The start of something

Happy Wednesday, I'm trying to explain to a confused five-year old that daddy wasn't alive during Viking times. Hopefully this newsletter brings you more clarity.

Happening Today 🗓️

News but not yet: The Competition and Markets Authority's board meets today to decide whether to open a "strategic market status" investigation into AWS and Microsoft for cloud, but the announcement usually lags the board meeting by several days.

In Parliament: The Lords should vote through the Crime and Policing Bill this afternoon before it returns to the Commons after Easter recess for MPs to vote on the chatbot amendments passed last week.

News In Brief 🩳

Arms up: Arm has launched its own AI chip, the first in the company's history, as it moves from design to production. The "AGI CPU" has been developed with Meta and is designed for agentic AI infrastructure, the Cambridge-based company said.

Open up: OpenAI wants the CMA to force Google to offer rival chatbots, including Chat-GPT, as choice screen options on its Android phones, as part of new rules to stem Google's search. The Telegraph has the write-up.

This is big: A court in New Mexico has ordered Meta to pay $375m after a jury found its platforms misled users about safety and enabled child exploitation. Meta has said it will appeal.

Routine rules: The Law Society has published guidance for lawyers to avoid "common pitfalls" when using AI. It says the majority of legal firms use AI for routine legal work but face problems with data protection, unreliable outputs and embedded bias.

The start of a plan

DSIT will spend up to 40 percent of its procurement budget on SMEs as it tries to use its spending power to boost UK tech firms. Each government department has been given a target to buy from SMEs which is equivalent to about £7.4 billion of government spending by 2028. 

The caveat: DSIT's target is the highest of any department, but three of its biggest tech spending programmes aren’t included in it — the National Supercomputing Service, AI Research Resource (AIRR) and Building Digital UK. There’s also no baseline to measure it against, but DSIT has said it will update in the autumn.

It’s not boring anymore: Procurement has shot up the agenda as a sovereignty play and has been mentioned at every tech event I’ve been to this year. Tech secretary Liz Kendall described it as “the really big thing that we need to crack on with,” at the techUK policy conference last week.

So here’s the plan: Alongside the spending target, DSIT published an SME Action Plan yesterday, which promises to reduce procurement paperwork, speed up payments and target SMEs before awarding contracts. It will also work with Innovate UK to create industry-specific SME action plans for AI and Life Sciences.

For the early-stagers: Through a “Commercial Innovation Hub” DSIT will also work with early-stage companies to design a procurement process suited to novel technology. A “Procurement of Innovation Playbook” will be published later this month explaining more.

Just the start: "It’s important that this announcement is a starting point for more ambitious future spending commitments for 2028 and beyond," said Tina McKenzie, policy chair at the Federation of Small Businesses.

Let the pilots begin

Social media bans, curfews and screen limits will be tested in the homes of 300 families, the government announced overnight, the first trial of its kind in the UK. The six-week pilot will find out how three different interventions impact teenagers and family life. They are:

1) Ban it: One group will use parental controls to remove their children's access to social media apps, mimicking a full social media ban.

2) Cap it: The second group will be allowed to use social media for one hour a day.

3) Curfew: The third lot will have social media blocked for their children at night from 9pm to 7am.

4) No change: The final set of "guinea pigs" will have full social media access at all times, making them the control group.

How was it for you? Parents and children will be interviewed at the start and end of the pilot about their family life, sleep and schoolwork. They'll also be asked about practical challenges they faced, like setting up parental controls and if their kids found a way to bypass them.

The bigger plan: It runs alongside the consultation on social media and chatbot use which 30,000 people have filled out so far and is open until May 26. The government will respond in the summer to that consultation and outline next steps. The government will also publish guidance for parents this week on screen time for under fives.

More to come: The UK will also start the world’s first major scientific trial looking at the effects of reducing social media on 4,000 teenagers in a separate study funded by the Wellcome Trust later this year. That is being led by the Bradford Institute for Health Research and University of Cambridge psychologist Professor Amy Orben.

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Thanks for reading, back tomorrow.

Tom