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Conference, Friday 20 November 2026, Palace of Westminster, London
20Nov 2026
AI: Worker Voice as Critical Internal Condition
From code to boardroom
An invitation-only conference on governance and worker voice inside frontier AI labs.
- Hosted by Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE, Member of the House of Lords
- Convened by the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford, through its Accelerator Fellowship Programme, and the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School
- Coordinated by Polaris Collective
Attendance is by invitation and free of charge.
- When
- Fri 20 Nov, 09:00 to 17:45, then drinks
- Where
- Palace of Westminster
- Who
- 80 invited: policymakers, lab governance staff, union leaders, scholars
- Format
- One room, four sessions, a public pledge
Confirmed speakers and chairs
Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE
Member of the House of Lords; Chair, 5Rights Foundation
Host of the day and co-chair of the closing plenary
BiographyChloé Bakalar
AI Ethics Lead, Senior Research Associate, Responsible Superintelligence Institute (RESI) & University College London (UCL)
Speaker in session 2
BiographyChristopher Knutsen
Senior Programs & Strategy Manager @FAR.AI, ex-Research Program Manager @Google DeepMind
Speaker in session 1
BiographyMark Coeckelbergh
Professor, University of Vienna. Member of the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.
Speaker in session 3
BiographyMarkus Anderljung
Director of Policy and Research, GovAI Adjunct Fellow, Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Speaker in session 4
BiographyProf. Isabelle Ferreras
FNRS Research Director and Professor of Sociology, UCLouvain; Distinguished Research Fellow and 2026-27 Accelerator Fellow of the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford; Chair of the International High-Level Expert Committee on Democracy at Work; Polaris Collective Co-founder
Academic framing at the parliamentary opening and co-chair of the closing plenary
BiographyProf. Jeremias Adams-Prassl
Professor of Law and Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Law, University of Oxford; Principal Investigator, ERC iManage project
Academic framing at the opening, and chair of session 4
BiographyProf. Sharon Block
Professor of Practice and Executive Director, Center for Labor and a Just Economy, Harvard Law School
Convenor for Harvard at the opening, and chair of session 3
BiographyDr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green
Director of Research and Head of Public Engagement, Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford; lead of the Accelerator Fellowship Programme
Chair of session 1
Biography
Further speakers will be added on this page as they confirm attendance.
About the day
Mainstream Artificial Intelligence safety treats “alignment” primarily as an engineering puzzle. In practice, making AI accountable to human values and priorities (i.e. alignment) is also an institutional challenge: frontier systems mirror the priorities of the concentrated capital that finances and directs them. As this race evolves, corporate leadership routinely sidelines and devalues workers’ knowledge, ignoring the very expertise required to steer these systems safely.
A growing cycle of open letters, whistleblower warnings, and high-profile resignations across frontier AI companies reveals that a potentially powerful and credible demand for accountability is originating from within the AI companies themselves. Voluntary corporate pledges, self-selected boards, and discretionary executive promises have proven structurally incapable of checking competitive and massive financial pressures and lack credibility among many policymakers and stakeholders.
We cannot afford to accept the continued expansion of AI without ensuring that those who labour to develop it have a real say, and that their knowledge is empowered to steer both ethical development and safety. In particular, the fact that dominant frontier AI labs appear to have a conflict of interest with regard to regulation is proving to be a significant obstacle to creating a consensus around what regulation is needed and how urgently it is needed. To counter this, policy must establish viable channels for the diverse internal knowledge of employees to actively shape decisions, ensuring that critical worker voice is not reduced to resignation, or “exit” per Albert O. Hirschman’s typology. By anchoring workers’ voice directly into corporate internal governance structures, technical and operational staff will secure the structural leverage needed to audit, steer, and veto frontier models in the public interest. The promise of alignment must be transformed from a discretionary executive pledge into an enforceable standard for AI companies. This structural shift is crucial, and forms a cornerstone of the wider far-reaching regulatory transformation required to ensure technology serves the common good.
