Digital Ethics Summit 2021

Dr Wasim Ahmed

Senior Lecturer, University of Stirling

Dr. Wasim Ahmed is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Business. His research and teaching interests include digital business, digital sport, and digital health. He completed his PhD at the University of Sheffield, and his thesis examined the role of social media during infectious disease outbreaks. His PhD involved completing an internship at Manchester United Football Club. Dr. Ahmed also holds an Msc in Information Systems and a BA (Hons) degree in Philosophy from the University of Sheffield. He has published several high impact research articles and delivered over 100+ invited talks.  

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Lisa Allen

Head of Consultancy for Data Programmes, The Open Data Institute

Lisa is a data professional and has led many data teams in the public sector in the UK. She has experience across various data disciplines including open data, data protection, data transformation, and developing data strategies and frameworks to implement data governance. 
 
At the ODI, Lisa heads up the consultancy team who use their data expertise to advise and guide companies, governments and organisations to make the data ecosystem work better for everyone. 

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Dr Chris Anagnostopoulos

Senior Expert, QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and Honorary Senior Lecturer, Department of Statistics, Imperial College

Chris is a Senior Expert at QuantumBlack McKinsey. He is singularly motivated by the belief that safe, responsible adoption of AI/ML in the Life Sciences can drastically accelerate scientific discovery. He leads large hybrid teams of machine learning engineers, data scientists, clinical and biopharma experts and biostatisticians to help biopharma R&D organisations accelerate their AI transformation journeys. He maintains an Honorary Associate Professorship at Imperial College London, where he teaches Ethical AI and Data Science. He previously served as head of R&D of the modelling and simulation division of a large UK-based technology company.  

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Stephen Bonner

Executive Director (Regulatory Futures and Innovation), Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

Stephen joined the ICO to lead our work developing our capacity and capability to regulate new and emerging technologies and innovations. He leads programmes of work to develop strategic ICO positions, based on horizon scanning and research, on technology issues such as data, supervision of the large technology platforms now in our remit, online harms, the Digital Markets Unit and delivery of the DRCF (Digital Regulatory Cooperation Forum) workplan. He is also leading on the implementation of the Children’s code.

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Georgina Bourke

Principal Technology Adviser-User Experience Design, in the Technology department, Information Commissioners Office

Georgina Bourke is a Principal Technology Adviser – User Experience Design, in the Technology department at the Information Commissioners Office. She works at the intersection of data rights, emerging technologies and design to create engaging services that meet people’s needs and support their rights. She led the ICO’s award-winning project to create UX design guidance that helps designers and developers understand the Children’s code and apply its standards in practice. 

Before joining the ICO, Georgina was a designer at Projects by IF for 5 years, a design studio specialising in responsible and ethical uses of data and AI. At IF, she led projects with public and private organisations dealing with a range of complex data, trust and design challenges. She was also integral to the development of IF’s Data patterns catalogue.
 

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Professor Joanna Bryson

Professor of Ethics and Technology, Hertie School

Joanna J. Bryson is a transdisciplinary researcher on the structure and dynamics of human- and animal-like intelligence. Her research ranges from systems engineering of Artificial Intelligence (AI), through autonomy, cognition, robot ethics, human cooperation on to technology policy and has appeared in venues ranging from a reddit to Science. She holds degrees in Psychology from Chicago and Edinburgh, and AI from Edinburgh and MIT. She has additional professional research experience from Princeton, Oxford, Harvard, and LEGO, and technical experience both in Chicago's financial industry and international management consultancy. Bryson is presently Professor of Ethics and Technology at Hertie School of Governance.

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Professor Raja Chatila

Professor Emeritus of Artificial Intelligence,  Robotics and IT Ethics, Sorbonne University

Raja Chatila is Professor Emeritus of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and IT Ethics at Sorbonne University in Paris. He is former director of the SMART Laboratory of Excellence on Human-Machine Interactions and of the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics.  He is co-chair of the Responsible AI Working group of the Global Partnership in AI and was co-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on AI for Humanity. He is chair of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. 

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Ted Chiang

Science Fiction Writer

Ted Chiang’s fiction has won four Hugo, four Nebula, and six Locus awards, and has been featured in The Best American Short Stories. His collections Stories of Your Life and Others (2016) and Exhalation (2019) have been translated into over twenty languages. He was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and currently lives near Seattle, Washington. 

