As part of the Reuters Institute’s 2026 conference on AI and the Future of News, our lab co-director Natali Helberger was part of a panel discussion revolving around the societal impact of artificial intelligence. The discussion was chaired by Felix Simon, researcher at the Reuters Institute, and featured Keegan McBride, director of science and technology at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, Max Kasy, professor of economics at the University of Oxford, and Carina Prunkl, senior research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI.
As the panel addressed points like the regulation and policy, funding sources, transparency and open-sourcing, and the influence of AI on younger, more vulnerable users, both points of agreement and of tension also became apparent between the different participants, which made for an interesting debate. The panelists were on the same page about AI being here to stay (and not just a bubble or a passing trend), but their opinions differed on how to effectively integrate it into our society: whether through more regulation, or through investing and letting innovation run its course.
Summaries of the panel are also available by the Reuters Institute and by the moderator, Felix Simon.
Watch the panel:
