Earlier this year, Pavlov Shack included a massive update that shifted from Unreal 4 to Unreal 5, but also included Mod.io support and a mod browser in-game to manage and download your content more gracefully.
There was a catch however, everything had to be contained in one UGC map file. Sharing content between creators was a painful process of zipping up projects entirely or exporting as plugins for other creators to download and implement with their own content.
A beautiful marble statue of the Vankrupt company pet Jared
With these new mod kit improvements, a creator who specializes in map design and struggles with using visual blueprint logic can now more easily set another mod or gamemode as a dependency, allowing them to implement the content from that other creator much more fluidly. It also provides the benefit of removing the versioning headaches. If a dependency is updated, such as a custom vehicle with a bug fix, then all subscribed content to that custom vehicle will receive the same update. Less sharing of zipped files and all the distribution is seamless.
We value our mod and map creators because it enriches the player experience by being able to generate unique and novel content at a much faster rate than Vankrupt Games could ever hope to achieve. Ultimately, this benefits the players and enriches the creators with the satisfaction they have access to a large player base to play their content. For example, popular mods like ‘Pavlov Kart’ puts players into a Pavlov meets Mario Kart world that is a unique experience created just for the Pavlov community by the Pavlov community. Due to improvements in Pavlov Shack’s mod kit 3.0, players are the true winners, as they will benefit from more and better game content.
Content can also be stacked on each other and multiple mod packs from different creators can be applied at once in unison. Additionally, the assets for those modpacks only need to be downloaded once, so content adopting the same mod dependencies also have the added benefit of reducing duplication of asset bloat, saving that precious storage space on the player’s headset.
Adjusting a prop in a custom map
The implications of this drastic change will take quite a bit of time to bear fruit, but the modding landscape of Pavlov Shack will look completely different in a year once the content creators shift to the new and more practical methods and understand the nuance of what can now be possible.
A UK-based startup is looking to breathe new life into a century-old technology that could power tropical island nations with virtually limitless, consistent, renewable energy.
Known as ocean thermal energy conversion or ‘OTEC,’ the technology was first invented in 1881 by French physicistJacques Arsene d’Arsonval. He discovered that the temperature difference between sun-warmed surface water and the cold depths of the ocean could be harnessed to generate electricity.
OTEC systems transfer heat from warm surface waters to evaporate a low-boiling point fluid like ammonia, creating steam that drives a turbine to produce electricity. As the vapour cools and condenses in contact with cold seawater pumped from the ocean’s depths, it completes the energy cycle.
How it works:
Gameplay
It’s your job to uncover the mystery behind your sire’s murder and reclaim a stolen relic, all of which is set in the claustrophobic alleys and sprawling sewers of Venice—yes, the world-famous sewer systemof Venice. You know, the Italian island-city built on wooden stilts. With canals. And no basements. Because of the water. Ok, you’ll need to suspend disbelief only a tad more than you might normally for a fantasy world filled with vampiric factions, but not by much. After all, you can suck blood from people (and rats!), teleport around, and shoot mini-bolts formed from your own life force out of a Fisher-Price crossbow. What’s a sewer level or three? It’s all gravy.
Like pretty much all World of Darkness stuff, Justice is pretty pulpy when it comes to the narrative. If you’re not already an acolyte of the universe, the game does a pretty good job of introducing you to a few of the main vampire factions that come to a head. Still, you won’t need to absorb much of it, as it leads you by the hand through some pretty well-trodden territory which will probably feel like home for anyone who’s a fan of the gothic-punk vibe in general. That said, the suitably schlocky narrative spends a little too much time in the foreground for my tastes, especially considering it’s such a cookie-cutter tale with some pretty interchangeable villains and objectives.
For a game that mostly nails the ethereal feel of apparating onto the ledge of a building and blasting through an unsuspecting bad guy, I was really hoping it would provide me with a sort of Hitman-esque challenge of solving missions with my own creativity. Instead, it all feels a little hemmed in. Levels are typically large, although missions are entirely linear, meaning you’ll have to complete specific objectives that are force-fed to you by Pietro, your vampire pal and chief quest-giver. Don’t let that dialogue box fool you. You’re doing whatever Pietro says, even if you decide to be a little snotty about it. Anyway, that’s how it is with everyone you talk to in the game though, so it’s fine I guess?
