NERDS ON VERGE OF REVOLT: UK’S TOP AI EGGHEADS THREATEN MASS EXODUS OVER “TOXIC NERD CULTURE” AND GOVERNMENT MEDDLING
In what experts are calling “the most passive-aggressive workplace drama since that time someone stole Karen’s yogurt from the office fridge,” staff at Britain’s Alan Turing Institute have filed a whistleblowing complaint that essentially translates to “we f@#king hate it here.”
GOVERNMENT THREATENS TO CUT FUNDING UNLESS INSTITUTE STARTS “DOING ACTUAL SH!T”
The prestigious AI think tank, named after the father of computer science who would absolutely be horrified by the current state of affairs, is reportedly teetering on the edge of complete collapse after Technology Secretary Peter Kyle demanded they “stop wanking about with theoretical papers and start making stuff that actually works.”
Sources inside the institute report that Kyle’s intervention last month included a 47-slide PowerPoint presentation titled “What The Hell Have You People Been Doing With All This Money?” followed by increasingly desperate pleas for the institute to “make something cooler than ChatGPT, for God’s sake.”
“CALCULATOR JOCKEYS” REVOLT AGAINST MANAGEMENT
Dr. Pointy McPointerson, the institute’s self-appointed morale officer, told us, “The tension is so thick you could cut it with a mathematical proof. Yesterday, I saw two PhD researchers passive-aggressively correcting each other’s grammar in the Slack channel. It was brutal.”
The complaint to the charity watchdog reportedly includes such scathing allegations as “management keeps stealing our fancy tea bags” and “the weekly seminars run 7 minutes over schedule with alarming regularity.”
EXPERTS WARN OF “NERD FLIGHT” TO SILICON VALLEY
Professor Obvious Truth, head of the Department of Predicting Things After They’ve Already Happened at Cambridge University, warns this could lead to Britain’s brightest minds fleeing to America.
“We’re looking at a potential exodus of 97.8% of the UK’s professional algorithm wranglers,” Truth explained while nervously adjusting his bow tie. “And once these data wizards taste proper Mexican food in California, they’re never coming back.”
GOVERNMENT DEMANDS INSTITUTE START ACTING LIKE “PROPER ADULTS”
According to leaked emails, the government’s new strategic vision for the institute includes such groundbreaking directives as “make AI that doesn’t try to kill everyone” and “for the love of God, please figure out how to make Alexa understand Scottish accents.”
An anonymous source within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology confirmed, “We’ve given these nerds £100 million and all they’ve produced is 3,000 academic papers with titles so long they don’t fit on a standard PDF page. Meanwhile, some teenager in his mum’s basement just made an AI that can predict what sandwich you want before you know you’re hungry.”
WHISTLEBLOWERS FEAR REPRISAL IN FORM OF “REALLY MEAN EMAILS”
Staff members filing the complaint have requested anonymity, fearing reprisals such as being assigned to the institute’s infamous basement office where the WiFi mysteriously cuts out during Zoom calls and the coffee machine makes a sound like a dying modem.
“The last person who complained got reassigned to the ‘ethics committee,'” whispered one source. “They haven’t seen daylight in 18 months.”
In response to the crisis, the institute has reportedly formed seven new committees, scheduled 23 emergency meetings, and commissioned an independent review that should be completed “sometime before the heat death of the universe.”
Meanwhile, the charity watchdog is reportedly considering whether “having to listen to computer scientists explain their research for more than five minutes” constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under British law.