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Lord Tim Clement-Jones CBE

House of Lords

Lord Clement-Jones was made CBE for political services in 1988 and life peer in 1998.  He is the Liberal Democrat House of Lords spokesperson for Science, Innovation and Technology.  He is a member of the AI in Weapons Systems Select Committee and a member of the Industry and Regulators Committee.  He is former Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on AI (2017-18) and Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI.  He is a founding member of the OECD Parliamentary Group on AI and former consultant of the Council of Europe’s Ad-hoc Committee on AI.  He is a former member of the House of Lords Select Committees on Communications (2011-15); the Built Environment (2015-16); Risk Assessment and Planning (2020-21); and the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill (2021-22).  He is a Consultant on AI Policy and Regulation to global law firm DLA Piper where previous positions held includes London Managing Partner.  He is Chair of Trust Alliance Group (formerly Ombudsman Services), the not-for-profit, independent ombudsman providing dispute resolution for communications, energy, property and copyright industries.  He is Chair of Council of Queen Mary University London.  He is President of Ambitious about Autism.  Full details at: https://www.lordclementjones.org/

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Ruth Cookman

Head of Policy, Geospatial Commission

Ruth is the Head of Policy at the Geospatial Commission, which is an Expert Committee within the UK Government’s Cabinet Office, tasked with advising the government on priorities for improving the UK’s location data, running the public sector’s key geospatial data contracts and developing and overseeing implementation of the UK’s geospatial strategy. Prior to this, Ruth worked on online harms policy and operations at DCMS, including working in the cross-government Counter Disinformation Unit in the early months of the pandemic. Ruth previously worked at BEIS on clean heat policy. 

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Sue Daley

Director, Technology and Innovation, techUK

Sue leads techUK's Technology and Innovation work at techUK.

This includes work programmes on cloud, data protection, data analytics, AI, digital ethics, Digital Identity and Internet of Things as well as emerging and transformative technologies and innovation policy. She has been recognised as one of the most influential people in UK tech by Computer Weekly's UKtech50 Longlist and in 2021 was inducted into the Computer Weekly Most Influential Women in UK Tech Hall of Fame. A key influencer in driving forward the data agenda in the UK Sue is co-chair of the UK government's National Data Strategy Forum. As well as being recognised in the UK's Big Data 100 and the Global Top 100 Data Visionaries for 2020 Sue has also been shortlisted for the Milton Keynes Women Leaders Awards and was a judge for the Loebner Prize in AI. In addition to being a regular industry speaker on issues including AI ethics, data protection and cyber security, Sue was recently a judge for the UK Tech 50 and is a regular judge of the annual UK Cloud Awards.

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Professor Sarah Dillon

Professor of Literature and the Public Humanities in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

Sarah Dillon is Professor of Literature and the Public Humanities in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. Her books include Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning (2021, with Claire Craig) and AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking About Intelligent Machines (2020). She is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and 4. 

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Gillian Docherty OBE

CEO, The Data Lab

Gillian Docherty is chief executive of The Data Lab, Scotland’s innovation centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence with a mission to help Scotland maximise value from data and lead the world to a data-powered future.

The Data Lab believes Scotland can lead the world to a future where data powers scientific progress, economic prosperity and social good.

The Data Lab helps accelerate the journey to impact by fuelling innovation through collaboration, building skills and growing talent, and strengthening Scotland’s thriving data science community.   The Data Lab acts as a catalyst, using our expertise, network, funding and platforms to change how Scotland, and the world, innovates with data.

Gillian was appointed an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2019 for Services to Information Technology and Business.

Gillian was appointed Chair of Scotland’s AI Alliance, created to drive forward the recommendations in the AI Strategy for Scotland.

 Formerly of IBM, Gillian is a TED speaker and was named Digital Leader 2018 for the UK, she received an Outstanding Achievement Award at Scotland’s Women in Technology Awards in 2019.

Gillian was named CEO of the year at the Digital Technology Awards 2017 and was also in the UK’s top ten most influential people in data according to DataIQ. 

Gillian is Vice President of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, a trustee of Beyonder Involve Charity and an Industry advisor to several Startups.

Gillian has a degree in Computing Science from the University of Glasgow, an Honorary Doctorate from Robert Gordon University and is married with a daughter.