Image captured by Road to VR
The game is pretty intent on taking you by the hand to do most everything. By default, objectives are highlighted automatically, providing you with a far-off direction to point towards as you navigate through whoever and whatever is your way. You can see the little yellow geometric icon through the walls, which is more convenient than having to constantly refer to a map, but significantly less satisfying since it comes at the cost of exploration. I know that’s a thing in traditional gaming, but it feels just a little too abstracted in VR without giving me some sort of reason. Some cool AR glasses maybe? Nope. Vampires can just see objective markers.
Additionally, you can also activate a vampiric sense that gives you a whispy trail towards intermediary objectives, which most often times are keys to open doors. You can abuse it as much as you want, which is a clear temptation when you’re just looking to get to the ‘Mission Complete’ screen.
Image captured by Road to VR
That said, the game’s combat is a high point, offering you several ways to dispatch baddies. Kills feel iconic and fun, although the skill difficulty is almost comically low since bad guys just never look up—not even if you call attention to yourself by dropping a brick or beer bottle. You can saunter around ledges and scurry up drainpipes to your heart’s content, never being in any danger, save the two or three times in the game when there’s a sniper.
And yes, the game’s singular way of getting from ledge to ledge is teleporting, which may disappoint anyone who was looking for a parkour experience. Still, it feels right here since it’s actually a vampire superpower, although I can see why some people may miss hitting ‘A’ for jump.
Image courtesy Fast Travel Games
It’s not all rooftop-trawling at midnight though. When you need to move among them at street level, you really have one of two real options: go ham and kill before you catch two or three bullets, putting you back to your last automatic save point, or use some of your life force by turning invisible and walking right on by. Enemies seem to have radios, but it doesn’t appear they know how to use them very well, as you’ll kill a dude, his friend will come over and be like “oh no!” and then he’ll wander away eventually because you’re sitting on a ledge just above his head.
You can also always see where baddies are in level, since your vampire abilities not only provide a yellow highlighted heart icon, but also a cone that indicates which way they’re looking at any given time. Basically, the only way to be caught off guard is to close your eyes.
These aren’t the only ways to skin a cat, although you’ll probably land on your favorite method pretty quickly, as all enemies are basically the same, save three bosses you have to contend with. Different powers can be purchased in-game via XP, which includes things like that invisibility cloak ability, but also powerful and noisy attacks that boil the blood of victims until they explode. You can also set a something called a Shadow Trap that opens a pit to hell, but I found my own method pretty much the only real tactic for quick and easy kills. Using the crossbow, you can fire sleep-inducing bolts into everyone but bosses, and either knock them out to sneak by, or keep them still so you can suck their blood. It’s a pretty handy little device that feels well designed in terms of VR interactions, as it requires you to craft bolts, load individually, and cock back manually. You really don’t need anything else to beat the game, which took me about eight hours.
In the end, Justice has some really solid footing in terms of combat and level design, but it doesn’t really know how to leverage both of these things to make enemy encounters continuously feel fresh and engaging since baddies are fairly dumb and easy to kill. Besides some environmental puzzles, there aren’t a lot of objectives out there that I really used my brain to complete, as most of it’s a breadcrumb trail to the next thing and some dudes in the way.
Immersion
Justice feels like it wants to be an open-world game, but as we all know, that’s an order of magnitude more costly to build, which just isn’t in the cards for this decidedly more cheap and cheerful $30 adventure. While there is an ‘over world’ that you can freely prowl around, simply called ‘The Streets’, it really only serves as an intermediate area between you and the actual mission at hand. You can kill a dude to get some health before heading in, but there’s really not much going on.
