Annual Public Policy Lecture: We're all going to die! (Or are we?)

Martha Lane Fox will explore AI’s potential impact over the next 50 years on work, business, institutions, culture and defence. Drawing on her experience as an entrepreneur, legislator and board member, Martha Lane Fox will explore what AI could mean for the next 50 years, including its effects on work, business, entrepreneurial opportunity, existing institutions, culture, security and defence. Chaired by Prof Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge. Artificial intelligence has inspired some extraordinary predictions. Depending on whom you believe, it will either solve humanity’s greatest problems or bring about its extinction. Martha Lane Fox suspects the next 50 years will be considerably more interesting, complicated and surprising than either camp suggests. Martha has spent nearly 30 years watching the internet transform our world, from the early optimism of building lastminute.com to the extraordinary concentration of power in a handful of technology companies today. She has seen what we got right, what we got spectacularly wrong, and how often the consequences were ones nobody anticipated. Drawing on her experiences as an entrepreneur, legislator and board member, she will explore what AI might really mean for the next half-century. How will it change the work we do, the companies we build and the way we organise ourselves? What new opportunities will emerge for entrepreneurs, and what happens to our existing institutions when technology challenges their fundamental assumptions? How will AI reshape culture, security and defence? Martha is fundamentally optimistic about what comes next, but not because she trusts technology to deliver a better future automatically. The UK has an opportunity to forge its own path, drawing on our particular strengths and learning from the mistakes of the internet era, rather than simply following the technological ambitions of others. About Martha Lane Fox Martha Lane Fox is an entrepreneur, crossbench peer and digital leader who has helped shape Britain’s technology landscape. She co-founded lastminute.com, one of Europe’s pioneering e-commerce businesses and played a founding role in the Government Digital Service, which built GOV.UK and transformed access to public services. She chairs the Mayor of London’s Taskforce on AI and Jobs and is a non-executive director of Chanel, Multiverse and British Airways. She also advises the Lakestar Resilience Fund and is a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company.