The Alan Turing Institute is the United Kingdom's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, founded in 2015 and largely funded by the UK government. It is named after Alan Turing,[1] the British mathematician and computing pioneer.
Funding for the creation of the institute came from a £600m investment for the "Eight Great Technologies",[5] and specifically so-called "big data", signalled by the UK Government in 2013[6] and announced by George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the 2014 budget.[7] The bulk of the investment in "big data" was directed to computational infrastructure. Of the remainder, £42m was allocated to the institute to cover the first five years of its operation.[7] The five founder universities each contributed £5m to the institute.[8] Further funding has come primarily through grants from Research Councils, university partners and from strategic and other partnerships.[9]
Concurrently with the selection of founder universities, the EPSRC initiated a process to find a "location partner". The resulting selection of the British Library in London was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in December 2014 during the launch of the Knowledge Quarter, a partnership of organisations in and around the King's Cross area of the capital.[13]
As of 2023, the Alan Turing Institute is housed within the current British Library building, but it is anticipated it will occupy new premises in a development planned on land between the Francis Crick Institute and library.[14] In February 2023 the plans for the new building were approved by the local council.[15]
Background
The Alan Turing Institute was founded following a letter from the Council for Science and Technology (CST) to the UK prime minister (7 June 2013), describing the "Age of Algorithms". The letter presented a case that "The Government, working with the universities and industry, should create a National Centre to promote advanced research and translational work in algorithms and the application of data science".
The Alan Turing Institute fits into a complex organisational landscape that includes the Open Data Institute, the Digital Catapult and infrastructure investments. The role of the institute is to provide the expertise and fundamental research into data science and artificial intelligence needed to solve real-world problems.[9]
The Alan Turing Institute has since 2021 run an annual event called AI UK,[16] which is described as a national showcase of data science and artificial intelligence.
The organisation's intranet is called Mathison, which was Alan Turing's middle name.
History
In 2015 Lloyd's Register Foundation became the institute's first strategic partner, providing a grant of £10 million over five years to support research into the engineering applications of big data.[8][17][18]
In March 2023, the Turing Institute announced a new strategy, dubbed "Turing 2.0".[19] Following the release of the strategy, an all-male team of four senior academics was hired to deliver on the new strategy, leading to a letter signed by 180 staff members to express serious concerns about the institute's approach to diversity and inclusion.[20]
In October 2024, the Institute started a redundancy consultation process, affecting around 140 of the 440 staff members.[21]
In December 2024, 93 employees of the Alan Turing Institute sent a letter to the board of the institute to expresses no confidence in the body's executive leadership and asked the board to intervene.[22] In addition to concerns about gender diversity and the redundancy round, the letter mentions the institute's sense of direction as issues. Furthermore, it outlines how a lack of accountability and transparency, as well as poor decision making by the executive, are leading to a catastrophic decline in trust in leadership and rising levels of stress and burnout across employees. Reportedly, an internal review by the institute mirrors these conclusions.[23]