Image courtesy Fast Travel Games
That honestly doesn’t bother me, since the game never promised that. What does bother me though is unreliable object interaction. Like we noted in our preview earlier this year, object interaction feels flighty and not nearly as solid as it should be. Manipulating levers and other puzzle elements is a crapshoot, and picking up a rat-sized snack is basically like doing surgery with mittens. This does a great deal to hamper immersion, as it feels like the game really isn’t at home with up close interactions, preferring instead to relegate most of its interactions to superpower moves, crossbow shooting, and force-grabbing.
While a little rough around the edges, its set pieces and level design are both very good, providing a constantly changing environment that feels like it’s modeled after the real-world Venice (save the sewers). Justice is mostly awesome-looking, and I only wish there were more of it to explore and interact with, as it does an excellent job of creating a believable underworld in a fantasy version of Venice.
Comfort
You’ll be zipping around a lot in Justice, although since it entirely relies on teleportation to move from plane to plane, it does a lot to mitigate confort issues. Playing for hours on end wasn’t an issue for me, and that’s coming from someone who never uses smooth turning as an option for the fear of the dreaded flop sweats. Both lateral and forward motion can be mitigated by variable vignettes, which is a neat little extra that will make sure most anyone can play Justice from start to finish without issue.
‘Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice’ Comfort Settings – October 31st, 2023
Turning
Artificial turning
✔
Snap-turn
✔
Quick-turn
✖
Smooth-turn
✔
Movement
Artificial movement
✔
Teleport-move
✔
Dash-move
✖
Smooth-move
✔
Blinders
✔
Head-based
✔
Controller-based
✖
Swappable movement hand
✖
Posture
Standing mode
✔
Seated mode
✔
Artificial crouch
✔
Real crouch
✔
Accessibility
Subtitles
✔
Languages
English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese
World leaders and tech titans are currently descending on southern England for an AI safety summit, but the flashy event isn’t impressing everyone.
Over the next two days, around 100 bigwigs will attend the event at the historic Bletchley Park, a country estate around 90km north of London. During World War Two, the site was home to the codebreakers who cracked Nazi Germany’s notorious Enigma encryption device. Some 80 years later, the British government wants to show that the UK is still a tech superpower — but the plans have caused alarm.
Critics have various concerns. They worry that the summit organisers are spellbound by “frontier AI,” famous names, and far-flung fears, while overlooking more pressing and inclusive issues.
A show-stealing late addition to the schedule elevated their suspicions. On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak revealed that he will be “in conversation” with Elon Musk on X.
Musk adds further lustre to a star-studded guest list.
Among the invitees are several political heavyweights, including US Vice President Kamala Harris, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and Chinese Vice Minister Wu Zhaohui.
Also in attendance are various tech titans, such as Microsoft President Brad Smith, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Meta AI chief Yann LeCun. But the event is not for everyone.
“My fear is that the summit will focus on headline-grabbing existential threats.
Much of the tech sector feels that only industry giants and political leaders will be seated at Sunak’s conference table.
Dr Hector Zenil, the founder of healthcare startup Oxford Immune Algorithmics, is worried that the event will be dominated by generative AI and big tech. He has called on Sunak to involve a greater balance of commercial and academic representation.
“If the AI Safety Summit is to be judged a success — or at least on the right path to creating consensus on AI safety, regulation, and ethics — then the UK government must strive to create an even playing field for all parties to discuss the future use cases for the technology,” Zenil said.
“The Summit cannot be dominated by those corporations with a specific agenda and narrative around their commercial interests, otherwise this week’s activities will be seen as an expensive and misleading marketing exercise.”
Zenil’s views are common across the sector. Among the industry insiders who share his unease is Victor Botev, the CTO and co-founder of Iris.ai, an Oslo-based startup.
A former AI researcher at Chalmers University and now a business leader, Botev wants broader representation from both academia and industry at the meeting.
“It is vital for any consultation on AI regulation to include perspectives beyond just the tech giants,” he said. “Smaller AI firms and open-source developers often pioneer new innovations, yet their voices on regulation go unheard. The summit missed a great opportunity by only including 100 guests, who are primarily made up of world leaders and big tech companies.”
Venture capitalists have raised similar concerns.
“Going forward, we also must have more voices for startups themselves. The AI safety summit’s focus on big tech, and shutting out of many in the AI startup community, is disappointing,” said Ekaterina Almasque, General Partner at European VC OpenOcean.
