{"id":241448,"date":"2025-07-06T01:00:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T01:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/241448\/"},"modified":"2025-07-06T01:00:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T01:00:16","slug":"minister-tells-uks-turing-ai-institute-to-focus-on-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/241448\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister tells UK’s Turing AI institute to focus on defence"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a turbulent few months for the institute, which finds itself in survival mode in 2025.<\/p>\n

A review last year by UK Research and Innovation, the government funding body, found “a clear need for the governance and leadership structure of the Institute to evolve”.<\/p>\n

At the end of 2024, 93 members of staff signed a letter expressing lack of confidence in its leadership team.<\/p>\n

In March, Jean Innes, who was appointed chief executive in July 2023, said the Turing needed to modernise and focus on AI projects, in an interview with the Financial Times, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She said “a big strategic shift to a much more focused agenda on a small number of problems that have an impact in the real world”.<\/p>\n

In April, Chief Scientist Mark Girolami said in an interview, external<\/a> the organisation would be taking forward just 22 projects out of a portfolio of 104.<\/p>\n

Kyle’s letter said the institute “should continue to receive the funding needed to implement reforms and deliver Turing 2.0”.<\/p>\n

But he said there could be a review of the ATI’s “longer-term funding arrangement” next year.<\/p>\n

The use of AI in defence is as powerful as it is controversial.<\/p>\n

Google’s parent company Alphabet faced criticism earlier this year for removing a self-imposed ban on developing AI weapons.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the British military and other forces are already investing in AI-enabled tools.<\/p>\n

The government’s defence review said AI technologies “would provide greater accuracy, lethality, and cheaper capabilities”.<\/p>\n

The review said “uncrewed and autonomous systems” could be used within the UK’s conventional forces within the next five years.<\/p>\n

In one example, the review said the Royal Navy could use “acoustic detection systems powered by artificial intelligence” to monitor the “growing underwater threat from a modernising Russian submarine force”.<\/p>\n

The Nato spending target the UK has committed to involves spending at least 3.5% on core defence, and up to 1.5% on security-related investments.<\/p>\n

Asked whether any government funding that goes to the Alan Turing Institute would now count towards the defence spending target, Downing Street said the 1.5% security element would include “investments that raise the overall resilience of our society”.<\/p>\n

The tech firm Palantir has provided data operations software to the UK’s armed forces.<\/p>\n

Louis Mosley, the head of Palantir UK, told the BBC that shift the institute’s focus to AI defence technologies was a good idea.<\/p>\n

He said: “Right now we face a daunting combination of darkening geopolitics and technological revolution – with the world becoming a more dangerous place right at the moment when artificial intelligence is changing the face of war and deterrence.<\/p>\n

“What that means in practice is that we are now in an AI arms race against our adversaries.<\/p>\n

“And the government is right that we need to put all the resources we have into staying ahead – because that is our best path to preserving peace.”<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Chris Vallance, senior technology reporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s been a turbulent few months for the institute, which finds itself in survival mode in 2025. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-241448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114803587318694020","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}