Similar empowerment will have to be extended beyond frontier AI companies to cover the whole of society. At work, the same structural guarantees will have to be granted to all those subjected to AI systems across workplaces. As the ones who invest their time, brain, and mental and physical health to solve the firm’s problems, workers are entitled to full algorithmic transparency and accountability; systems cannot answer solely to capital investors while governing the day-to-day lives of the workforce. In society at large, seeking to ensure the people consent to the rules that govern them, appropriate accountability mechanisms to ensure AI is deployed in the service of humanity are urgently needed (see e.g. Tang and Landemore 2026). This represents the next foundational chapter of the social contract in the algorithmic age: people must hold the enforceable democratic right to shape and consent to AI deployment, directly and through their representatives, with the statutory power to validate, reshape, or veto the systems that govern their life, at work and beyond.
This parliamentary day convenes policymakers, frontier engineers, organized labour, business leaders, and legal scholars to deliberate actionable policy pathways.
Four essential strategic angles
To build a coherent regulatory architecture, the agenda tackles AI governance across four interdependent fronts, via the following four-session programme:
- Employee voice and internal whistleblowing: moving beyond forced resignations and non-disclosure gag orders to institutionalized voice, worker protections, and collective agency.
- Technical alignment and safety frontiers: demystifying what alignment actually means in practice, examining upcoming technical safety bottlenecks, and exploring the potential of AI constitutions as a tool for oversight and alignment.
- Corporate governance and structural reform: interrogating whether we can remain satisfied with the corporate status quo, evaluating the limits of elite trusts, and codifying worker voice at board level, and below.
- International and multilateral coordination: formulating joint strategies that national governments and international bodies (such as the UN, ILO and EU) can pursue to prevent a regulatory race to the bottom.
How the day works
Each session is a moderated panel followed by an open floor. Speakers receive the reference points for their session in advance, and the chair summarises them at the start, so the discussion begins from the proposals rather than from first principles.
The opening and the closing pledge session are on the record. The four working sessions run under the Chatham House Rule: what is said may be used, but not attributed.
Two outputs follow. Participants receive a two-page readout within a week, under the agreed basis. The convenors publish a short public memo on lessons learned and next steps from this day in Westminster.
Programme
08:30
Registration and coffee. Security clearance and delegate reception.
09:00 to 09:45
Parliamentary opening and keynote framing
On the record
Why frontier alignment is an institutional conflict, not only an engineering puzzle, and why voluntary corporate self-regulation is not enough.
Host: Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE. Convenor for Oxford (IEAI) and Convenor for Harvard (Prof. Sharon Block). Academic framing: Prof. Isabelle Ferreras and Prof. Jeremias Adams-Prassl.
09:45 to 11:00
Session 1: the internal revolt. Collective voice, protection and access to information
Chatham House Rule
Collective voice, protection and access to information for the people who build these systems, in the wake of the resignations and open letters of the past year.
Chair: Dr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green.
Speakers: Christopher Knutsen and Karl Koch.
11:00
Coffee
11:30 to 12:30
Session 2: piercing the code. Constitutions and model specifications as instruments of governance
Chatham House Rule
Constitutions and model specifications as instruments of governance, with the labs’ own authors in the room.
Chair: Gabriel Levie.
Speakers: Chloé Bakalar, Kevin Frazier, Canfer Akbulut and Zarinah Agnew.
12:30
Lunch
13:30 to 15:15
Session 3: corporate governance as alignment. Dual board majority and co-decision across the supply chain
Chatham House Rule
Dual boards and worker co-decision, including across the supply chain, discussed alongside the Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust and the OpenAI Foundation as they exist today.
Chair: Prof. Sharon Block.
Speakers: Catherine Bracy and Mark Coeckelbergh.
