Rachel Adams

Dr Rachel Adams is the Executive Director and Research Professor at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), University of Cambridge. She is also the Founding CEO of the Global Centre on AI Governance, established in 2023, and an Honorary Research Fellow at The Ethics Lab, Department of Medicine, at the University of Cape Town.

Rachel is an internationally recognised expert on AI governance, global inequality, and the political economy of emerging technologies. Her research and policy work sits at the intersection of AI, development, human rights, geopolitics and global justice, with a particular focus on how AI is reshaping power relations between states, corporations, and communities in the Global South.

She has advised governments and international organisations across Africa, Europe, and beyond, and was one of the lead drafters of the African Union Commission’s Continental AI Strategy, a landmark framework shaping the future of responsible AI on the continent. She serves on numerous international expert committees and advisory boards, including for UNESCO, the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office of the UK, the UNDP, the Gates Foundation, and the Global Partnership on AI.

Rachel holds degrees in English Literature, International Human Rights Law, and Philosophy, and has published widely on AI governance, technology and inequality, digital empire, and the ethics and politics of innovation. She is the author of three books, including The New Empire of AI: The Future of Global Inequality (Polity Press, 2024), and is currently working on a follow-up book on AI, development, and geopolitics.