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Conference, Friday 20 November 2026, Palace of Westminster, London
20Nov 2026
AI: Worker Voice as Critical Internal Condition
From code to boardroom
An invitation-only conference on governance and worker voice inside frontier AI labs.
- Hosted by Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE, Member of the House of Lords
- Convened by the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford, through its Accelerator Fellowship Programme, and the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School
- Coordinated by Democratic Intelligence (formerly Polaris Collective)
With the support of
Attendance is by invitation and free of charge.
- When
- Fri 20 Nov, 09:00 to 17:45, then drinks
- Where
- Palace of Westminster
- Who
- 80 invited: policymakers, lab governance staff, union leaders, scholars
- Format
- One room, four sessions, a public pledge
Confirmed speakers and chairs
Alex Sobel
Member of Parliament, Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Labour and Cooperative Party
Speaker in session 4
BiographyBaroness Beeban Kidron OBE
Member of the House of Lords; Founder, 5Rights Foundation
Host of the day and co-chair of the closing plenary
BiographyChloé Bakalar
AI Ethics Lead, Senior Research Associate, Responsible Superintelligence Institute (RESI) & University College London (UCL)
Speaker in session 2
BiographyChristopher Knutsen
Senior Programs & Strategy Manager @FAR.AI, ex-Research Program Manager @Google DeepMind
Speaker in session 1
BiographyJanel Thamkul
General Counsel, Fireworks AI; Visiting Senior Fellow, Institute for Law & AI
Speaker in session 3
BiographyMarcelo Suárez-Orozco
Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Boston; Academician, Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
Speaker in session 4
BiographyMark Coeckelbergh
Member of the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. Professor, University of Vienna.
Speaker in session 4
BiographyMarkus Anderljung
Director of Policy and Research, GovAI Adjunct Fellow, Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Speaker in session 4
BiographyYolanda Díaz
Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labour and Social Economy, Government of Spain
Speaker at the closing plenary: the pledge
BiographyIsabelle Ferreras
FNRS Research Director and Professor of Sociology, UCLouvain; Distinguished Research Fellow and 2026-27 Accelerator Fellow of the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford; Chair of the International High-Level Expert Committee on Democracy at Work; Democratic Intelligence Co-founder
Academic framing at the parliamentary opening and co-chair of the closing plenary
BiographyJohn Chadfield
National Officer for Tech Workers, Communication Workers Union
Speaker in session 1
BiographyJeremias Adams-Prassl
Professor of Law and Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Law, University of Oxford; Principal Investigator, ERC iManage project
Academic framing at the opening, and chair of session 3
BiographySharon Block
Professor of Practice and Executive Director, Center for Labor and a Just Economy, Harvard Law School
Convenor for Harvard at the opening, and chair of session 4
BiographyDr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green
Director of Research and Head of Public Engagement, Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford; lead of the Accelerator Fellowship Programme
Chair of session 1
Biography
Further speakers will be added on this page as they confirm attendance.
About the day
Mainstream Artificial Intelligence safety treats “alignment” primarily as an engineering puzzle. In practice, making AI accountable to human values and priorities (i.e. alignment) is also an institutional challenge: frontier systems mirror the priorities of the concentrated capital that finances and directs them. As this race evolves, corporate leadership routinely sidelines and devalues workers’ knowledge, ignoring the very expertise required to steer these systems safely.
A growing cycle of open letters, whistleblower warnings, and high-profile resignations across frontier AI companies reveals that a potentially powerful and credible demand for accountability is originating from within the AI companies themselves. Voluntary corporate pledges, self-selected boards, and discretionary executive promises have proven structurally incapable of checking competitive and massive financial pressures and lack credibility among many policymakers and stakeholders.
We cannot afford to accept the continued expansion of AI without ensuring that those who labour to develop it have a real say, and that their knowledge is empowered to steer both ethical development and safety. In particular, the fact that dominant frontier AI labs appear to have a conflict of interest with regard to regulation is proving to be a significant obstacle to creating a consensus around what regulation is needed and how urgently it is needed. To counter this, policy must establish viable channels for the diverse internal knowledge of employees to actively shape decisions, ensuring that critical worker voice is not reduced to resignation, or “exit” per Albert O. Hirschman’s typology. By anchoring workers’ voice directly into corporate internal governance structures, technical and operational staff will secure the structural leverage needed to audit, steer, and veto frontier models in the public interest. The promise of alignment must be transformed from a discretionary executive pledge into an enforceable standard for AI companies. This structural shift is crucial, and forms a cornerstone of the wider far-reaching regulatory transformation required to ensure technology serves the common good.