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Mark Enzer OBE FREng

Head of the National Digital Twin Programme at the Centre for Digital Built Britain and Chief Technical Officer of Mott MacDonald

Mark is a keen champion of innovation in the context of collaborative delivery models and he is particularly interested in the transformation of the infrastructure industry, including: systems-thinking, digital transformation, connected digital twins, data infrastructure, low-carbon sustainable solutions and the circular economy in the built environment. 

As the Head of the NDTp, Mark is contributing to the leadership of this ambitious programme to enable an ecosystem of connected digital twins across the built environment.  

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Professor Luciano Floridi

Founding Director of the Digital Ethics Center and Professor in the Cognitive Science Program, Yale University

Founding Director of the Digital Ethics Center and Professor in the Cognitive Science Program, Yale University; Professor of Sociology of Culture and Communication at Bologna University. He is one of the most authoritative voices of contemporary philosophy, the founder of the philosophy of information, and one of the major interpreters of the digital revolution. His more than 300 works about the philosophy of information, digital ethics, the ethics of AI, and the philosophy of technology have been translated into many languages. His most recent books are The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence – Principles, Challenges, and Opportunities (OUP, 2023) and The Green and The Blue – Naive Ideas to Improve Politics in the Digital Age (Wiley, 2023). Among his many awards, in 2022 he was made Knight of the Grand Cross OMRI for his foundational work in philosophy.

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Gavin Freeguard

Policy Associate, Connected by Data

Gavin is a freelance consultant working on research, policy and advocacy around data. He was previously programme director for data and digital and government at the Institute for Government, where he remains an associate (running the Data Bites event series). He is a special adviser at the Open Data Institute, a consultant at mySociety and a member of the Public Digital network, and has also worked on projects for organisations including the Ada Lovelace Institute, Full Fact and the Alan Turing Institute. He sends a weekly email on data and dataviz called Warning: Graphic Content. 

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Carl Gahnberg

Senior Policy Advisor, The Internet Society

Carl Gahnberg is a Senior Policy Advisor at the Internet Society (ISOC), where he is focused on issues related to Internet governance. In this role, Carl leads the organization’s efforts to promote Internet impact assessments, and contributes to its global policy development and its partnerships with international and regional organizations on key Internet issues. This includes ISOC’s engagement in the UN system and the WSIS process, as well as contributions to the Internet Technical Advisory Committee to the OECD. 

 

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Tabitha Goldstaub

Co-founder, CogX

Tabitha is the co founder of CogX, a festival and online platform. Alongside CogX, Tabitha is the chair of the UK government's AI Council and a member of the DCMS Digitial Economy Council and on the TechUK board. A serial entrepreneur, Tabitha was the co-founder of video distribution company Rightster (IPO 2011.) Tabitha is the Author of How To Talk To Robots - A Girlsguide to a World Dominated by AI. She's also an advisor to The Stack, TeensInAI, Raspberry Pi and The Alan Turing Institute.

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Dr Mike Goodwin

VP of Product Data Strategy & Technical Fellow, Sage Group Plc

Dr Mike Goodwin is VP of Product Data Strategy and a Technical Fellow at Sage Group Plc. His area of focus is how data and data powered capabilities can help Sage achieve our mission to build experiences that connect, remove friction, and deliver insights to the organisations and people that make up our network, knocking down barriers and allowing them to thrive. This is the latest stage in a 30 year career in research, development and technology leadership spanning academia, the public sector, tech start-ups, open source and now a FTSE100 company.

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Liz Grennan

Associate Partner, Global Co-Leader of Digital Trust, McKinsey & Company

Technology lawyer with two decades of experience specializing in emerging technologies, ethical AI, intellectual property, data privacy, cybersecurity and SaaS. In my roles at McKinsey, focused within McKinsey Digital, I have launched a new service line, built and lead a phenomenal, cross-functional team covering issues around digital, analytics, core technology, cloud infrastructure, digital design and IOT and created systems to derisk emerging technology across McKinsey's full portfolio. With a proven ability to distill complex legal concepts into clear and actionable advice, I have built a risk-forward corporate culture grounded in a strong core of judgment and ethics. Success to me is fostering innovation and enabling organic and inorganic growth at scale while delivering strategic business-focused legal advice and risk management.

Prior to McKinsey, I served in key leadership roles in Analytics startups for over 10 years. As General Counsel of Noragh Analytics (including interim President for one year), in addition to handling all legal and risk issues, I primarily focused on market penetration and scaling of business. As General Counsel of Kestrel Enterprises, I managed the legal team and all matters leading its sale to The Boeing Company in 2008 (now Boeing Intelligence & Analytics).

