Staff at the UK’s national institute for artificial intelligence have warned that its credibility is in “serious jeopardy” and raised doubts over the organisation’s future amid senior departures and a cost-cutting programme.
More than 90 staff at the government-backed Alan Turing Institute have written to its board of trustees expressing concerns about its leadership.
The letter warns that a redundancy programme, which could affect about 140 of ATI’s 440 staff, has put the institute’s credibility at risk.
“With programmes and their teams all slated ‘at risk’ of redundancy, the future of the Turing’s ability to be a serious scientific organisation is now in serious jeopardy,” the letter reads.
The staff members warned that ATI was being left behind as the technology, epitomised by the ChatGPT chatbot, developed rapidly.
“Both the community and cutting-edge has moved ahead without us, whilst we are publicly and privately criticised for being behind the curve,” the letter adds.
The letter also claims that recent employee departures have damaged ATI’s ability to “deliver against existing contractual commitments”, without naming partnerships that might be at risk.
Claiming that “numerous” grant awards have fallen through recently due to concerns about ATI’s performance, it adds: “If these failures continue, the institute’s financial viability and ability to secure future funding will be severely compromised.”
ATI confirmed to the Guardian that two out of four recently appointed directors of science and innovation have left the institute since their appointment in February.
The letter asks the board of trustees, which is chaired by Douglas Gurr, the director of the Natural History Museum, to intervene and hold ATI’s leadership “accountable” for failing to properly implement a newly established strategy for the institute. It adds that if the board does not act, the institute “risks a very serious and public failure”.
The institute, named after the British mathematician widely considered the father of modern computing, was founded in 2015 as a national institute for data science before adding AI to its remit in 2017.
Its goals include to “advance world-class research and apply it to national and global challenges”, as well as driving an “informed public conversation” on AI, a subject that has climbed up the political agenda following recent breakthroughs including ChatGPT. Its five founding universities were Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, UCL and Warwick.
A spokesperson for ATI, which is a registered charity and governed by a board of trustees, said the institute had recently secured £100m from the government in a five-year funding deal and said the board was “actively supporting the leadership team” as it implemented a new strategy. The strategy, dubbed “Turing 2.0”, focuses on three key areas: health, the environment, and defence and security.
The spokesperson added that the institute’s work was having a “real-world impact” including developing methodology for assessing the human rights risk associated with AI and working with the Met Office to improve weather forecasting.
Jean Innes, ATI’s chief executive, said: “We are shaping a new phase for the Turing in line with an ambitious strategy set by our board and endorsed by our core funder. This will see us collaborating with partners across the ecosystem to use data science and AI to deliver real-world impact on issues like climate and environmental change, improving health and protecting people from defence and security threats.”
