A three-day event last week saw 7 Scholars addressing some of the big issues shaping today's complex world.
Seven Gates Cambridge Scholars took part in a three-day programme at Jesus College last week on “Shaping the Future Together: AI, Innovation, Inclusion and Resilience in a Fractured World”.
The bespoke event for founders, CEOs and senior executives, which took place from 29th April to 1st May, was hosted by the Gates Cambridge Trust, in collaboration with Bridgehouse.co and the Intellectual Forum at Jesus College, Cambridge.
The Gates Cambridge Scholars co-led sessions with senior academics, guiding delegates through cutting-edge issues in their fields. Through seminars, breakout groups and distinguished speaker events, Scholars exchanged ideas with senior leaders across a variety of sectors and explored key questions in our age of uncertainty – Entrepreneurship and Cambridge, AI and human judgement, Resilience in a polycrisis era and Public trust in the age of deepfakes and polarisation.
The event offered participants the opportunity to engage directly with Cambridge academics, including Lord Martin Rees, Mateja Jamnik, Professor of Artificial Intelligence who is also a Gates Cambridge interviewer, Andreas Vlachos [2006], Professor of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning and a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and Gates Cambridge Provost Eilis Ferran, Professor of Company & Securities Law.
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Hannah Claus [2024], who is doing a PhD in Computation, Cognition and Language
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Nikita Jha [2021], who is doing a PhD in Education
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Alex Mentzel [2022], who is doing a PhD in German and Associate at Cambridge Digital Humanities
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Abdullah Hasan Safir [2024], who is doing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Design
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Aliva Salmeen [2023], who is doing a PhD in Public Health and Primary Care
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Albert van Wijngaarden [2023], who is doing a PhD at the Scott Polar Institute
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Meiru Zhang [2021], who is doing a PhD in Computation, Cognition & Language.
Picture: davidjohnsonphotographic.co.uk
On a LinkedIn post, Professor Ferran wrote: “Is this a golden age of quantum agentic AI-enabled scientific discovery? Or a new dark age of strategic decoupling, fragmented systems, and deepening inequality? Can we make the most of the opportunities while also managing the risks?
After three intense yet inspiring days at the Jesus College Cambridge Intellectual Forum, I don’t have the answers. But I feel I can ask better questions. I’m also more convinced than ever that we can navigate what comes next provided we keep learning from each other and stay in conversation across disciplines, geographies, and generations.”
