Searching for a Place at the Table: What is The Role of the United Kingdom in the Development and Regulation of Artificial Intelligence?

About

The United Kingdom intends to position itself as a leader in the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) ecosystem, both in its innovation and development as well as its regulation. The government has released their proposal for “A Pro-Innovation Approach to AI Regulation”, intending to offer a middle-path between the prevailing “hands-off” approach to AI regulation in the USA and the stronger regulatory approach of the European Union. As a first step in centring the UK in the global AI regulatory ecosystem, the government has organized an “AI Safety Summit” to develop a shared understanding of how to manage emergent and potentially existential risks associated with new frontier AI developments. Though ambitious in scale, the summit has been besought with criticism with many doubting its potential for impact highlighting that other global AI regulatory initiatives have thus far fallen short.

Join us for a panel discussion on the role of the United Kingdom in the development and regulation of AI. The panel of experts will discuss topics such as how the UK’s proposals compare to other global attempts at AI regulation, the growth in interest in AI and existential risk, the role of China in the global regulation of AI, and what the UK could do to ensure it remains competitive in the AI industry.

Chaired by Dr Keegan McBride, panellists including Professor Helen Margetts, OII, Jennifer Beroshi, Google DeepMind, Sue Daley, techUK, Karen Croxson, CMA and Kayla Blomquist, OII.

This event is in person only at the HB Allen Centre, 25 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN. Tea, coffee and pastries will be served in the Robin Geffen Cafeteria 09:00-09:20 followed by the discussion in the lecture theatre 09:20-11:00.

Helen Margetts is Professor of Society and the Internet and Professorial Fellow at Mansfield College. She is a political scientist specialising in the relationship between digital technology and government, politics and public policy. She is an advocate for the potential of multi-disciplinarity and computational social science for our understanding of political behaviour and development of public policy in a digital world.  She has published over a hundred books, articles and policy reports in this area, including Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action (with Peter John, Scott Hale and Taha Yasseri, 2015); Paradoxes of Modernization (with Perri 6 and Christopher Hood, 2010); Digital Era Governance (with Patrick Dunleavy, 2006, 2008); and The Tools of Government in the Digital Age (with Christopher Hood, 2007).

Jennifer Beroshi leads Policy Development and Strategy at Google DeepMind. In this role, she oversees a team in charge of policy analysis, strategic advice, and positions for advocacy, with the goal of shaping policy frameworks so AI has a positive impact on the world. Jennifer was previously the Interim Head of Public Policy at DeepMind. She has over a dozen years of experience at the forefront of complex technology policy debates. She previously led Google’s public policy strategy team for intellectual property and media regulation issues for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She also spent 5 years in Google’s Washington, D.C. office, managing relationships with Congressional offices and advocacy groups. Jennifer is passionate about ensuring technology furthers international security, equity, and creativity. She has a BA with honors in Public Policy from Stanford University, where she also minored in art.

Sue Daley leads techUK’s Technology and Innovation work. 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.

Dr Karen Croxson recently joined the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the role of Chief Data and Technology Insights Officer. She leads the CMA’s Data, Technology and Analytics (DaTA) unit, which brings together technologists, data scientists, data engineers, behavioural scientists, economists, and experts in eDiscovery and digital forensics. Karen works across the CMA’s full portfolio providing oversight for digital cases, leading the CMA’s work on algorithms and online choice architecture, helping design the new digital regulation regime, and shaping the CMA’s internal transformation through digital, data, and AI.  Her teams work on all major digital cases, investigating technology, analysing large-scale data, scrutinising algorithms including AI/foundation models, running and evaluating experiments, and building software.

Prior to her current role, Karen worked at the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), in the role of Deputy Chief Economist and Head of Research. She built a function that integrates economics, data science, and behavioural science, and worked across horizon scanning, harm diagnosis, policy design, ex post impact evaluation, and developing the FCA’s strategic approach to AI and digital markets. Prior to the FCA, Karen worked for McKinsey & Company, serving clients across the US and Europe on a wide range of strategic issues, and helping build out QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI division. Karen is an Honorary Professor in economics at the University of Nottingham and holds a PhD in economics from Oxford University, where she was also a Post-doctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer in Economics.

Kayla Blomquist is a technology and geopolitics researcher focused on AI governance, China, and the role of third countries in US-China relations. She is the Co-founder and Director of the Oxford China Policy Lab, a researcher at the University of Oxford China Centre, and recent fellow at the Centre for Governance of AI. Previously, she worked as a diplomat in the U.S. Mission to China, where she specialized in the governance of emerging technologies, human rights, and improving the use of new technology within government services. She is pursuing a DPhil at the Oxford Internet Institute, previously studied at Peking University, and is professionally fluent in Mandarin. She holds an MSc from the Oxford Internet Institute and a BA with Honors in International Relations, Public Policy, and Mandarin Chinese from the University of Denver.

Dr. Keegan McBride 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.