Baroness Joanna Shields OBE is a tech industry pioneer, start-up CEO, and life peer in the UKHouse of Lords, who is passionate about creating technology that benefits humanity. Over the past three decades, she has made a profound impact in driving innovation and advocating for the development of technology across industry, government, and civil society.
Joanna is the founder and CEO of Precognition, a startup that empowers leaders in this AI-centric era to anticipate the future and build solutions for a better world. She was previously CEO of BenevolentAI, where, under her leadership, the company grew from a startup to a clinical-stage drug discovery company and developed an industry-leading AI platform that translates the complex language of biology into novel insights that lead scientists to new discoveries.
Joanna has served in executive leadership positions at some of the world’s largest tech companies. In the early years of both Google and Facebook, she expanded international operations, building global teams responsible for exponential growth in revenues and users. As President and CEO of Bebo, Joanna pioneered groundbreaking innovations in online original video content years before Netflix and other streaming services. She successfully steered its $850M acquisition by AoL Time Warner, gaining two BAFTA nominations along the way. As a startup CEO, Joanna built Veon into a leader in interactive video streaming before its acquisition by Philips NV and led international operations at Real Networks, the inventor of streaming audio and video.
From 2013-2018, Joanna served in the UK Government as the first-ever Minister for Internet Safety and Security. She also served as Digital Economy Advisor to the Prime Minister, UK Ambassador for Digital Industries, and Special Representative on Internet Harms and Crimes. During her tenure, Baroness Shields pioneered solutions to pressing global issues at the intersection of technology and society, including developing AI products to understand the language of extremism online and to combat exploitation, abuse and crimes online.
A leading global internet safety advocate and campaigner, Baroness Shields founded the We Protect Global Alliance, a multi-stakeholder organisation with over 100 member countries committed to combating online child sexual abuse and exploitation.
The uniting theme of her work today is advancing responsible technology development and human-centric AI for the benefit of all in society. As the twice-elected Co-Chair of the Global Partnership on AI, Joanna led the collaboration of 25 member countries and expanded the organisation’s global influence. She is currently a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of AI, the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity, the Global Tech Thinkers Group and the Council on Foreign Relations.
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The Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) is an international initiative to promote responsible AI use that respects human rights and democratic values. The Partnership was conceived by Canada and France during their G7 presidencies and at its launch counted 13 other founding members: Australia, the European Union, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States. With its Secretariat hosted at the OECD, the GPAI brings together experts from industry, government, civil society and academia, to advance cutting-edge research and pilot projects on AI priorities.
The subgroup on AI and Pandemic Response brings together AI practitioners, healthcare experts, members and international organizations to promote that methods, algorithms, code and validated data are shared rapidly, openly, securely, and in a rights and privacy-preserving way, to inform public health responses and help save lives. The subgroup was launched in summer 2020, with the collaboration of Jacques Rajotte, Interim Executive Director at the International Centre of Expertise in Montréal for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (ICEMAI), and his team.In November 2020, Baroness Shields has been elected Co-Chair of the GPAI Steering Committee and Chair of the GPAI Multi-stakeholder Expert Group Plenary.
The challenge of using AI for good governance urgently concerns public policy, administration and politics in democracies across the world. The goal of the Oxford Commission on AI and Good Governance is to develop principles and practical policy recommendations to ensure the democratic use of AI for good governance.
The Oxford Commission on AI and Good Governance will investigate the procurement and implementation challenges surrounding the use of AI for good governance faced by democracies around the world, identify best practices for evaluating and managing risks and benefits, and recommend strategies in an effort to take full advantage of technological capacities while mitigating potential harms of AI-enabled public policy.
Drawing from input from experts across a wide range of geographic regions and areas of expertise, including stakeholders from government, industry, technical and civil society, OxCAIGG will bring forward applicable and relevant recommendations for the use of AI for good governance.
