The Ministry of Silly Models

This is an imagined future, one that I believe could place the UK at the forefront of AI today. It builds upon our traditional strengths, but is forward looking.

I’ve set the scene below by imagining the application process. Imagine a 1970s style office just off Whitehall (with apologies to John Cleese and Michael Palin).

Whitehall where our action takes place

Minister: Good morning. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I’m afraid my model has become rather sillier recently, and so it takes me rather longer to train it. (sits at desk) Now then, what was it again?

Mr. Pudey: Well sir, I have a silly model and I’d like to obtain a Government grant to help me develop it.

Minister: I see. May I see your silly model?

Mr. Pudey: Yes, certainly, yes.

(Shows laptop with PyTorch open in Jupyter notebook)

Minister: That’s it, is it?

Mr. Pudey: Yes, that’s it, yes.

Minister: It’s not particularly silly, is it? I mean, the first layer isn’t silly at all and second layer merely does a forward pass with a partial recursion every alternate iteration.

Mr. Pudey: Yes, but I think that with Government backing I could make it very silly.

Minister: (rising) Mr. Pudey, (he walks about behind