“It is vital that industry voices are included when shaping regulations that will directly impact technological development.”
Frontier AI apocalypses
The glitzy guestlist has been accompanied by a fittingly dramatic agenda. This combination, critics say, is a distraction from more pressing concerns.
They note that the programme will exclusively focus on “frontier” AI systems — a hazy term for advanced, general-purpose AI models. In a recent government report, the term “frontier AI” was applied almost entirely to large language models (LLMs) — particularly OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Zenil suspects the focus has been influenced by CEOs who are invested in this field. He wants the government to take a broader view.
“It is absolutely critical that the UK has a coherent strategy for AI that encompasses all aspects of the technology and different models. Above all, this is important because no one approach will become the ‘silver bullet’ for AI adoption,” he said.
“If the AI Summit at Bletchley Park and the AI advisory committee are dominated by individuals with a particular research or commercial focus for AI, then it will make it harder to develop regulatory frameworks which reflect all the potential use cases.”
Zenil has also worked as a senior researcher for the government-funded Alan Turing Institute. Credit: Oxford Immune Algorithmics
Another cause of consternation is the summit’s focus on “extreme” hypothetical threats and doomsday scenarios. Sunak has personally highlighted these cataclysmic possibilities.
“In the most unlikely but extreme cases, there is even the risk that humanity could lose control of AI completely through the kind of AI sometimes referred to as super intelligence,” he said last week.
Such apocalyptic prospects, critics argue, are dramatically overblown. Some blame the media for inflating the dangers, while others argue that tech bosses exaggerate the risks to conceal the real and present problems that they’re creating.
They are more concerned about the tangible threats of climate change, biases against marginalised groups, and cyber-attacks. They note, for instance, that a recent study found that Google’s AI could soon consume as much electricity as Ireland.
Almasque, from VC firm OpenOcean, fears the summit’s priorities are skewed.
“It looks likely to focus mostly on bigger, long-term risks from AI, and far less on what needs to be done, today, to build a thriving AI ecosystem,” she said. “It’s like a startup worrying about its IPO price before it’s raised seed funding.”
These concerns are shared by Natalie Cramp, CEO of data company Profusion, which has previously advised the UK government. She is wary of the fixation on an imaginary future.
“My fear is that the AI safety summit will focus on headline-grabbing existential threats at the expense of the more mundane problems that have the capacity to do a lot of damage right now,” Cramp said.
Natalie Cramp, CEO at data company Profusion.
The build-up to the summit has amplified the dissent. Ahead of the event, Sunak revealed a core component of his plan will be a new “world-first” AI safety institute.
Dr Asress Gikay, a senior lecturer in AI at Brunel University London, was unimpressed by the announcement. Gikay is dismissive of the institute’s aim to prompt international agreements. She suspects that Sunak has ulterior motivations.
“The Prime Minister seems more focused on making political statements by unrealistic and unachievable agendas rather than addressing more pressing and attainable issues, such as domestic AI investment and the development of a robust policy and regulatory framework for responsible AI at the national level,” she said.
Taking chances
Amid the scepticism, there is also optimism about the AI summit’s potential. The big-name attendees and international media attention suggest the UK can be a key player in global developments.
The country’s thriving AI sector adds credibility to the event, while its pro-innovation approach to regulation provides a point of differentiation from European Union governance. Britain’s unique international position could also provide a bridge between the US, EU, and China.
Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability AI —which develops the Stable Diffusion text-to-image model — is among the high-profile supporters of the summit.
“The UK has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to become an AI superpower and ensure that AI benefits all, not just big tech,” he said.
Botev, the co-founder of Iris.ai, is more cautiously hopeful. He is upbeat about the summit’s potential, but worried that the government may make a rash decision for a front-page news story.
“With the global AI community watching, the UK should resist this urge,” he said. “The summit is a chance for the UK to chart a global direction on AI governance, ensuring progress without compromising safety. With care and wisdom, the UK can develop forward-thinking regulations that promote innovation while establishing trust.”
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