15:15
Coffee
15:30 to 16:45
Session 4: global governance and the policy toolbox
Chatham House Rule
What the EU, the UK, the US and China can do, alone and together, through legislation and incentives.
Chair: Prof. Jeremias Adams-Prassl.
Speakers: Markus Anderljung.
16:45 to 17:45
Closing plenary: the pledge
On the record
Chairs report what was proposed, what was contested and what could be pledged. Signature of a short public pledge on worker voice in AI governance, and a commitment to carry draft amendments into national company law and forthcoming AI statutory frameworks.
Chairs: Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE & Prof. Isabelle Ferreras.
Signatories to be announced.
17:45
Drinks reception
The full speaker line-up will be kept up to date on this page.
Speaker biographies
- Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE
- Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE is a crossbench member of the House of Lords, a film-maker and the founder and chair of 5Rights Foundation, which works on children’s rights in the digital world. She has played a leading role in shaping online safety and privacy standards in the UK and internationally, and sits on the Advisory Council of the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford.
- Web page
- Catherine Bracy
- Catherine Bracy is the Founder and CEO of TechEquity, an organization doing research and advocacy on issues at the intersection of tech and economic equity to ensure the tech industry’s products and practices create opportunity instead of inequality. She is also the author of World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy (Dutton: March, 2025). She was previously Code for America’s Senior Director of Partnerships and Ecosystem where she grew Code for America’s Brigade program into a network of over 50,000 civic tech volunteers in 80+ cities across the US. While at Code for America, she founded Code for All, the global network of Code-for organizations with partners on six continents. Catherine built Code for America’s civic engagement focus area, creating a framework and best practices for local governments to increase public participation which has been adopted in cities across the US. During the 2012 election cycle she was Director of Obama for America's Technology Field Office in San Francisco, the first of its kind in American political history. She was responsible for organizing technologists to volunteer their skills for the campaign’s technology and digital efforts. Prior to joining the Obama campaign, she was the administrative director at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. She is on the board of directors of the Terner Housing Innovation Labs.
- Web page
- Chloé Bakalar
- Chloé Bakalar is an AI ethicist and political philosopher whose work examines how advanced AI systems should be developed, governed and integrated into society. She was the first AI Ethics Lead at OpenAI, and previously served as Chief Ethicist at Meta and Assistant Professor at Temple University. She is now a Senior Research Associate at University College London and the ASI Ethics Lead at the Institute for Responsible Superintelligence (RESI). She holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where she specialized in moral and political philosophy and constitutional law.
- Web page
- Christopher Knutsen
- Chris Knutsen spent the last 5 years at Google DeepMind as a program manager on various Gemini efforts, as well as more foundational research programs such as text diffusion and computational neuroscience. He is about to start a senior role at the AI safety non-profit FAR.AI focussed on strategy and programs. Outside of work, Chris is a grassroots organiser working cross-lab to help increase the chances of AI going well and is launching a London-based charity to prototype and scale a new model for community spaces.
- Karl Koch
- Karl is the Founder and Managing Director of AIWI, an independent non-profit focused on strengthening the position of frontier AI employees. He has been involved in responsible AI since 2016, when he was a volunteer researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. Before AIWI, he worked as a management consultant and founded a SaaS business, which was acquired in 2023. Outside of educating and connecting insiders with support, AIWI's policy work includes encouraging and supporting the establishment EU AI Office whistleblowing channel, championing the U.S. Federal AI Whistleblower Protection Act, and providing expert input to the California Office of Emergency Services on incident reporting and whistleblowing implementation. He has spoken about insider protections and disclosure decisions at IAESAI and on podcasts like The Cognitive Revolution or the Future of Life Institute Podcast.
