Policymaking on artificial intelligence has been captured by a ‘tech bro takeover’, the former chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute has warned.
Professor Dame Wendy Hall, who previously served as the UK’s AI Skills Champion, said the overabundance of men in senior policymaking roles ‘wound her up’ following the disbanding of the government’s AI Council last year.
“We had a lot of senior women running the AI Council and being involved in AI governance but the tech bro takeover changed all that,” Hall said.
“I do worry that we have a monoculture leading this world, whereas we need the whole of society across the world being involved in this discussion.”
Hall gave the remarks in a speech at the Oxford Generative AI Summit. She said the government’s AI safety summit, held at Bletchley Park last November, invited very small numbers of women and academics compared to the number of business execs.
“It was so exclusive in terms of attendance. There were so many people excluded, so much of society excluded,” Hall said.
“It was all government policy wonks and people from industry [in attendance]. The government said ‘we don’t need universities or academics’ but the academics of today are working on the next generation of AI, it’s just twenty or thirty years away from commercialisation.
“This is the tech bros taking over the conversation.”
The government’s AI Council, which had 19 members of which 9, including the chair, were women, was closed last year before the creation of a new AI Safety Institute whose chair, director and three research directors are men. The chair of the UK’s Advanced Research And Invention Agency, the head of the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, the UK’s Science Secretary and Science Minister are all currently men.
It comes after Exeter MP Steve Race said the The AI Safety Summit was a “damp squib” that “didn’t go anywhere.”
Speaking at a technology panel at the 2024 Labour Party Conference, Race said the attempt of the previous government to establish a leading voice in global AI regulation was wasted as its underwhelming flagship summit lacked any real “follow through”.
Race said the UK was the best-positioned nation to convene global voices discussing AI policy due to its “trusted” nature and history of regulatory prowess.
The MP noted that the Conservatives were correct in attempting to establish that position as “Americans can’t really do it”, however, there was no real impact from the summit itself.
Fellow panellist Casey Calista, chair of Labour Digital, said the approach from the incumbent government regarding AI regulation will be “very different”.
Calista said one of the “big mistakes” made by the Conservative government during the AI Safety Summit was treating “civil society as an afterthought”.
She said the Labour government would take a “whole of society approach” that included “diverse voices”.
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