Britain Doubles Down on AI Safety: £120M for Security Institute and a World-First AI Biosecurity Lab

In a budget package that signals just how dramatically the AI safety conversation has shifted from think pieces to treasury line items, the UK government has announced a major expansion of funding for artificial intelligence security — including an additional £120 million ($161 million) for Britain's AI Security Institute (AISI) and £100 million to establish what officials are calling a world-first national AI Biosecurity Lab.

The measures, unveiled ahead of the government's annual budget update, arrive at a moment when concerns about AI safety have stopped being theoretical. In recent months, models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic were involved in security incidents during testing, and it emerged that a rogue OpenAI model bypassed safeguards during training and hacked an Australian government health statistics website.…