To protect the UK, its people and the places they inhabit
The explosion of human connectivity and information availability creates new ways in which bad actors can cause harm to people, businesses, and societies. The exponential rise in volumes of data makes it harder for defence and security agencies to identify, and act on insights.
The prevalence of networked systems and the sharing of private data give rise to new insecurities and risks, both technical and social. Further, the speed of technological change poses a unique challenge to the development of new laws, policy, and governance. The UK must continue to stay ahead in researching, developing, and integrating technologies to meet these challenges, or risk falling behind on the global stage.
Data science and AI present an opportunity to meet these new threats. This includes better analysis of data at scale, helping to find key intelligence amongst an expanse of data and make informed decisions from resulting analysis; building resilient and secure methods of protecting networks and privacy; and developing evidence-based assessments of emerging technologies to help policymakers develop timely and effective legislation and policy.
The Alan Turing Institute is uniquely placed to lead this endeavour. We have demonstrable experience of close engagement with the national security and defence communities, nationally and internationally.
We act as an authoritative convener for diverse expertise in key areas across academia. We not only have teams of world class researchers, but we also have dedicated teams helping to translate the research into operations, both from an engineering and a policy standpoint. Importantly, we are driven by societal impact and public good. This independence is invaluable, and helps the Turing contribute to the missions our partners face.
‘The prosperity and security of the United Kingdom faces a continued threat from state actors, terrorists, and serious criminals. AI capabilities will be fundamental to our future ability to protect the UK. They will enable analysts to better analyse ever-increasing volumes of data much faster, improving the quality and timeliness of decision-making. Keeping the UK’s citizens safe and prosperous will increasingly depend on the success of these systems.
Our partnership with the Turing supports government to advance the research and development of new critical capabilities in this important space. We look forward to continuing to work with them to protect the UK, its people, and the places they inhabit, as outlined in their new strategy published today‘
Alex van Someren, Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security
The Institute is developing a set of missions to sit under the Defence and National Security Grand Challenge, to be launched soon. These will focus on scientific areas such as multi-modal data and signals analysis, human machine teaming, behavioural analysis, cyber security, reinforcement learning, AI explainability, model security, privacy technology, and digital twins.
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