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Aaron Harris

Chief Technology Officer (ExCo), Sage

Responsible for Sage’s technology strategy and software architecture, Aaron Harris has more than 20 years of high-tech engineering experience in business applications and software development strategies.

Previously, a founding leader of Sage Intacct, which was acquired by Sage in 2017, Harris led the company's product vision and technology direction, establishing Sage Intacct as the innovation leader in cloud financial management solutions.

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Giles Herdale

Independent Advisor on Data Ethics in Policing

A leading voice on the development of digital investigative policy, strategy and ethics, Giles has been involved at the cutting edge of the national evolution of law enforcement thinking in this area. With experience from the NCA, NPCC, the Home Office, the College of Policing and NPIA, Giles can translate the fast-evolving technical, legislative and policy environment to the operational context to understand and address the threats and opportunities of the digital age.  He is now a freelance policy advisor working with researchers, think tanks, government and law enforcement.  He is an associate fellow at RUSI and a member of the Validate AI conference steering group. 

 

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Darren Jones MP

Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Labour Member of Parliament for Bristol North West

Darren Jones is Member of Parliament for Bristol North West. He was first elected at the 2017 General Election and re-elected in 2019 with an increased majority. Darren was chair of Labour Digital and became Chair of the Business and Trade Select Committee in May 2020 until September 2023 when he was appointed Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer.

Born in Bristol, Darren went to University in Plymouth studying Human Bioscience. He read Law at the University of West of England (UWE) before becoming a solicitor specialising in technology law.

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Arnav Joshi

Senior Associate and Digital Ethics Lead, Clifford Chance

Arnav Joshi, Senior Associate and Digital Ethics Lead, Clifford Chance: Arnav is a senior technology lawyer with over a decade of international experience as a trusted advisor to clients including leading global technology companies, Unicorns and financial services institutions. He leads strategic and regulatory advice on digital regulation, emerging technologies, data privacy, cybersecurity, regulatory engagements and public policy. In recent years, he has led ground breaking projects on children's privacy, online safety, advanced analytics and AI. Arnav serves as an expert advisor on AI and data privacy to a number of industry bodies in the UK, and has been previously called on to give expert evidence on Artificial Intelligence regulation to the UK Parliament. 

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Seema Khinda Johnson

Co-founder and COO, Nuggets

Seema Khinda Johnson is Co-Founder & COO at Nuggets – A multi award winning self-sovereign verified digital identity and payment platform, enabling trusted transactions through verified digital identities, a personal cloud vault and auditable nuggets. Nuggets is the only platform of its kind that truly brings together payments and ID, utilising self-sovereign data principles. 

 Seema has received widespread recognition across the industry, having recently won Deutsche Bank’s Female Fintech Competition, Women in Payments’ Unicorn Challenge, was awarded the Booking.com Technology Playmaker Entrepreneur of the Year and also listed as one of the Most Influential Women in Payments, by PaymentsSource. 

 Before founding Nuggets, Seema spent more than 20 years leading teams and delivering large-scale commercialisation, products, campaigns and projects with brands like Skype and  Microsoft. 

 

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Nicole Kidney

Associate, Tech Group, Clifford Chance

Nicole advises  companies on matters relating to international data protection compliance, cyber security and emerging technologies across a range of industries, including financial services, telecommunications, and retail.

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Kendrick Lee

Director, Trusted Data & Services, Government Technology Agency of Singapore

Kendrick Lee is the Director of National Digital Identity (NDI) programme at the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech). NDI is one of eight strategic national projects that drives Singapore’s Smart Nation vision.In his role, Kendrick oversees product management of Singpass application programming interfaces (APIs) as well as digital payments; with the aim of enabling secure and seamlesstransactions for residents, businesses and government agencies.He also serves industry as adjunct lecturer of digital product strategy at the Institute of Systems Science (ISS-NUS), digital identity expert group member at the Biometrics Institute, and technical working group member of “Trustworthy Digital Infrastructure for Identity Systems” project with the Alan Turing Institute.

