We were delighted to hear that Adrian Weller, one of our Governors, was awarded an MBE in the recent Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
Dr Adrian Weller MBE is Programme Director for AI at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK national institute for data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and is a Turing Fellow leading work on safe and ethical AI. He is a Principal Research Fellow in Machine Learning (ML) at the University of Cambridge and at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, where he is Programme Director for Trust and Society. His focus is on the tremendous benefits that AI can bring, but at the same time ensuring that it is developed and deployed in safe and ethical ways. By getting this right, he aims to improve lives, foster the right sort of innovation and reduce the fears of adopting AI.
A common cry in discussions about AI is that it will spell the end of jobs for humans. However, Dr Weller sees that, for the foreseeable future at least, AI operates in ways that are very different to humans. AI can be much more consistent, and can identify patterns in huge amounts of data – but lacks any notion of context or common sense. This means there are great opportunities for us to work closely with machines, to harness the best of both.
Dr Weller said: “I am delighted to receive this honour, acknowledging the incredible work taking place across the AI ecosystem. I have been fortunate to work with many inspiring colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines at Cambridge, Turing, CDEI and beyond.
“I hope I can encourage more people to get involved as we try together to design, develop and deploy trustworthy technologies which benefit individuals and society.”
Dr Weller believes that the UK is well positioned to be a global leader in the field of AI. By working with international partners, the UK has strengths in all the key areas needed to play a leading role in developing a great ecosystem for trustworthy, responsible AI: academic excellence, a thriving commercial environment, and great depth of expertise and experience in thoughtful governance.
We feel fortunate to have a leading figure in this exciting field as part of our governing body, and we hope that the expertise Dr Weller brings to the school will continue to promote the pioneering spirit of NLCS that we prize.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/Birthday-Honours-2022
