Staff at the Alan Turing Institute (ATI) have filed a whistleblowing complaint with the charity watchdog, alleging the “mismanagement of public funds” amid a “crisis” at the publicly funded research institution.
The ATI, which last year was handed £100m in taxpayer funding, was accused of a “failure to deliver on its charitable mission” in the filing with the Charity Commission, The Telegraph understands.
The complaint alleges that public cash and donations have been spent on “wasted resources” with “no accountability” over how funds have been deployed.
Established in 2015 as Britain’s leading centre of artificial intelligence (AI) research, the ATI has been in turmoil amid questions over its effectiveness and internal anger from staff.
Peter Kyle, the Technology Secretary, stepped in last month, writing a letter to the chairman of the ATI demanding “reform” and that it change its focus to defence.
Mr Kyle told Doug Gurr, the former Amazon UK boss who is chairman of the ATI’s board of trustees, it must “evolve and adapt” and warned long-term funding for Turing would be tied to new objectives prioritising “defence, national security and sovereign capabilities”.
In the whistleblowing complaint, staff warned that the threat to funding “could lead to the Institute’s collapse”. It is understood that the Charity Commission is in the early stages of examining the claims.
As part of the complaint, staff claim that the ATI has shifted its priorities away from its stated charitable purpose, which includes research into “data-centric engineering, high performance computing and cyber security, to smart cities, health, the economy and data ethics”.
Questions for the ATI
The ATI, which is named after the Second World War code-breaker Alan Turing, has since scrapped or paused a number of initiatives under its public policy programme, including initiatives to study women and diversity in data science and AI bias.
It is not the first time the ATI has faced questions over its direction. A report last month from British Progress, a think tank, claimed it had a “fragmented and thinly spread research portfolio” that had drifted toward “work rooted in social and political critique”.
The uncertainty at the research lab has been accompanied by the exit of senior researchers and executives.
Turing’s chief technology officer, Jonathan Starck, left the ATI just nine months after being appointed, while two senior scientists – Andrew Duncan and Marc Deisenroth – both also left earlier this year after originally being asked to lead a series of “grand challenges” for the organisation.
The ATI has been in the process of cutting dozens of jobs, while it has been grappling with plunging morale among staff after ending a number of projects.
It is understood that a separate whistleblowing complaint, sent to the UK Research and Innovation funding agency, about the ATI was the subject of an independent investigation, which found no concerns.
A spokesman for the Alan Turing Institute said: “We’re shaping a new phase for the Turing, and this requires substantial organisational change to ensure we deliver on the promise and unique role of the UK’s national institute for data science and AI.
“As we move forward, we’re focused on delivering real-world impact across society’s biggest challenges, including responding to the national need to double down on our work in defence, national security and sovereign capabilities.”
A Charity Commission spokesman declined to comment.