Staff disquiet as Alan Turing Institute faces identity crisis
53 comments
·August 18, 2025nmeofthestate
trentnix
Without knowing any details, I'm guessing what's happened is the inevitable result that befalls organizations as predicted by Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
prox
And as Douglas Adams stated in the problem with ruling axiom, is that under no circumstance should you allow someone who gets themselves in a position to rule, rule.
JumpCrisscross
> under no circumstance should you allow someone who gets themselves in a position to rule, rule.
Unfortunately the opposite is also true, as anyone who's served on a non-profit board with noncommital members knows.
Der_Einzige
At least some greek states used to assign leadership in a lottery system designed in such a way partially to avoid the issues with this...
derefr
I don't think you need to read between the lines. The lede is buried, but explicit:
> This is part of an overhaul dubbed Turing 2.0 under which the institute will focus on three key areas: health, the environment, and defence and security.
They're trying to make the organization into a defense subcontractor (with a few side-projects for image maintenance), and purging anyone who isn't interested in that mission.
ok123456
Yes, we're pretty accustomed to these non-specific accusations of "toxicisity" at this point. It's code for "my pet projects and initiatives have been cut because they produce little of value."
netbioserror
There are plenty of anthropological, sociological, and philosophical arguments that this is inevitable for any organization. Once visionaries in any organization of any size are gone, the priorities of its members are proportionally dominated over time by simple self-preservation.
stego-tech
> Once visionaries in any organization of any size are gone, the priorities of its members are proportionally dominated over time by simple self-preservation.
This. It’s also nigh impossible for new visionaries to succeed in an organization because of that self-preservation of the existing ruling political class. Visionaries show loyalty to the org, not the people, and that makes them a prime target for harassment and cuts as a result.
Smart orgs keep visionaries in charge, but accountable.
trentnix
And when they can't suppress visionaries within the organization, the ruling class finds other ways to preserve their power. Today the entrenched companies, organizations, and government bureaucracies collaborate to write the laws and regulations and pursue predatory competitive strategies that suppress new competitors and preserve their power.
There are always good reasons for why X law or Y regulation exists or why Z company is given preferences and even subsidies. But the visionaries are undermined all the same.
Angostura
I’m sure exactly those words were said about Turin
logifail
> “The ATI brand is well recognised internationally,” says Dame Wendy Hall, a professor of computer science at the University of Southampton and the co-chair of a 2017 government AI review. “If it ceases to be the national institute for AI and data science then we are at risk of weakening our international leadership in AI.”
'our [UK?] international leadership in AI' -> citation needed?
jlokier
DeepMind was founded in London, UK and still headquartered there, and is one of the leaders in the field..
Notable well-known things from DeepMind are AlphaGo (the first time a computer beat a world champion at Go), AlphaFold (resulting in a Nobel prize). Gemini (LLM, a variant of which is used in Google search results) and Gemma (open-weights LLMs).
They were acquired by Google, so you could argue they aren't centred in the UK any more, but I still think they qualify as international leadership in AI coming from the UK.
goobert
Instead of founding this institute and spending however much they did on it they should have just protected DeepMind and not allowed it to have been sold to Google
nemomarx
What international leadership in AI does the UK have? any models produced?
sobiolite
DeepMind was founded and is still headquartered in London.
logifail
"DeepMind Technologies Limited, trading as Google DeepMind or simply DeepMind, is a British–American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Founded in the UK in 2010, it was acquired by Google in 2014 and merged with Google AI's Google Brain division to become Google DeepMind in April 2023"
Q: Is the HQ nominally being in London at all relevant given it was acquired by Alphabet/Google? I'm sure the accountants have the tax status all sorted by now...
eab-
a lot of the researchers are still in london
shkkmo
It's not just the HQ, the only AI researcher I know personally is an American who moved to London to work on AI with DeepMind well after the acquisition.
