Ministers have accepted $1 million (£728,000) from US tech and social media company Meta to build AI systems for defence, national security and transport, prompting warnings about the UK government’s “worryingly close ties with Trump-supporting US tech giants”.
The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) announced on Tuesday that money from Mark Zuckerberg’s company will be used to pay experts to “develop cutting-edge AI solutions to support national security and defense teams.”
The money will pay for four British AI experts coordinated by the government-funded Alan Turing Institute to “play a vital role in reimagining our healthcare, policing, transport systems and more”, said Ian Murray, the government minister for data and digital.
The move comes after Meta executives held 50 meetings with ministers over the past two years for which data was available, one of the highest levels of direct access of any technology company, a Guardian investigation found.
The government is consulting on banning the use of social media by people under 16, which would have a major impact on Meta’s Instagram platform. Meta said the money was allocated to the Alan Turing Institute before any restrictions were implemented.
Announcing the $1 million deal, Meta said it was “proud to help bring top British AI talent into government, while fast-tracking the transformation of public services”.
DSIT said: “People across the UK can benefit from faster, safer and more reliable public services as leading British AI experts join the government to modernize the critical systems we use every day, from public safety to transport maintenance.”
But tech justice campaign group Foxglove asked: “What is Meta getting for its million dollars?” It says: “When it comes to big tech, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
Donald Campbell, advocacy director at Foxglove, said, “This is further evidence of the UK government’s worryingly close relationship with Trump-supporting US tech giants.” “It is deeply worrying that ministers are still naive enough to swallow this kind of lobbying from a handful of Silicon Valley oligarchs – who have proven beyond doubt that they do not have the best interests of the British public at heart.”
Daisy Greenwell, co-founder of the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign, said the deal “highlights an inconvenient reality: tech giants spend huge sums of money to gain access and influence in policymaking”.
He added: “This makes it even more important that decisions about children and online safety are driven by independent evidence and the public interest, not by the companies whose products are under scrutiny.”
The government also announced a new partnership with San Francisco AI company Anthropic, which will build and operate a dedicated support tool for public services on gov.uk, starting with a model that will provide career advice to job seekers “and help lock down a job”. Anthropic said the project implementation work was “pro bono”.
DSIT said the technology is “part of a cutting-edge plan to use AI agents for national government services, with a pilot project expected to begin later this year”. In October, Anthropic announced that former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was taking on an advisory role to the $350 billion startup. Former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith is a policy and communications adviser to Anthropic.
The deals come as ministers grapple with policy decisions that directly affect Meta and Anthropic. As well as launching a consultation last week on banning social media use for people under 16, they are also set to make changes to how to protect copyrighted works of creatives from being mined to create AI models, such as those created by Anthropic.
Beeban Kidron, a cross-bench peer who campaigns on child protection and copyright, said: “This government is driving dependence on Silicon Valley, reducing the opportunity to build a UK AI sector, and above all it is busy handing over some of the world’s most precious datasets to Silicon Valley who can afford to pay.”
Meta-funded AI experts will be tasked with using AI to develop models that analyze images and video, enabling councils to more effectively prioritize repairs to transport infrastructure. “They will also develop cutting-edge AI solutions that run offline or within secure networks to assist national security and defense teams in taking critical decisions while protecting sensitive data,” the government said.