Similar empowerment will have to be extended beyond frontier AI companies to cover the whole of society. At work, the same structural guarantees will have to be granted to all those subjected to AI systems across workplaces. As the ones who invest their time, brain, and mental and physical health to solve the firm’s problems, workers are entitled to full algorithmic transparency and accountability; systems cannot answer solely to capital investors while governing the day-to-day lives of the workforce. In society at large, seeking to ensure the people consent to the rules that govern them, appropriate accountability mechanisms to ensure AI is deployed in the service of humanity are urgently needed (see e.g. Tang and Landemore 2026). This represents the next foundational chapter of the social contract in the algorithmic age: people must hold the enforceable democratic right to shape and consent to AI deployment, directly and through their representatives, with the statutory power to validate, reshape, or veto the systems that govern their life, at work and beyond.
This parliamentary day convenes policymakers, frontier engineers, organized labour, business leaders, and legal scholars to deliberate actionable policy pathways.
Four essential strategic angles
To build a coherent regulatory architecture, the agenda tackles AI governance across four interdependent fronts, via the following four-session programme:
- Employee voice and internal whistleblowing: moving beyond forced resignations and non-disclosure gag orders to institutionalized voice, worker protections, and collective agency.
- Technical alignment and safety frontiers: demystifying what alignment actually means in practice, examining upcoming technical safety bottlenecks, and exploring the potential of AI constitutions as a tool for oversight and alignment.
- Corporate governance and structural reform: interrogating whether we can remain satisfied with the corporate status quo, evaluating the limits of elite trusts, and codifying worker voice at board level, and below.
- International and multilateral coordination: formulating joint strategies that national governments and international bodies (such as the UN, ILO and EU) can pursue to prevent a regulatory race to the bottom.
How the day works
Each session is a moderated panel followed by an open floor. Speakers receive the reference points for their session in advance, and the chair summarises them at the start, so the discussion begins from the proposals rather than from first principles.
The closing pledge session is on the record. The rest of the day, from the opening to the four working sessions, runs under the Chatham House Rule: what is said may be used, but not attributed.
Two outputs follow. Participants receive a two-page readout within a week, under the agreed basis. The convenors publish a short public memo on lessons learned and next steps from this day in Westminster.
Programme
08:00
Registration and coffee. Security clearance and delegate reception.
09:00 to 09:45
Parliamentary opening and keynote framing
Chatham House Rule
Why frontier alignment is an institutional conflict, not only an engineering puzzle, and why voluntary corporate self-regulation is not enough.
Host: Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE. Convenor for Oxford (IEAI) and Convenor for Harvard (Sharon Block). Academic framing: Isabelle Ferreras and Jeremias Adams-Prassl.
09:45 to 11:00
Session 1: Inside the Black Box, collective voice & board-level
Chatham House Rule
Collective voice, protection and access to information for the people who build these systems, in the wake of the resignations and open letters of the past year.
Chair: Dr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green.
Speakers: Christopher Knutsen, Karl Koch, John Chadfield and Kate Bell.
11:00
Coffee
11:30 to 12:45
Session 2: piercing the code. Constitutions and model specifications as instruments of governance
Chatham House Rule
Constitutions and model specifications as instruments of governance, with the labs’ own authors in the room.
Chair: Gabriel Levie.
Speakers: Chloé Bakalar, Kevin Frazier, Canfer Akbulut and Zarinah Agnew.
12:45
Lunch
14:00 to 15:15
Session 3: corporate governance as alignment. Dual board majority and co-decision across the supply chain
Chatham House Rule
Dual boards and worker co-decision, including across the supply chain, discussed alongside the Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust and the OpenAI Foundation as they exist today.
Chair: Jeremias Adams-Prassl.
Speakers: Aiha Nguyen, Catherine Bracy and Janel Thamkul.