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Dr David Leslie

Ethics Theme Lead, Ethics Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute

Dr David Leslie is the Ethics Theme Lead within the public policy programme at the Alan Turing Institute. He is the author of the UK Government’s official guidance on the responsible design and implementation of AI systems in the public sector, Understanding artificial intelligence ethics and safety (2019) and a principal co-author of Explaining decisions made with AI (2020), a co-badged guidance on AI explainability published by the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Alan Turing Institute. He was a Principal Investigator and lead author of the NESTA-funded Ethics review of machine learning in children’s social care (2020) and is now Principal Investigator of a UKRI-funded project called PATH-AI: Mapping an Intercultural Path to Privacy, Agency and Trust in Human-AI Ecosystems, which is a research collaboration with RIKEN, one of Japan’s National Research and Development Institutes founded in 1917, as well as of a BEIS and GPAI funded research project entitled Advancing Data Justice Research and Practice. David is also a co-author of Mind the gap: how to fill the equality and AI accountability gap in an automated world (2020), the Final Report of the Institute for the Future of Work’s Equality Task Force and lead author of “Does AI stand for augmenting inequality in the COVID-19 era of healthcare” (2021) published in the British Medical Journal. He is additionally the lead author of Artificial intelligence, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law (2021), a primer prepared to support the CAHAI’s Feasibility Study and translated into Dutch and French. His other recent publications include the Harvard Data Science Review (HDSR) article, “Tackling COVID-19 through responsible AI innovation: Five steps in the right direction,” (2020), Understanding bias in facial recognition technologies: An explainer (2020), and “The Arc of the Data Scientific Universe,” (2021) also published in the HDSR. 

Before joining the Turing, David taught at Princeton’s University Center for Human Values (UCHV), where he also participated in the UCHV’s 2017-2018 research collaboration with Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy on “Technology Ethics, Political Philosophy and Human Values: Ethical Dilemmas in AI Governance.” Prior to teaching at Princeton, David held academic appointments at Yale’s programme in Ethics, Politics and Economics and at Harvard’s Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, where he received over a dozen teaching awards including the 2014 Stanley Hoffman Prize for Teaching Excellence. He now serves as an elected member of the 9-person Bureau of the Council of Europe’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI). He is on the editorial board of the Harvard Data Science Review and is a founding editor of the Springer journal, AI and Ethics.

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Dr Sasha Luccioni

Research Scientist, Hugging Face

Sasha is a Research Scientist working at Hugging Face. Her work aims to study the societal and ethical impacts of AI, and her goal is to find ways to maximize the positive effects of AI while minimizing the negative ones, be it from a research or application perspective. Sasha's work has been featured in various news and media outlets such as MIT Technology Review, WIRED and the Wall Street Journal, among others, both her projects on the environmental impact of AI and those on how to reduce it. She is also a 2020 National Geographic Explorer and a founding member of Climate Change AI.  

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Ken MacLeod

Science Fiction writer

Ken MacLeod lives in Gourock on the west coast of Scotland. He has degrees in biological sciences, worked in IT, and is now a full-time writer. He is the author of eighteen novels, from The Star Fraction (1995) to Beyond the Hallowed Sky (2021) and many articles and short stories. He has been a speaker or panellist at numerous conferences and conventions, including the International Conference on Social Robotics 2011 and the AI for Good Global Summit 2019.

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Dr Kevin Macnish

Head of Ethics and Sustainability Consulting, Sopra Steria

Kevin Macnish is Head of Ethics and Sustainability Consulting at Sopra Steria. He has led numerous projects with financial services, government agencies and devolved governments in digital ethics and sustainability. Prior to joining Sopra Steria, Kevin had 12 years’ experience as an academic and consultant in digital ethics and was a lead contributor to the EU SHERPA project on the ethics and human rights implications of AI. Kevin has published over 50 academic articles, chapters and books in ethics and technology.

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Lofred Madzou

Project Lead, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, World Economic Forum (WEF)

Lofred Madzou is a Project Lead for AI at the World Economic Forum, where he oversees global and multistakeholder AI policy projects. He is also a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute where he investigates various methods to audit AI systems. 

 Before joining the Forum, he was a policy officer at the French Digital Council, where he advised the French Government on technology policy. Most notably, he has co-written chapter 5 of the French AI National Strategy, entitled "What Ethics for AI?”.He has an MSc in Data Science and Philosophy from the University of Oxford 

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Louise Maynard-Atem

Research Lead, Women in Identity

Louise is currently Head of Data Insights for GB Group, focusing on unifying the identity, fraud and location intelligence business lines through a comprehensive and ambitious new data strategy. Her aim, in this newly created role and team, is to develop data insight driven products and services that sit at the intersection of the company’s main focus areas and drive greater value for customers.  
Louise has previously worked in highly analytical roles across both public and private sector. Louise is also currently the research lead for, and on the executive committee of the non-profit organisation, Women in Identity. Her work is currently centred around creating a Code of Conduct for digital identity services, ensuring they are centred on diverse and inclusive practices.
She co-founded the Corporate Innovation Forum in 2017, and is passionate about utilising data and technology to drive fairer outcomes for consumers, as well as helping businesses make better and more informed decisions.

