Unique AI symposium brings together government, academic, industry and culture

The arts and culture charity Cheltenham Festivals is convening a unique meeting of minds ahead of its annual Science Festival this year, bringing together government, academia, industry and the cultural sector for a major symposium on artificial intelligence, and how its future might be imagined.

Across two days in June, “ChelTechne” will offer senior figures the rare opportunity to approach a pressing issue in the round, using the lenses of science and technology, arts and culture to set new and productive terms of debate, arrive at fresh new questions and imagine novel solutions to one of the twenty-first century’s most important challenges.

Cheltenham Festivals, a charity which hosts four internationally acclaimed Festivals each year and maintains a year-round calendar of educational and outreach work based around both science and the arts, will co-host the event with Professor Genevieve Liveley, Director of the Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security at the University of Bristol, and Reid Derby, Head of Entrepreneurship at the Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser.

Ali Mawle is the co-CEO of Cheltenham Festivals. She said: “Cheltenham is the ideal location for this sort of meeting, which aims to cut across sectors, areas of government responsibility, and disciplinary boundaries, because it is at the heart of the UK’s digital and security infrastructure, but also a vibrant place of culture and debate, where thinkers of all kinds come together to discuss urgent questions in creative, generative ways."

The symposium will bring together thinkers, policy leaders and cybertech experts to open up new channels of thinking, and to imagine new realms of possibility, around AI. The goal is to be part of the society-wide response to the challenges of digital technology, and help power innovation, mitigate risk and influence policy on a key issue affecting society.

“We need to imagine better how technology fits into people’s lives,” explained Derby. “Breaking down the boundaries between the sciences and the arts, between industry and culture, doesn’t happen very often – but is incredibly powerful when it does. Cheltenham as a town boasts a unique mix in this regard – and Cheltenham Festivals, with its expertise and networks spread so widely and deeply across our ‘two cultures’, simply has unique convening power in this space.”

ChelTechne will bring together a “very special confluence of stakeholders” and operate according to “Chatham House rules,” offering attendees the privacy to think freely. Cheltenham Festivals hopes that this event will see Cheltenham become a regular host of similar meetings. This year’s discussions are intended to contribute to the consultation on the government’s current White Paper on AI.

“We really need to start asking, ‘What other ways are available to us?’” said Professor Liveley. “The future is an imagination space, and we need spaces in which to think creatively about problems to we can arrive at people-shaped solutions. A lot of this is about storytelling: we want to help create better narratives for our future that aren’t utopian or dystopian, and which can help frame our response as a society and culture to the tech challenges of the future.”

The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) has outlined plans to make the UK a Science & Technology Superpower, with the aim of driving prosperity, enhancing national security, and creating greater opportunities across society. For the team behind the Cheltenham symposium, engagement and partnership-working that characterizes the event will enable a flourishing cyber-tech ecosystem and cultural sector not just in Gloucestershire but nationwide.

Marieke Navin, the Head of Programming for Cheltenham Science Festival, sees science and culture as working hand-in-hand. “The UK will emerge as a cybertech superpower if and when the public sector, civil society, academia, industry and private sector all come together,” she explained.

“Crucially, the general public, too, should be constantly engaged, to ensure science and technology is not perceived to be at the fringes of citizens’ lives. Cheltenham Festivals takes very seriously its role and potential as a hub for this kind of cross-society thinking. We’re excited to start the conversation.”

ChelTechne will take place in Cheltenham on Monday 5^th and Tuesday 6^th June, 2023.