Temporary_31337
When it was founded in 2014 it was criticized as yet another glass building in London (technically a floor in this case) in a very prestigious location. And indeed as you could a lot of the funding went into the building, maintenance, events/catering and you could see random freeloaders loosely associated with the Institute using the space as a free coworking space. I think since the beginning, the PhD funding was great idea as you could do your research towards current issues, somewhat outside of the usual rusty academic echo chambers. But the fact that you were supposed to commute to the central London location, a lot of the grant went on train tickets or accommodation. As an early LLM adopter / practitioner, I went there for some sessions on AI Ethics and such and did not see that it was worth the millions pumped into the institution as we saw that whatever Captain Obvious insights (guardrails, data protection etc) came out of the Institute were completely ignored by the US giants. The current political twist toward practical applications in defence might actually be good for the institute as they will actually be able to practice some applied science but frankly I don't have much hope that my tax payer money is being put to good use here - it's always been a desperate scream for relevance and there's more and more of this action free nonsense coming from the government, like the recent OpenAI memorandum https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/memorandum-of-und...
fossuser
This is sort of the problem with nonprofits and NGOs generally - they have bad incentives, are easily corrupted, and attract people that don't create any value.
It's the communist form of a company and shares similar failures. IMO we're better off just not having them for the most part.
alephnerd
An earlier discussion on HN about this issue.
What went wrong with the Alan Turing Institute? (April 2024): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43493313
cbeach
> In March last year more than 180 staff wrote a letter to leadership expressing “serious concerns” about the organisation’s approach to diversity after it appointed four men to senior roles.
Looks like activists pushing DEI have infiltrated this organisation, like many others in the UK.
gedy
> "In March last year more than 180 staff wrote a letter to leadership expressing “serious concerns” about the organisation’s approach to diversity after it appointed four men to senior roles"
This is part of the "identity crisis"?
fossuser
I'm only a little surprised they're not protesting the "Alan Turing" name itself - being gay isn't good enough for them anymore. The same crew would probably also complain about his defense work generally.
eltondegeneres
Seeing how Alan Turing was chemically castrated by the UK government for his sexuality, the Institute's staff might see diversity as an implicit part of the org's identity.
dmix
Turing was a pioneer in technology. The organization's mandate and reason for it's funding is as a "national institute for data science and artificial intelligence". Putting Turing's name on it doesn't mean the organization must serve primarily as a performant or symbolic role to his sexuality.
And regardless it sounds like the gender ratio is in line with STEM averages (or even above average).
> At ATI, management at the scientific leadership level referred to in the letter – people who oversee research into AI – has six women to 13 men, a split of approximately 32%-68%. The gender split among ATI’s total staff of 560 people is 53% male and 47% female.
logifail
[flagged]
ryandv
Monty Python seems especially appropriate here.
> It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression! [0]
taneq
Alright, you can have the right to have babies.
theossuary
I mean go ahead and pretend you're black or whatever, I'm sure that'll go over well with the people you work with every day. There are some real weirdos on this site
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bell-cot
Lots of talk about Alan Turing's "legacy" being at stake, "cornerstones", and such - when the story admits that the Institute is only 11 years old. And that the gov't cut & pasted Turing's name onto the front door, 60 years after his death.
And trying to read the article - the narcissistic Dilbert-speak never stops.
Theory: The ATI was founded purely as an exercise in pretentious political posturing. And even on Day 1, it was so badly infested with self-serving third-raters that there never was any chance of it succeeding.
tonyarkles
And uhhh... while us computer science types know him for vast contributions to our field... the biggest contribution that the UK Government likely cared about at the time was a massive contribution to (inter)national security and defence!
theossuary
Maybe they should just start again. Taking the name of a man who the state chemically castrated and drove to suicide and putting it on an institution being repurposed from public good to defense of the state seems grotesque to me.
incone123
Given Alan Turing's work in the defense field, I do not think it grotesque to put his name on defence work.
theossuary
If he had done that work after they castrated him and drove him to suicide, sure, but that wasn't the order of events.
aurumque
Let's not forget just how much of Alan Turing's work went towards "defense of the state" before they discarded him. Even with the royal pardon, my biggest gripe is that they continue to use his name and likeness for anything government affiliated.
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0ct4via
Non-paywall link: https://archive.is/yMt9Q
Reading between the lines - actually, just reading the lines - it sounds like another organisation that got infested with the kind of people who are apt to ruin organisations, and perhaps an attempt it being made to fumigate it, and they don't like that.