Louise is also an advocate for the promotion of STEM education and careers to young people, and volunteers with a number of charities focused on increasing participation of under-represented groups in STEM subjects and professions. Her background is in chemistry, and she completed her PhD in materials science at the University of Manchester in 2013. 

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Dr Natasha McCarthy

Head of Policy, Royal Society

Natasha McCarthy leads the Royal Society’s Data theme, within the Science Policy Section. The Society’s Data Theme carries out a range of policy activities to promote the development and use of data and digital technologies for the benefit of humanity. The team has delivered work on machine learning and AI, data governance, digital skills and privacy technologies. Natasha has a background in philosophy of science and engineering, including professional ethics in engineering. She previously led the policy teams at the British Academy and the Royal Academy of Engineering, was part of the founding team at UCL’s Department for Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, and held an academic post in philosophy at the University of St Andrews. She is author of a number of papers and editor of collected volumes on philosophy of engineering and technology and engineering in policymaking, and author of Engineering: A Beginner’s Guide, an introduction to the social and historical impacts of engineering.  

 

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Carl Miller

Founder, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media and CASM Technology

Carl Miller is the founder of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (2011) and CASM Technology (2014), and has spent the last decade researching social media intelligence (SOCMINT), emerging technology and open source, online electoral interference, radicalisation, digital politics, conspiracy theories, cyber-crime, and Internet governance.  

His debut book, The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab (published by Penguin, Random House August 2018) was about hidden forms of power in the digital age. He’s a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, an Associate of the Imperial War Museum, a member of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime and a member of the Challenging Pseudoscience group at the Royal Institution. 

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Katy Minshall

Head of UK Public Policy, Twitter

Katy Minshall is Head of Public Policy for Twitter in the UK, where she manages Twitter's work with governments and charities. She previously worked at the Cabinet Office and for a Member of Parliament. She holds a masters degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and has previously published research on cyber security. 

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Madhumita Murgia

European Technology Correspondent, The Financial Times

Madhumita Murgia is a senior correspondent at the FT, where she covers technology, including artificial intelligence, the use/abuse of data, policy, and emerging technologies. She also authors a monthly column on the tech world for the FT weekend magazine and features on the weekly podcast, Tech Tonic. She was previously a reporter and editor at WIRED and The Daily Telegraph 

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Dr Marion Oswald

VC Senior Fellow, , Northumbria Law School

Marion Oswald is a lawyer with over 30 years’ experience spanning several contexts: law firms, international technology businesses, central government including national security, academia, and oversight functions.  She researches the interaction between law and digital technology, with a particular interest in the human rights, ethics and use of data analytics within policing and intelligence agencies.  

Marion works in the intersection between practice, policy and academia, and her research has made distinctive contributions in respect of privacy, fair decision-making and AI and the way that data is acted upon by the public sector.  She is Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Fellow in Law at Northumbria University and part-time Senior Research Associate with the Alan Turing Institute, focusing on safe and ethical AI within criminal justice.   

Marion chairs the West Midlands Police & Crime Commissioner and West Midlands Police data ethics committee and is a member of the New Zealand Police independent advisory panel on emerging technologies. She is an Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, a member of the National Statistician's Data Ethics Advisory Committee, and from July 2021, Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee advising the Committee on its inquiry into new technologies and the application of the law.  She has been appointed to the independent Advisory Board of the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, a government expert body focused upon the trustworthy use of data and AI.   

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Chris Philp MP

Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

Chris Philp was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on 17 September 2021. He was previously Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office and Ministry of Justice from 13 February 2020 to 16 September 2021. Before that, he was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice from 10 September 2019 to 18 December 2019 and Minister for London at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government from 18 December 2019 to 13 February 2020. 

