Geopolitics of AI and Digital Innovation

About

To remain competitive in the new emerging digital order, governments around the world are developing new industrial strategies and policies to promote digital innovation. This is especially true for Artificial Intelligence. Join us for a fireside chat with Michael Kratsios and Dr. Keegan McBride. During this event, the speakers will untangle several emerging geopolitical tensions related to artificial intelligence and digital innovation, discuss how to create a better regulatory ecosystem that enables innovation while simultaneously protecting and respecting fundamental rights, and offer insight into key questions that decision makers are likely to face in the years ahead.

Michael Kratsios served as the fourth Chief Technology Officer of the United States at the White House and Under Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. Under his leadership, the White House reoriented U.S. national technology policy towards an explicit primary focus on ensuring continued American leadership in emerging technologies. He is currently the Managing Director at Scale AI, leading corporate strategy and helping accelerate AI applications across industries. Michael was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, is responsible for architecting the U.S.’s first AI Strategy, the American AI Initiative, and is the youngest Under Secretary of Defense in history. Prior to joining the White House, Michael invested in and advised technology companies at Thiel Capital. A South Carolina native, Michael graduated from Princeton University and served as a Visiting Scholar at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

Dr. Keegan McBride is Departmental Research Lecturer in AI, Government, and Policy at the Oxford Internet Institute. Keegan is an expert on topics such as digital government, digital innovation, the use of AI in the public sector, digital well-being and happiness, and government interoperability and data exchange. He is an active member of the scholarly community, participating in several high-level digital government focused conferences and publishing in leading peer-reviewed digital government focused journals. In his research he aims to develop an understanding about the future trajectory of the state in the digital age by exploring the complex and co-evolutionary relationships between technology, society, and the state.

This event is in person only in Lecture Theatre VIII, Thatcher Business Education Centre, Said Business School, Park End St, Oxford OX1 1HP.