AUTONOMY DATA UNIT
Autonomy Institute
We are a small team of six data scientists and machine-learning engineers inside the Autonomy Institute. We build the kind of evidence that unions, charities, newsrooms and campaigners can act on. Frontier methods, used in public. Working since 2020.
We scrape filings, donations, contracts and the open web, then use LLMs to pull out entities and the links between them. The output is a map of who is connected to whom, and what flows along those edges.
Microsimulation, input-output models and bespoke indices. We build the numbers behind a policy argument: who gains, who loses, and by how much. Used by unions and think tanks to make a case stick.
We read millions of documents with LLMs and turn them into datasets you can query. Annual reports, registers, planning records: the boilerplate goes in, the confirmed facts come out, verified and human-curated.
Searchable databases, trackers and indexes that outlive a single report. We ship and maintain them, so a finding stays usable. The Care Visa database and the arts funding tracker still run today.
A directory of recent projects. Each one shipped to a partner or to the public. Follow the arrows to the live site.
Millions of pages scraped to map the modern far right and its links to power, built with the Autonomy Institute.
→ authoritarian-stack.info
An LLM pipeline reading every UK annual report to surface confirmed risk events. Live, and updated daily.
→ riskstobritishbusiness.today
30M job adverts tagged with LLMs on the Isambard supercomputer, with the UK AI Security Institute.
→ with AISI · internal
Political donations linked to the government contracts they sit next to. The donor-contractor nexus, mapped.
→ autonomy.work
Labour's shift toward business donors between 2019 and 2024, traced through the donation record.
→ autonomy.work
An AI-augmented index of the Heritage Foundation's 900-page plan, made searchable for reporters.
→ project2025index.com
An economic model of UK landlord returns, built for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
→ autonomy.work
A searchable database of licensed care-visa sponsors, built with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
→ autonomy.work
Arts-council funding by constituency since 2014, built for Equity, the performing-arts union.
→ apps.autonomy.work
The corporate connections behind the UK's entrepreneurial far right, mapped from the filings up.
→ autonomy.work
A co-mention network built for the ITUC, the global trade-union body. Who undermines labour, and where.
→ for ITUC · internal
The project that started us off: the UK workforce scored by Covid exposure, picked up on Peston.
→ autonomy.workSix people, working as one unit inside the Autonomy Institute. We half-joke that we left Palantir for the other side. Small enough that you talk to the person doing the work.
Lead. ML and data engineering. Builds the pipelines that read at scale.
Data science and ML research. Methods that hold up to scrutiny.
NLP and network analysis. Turns text into entities and edges.
Investigations and political data. Follows the money and the donors.
Economic modelling. The simulations behind a policy case.
Forecasting and statistics. Says what the numbers can and cannot bear.
Most of our work starts with a conversation and a hunch. If you have filings to read, networks to map, or a number that needs building, write to us.
→ adu@autonomy.work