Eleanor Drage

In a world obsessed with whether AI will destroy humanity, Eleanor Drage, one of the world’s leading AI ethicists, is asking a far more urgent – and actionable – question: ‘What if We Got AI Right?’ (Profile, 2026). This book unpicks the dominant narratives around AI and the culture and ideas that drive its arms race, offering a radically more hopeful, human-centred vision. Drawing on cutting-edge research, real-world case studies and cultural analysis, Drage argues that the biggest risks of AI are not futuristic doomsday scenarios, but the systems, incentives and power structures shaping it today. From Big Tech monopolies to hidden bias in algorithms, from ‘AI hype’ to the lack of public involvement in its design, this is a timely, provocative intervention that reframes AI as a social, political and ethical issue – not just a technical one. Only by bringing feminism, reparative justice and climate politics into the debate can we create a better future with machines.

This event is supported by Kenneth and Isabel Morrison.

Dr Eleanor Drage is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. One of the UK’s leading AI ethicists, her work has been covered by the BBC, the Guardian, Telegraph and Forbes, and she frequently speaks on radio and at AI conferences. She is host of ‘The Good Robot Podcast’, and a Top 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics 2022.

Marion Thain comes to Edinburgh Futures Institute from her role as Professor of Culture and Technology at King’s College London, where she was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities for 6 years. While at King’s she founded and led the Digital Futures Institute, which grew out of her Centre for Attention Studies. She began her career as a Junior Research Fellow at Cambridge University, and worked in English departments at Russell Group universities before moving to New York University as a professor of Arts and Literature (in English and the school of the interdisciplinary global liberal arts) and Director of Digital Humanities. She returned to the UK in 2018. Marion is interested particularly in the relationship between culture and technology (considering ‘technology’ in the broadest sense), and in formations of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity.