A diversity row has erupted at the U.K.’s national AI institute after staff signed a letter questioning the “inclusivity” of the appointment of four male senior scientists. The Telegraph has more.
Employees and researchers at the Alan Turing Institute, Britain’s flagship data science and AI research organisation set up in 2015, questioned whether its “commitment to inclusivity” was being followed in its hiring process.
More than 180 people signed the letter, which was first reported by the Guardian, after four top male academics were appointed in February. The signatories said the hiring suggested a “continuing trend of limited diversity within the institute’s senior scientific leadership”.
In the letter, addressed to Chief Executive Dr. Jean Innes and its Operations Lead and Chief Scientist, the staff said: “This is an excellent time to reflect on whether all voices are being heard and if the institute’s commitment to inclusivity is being fully realised in our recruitment and decision-making practices.”
The protest comes after the Government agreed to hand the institute a further £100m over the next five years for research focusing on “grand challenges” in the use of data and AI in healthcare, defence and sustainability.
Four new scientists, including experts from UCL and Imperial College London, were hired to help lead those efforts. All were men.
The staff who signed the letter to the Turing Institute’s leadership said their intention was “not to undermine” the scientists’ credentials, but they added: “Our aim is to highlight a broader issue within our institute’s approach to diversity and inclusivity, particularly in scientific leadership roles, with a specific eye towards gender diversity.”
Four of the 12 research programme directors at the institute are women.
Dr. Innes, the chief executive of the Alan Turing Institute, said: “Our appointments are made through free and fair competition and on the basis of merit. We recognise the critical importance of diverse leadership and welcome dialogue with our community about what more we can do.
“As the national institute for data science and AI we are committed to increasing the proportion of under-represented groups in these fields.”
Worth reading in full.
Let’s face it. The activists were never going to be happy with equal opportunity. Only the full-on socialist ‘equity’ of equal outcomes between identity groups was going to be acceptable to those bent on bringing down the ‘evil oppressors’.
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Is equity what they want? I thought it was the elimination of melanin-deficient skin in toto. And Y chromosomes that belong to people that identify as male.
I thought they were there to learn about data science not nobs and knockers!
I do despair really. Trying to redpill young* intelligent people is such hard work – they just want to get on with their lives and pretend all this mad, evil stuff isn’t going on because it’s too horrible to contemplate. They just hope it will all go away of its own accord. But it won’t.
*I have limited energy and the young are the future.
And what about when the fighting starts?
Indeed. I kind of thought that “covid” would have woken more people up than it did as it was so obviously a complete scam, but it’s been memory-holed.
This did make me laugh!
This is the Met police aiming to meet their DEI quota back in the 1930s. I have a feeling the definition of ”hefty” ( not to mention, ”fairly good looking”, LOL ) has changed somewhat since those days. Doubt there were many ‘Lesbian Nanas’ floating about either… 
https://twitter.com/realMattToomer/status/1766790065072603501
Priceless
I just told the wife about having to be hefty, I just mentioned she could have joined!
I’m still mopping my blood off the ceiling
My grandmother was a teacher in the 1920s and when she and my grandfather married she had to give up work – maybe that was the law then, it was certainly the rule in the teaching profession.
Diversity is the 21st century word for discrimination.
Substitute diversity for discrimination and the meaning of the sentence immediately.
No doubt they will all be white male scientists. ——–The destruction of the west continues via the 5 main agendas —-Equality Diversity Race Gender and Climate.
It no longer matters as one of the males could wear a dress, buy some Tampax and claim to be a woman to ‘even’ up the statistics.
funny but true
“Four new scientists, including experts from UCL and Imperial College London, were hired to help lead those efforts.”
UCL and Imperial. These four new blokes are bloody plants for Billy’s mob.
That is the story in a nutshell.
Give qualifications to an AI machine and let it decide. May the best scientist win.
Were the men the best candidates for the job? If they were, then what’s the problem.
All these DIE targets are destroying Britain socially and economically. Cut it out and grow up.