The government has announced members of its new Artificial Intelligence Council, an independent committee set up to discuss ways to promote ethical use of the technology.
The line-up includes online-only retailer Ocado’s chief technology officer Paul Clarke, the co-founder of Google-owned AI firm DeepMind Mustafa Suleyman and Alice Webb, director for children’s and education at the BBC.
The panel also includes university professors, AI ethics board members, and the public sector in the CEO of NHS Digital Academy.
Other representatives are AI for good founder Kriti Sharma, UKRI chief executive Mark Walport and founding director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics Professor David Lane.
The new members were chosen by chair of the AI Council, Tabitha Goldstaub, who worked closely with Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright, Business Secretary Greg Clark and the Office for AI.
Wright said this new council will leverage the knowledge of experts from a range of sectors to “provide leadership on the best use and adoption of artificial intelligence across the economy”.
Goldstaub said she was thrilled with the announcement.
“If we are to grasp the full benefits of AI technologies it is vital all of the AI community comes together and works with the AI Council to create an open dialogue between industry, academia and the public sector, so we can see social and economic benefits for all of society,” she said.
Goldstaub is also co-founder of CognitionX, an online platform which provides companies with access to AI experts, and was named one of BusinessCloud’s 301 Female Tech Trailblazers.
The announcement comes a year after the ‘AI Sector Deal’, a billion-pound joint government and industry deal to put the nation at the forefront of emerging technologies.
The 21 new members are:
- Wendy Hall – Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton
- Professor Adrian Smith – Institute Director and Chief Executive, Alan Turing Institute
- Alice Bentinck – Cofounder, Entrepreneur First
- Alice Webb – Director for Children’s and Education at the BBC
- Ann Cairns – Executive Vice Chair of Mastercard
- Professor Chris Bishop – Microsoft Technical Fellow and Director of the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge, UK
- Dr Claire Craig – Chief Science Policy Officer, Royal Society
- Professor David Lane – Professor & Founding Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics
- Kriti Sharma – AI for good founder
- Marc Warner – CEO, Faculty
- Professor Máire O’Neill – Principal Investigator at Queen’s University Belfast’s Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) and Director of the UK Research Institute in Secure Hardware and Embedded Systems (RISE)
- Sir Mark Walport – Chief Executive, UKRI
- Martin Tisne – Managing Director, Luminate
- Mustafa Suleyman – Co-Founder, DeepMind
- Professor Neil Lawrence – Professor at the University of Sheffield and Director, Machine Learning at Amazon
- Professor Nick Jennings – Vice-Provost Research and Enterprise, Imperial College
- Dame Patricia Hodgson – Board Member Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation
- Paul Clarke – Chief Technology Officer, Ocado
- Professor Pete Burnap – Professor of Data Science & Cybersecurity at Cardiff University
- Priya Lakhani – Founder of edtech AI platform CENTURY Tech
- Rachel Dunscombe – CEO, NHS Digital Academy