FST JOURNAL

With the overarching theme of ‘Risk and Resilience’, leading thinkers, policy- and decision-makers took delegates on a deep dive into the key issues of AI, the future of work, and energy security at the 2023 Foundation Future Leaders Conference.

Over 100 early- and mid-career professionals made their way to Glaziers Hall, London, on 20 November 2023 to hear from speakers including Professor Helen Margetts OBE, Director of the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute, and Professor Paul Monks, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. This, the fourth annual Future Leaders Conference was organised by members of the 2023 cohort and designed for delegates at a similar career stage.

Setting the scene, Dr Luke Reynolds MBE, Head of Policy - People and Planet at The Royal Society, gave an insight into some of the upcoming challenges at the science and policy interface. Exploring the importance of linking new science and technology with existing social need, he told the audience: “When you're thinking about your careers and science-policy interface… think about balance and that matching process because that's where you will derive and give value.”

Artificial Intelligence

The programme began with a discussion on Artificial Intelligence and its place in society. Professor Helen Margetts from The Alan Turing Institute and Esra Kasapoglu, Director of AI and Data Economy at Innovate UK led the session. Professor Margetts began by unpicking the definition of AI, as well as the risks and controversy surrounding the topic, and discussed recently obtained survey results into how people really felt about it. The survey, which was undertaken jointly with the Ada Lovelace Institute, showed that people were particularly excited about AI in health research. They also saw possible benefits in education with the use of virtual reality. However, there was concern around advanced robotics, with over 60% of people saying that laws and regulation prohibiting certain uses of technologies while guiding the use of AI technologies would make them feel more comfortable.

Professor Margetts then went on to talk about the ethics of AI. She said: “AI technologies can introduce bias ... They are based, after all, on human decisions from the past, and many of those were biased. So that means the decisions the technology makes may also be biased. They cause accountability problems. They cause transparency problems … Those are all things that need to be thought about and built into the design, development and deployment of these technologies.”  Her team has carried out a great deal of work on these matters and had produced the UK Government’s official guidance on AI ethics – the first guidance of its kind in the world, and the most downloaded.

Esra Kasapoglu from Innovate UK, added that: “AI has started to unlock some of the biggest opportunities in the world, including fields such as life sciences and pharmaceuticals … We need more and more scientists to get engaged in making these discoveries which can change people's lives not just in the UK, but globally.”

The future of work

The second session looked at the future of work. Foundation Future Leaders Programme member and session Chair, Eun Sun Godwin, noted: “We are living in a society and time where the understanding, perception, environment and the landscape of work is radically changing.”  

Delegates heard from a range of guest speakers, including Toby Peyton-Jones, whose experience as a zoologist provided material for several evolutionary animal-related examples. Talking on the current speed of change, which he called “astonishingly complex,” he said: “Any animal’s response to this kind of rapid change is fear.”   His three key principles of advice to survive and stay relevant in an uncertain future, were: stay broad; have a strategy rather than a plan; and remember that ‘context is king’.

Professor Jillian MacBryde, Director of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship and Professor of Innovation & Operations Management, University of Strathclyde, highlighted the changing face of manufacturing in the UK. She said that there needed to be a perception change within industry and a greater understanding of what people value in their jobs. The session was closed by Dr Rhys Morgan, Director of Engineering and Education, Royal Academy of Engineering, who focussed on the future of responsible engineering. His four major vectors of change included: global responsibility; including the fundamental changes needed to reverse carbon emissions produced by engineering; systems thinking for more ethical decision making; and the importance of inclusive thinking when designing products and engineering goods and services.

The future of energy

In the afternoon, delegates heard first from Professor Paul Monks, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero who gave a ‘quick canter’ as he described it into the world of energy security. He described what the uninterrupted availability of energy looks like today, and what it will look like as the UK transitions to a more sustainable future.

He explained that alongside economic and societal impacts, the global energy system must show resilience to weather and a changing climate. He gave a glimpse into what the UK (by then, highly-electrified) energy system will look like in 2050, and explained that what we will see is a fundamental shift in our net-zero world from a carbon intensive, centralised generation to a much more complex system that is low carbon, interconnected, more distributed. He stressed that this will need a lot more energy storage – a topic he is deeply immersed in.

Professor Jim Watson, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Resources at University College London, talked through some additional features he felt were needed in the next stage of transitioning to low carbon sources. He pointed out that in our globalised world, having UK energy independence was not going to happen any time soon and that any transition to low carbon sources needed to take into account the nature of our interconnected world. Professor Watson also discussed how we should manage the decline of fossil fuels in the UK and the risks to any new system, such as recent, well-documented cyber-attacks.

Completing the session, Dr Joanne Wade OBE, Chief Strategic Adviser at the Association for Decentralised Energy, painted a picture of what an energy-secure home would look like for the average householder in a net-zero world. She stressed the importance of talking to social scientists when creating an optimal energy system. She concluded: “If we're going to deliver an optimal net-zero energy system (not just a functional one), we all need to take the time to understand, to listen, to talk and to understand each other a bit better. If we do this, we’ll be much more likely to design a system that does not only deliver net zero but also ensures resilience, affordability and security, both for UK plc and for every single household within it.”

The session was followed by a vigorous panel discussion and debate, led by members of the 2023 cohort of the Foundation Future Leaders programme.

The sessions were recorded and are available on the Foundation website at: www.foundation.org.uk/Events/2023/Risk-and-Resilience-Foundation-Future-Leaders-Conf