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Ahmed Razek

Principal Technology Adviser, Information Commissioners Office

Ahmed is a Principal Technology Adviser at the Information Commissioners Office. His expertise in Data and emerging technology is combined with a passion for understanding the impact of technology on society. He co-led the ICO’s award-winning project to create UX design guidance that helps designers and developers understand the Children’s code and apply its standards in practice

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Hannah Rutter

Chief Executive, OfDIA | DSIT,

Hannah is an experienced civil servant with a track-record of using innovative approaches and new technology to improve public services. She is currently leading a team to enable the use of digital identity products across the UK economy.  

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Professor Fraser Sampson

Commissioner for the Retention and Use of Biometric Material and Surveillance Camera Commissioner

Fraser Sampson is an Honorary Professor and member of the Advisory Board at the Centre for Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence & Organised Crime Research at Sheffield Hallam University where he obtained a PhD in digital accountability in law enforcement and has worked on a number of international research projects involving technology within policing, including the development of principles for the accountable use of AI.  Having over 40 years’ experience working in the criminal justice sector, he served as a police officer in the West Yorkshire Police and British Transport Police before becoming a solicitor specialising in policing law, conduct and governance.  He has written and edited a number of leading police law texts including the Blackstone’s Police Manuals published by Oxford University Press.  As national chair of the Association of Police and Crime Chief Executives, he proposed and subsequently drafted the statutory oath of office for police and crime commissioners and was appointed CEO & Solicitor to the Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire in 2012 where he was instrumental in establishing the National Police Air Service, later being seconded as CEO to the Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner in North Yorkshire.  He is a graduate of the Top Management Programme at the Civil Service College, a Senior Fellow of the Weinstein International Foundation for dispute resolution in the United States and a CEDR qualified mediator. 

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Riham Satti

Co-founder and CEO, MeVitae

Riham Satti is a keynote international speaker, neuroscientist and entrepreneur. She co-founded MeVitae in 2014, a deep tech company aimed at helping companies mitigate algorithmic and unconscious biases whilst hiring. Riham is involved in several initiatives including Founder of Linkedin’s Women in Tech group, and member of TechUK Diversity and Skills Council. She has expertise in the science of HR and human decision-making.  Riham holds a Master of Research in Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford and a First-Class Honour Master of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London.

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Cornelius Saunders

Program Manager, ID2020

Cornelius Saunders leads ID2020’s digital identity programs to ensure that they are designed and implemented in ways that are ethical, impactful and measurable.  

Prior to joining ID2020, he conducted impact evaluations for Innovations for Poverty Action, global performance assessment reviews for the World Food Programme, and economic development research for Rand Europe and Endeavor Global.  

Cornelius holds a BA in Economics and Global Affairs from Yale University, and an MPP from the University of Cambridge. He currently volunteers as a member of the Development Committee for the Yale Alumni Nonprofit Association and as a mentor to student startups at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking. 

 

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Hetan Shah

Chief Executive, The British Academy

Hetan Shah is chief executive at the British Academy, the UK’s national academy for humanities and social sciences. He is Chair of Our World in Data, which brings together research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. Hetan was appointed in 2024 by the UK Parliament to the board of the National Audit Office, the UK’s independent spending watchdog. He is Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute, Kings College London and a Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. Hetan serves on a number of advisory boards including the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, the UCL Policy Lab and the Resolution Foundation.

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Ruth Smeeth

CEO, Index on Censorship

Ruth Smeeth is the Chief Executive of Index on Censorship – the international campaign to protect and promote free speech around the world, which was originally launched in 1971 to provide a platform for Soviet dissidents to expose what was happening behind the Iron Curtain.  
Ruth was previously the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North & Kidsgrove from 2015-2019.  During that time she was the Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement.  

Before her election Ruth ran HOPE not hate the anti-extremism campaign which defeated the BNP and EDL.  Ruth has also worked in the trade union, third sector and private sectors before seeking election.  
 

: @RuthSmeeth

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Brittany Smith

Policy Director, Data & Society

Brittany Smith is the Policy Director at Data & Society, an independent, nonprofit research institute that produces original research on the social implications of data-centric technologies & automation. Prior to joining Data & Society, Brittany worked at Alphabet for 10 years in policy, ethics and human rights. At DeepMind, she helped build the company’s first ethics and policy team, leading the company’s work on partnerships and public engagement around AI policy, human rights, and racial justice. At Google, she worked on public policy and government affairs strategy teams in San Francisco and London, supporting Google’s work across Europe against online extremism and hate speech. Brittany graduated from Northwestern University and the London School of Economics. 