- Web page
- Kevin Frazier
- Kevin Frazier is the Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare. His research focuses on the rule of law in the Age of AI. Professor Frazier's scholarship has been published in popular outlets like the MIT Tech Review and leading scholarly journals such as the Tennessee Law Review. He has shared his insights on how to manage the transition to the AI era via testimony before Congress, several state legislatures, and policymakers in Taiwan, Japan, and the United Kingdom. You can hear his latest thoughts on AI policy via the Scaling Laws podcast.
- Web page
- Mark Coeckelbergh
- Mark Coeckelbergh is a leading international philosopher of technology and a widely recognized expert on the ethics of artificial intelligence and robotics. He is Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the University of Vienna and serves as Circle U Chair for Artificial Intelligence. He also holds the ERA Chair at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, where he leads the Center of Environmental and Technology Ethics. He is a member of the United Nation’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. Previously he held academic and leadership roles across Europe and beyond, including Vice Dean in Vienna, Managing Director of the 3TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology, and President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.
- Web page
- Markus Anderljung
- Markus is Director of Policy and Research at the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI), where he leads research and advice to help governments and leading AI companies understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by frontier AI. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a member of the OECD AI Policy Observatory's Expert Group on AI Futures. Markus previously served as one of the Vice-Chairs drafting the EU's Code of Practice for General Purpose AI and was seconded to the UK Cabinet Office as a Senior AI Policy Specialist advising on the UK's regulatory approach to AI. His work focuses on setting up solid frontier AI regulation, what pacing might look like in practice and how society can adapt to increasingly advanced AI.
- Web page
- Canfer Akbulut
- Canfer Akbulut is a Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, where she works on the ethics and safety of social AI: the risks of anthropomorphic behaviour, deception and harmful manipulation in large language models. She has contributed to the Gemini models and co-authored STAR, a sociotechnical red-teaming framework for language models. She is also a PhD candidate in psychology at the University of Cambridge, and holds an MSc from the University of Oxford and a BA from Columbia University.
- Prof. Isabelle Ferreras
- Isabelle Ferreras chaired the International High-Level Expert Committee on Democracy at Work appointed by the Spanish Government, which delivered its report in February 2026. She is FNRS Research Director and Professor of Sociology at UCLouvain, Senior Research Associate at the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School, and Distinguished Research Fellow and 2026-27 Accelerator Fellow of the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. Her books include Firms as Political Entities (Cambridge, 2017) and, as co-author, Democratize Work (Chicago, 2022) and Democratizing the Corporation (Verso, 2024). She co-founded and coordinates the DemocratizingWork.org network. In 2026, she co-founded Polaris Collective.
- Web page
- Prof. Jeremias Adams-Prassl
- Jeremias Adams-Prassl is Professor of Law and Associate Dean (Research) at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, a Fellow of Magdalen College and a Senior Research Associate of the Institute for Ethics in AI. He leads the ERC-funded iManage project on algorithmic management, whose policy blueprint, Regulating AI at Work, is discussed on the day, and served on the Spanish expert committee on democracy at work. His work on technology and the future of work has been drawn on by governments and international organisations and includes Humans as a Service (Oxford, 2018).
- Web page
- Zarinah Agnew
- Zarinah Agnew is Research Director at The Collective Intelligence Project, where she explores how AI can strengthen our ability to coordinate, communicate and govern together. A neuroscientist by training, with a PhD from Imperial College London, she spent fifteen years in academic research before leading Irrational Labs and the Social Science Observatory. She is faculty at the London College of Political Technology and has been an Aspen Foresight Fellow.
- Web page
- Prof. Sharon Block
- Sharon Block is Professor of Practice and Executive Director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School, where she launched the Clean Slate for Worker Power project. She has held senior labour policy roles across the US government over two decades, including as a member of the National Labor Relations Board, senior counselor to the Secretary of Labor, senior counsel to the Senate HELP Committee under Senator Edward Kennedy, and acting head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Biden White House. She led the White House Summit on Worker Voice in 2015.
