Wendy Hall
Computer Scientist
Regius Professor of Computer Science at Southampton and web-science pioneer who co-authored the review that shaped Britain’s AI strategy, served on the UN’s AI advisory body, and insists “AI is too important to be left to men.”
In her words
AI will take the drudge out of life, but it doesn’t mean lots of people are going to become jobless.
AI is too important to be left to men.
Biography
Dame Wendy Hall (born 1952) was building hypermedia systems before the web existed — her Microcosm project anticipated linked information years ahead of the browser — and she went on to co-found the discipline of web science with Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt. She is Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton and one of the most decorated figures in British computing.
Architect of Britain’s AI strategy
Hall co-chaired the 2017 independent review “Growing the Artificial Intelligence Industry in the UK,” whose recommendations seeded the national AI strategy, and in 2018 was named the UK’s first AI skills champion. In 2023 the UN Secretary-General appointed her to his high-level advisory body on AI — chosen from more than 1,800 nominees — where she pushed for governance that spreads AI’s benefits globally. She argues the UK “has the ability to sidestep overly heavy-handed regulation” rather than copy the EU’s approach.
Women are using AI like they use the web, but they’re not part of its design or development and that needs to change.
Her advocacy is unmistakably pro-AI — “used right, it can change the world”; businesses should “see AI as a new colleague sitting at the table”; cutting workforces would be “naive and short-sighted” — but paired with warnings that progress is happening in “a regulation vacuum” and a career-long campaign to get women designing the technology, not just using it.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/wendy-hall