15:15
Coffee
15:45 to 17:00
Session 4: global governance and the policy toolbox
Chatham House Rule
What the EU, the UK, the US and China can do, alone and together, through legislation and incentives.
Chair: Sharon Block.
Speakers: Alex Sobel, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Mark Coeckelbergh and Markus Anderljung.
17:00 to 17:45
Closing plenary: the pledge
On the record
Chairs report what was proposed, what was contested and what could be pledged. Signature of a short public pledge on worker voice in AI governance, and a commitment to carry draft amendments into national company law and forthcoming AI statutory frameworks.
Chairs: Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE & Isabelle Ferreras.
Speakers: Yolanda Díaz, Isabelle Schömann and Kate Bell.
17:45
Drinks reception
The full speaker line-up will be kept up to date on this page.
Speaker biographies
- Aiha Nguyen
- Aiha Nguyen is the Director of the Labor Futures Initiative at Data & Society where she guides research and engagement at the intersection of technology and labor. Aiha researches workplace monitoring and automation including the resulting privacy concerns of workers and changing labor conditions. She has authored several studies including The Constant Boss: Work Under Digital Surveillance, and coauthored The Privacy Trap and Last Place in the AI First Economy. Aiha is leading a new multi-year inquiry into AI’s labor impacts which will interrogate the social, political and economic mechanisms that scaffold the AI economy.
- Web page
- Alex Sobel
- Alex Sobel is the Labour and Co‑operative Member of Parliament currently representing Leeds Central & Headingley (previously Leeds North West since 2017). He currently chairs the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which published a report in September calling for a new Bill to address the scale and seriousness of threats posed to human rights by artificial intelligence systems. He has also introduced the Artificial Superintelligence Security Bill in Parliament to prohibit the development of superintelligent AI in the UK while establishing a framework for international cooperation to prevent its development globally.
- Web page
- Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE
- Baroness Beeban Kidron is a member of the UK’s House of Lords and author of Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back - published in June 2026. She is a leading voice on children’s rights in the digital environment and a global authority on digital regulation. She has played a central role in establishing standards for online safety and privacy across the world. Kidron is the Founder and Honorary President of 5Rights Foundation, a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics, where she chairs the Digital Futures for Children research centre, and a member of the Lancet Psychiatry’s Commission on Global Action on Problematic Usage of the Internet. She holds several roles at the University of Oxford, including as an advisor to the Institute for Ethics in AI, a Fellow at Jesus College, and as a Visiting Fellow to the Department of Computer Science. Before she became a peer, Baroness Kidron was an award-winning film director. She co-founded the charity Filmclub (now Into Film) in 2006, and was awarded an OBE for services to drama in 2012.
- Web page
- Catherine Bracy
- Catherine Bracy is the Founder and CEO of TechEquity, an organization doing research and advocacy on issues at the intersection of tech and economic equity to ensure the tech industry’s products and practices create opportunity instead of inequality. She is also the author of World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy (Dutton: March, 2025). She was previously Code for America’s Senior Director of Partnerships and Ecosystem where she grew Code for America’s Brigade program into a network of over 50,000 civic tech volunteers in 80+ cities across the US. While at Code for America, she founded Code for All, the global network of Code-for organizations with partners on six continents. Catherine built Code for America’s civic engagement focus area, creating a framework and best practices for local governments to increase public participation which has been adopted in cities across the US. During the 2012 election cycle she was Director of Obama for America's Technology Field Office in San Francisco, the first of its kind in American political history. She was responsible for organizing technologists to volunteer their skills for the campaign’s technology and digital efforts. Prior to joining the Obama campaign, she was the administrative director at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. She is on the board of directors of the Terner Housing Innovation Labs.
- Web page
- Chloé Bakalar
- Chloé Bakalar is an AI ethicist and political philosopher whose work examines how advanced AI systems should be developed, governed and integrated into society. She was the first AI Ethics Lead at OpenAI, and previously served as Chief Ethicist at Meta and Assistant Professor at Temple University. She is now a Senior Research Associate at University College London and the ASI Ethics Lead at the Institute for Responsible Superintelligence (RESI). She holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where she specialized in moral and political philosophy and constitutional law.
- Web page
- Christopher Knutsen
- Chris Knutsen spent the last 5 years at Google DeepMind as a program manager on various Gemini efforts, as well as more foundational research programs such as text diffusion and computational neuroscience. He is about to start a senior role at the AI safety non-profit FAR.AI focussed on strategy and programs. Outside of work, Chris is a grassroots organiser working cross-lab to help increase the chances of AI going well and is launching a London-based charity to prototype and scale a new model for community spaces.
- Janel Thamkul
- Janel Thamkul is the founding General Counsel of Fireworks AI, where she oversees legal and government and regulatory affairs and helps advance the company’s mission of democratizing access to intelligence. She is also a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute for Law & AI, where she focuses on AI governance and the future of open source models. Previously, Janel served as the first Deputy General Counsel at Anthropic, where she helped build the legal function from its founding through rapid growth. Before that, she led product counsel for Google AI and began her career as a litigator. In 2026, she became the first Deputy General Counsel to receive a Burton Award “Legends in Law” honor. Janel holds a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law and a B.A. from UCLA.
- Web page
- Karl Koch
- Karl is the Founder and Managing Director of AIWI, an independent non-profit focused on strengthening the position of frontier AI employees. He has been involved in responsible AI since 2016, when he was a volunteer researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. Before AIWI, he worked as a management consultant and founded a SaaS business, which was acquired in 2023. Outside of educating and connecting insiders with support, AIWI's policy work includes encouraging and supporting the establishment EU AI Office whistleblowing channel, championing the U.S. Federal AI Whistleblower Protection Act, and providing expert input to the California Office of Emergency Services on incident reporting and whistleblowing implementation. He has spoken about insider protections and disclosure decisions at IAESAI and on podcasts like The Cognitive Revolution or the Future of Life Institute Podcast.
- Web page
- Kevin Frazier
- Kevin Frazier is the Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare. His research focuses on the rule of law in the Age of AI. Professor Frazier's scholarship has been published in popular outlets like the MIT Tech Review and leading scholarly journals such as the Tennessee Law Review. He has shared his insights on how to manage the transition to the AI era via testimony before Congress, several state legislatures, and policymakers in Taiwan, Japan, and the United Kingdom. You can hear his latest thoughts on AI policy via the Scaling Laws podcast.
- Web page
- Marcelo Suárez-Orozco
- Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and in the Executive Council of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the Vatican Gardens. His research focuses on cultural psychology and psychological anthropology, with an emphasis on the causes and consequences of mass migration, globalization, and climate resilience. His books, published by Harvard University Press, Stanford University Press, University of California Press, Cambridge University Press, New York University Press, the Vatican Press, Columbia University Press, and others, have received numerous awards and citations. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education, and a Director at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the Chancellor served as the Victor S. Thomas Professor at Harvard, co-founded the Harvard Immigration Project, and was a founding member of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. He also served as University Professor at NYU, & as the inaugural Wasserman Dean at UCLA.
- Web page
- Mark Coeckelbergh
- Mark Coeckelbergh is a leading international philosopher of technology and a widely recognized expert on the ethics of artificial intelligence and robotics. He is Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the University of Vienna and serves as Circle U Chair for Artificial Intelligence. He also holds the ERA Chair at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, where he leads the Center of Environmental and Technology Ethics. He is a member of the United Nation’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. Previously he held academic and leadership roles across Europe and beyond, including Vice Dean in Vienna, Managing Director of the 3TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology, and President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.
- Web page
- Markus Anderljung
- Markus is Director of Policy and Research at the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI), where he leads research and advice to help governments and leading AI companies understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by frontier AI. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a member of the OECD AI Policy Observatory's Expert Group on AI Futures. Markus previously served as one of the Vice-Chairs drafting the EU's Code of Practice for General Purpose AI and was seconded to the UK Cabinet Office as a Senior AI Policy Specialist advising on the UK's regulatory approach to AI. His work focuses on setting up solid frontier AI regulation, what pacing might look like in practice and how society can adapt to increasingly advanced AI.
