Oxford AI ethics institute names five new Accelerator Fellows

Fellows will address AI safety and technology policy

Three of the appointees are joining as Senior Accelerator Fellows. Stuart Russell OBE, FRS is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, co-author of the standard textbook on artificial intelligence, and President of the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI.

During his Fellowship, Russell will explore philosophical problems arising from his long-term project to devise provably safe and beneficial AI systems. Marietje Schaake, a Dutch politician and digital policy expert, will research policy options for countering the influence of technology companies as AI is deployed across the globe. Her work focuses on the relationship between technology, democracy and geopolitics.

Jen Zhu, a technology founder, board member and investor, will examine AI as materially grounded in physical infrastructure, including water, minerals and data centres. Zhu is co-founder and CEO of Power Dynamics, which provides hardware integrating battery energy storage systems, advanced immersion cooling for GPUs and thermal reutilisation for AI data centres and edge compute for local inference.

Research focuses on work and representation

Isabelle Ferreras joins as an Accelerator Fellow. A sociologist and political scientist, she works on corporate governance, labour, AI and democratic theory. She is Research Director at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research in Brussels and professor extraordinaire at the University of Louvain.

Ferreras will lead a programme based on the view that the right to shape AI is the primary driver of meaningful work. The project places participation in the development of AI at the centre of questions about labour and the future of work.

Zarinah Agnew, Research Director at the Collective Intelligence Project, will study where AI can be trusted to represent different sections of the population in exercises such as policy simulations. Agnew trained as a neuroscientist and leads the organisation's Global Dialogues programme, a cross-cultural deliberation dataset spanning more than eighty countries. The Collective Intelligence Project builds methods for measuring how well AI systems represent the people they are asked to speak for.

A programme aimed at AI regulation and public awareness

Dr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green, Director of the Accelerator Fellowship Programme, said: “We are delighted to welcome this exceptional group of Fellows to the Accelerator Fellowship Programme. They bring a remarkable breadth of expertise and perspectives and the work they undertake as Fellows will make a vital contribution to our mission to address some of the most pressing ethical challenges posed by AI.”

Supported by funding from the Stephen A. Schwarzman Foundation, the programme aims to contribute to AI regulation, industry practices and public awareness while fostering long-term alliances addressing AI's risks and opportunities. The Institute says its vision is to ensure AI benefits everyone by addressing ethical challenges including bias, privacy concerns, accountability and transparency.

For users and policymakers, the appointments signal a broad research agenda. The Fellows' work connects technical safety with questions about corporate power, democratic participation, resources, labour and whether AI systems can represent communities fairly. The Institute encourages the public to follow the Fellows' work through its LinkedIn and X accounts and regular events.