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Anna Thomas MBE

Co-founder and Director, Institute for the Future of Work

Anna Thomas MBE is Founding Co-Director of the Institute for the Future of Work. She was formerly a barrister from Devereux Chambers, specialising in employment and equality law and was appointed a Counsel to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Anna was Head of Policy for the Labour Party’s Future of Work Commission and is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Research, RSA and IEO. Anna has advised the UK Government, Opposition, Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, Trade Union Congress and WEF on I governance.

She is currently undertaking a DBA at Warwick Business School and has been awarded a scholarship for for Women in Leadership.

In the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours List Anna was awarded an MBE for her services to Research on the Future of Work.

: anna-thomas-969529138
: @FutureWorkInst

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Alex Towers

Director of Policy and Public Affairs, BT Group

Alex Towers is Director of Policy and Public Affairs for BT Group. He leads BT’s political strategy and its public policy work, both in the UK and around the world. Before joining BT, he was the Director of  the BBC Trust – the BBC’s regulator and governing body until 2017. In his earlier career, he was a civil servant at DCMS, where his work on media policy included the 2003 Communications Act, Ofcom’s first review of public service broadcasting and the BBC Charter Review that followed.

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Professor Sandra Wachter

Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute

Professor Sandra Wachter is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow focusing on law and ethics of AI, Big Data, and robotics as well as Internet regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Her current research focuses on the legal and ethical implications of AI, Big Data, and robotics as well as profiling, inferential analytics, explainable AI, algorithmic bias, diversity, and fairness, governmental surveillance, predictive policing, and human rights online. At the OII, Professor Sandra Wachter also coordinates the Governance of Emerging Technologies (GET) Research Programme that investigates legal, ethical, and technical aspects of AI, machine learning, and other emerging technologies. Professor Sandra Wachter serves as a policy advisor for governments, companies, and NGO’s around the world on regulatory and ethical questions concerning emerging technologies. 

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Antony Walker

Deputy CEO, techUK

Antony Walker is deputy CEO of techUK,  which he played a lead role in launching in November 2013.

Antony is a member of the senior leadership team and has overall responsibility for techUK’s policy work. Prior to his appointment in July 2012 Antony was chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), the UK’s independent advisory group on broadband policy. Antony was closely involved in the development of broadband policy development in the UK since the BSG was established in 2001 and authored several major reports to government. He also led the development of the UK’s world leading Open Internet Code of Practice that addresses the issue of net neutrality in the UK. Prior to setting up the BSG, Antony spent six years working in Brussels for the American Chamber of Commerce following and writing about telecoms issues and as a consultant working on EU social affairs and environmental issues. Antony is a graduate of Aberdeen University and KU Leuven and is also a Policy Fellow Alumni of the Centre for Science and Policy at Cambridge University.

: @techUKdepceo

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Matt Warman

MP Boston & Skegness,

Matt Warman was first elected as MP for Boston & Skegness in 2015, returning with increased majorities in 2017 and 2019. Prior to entering politics, he worked for the Daily Telegraph from 1999 until 2015, focusing for most of the period on technology, leading coverage of Facebook, Google and Apple, and covering the launch of products including iPhones, the BBC iPlayer and the Apple Watch, as well as interviewing key figures including the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web. Matt’s former ministerial portfolio covered mobile coverage, telecoms supply chain, cyber security, and the Building Digital UK (BDUK) and Gigabit Delivery programmes. He is continuing to champion these areas and his other interests from the backbenches.

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Kirstie Whitaker

Programme Director for Tools, Practices and Systems, The Alan Turing Institute

Kirstie Whitaker leads the Tools, Practices and Systems Research Programme at The Alan Turing Institute (London, UK). The TPS community's mission is toinvest in the people who sustain the open infrastructure ecosystem for data science. Kirstie is the founder of The Turing Way, an openly developed educational resource inspire, train and enable researchers and citizen scientists across government, industry, academia and third sector organisations to apply open source practices to their work. Kirstie is a passionate advocate for making science "open for all" by promoting equity and inclusion for people from diverse backgrounds, and by changing the academic incentive structure to reward collaborative working. She is the chair of the Turing Institute's Ethics Advisory Group, a Fulbright scholarship alumna and was a 2016/17 Mozilla Fellow for Science. Kirstie was named, with her collaborator Petra Vertes, as a 2016 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine. You can follow her and her dog's adventures on twitter @kirstie_j. 

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