- Web page
- Yolanda Díaz
- Yolanda Díaz has been Second Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of Spain since 2021, and Minister of Labour and Social Economy since 2020. Before entering politics, she practised as a lawyer specialising in labour law. As Minister of Labour, she has championed reforms of the labour market against precarious work: securing the employment conditions of platform workers through the Ley Rider, which inspired the EU Directive on Platform Work adopted in 2024, reducing working time and raising the minimum wage. In 2025, she appointed an International High-Level Expert Committee on Democracy at Work to advise on how to implement Article 129.2 of the Spanish Constitution. In February 2026 the Committee, chaired by Isabelle Ferreras and including Jeremias Adams-Prassl, delivered its report, Two Promises to Those Who Work: Voice and Ownership.
- Canfer Akbulut
- Canfer Akbulut is an interdisciplinary AI researcher specialising in human-AI interaction and cognitive risks. As a former Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, she led research on evaluating the societal impacts of AI, focusing on manipulation, persuasion, anthropomorphism, and personalisation. At the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, her work explores how AI "theory-of-mind" relates to deceptive capabilities and behavioural influence.
- Web page
- Isabelle Ferreras
- Isabelle Ferreras chaired the International High-Level Expert Committee on Democracy at Work appointed by the Spanish Government, which delivered its report in February 2026. She is FNRS Research Director and Professor of Sociology at UCLouvain, Senior Research Associate at the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School, and Distinguished Research Fellow and 2026-27 Accelerator Fellow of the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. Her books include Firms as Political Entities (Cambridge, 2017) and, as co-author, Democratize Work (Chicago, 2022) and Democratizing the Corporation (Verso, 2024). She co-founded and coordinates the DemocratizingWork.org network. In 2026, she co-founded Democratic Intelligence (formerly Polaris Collective).
- Web page
- John Chadfield
- John Chadfield is the National Officer for Tech Workers at the Communication Workers Union (UK). John is responsible for leading industrial negotiations and organising strategy for the United Tech & Allied Workers (UTAW) national branch of the CWU, which he co-founded in 2020. UTAW is now the largest group of organised tech workers in the UK, and represents tech workers in both the public and private sectors, including the major Big Tech companies. Prior to the CWU, John co-founded a worker-owned technology co-operative after two decades in the tech industry working in a variety of infrastructure and product management roles.
- Web page
- Kate Bell
- Kate Bell is Assistant General Secretary and supports Paul Nowak in leading the TUC. Kate works with external stakeholders on behalf of the TUC and is responsible for inter-union relations. She also leads on internal TUC matters. She represents the TUC on the government's Industrial Strategy Advisory Council.
- Isabelle Schömann
- Isabelle Schömann, has been elected Deputy General Secretary at the ETUC 15. Congress in Berlin, in May 2023. Isabelle heads ETUC policies on Democracy at Work with a focus on Workers’ Information, Consultation and Participation, on Legal Affairs with a focus on Trade Unions, Workers’ and Human Rights, the ETUC legislative, legal and litigation strategy (the ETUCLEX), on Gender Equality, on Single Market, and on Human Centric Digitalisation with a focus on Artificial Intelligence in the world of work. Isabelle served as ETUC Confederal Secretary between 2019 to 2023. Key achievements in setting and implementing ETUC agenda materialise in her leadership in Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence, European Works Councils, Artificial Intelligence, Right to Disconnect; in guaranteeing access for self-employed to collective bargaining, on fighting Gender-based violence, in equipping the ETUC with Human Rights Legal and Strategic Litigation, in positioning the ETUC on the Social Progress Protocol, on EU Open Strategic Autonomy, Industrial Strategy that deliver for workers, on sustainable and inclusive EU Competition Policy. Isabelle, affiliated to the DGB, is member of IG Metall. As former ETUI researcher, she was ETUI staff representative and member of the ETUC works council, affiliated to the FGTB. Isabelle is a former Principal Adviser to the Regulatory Scrutiny Board of the European Commission, worked as ETUI senior researcher, research fellow at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB - Germany). Isabelle holds a postgraduate degree in Social and Labour Law from the Sorbonne University in Paris (France).
