We’ve been
thinking…a lot
SAFE AI: a responsible AI framework for humanitarian action
Last month, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) hosted a roundtable and launch of the SAFE AI project, a major new initiative funded by the FCDO and delivered by a consortium comprising the CDAC Network, The Alan Turing Institute, and...
Tracking AI incidents: OECD AIM and AIAAIC Repository
The societal stakes of artificial intelligence (AI)'s deployment continues to rise exponentially. Alongside the promised efficiency and innovation, the proliferation of AI systems has also generated a growing number of incidents where these systems malfunction, behave...
Quantisation in speech and language models
Quantisation underpins digital signal processing and now elements of contemporary machine learning. Digital audio and images are ubiquitous, and quantisation represents one of the core transformations from analogue to digital format - it converts continuous signals or...
What is Responsible AI in 2025?
In 2025, the concept of responsible AI (RAI) is shifting. Whereas it might once have been a collection of ethical principles mainly discussed in academic and policy circles, it's now a tangible, operational set of standards and practices increasingly embedded in the...
Governing AI agents
As artificial intelligence continues its break neck development pace, AI agents are emerging as the probable next frontier. These agents are not just advanced chatbots; they are systems capable of autonomously achieving goals in the world with minimal human input....
The business case for ethical AI: clear ROI
Operationalising AI ethics is no longer a luxury (if it ever was) - in the current climate it's a commercial necessity. As artificial intelligence plays an ever-larger role in business decision-making, the conversation around ethics is shifting from “nice to have” to...
Calculating AI’s energy use: frameworks and tools
Training large AI models - especially foundation models and generative architectures - can consume megawatt-hours of electricity, often with associated CO₂ emissions depending on the energy source. For AI developers, researchers and CTOs, quantifying and minimising...
Opt-out data use schemes: ethical implications
As governments and companies increasingly rely on data to power artificial intelligence (AI), shape public policy and deliver services, how that data is collected and used takes on enormous ethical significance. A key area is the use of opt-out data use schemes, in...
AI 2027: a race to superintelligence?
AI Futures Project has released ‘AI 2027’, detailed scenario forecasting how superintelligence might emerge from 2024 through 2027.
Le Chat and the European AI ambition
Le Chat, the conversational AI assistant developed by French startup Mistral AI, is Europe’s most serious effort yet to develop sovereign AI systems.
AI and energy
Artificial intelligence (AI) is scaling rapidly across industries, embedded in everything from content generation to predictive maintenance, autonomous vehicles to smart buildings. But beneath the surface lies an urgent, often overlooked, reality: there is no AI...
Building ethical AI: a step-by-step guide for developers
The ethical responsibility of those designing and deploying artificial intelligence (AI) has never been more important. While high-level ethical principles are useful, developers often face a critical question: what does building ethical AI actually look like in...
From frontier labs to public life: how AI shaped the world in 2024
The publication of the Stanford University Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence The AI Index Annual Report 2024 offers the most comprehensive overview yet of artificial intelligence’s sweeping impact, mapping a year that cemented AI’s place in science, policy,...
Applying AI to strategic warning
Strategic warning - the early detection of conflict, instability, or adversarial intent - is a pillar of national security. But today’s intelligence analysts are working with outdated infrastructure, brittle data ecosystems, and escalating cognitive load. The result?...
Exposing the gender gap in AI
Generative AI (Gen AI) promises to transform economies, workforces, and innovation ecosystems. But this transformation is unfolding along a sharply uneven playing field - especially when it comes to gender. A new World Economic Forum report makes the argument clear:...
The state of AI safety
As frontier AI systems advance toward superhuman capabilities, their developers increasingly acknowledge the potentially catastrophic consequences of failure. The three leading labs - OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind - are planning to mitigate these risks, but...
Is the future of AI Physical AI?
Artificial Intelligence has evolved rapidly over the past two decades, what began as systems trained to identify patterns in data has now extended into AI agents capable of reasoning, acting, and even generating content with human-like fluency. As we look to the...
Safety v competitiveness: the Paris AI Action Summit
The Paris AI Action Summit, opening today, is the latest in a series of international efforts to shape artificial intelligence (AI) governance. Co-hosted by France and India, the summit will bring together world leaders, technology executives, and researchers to...
Risks and challenges of increasingly agentic algorithmic systems
It has been over a year since the publication of the paper Harms from Increasingly Agentic Algorithmic Systems published in the FAccT Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. The paper has since then received significant...
‘Agentic’: the 2025 word of the year?
The last two years in artificial intelligence adoption have been all about generative AI, now, another technological wave - AI agents - promises to disrupt the tech landscape, potentially making ‘agentic’ the defining term of 2025. The rise of AI agents AI...
25 AI predictions for 2025
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform industries and everyday life, and by 2025, its impact may be even greater. Here are 25 AI predictions offering a glimpse into how AI could shape our lives in 2025 and beyond. 1. AI-powered diagnostics feature...
Ten steps to align AI with your corporate values
Artificial intelligence (AI) presents enormous opportunities for innovation, efficiency, and growth, but it also brings complex ethical challenges. For the C-suite, aligning AI with corporate values is about more than merely adopting technology responsibly. It’s about...
The ethical challenges of generative AI
As organisations, both in the private and public sectors, explore the adoption of generative AI, ethical challenges present themselves. Far from academic; they impact real decisions around data security, privacy, bias, transparency, intellectual property, and even...
AI and the EU border: surveillance, security, and migrant rights
The rise of border AI: security vs. rights Borders have existed for millennia, but the advent of AI has transformed how states surveil and police marginalised communities at border zones. Over the past two decades, borders have become critical sites for...
What AI in elections teaches us about the ethical use of AI
It's a big day for democracy in the US and AI has been playing a part. The emergence of AI-driven 'voting assistants', has underscored a set of ethical challenges that hold lessons for commercial sectors adopting artificial intelligence. While these voting assistants...
Advanced AI agents – opportunities and governance imperatives
The rapid progression of artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced a new generation of "advanced AI agents," defined as systems leveraging large language models (LLMs) to execute complex, multistep tasks across diverse environments autonomously. Unlike basic...
Short-term gain and long-term loss: social AI and loneliness
Loneliness is something that many of us could experience within our lifetime; it is a natural reaction to solitary situations given our inherent traits as social creatures. There is no universal experience of loneliness, either; it is highly subjective and can be...
Ethical AI and the ethics owner: definitions and challenges
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes an increasingly powerful tool in both public and private sector organisations, executives are faced with a critical challenge: how to deploy AI responsibly while maintaining public trust and upholding ethical standards. Ethical...
Attention to intimacy: the evolution of AI-driven platforms
The "race to intimacy" represents a significant shift in the evolution of AI-driven platforms, moving beyond the initial race to capture user attention and toward fostering deep personal connections between users and artificial intelligence (AI). While this new phase...
AI in education: ensuring fairness in predictive analysis
Predictive analytics is becoming increasingly prevalent in the use of AI in education, especially in identifying struggling students who may need interventions to succeed. Machine learning models analyse large datasets to predict student outcomes, such as likelihood...