Ethics & Innovation: The Social Media Ban, Sovereign AI, and the Race We Can't Stop
About this episode
The episode discusses the balance between AI innovation and ethical considerations in democracies, featuring insights from Lord Lionel Tarassenko.
Can democracies capture the economic benefits of AI while protecting citizens from the unintended consequences? In this episode of Ethics and Innovation by Oxford+ brought to you by Equinox , host Susannah de Jager speaks with Lord Lionel Tarassenko, founding President of Reuben College and a pioneer of machine learning in safety-critical systems, about why the race to build ever more powerful models increasingly resembles an arms race. They explore whether the UK's long focus on ethical AI has become a competitive advantage, how Britain should position itself between the United States, Europe and China, and why sovereign AI and sovereign data assets matter for defending national values. The conversation lands at a pivotal moment. Days after the UK government announced a ban on social media use by under-16s modelled on Australia's, Lionel explains why he changed his mind and now sees a ban as the only real leverage over platforms that have resisted safety by design for a decade. From AI literacy in schools to the case for putting the AI Security Institute on a statutory footing, this is a clear-eyed look at governing a technology moving faster than policy. Lord Lionel Tarassenko…
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