- Web page
- Jeremias Adams-Prassl
- Jeremias' research focuses on technology, innovation policy, and the future of work in the European Union and beyond. He is a Fellow of Magdalen College. Jeremias read law at Oxford (MA, MSt, DPhil), Paris (DSDFE), and Harvard Law School (LL.M.); he also holds a doctorate in law (honoris causa) from Lund University. Visiting positions include stints at Bocconi University Milan, the College of Europe, Hong Kong University, the European New School of Digital Studies, University College London, the University of Vienna, and Yale Law School. Since April 2021, Jeremias has led a five-year, interdisciplinary project exploring the rise of Algorithms at Work, funded by the European Research Council and a 2020 Leverhulme Prize. His book Humans as a Service (OUP 2018, Paperback 2019) explores the promise and perils of work in the gig economy across the world. It was awarded the 2019 St Petersburg Private Law Prize, and has been translated into multiple languages. Jeremias’ research on innovation policy and labour market regulation is frequently drawn on by governments and international organisations, including the European Commission, the International Labour Organisation, and the OECD, and has been cited by courts, policy documents, and news organisations in multiple jurisdictions. He has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Agenda for Work, Wages, and Job Creation. Jeremias also writes on the law and economics of fragmenting labour markets and access to justice. His work has been recognised by a number of prizes for teaching, research, and public impact, including the Wedderburn Prize and the Apgar Prize, an Oxford University Teaching Award, a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award, an O2RB Excellence in Impact Award, and an ESRC Outstanding Impact in Public Policy Prize.
- Web page
- Zarinah Agnew
- Dr Zarinah Agnew is Research Director at the Collective Intelligence Project (CIP), a nonprofit building infrastructure for democratic governance of AI. Agnew's work develops methods for bringing public input into how AI systems are built and evaluated. At CIP, Agnew works on Global Dialogues, a cross-cultural study of public attitudes to AI across more than eighty countries, and Weval, an open platform for evaluating models against publicly derived standards. A neuroscientist by training, Agnew is faculty at the London College of Political Technology.
- Web page
- Sharon Block
- Sharon Block is a professor of practice and Executive Director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School. CLJE is the hub of research and policy on workers’ rights and empowerment at HLS. Sharon served in senior positions in the Obama and Biden Administrations including at the White House, Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board. She also served as Senior Labor Counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate HELP Committee. She writes frequently on labor law and worker empowerment in national publications.
- Web page
- Dr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green
- Dr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green is the Director of Research and Head of Public Engagement at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. She leads the Institute’s Accelerator Fellowship Programme. As an academic researcher, Caroline works on the intersection of human rights, AI, care and ageing.
- Web page
- Gabriel Levie
- Gabriel Levie leads Democratic Intelligence (formerly Polaris Collective), an initiative building governance standing for safety researchers, workers and the public inside frontier AI labs, anchored at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. He previously co-founded and ran Wequity, a B2B AI company, and worked at McKinsey and Google.
- Web page
What this builds on
These proceedings build upon two policy blueprints.
The Aligning AI for Human Flourishing conference organized by the Accelerator Fellowship Programme of the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford on 10 July 2025 at the Palace of Westminster.
The Towards a Right to Shape AI conference organized by the Institute for Ethics in AI and the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford on 25 June 2026, grounded in two policy blueprints: Towards a Right to Shape AI, the section of the Spanish Government High-Level Expert Committee Report Two Promises to Those Who Work: Voice and Ownership (proposals DW1 to DW5), coordinated by Isabelle Ferreras; and Regulating AI at Work: A Policy Blueprint from the ERC-funded iManage project (proposals BP1 to BP8), coordinated by Jeremias Adams-Prassl.
Practical information
Attending
Attendance is by invitation and free of charge. If you have received an invitation, register on this page with the code in it. If you have not been invited and believe you should be in the room, you can request a place on this page until 10 November; the convenors review every request. Places are limited to eighty. Registration with an invitation code also closes on 10 November.
Venue and security
Palace of Westminster. Parliamentary security requires every attendee’s full legal name and ID details in advance; the registration form collects both. Joining instructions with the entrance, arrival time and a map follow one week before the day.
Travel and accommodation reimbursed
For speakers and chairs, the University of Oxford can reimburse travel if required: up to the cost of an economy air fare for those arriving from outside the UK (rail, including Eurostar, where the journey allows), and public transport within the UK to and from the venue, with no taxis or Ubers.
