> "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"
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...
> “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?
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
> 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.
If you change the sex and it becomes a sexist statement, it was always a sexist statement.
"ATI has recently notified about 50 staff – or approximately 10% of its workforce – that they are at risk of redundancy and is shutting down projects related to online safety, tackling the housing crisis and reducing health inequality."
>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.
These are not serious people interested in cutting edge AI research.
16 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 49.6 ms ] threadThis is part of the "identity crisis"?
'our [UK?] international leadership in AI' -> citation needed?
What went wrong with the Alan Turing Institute? (April 2024): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43493313
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.
Looks like activists pushing DEI have infiltrated this organisation, like many others in the UK.
If you change the sex and it becomes a sexist statement, it was always a sexist statement.
Why did they have projects in those areas at all?
These are not serious people interested in cutting edge AI research.