Blog

Britain’s leading AI institute has announced a new mission to help protect the nation from cyber-attacks on infrastructure, including energy, transport and utilities, after it was embroiled in allegations of toxic work culture and the chair resigned amid ministerial pressure.

The Alan Turing Institute will “carry out a programme of science and innovation designed to protect the UK from hostile threats”, it announced on Tuesday as part of changes following the resignation last month of Jean Innes, its chief executive, after a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul of the state-funded body.

The mission comes amid growing concern over Britain’s vulnerability to internet outages and cyber-attacks after this month’s incident affecting Amazon’s cloud computing globally and recent cyber-attacks crippling production at Jaguar Land Rover factories, and supply chains at Marks & Spencer and the Co-op.

Blythe Crawford, the former commander of the UK’s air and space warfare centre , will report back next month on how the government-funded institute “can best support the scale of government AI ambitions in defence, national security and intelligence”.

The chair, former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr, said 78 different research projects at the 440-staff institute have been closed, spun out or completed because they do not align with the new direction.

The institute has been beset by internal strife since last year as staff protested against changes, culminating in a group of employees filing a whistleblower complaint to the Charity Commission.

Gurr said in an interview with the BBC that the whistleblower claims were “independently investigated” by a third party that found them to have “no substance”.

The institute was named after the mathematical genius who helped crack the Enigma code during the second world war and outlined key concepts of AI. He also invented the eponymous test to determine if a computer can show human intelligence.

It will also focus on deploying AI for the environment and health. The institute will develop ways to use the fast-advancing technology to more rapidly and accurately forecast changes in weather, oceans and sea ice, in part to better inform UK government emergency planners. It will also target “tangible emissions reductions in transportation networks, manufacturing processes and critical infrastructure”.

On health, it will focus on creating digital twins of human hearts, a frontline of personalised AI-enabled medicine, which could improve medical interventions and patient outcomes for critically ill cardiac patients.