Conference attendees watch a panel of three people on a stage. Gina Neff sits on the far right of the stage and is speaks to fellow panelists with a hand gesture. There is a large screen behind the panelists explaining the topic of the panel and each panelist's professional affiliation.
Credit: Bennett Institute for Public Policy

Prof Gina Neff speaks about the social, economic, and geopolitical disruptions caused by innovation in AI at this year’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy Annual Conference

This year’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy Annual Conference hosted a series of sessions to engage academic thinkers and policy experts in conversations about the most pressing challenges facing governments around the world.

Our Executive Director Professor Gina Neff was invited to speak on the topic of disruption and technological innovation alongside Emran Mian, Director General for Digital Technologies and Telecoms at the UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), Brittany Smith, UK Policy and Partnerships Lead at OpenAI, and Professor Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy and Co-Director of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

Prof Neff spoke about innovation in AI technologies and its implications for global markets and social institutions. She highlighted the gap in who can enter AI markets and the need for “institutional restitching” to successfully prepare society for disruption to all our social institutions from our jobs and public sector to the makeup of our families. AI systems will have a transformative effect on the norms, practices, and rules we use to organise our societies so we can’t dismiss these new technologies but we also can’t leave the market to its own devices.

Prof Neff asks: How are we preparing societies to have the capacity to work well with these enormous transformations?

Watch a recording of the session at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.