UK government under pressure to change non-compete rules

Ah, marvellous. The UK government, which has spent a decade declaring itself a 'world leader in AI,' is now under pressure to change non-compete rules because the very minds it claims to champion are being turned into potted plants. Researchers and startups argue that garden leave clauses imposed by companies like DeepMind prevent researchers from starting new companies — which, in case you were wondering, is rather the point. In California, you can leave Google on Tuesday and incorporate on Wednesday; in Britain, a senior AI researcher faces a full year of paid gardening, presumably to cultivate the roses while their ideas decompose quietly.

The delicious irony is that this anti-competitive horticulture is dressed up as 'protecting trade secrets.' DeepMind, now an Alphabet subsidiary, apparently fears that a departing researcher might recall the exact wiring of a transformer. The government's likely response, no doubt, will be a consultation paper — because nothing says 'we're serious about AI' like a process that takes longer than the garden leave itself. The entrepreneurs who could be building the next DeepMind are instead weeding the borders of their property in Hertfordshire, while the competition — possibly in California, where people actually do things — sprints ahead.

Meanwhile, the Treasury wrings its hands about an AI brain drain while directly funding the corporate machinery that causes it. The pressure to change the rules comes not from Downing Street's sudden attack of common sense but from startups screaming into the void. One suspects the only thing more inevitable than a UK AI boom is a new parliamentary select committee convened to inquire into why the last one never arrived. Jolly good. The year-long garden leave for senior researchers remains in force, and Britain's most ambitious AI researchers are, at this very moment, learning a great deal about bedding plants.