Just outcomes: How can AI make people’s lives better?

This project will host four workshops to foster discussion and generate new research ideas on how to steer the development and use of AI in the public sector for the benefit of people and society.

Why is this important?

AI technologies continue to develop rapidly. They are increasingly being deployed or considered for use in automating processes and informing decisions in the public sector. But many urgent questions remained unanswered about the potential far-reaching impact of AI on people’s lives.

What does it involve?

This project will address this gap by delivering four workshops that consider what is not yet known and what needs to be considered or implemented. Each workshop will bring together leading stakeholders, experts, and policymakers from a range of sectors and disciplines, including technology, governance, healthcare, social care, legal experts, computer scientists, and economists.

The workshops will cover:

• Just outcomes: AI and administrative justice  
• AI and Public Health  
• Civic AI for place-based solutions 
• Market failures: what will Silicon Valley not do?  

How will it make a difference?

Professor Coyle at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy and Professor Hall at the Web Science Institute – University of Southampton will co-author an overview note setting out the challenge and aims of the project. Additionally, each workshop will be informed by a short provocation written by a participant that identifies thematic challenges and questions to address. The overarching question in each context being: what is needed for AI to work for the common good?

Each workshop will be attended by a professional policy writer who will summarise the discussions. These will be combined with the overview and provocations in a report which prompts the research community to focus on questions yet to be addressed.

By the end of 2024 the Nuffield Foundation will use the findings to set out details of a new funding call on AI as part of the Research, Development and Analysis Fund. Applications will be invited to our funding rounds in March and October 2025.