Oxford University policy for accommodation reimbursement goes up to £150 per person per night. Given the rates in London, please be in touch if this is not fitting.
Speakers book their own travel, keep receipts, and are reimbursed after the event. We will share the reimbursement process ASAP. A limited number of travel bursaries are available for participants who could not otherwise attend; to ask for one, write to westminster@democraticintelligence.org (westminster@polariscollective.org still works). Food and drink are provided during the day.
Visas
If you need a supporting letter for entry to the UK, answer yes to the visa question when you register. Once your place is confirmed, you receive the University of Oxford’s Visiting Speakers Form, which allows its HR team to review immigration requirements and prepare necessary documentation. Questions: westminster@democraticintelligence.org (westminster@polariscollective.org still works).
Contact
westminster@democraticintelligence.org (westminster@polariscollective.org still works)
Questions and answers
Who is the day for?
Eighty people, in one room: policymakers, engineers and governance staff from frontier AI labs, organised labour, business leaders and legal scholars. Each session is a moderated panel followed by an open floor, so the room speaks as much as the panel does.
Do I need an invitation, and does it cost anything?
Attendance is by invitation and free of charge. An invitation carries a code; register with it on this page. If you have not been invited and believe you should be in the room, request a place until 10 November and the convenors will read it. Places are limited to eighty. Registration with an invitation code also closes on 10 November.
What does the Chatham House Rule mean here?
Only the closing pledge session is on the record. The rest of the day, the parliamentary opening and the four working sessions, runs under the Chatham House Rule: what is said may be used, but not attributed to the person who said it or to their organisation. The programme names the basis of every session, so you know which one you are speaking under before you speak.
What do I need for parliamentary security, and when should I arrive?
Parliamentary security requires every attendee’s details in advance. The registration form asks for your full legal name and nationality as they appear on your ID, and which document you will bring: a passport, a national identity card or a driving licence. Bring that same document on the day.
Doors open at 08:00 for clearance and coffee, the opening is at 09:00, and the day ends with a drinks reception at 17:45. Joining instructions with the entrance, the arrival time and a map follow one week before the day.
Is travel or accommodation covered?
For speakers and chairs, the University of Oxford can reimburse travel where it is needed: up to an economy air fare from outside the UK, rail including Eurostar where the journey allows, and public transport within the UK to and from the venue, with no taxis. Accommodation is covered up to £150 per person per night.
Speakers book their own travel, keep the receipts, and are reimbursed after the event; the process follows as soon as we have it. A limited number of travel bursaries are open to participants who could not otherwise attend: to ask for one, write to westminster@democraticintelligence.org (westminster@polariscollective.org still works).
Can you provide a letter for a UK visa?
Yes, for speakers and participants alike. Answer yes to the visa question when you register: once your place is confirmed, you receive the University of Oxford’s Visiting Speakers Form, which allows its HR team to review immigration requirements and prepare necessary documentation. Questions: westminster@democraticintelligence.org (westminster@polariscollective.org still works).
Are meals provided, and can you meet dietary or access needs?
Food and drink are provided throughout the day, and it ends with a drinks reception. The registration form asks what you need, for food and for taking part; answer there and the convenors arrange it with the venue.
Can I change my answers, or say that I can no longer come?
Yes. Your confirmation email carries a link back to your own answers. That page states the date after which answers are fixed; after it you can still say that you can no longer come, which frees the place for somebody else.
What comes out of the day?
The closing plenary signs a short public pledge on worker voice in AI governance, with a commitment to carry draft amendments into national company law and forthcoming AI statutory frameworks. Participants receive a two-page readout within a week, under the basis each session ran under, and the convenors publish a short public memo on lessons learned and next steps from this day in Westminster.
Who do I ask about anything else?
westminster@democraticintelligence.org (westminster@polariscollective.org still works). The convenors read it, and answer.
Convenors and partners
- Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford
- Convenor.
- Accelerator Fellowship Programme
- The Institute’s programme through which the day is delivered.
- Center for Labor and a Just Economy, Harvard Law School
- Convenor.
- Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE
- Host, House of Lords.
- Democratic Intelligence
- Coordinator.
- Supporters
- UCLouvain and F.R.S.-FNRS.
DemocraticIntelligence