- Web page
- Dr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green
- Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green is Director of Research and Head of Public Engagement at the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford, and leads the Institute’s Accelerator Fellowship Programme. Her research focuses on AI and human rights, in particular in health and social care, and on how organisations engage stakeholders to assess and manage the risks of AI. She holds a PhD in Gerontology from King’s College London, an MSc in Human Rights from the LSE and an LLB from the University of Edinburgh.
- Web page
- Gabriel Levie
- Gabriel Levie leads Polaris Collective, an initiative building governance standing for safety researchers, workers and the public inside frontier AI labs, anchored at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. He previously co-founded and ran Wequity, a B2B AI company, and worked at McKinsey and Google.
- Web page
What this builds on
These proceedings build upon two policy blueprints.
The Aligning AI for Human Flourishing conference organized by the Accelerator Fellowship Programme of the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford on 10 July 2025 at the Palace of Westminster.
The Towards a Right to Shape AI conference organized by the Institute for Ethics in AI and the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford on 25 June 2026, grounded in two policy blueprints: Towards a Right to Shape AI, the section of the Spanish Government High-Level Expert Committee Report Two Promises to Those Who Work: Voice and Ownership (proposals DW1 to DW5), coordinated by Isabelle Ferreras; and Regulating AI at Work: A Policy Blueprint from the ERC-funded iManage project (proposals BP1 to BP8), coordinated by Jeremias Adams-Prassl.
Practical information
Attending
Attendance is by invitation and free of charge. If you have received an invitation, register on this page with the code in it. If you have not been invited and believe you should be in the room, you can request a place on this page until 6 November; the convenors review every request. Places are limited to eighty. Registration with an invitation code also closes on 6 November.
Venue and security
Palace of Westminster. Parliamentary security requires every attendee’s full legal name and ID details in advance; the registration form collects both. Joining instructions with the entrance, arrival time and a map follow one week before the day.
Travel and accommodation reimbursed
For speakers and chairs, the University of Oxford can reimburse travel if required: up to the cost of an economy air fare for those arriving from outside the UK (rail, including Eurostar, where the journey allows), and public transport within the UK to and from the venue, with no taxis or Ubers.
Oxford University policy for accommodation reimbursement goes up to £150 per person per night. Given the rates in London, please be in touch if this is not fitting.
Speakers book their own travel, keep receipts, and are reimbursed after the event. We will share the reimbursement process ASAP. A limited number of travel bursaries are available for participants who could not otherwise attend; to ask for one, write to westminster@polariscollective.org. Food and drink are provided during the day.
Visas
If you need a supporting letter for entry to the UK, answer yes to the visa question when you register. Once your place is confirmed, you receive the University of Oxford’s Visiting Speakers Form, which allows its HR team to review immigration requirements and prepare necessary documentation. Questions: westminster@polariscollective.org.
Contact
Questions and answers
Who is the day for?
Eighty people, in one room: policymakers, engineers and governance staff from frontier AI labs, organised labour, business leaders and legal scholars. Each session is a moderated panel followed by an open floor, so the room speaks as much as the panel does.
Do I need an invitation, and does it cost anything?
Attendance is by invitation and free of charge. An invitation carries a code; register with it on this page. If you have not been invited and believe you should be in the room, request a place until 6 November and the convenors will read it. Places are limited to eighty. Registration with an invitation code also closes on 6 November.
What does the Chatham House Rule mean here?
The parliamentary opening and the closing pledge session are on the record. The four working sessions run under the Chatham House Rule: what is said may be used, but not attributed to the person who said it or to their organisation. The programme names the basis of every session, so you know which one you are speaking under before you speak.
What do I need for parliamentary security, and when should I arrive?
Parliamentary security requires every attendee’s details in advance. The registration form asks for your full legal name and nationality as they appear on your ID, and which document you will bring: a passport, a national identity card or a driving licence. Bring that same document on the day.
Doors open at 08:30 for clearance and coffee, the opening is at 09:00, and the day ends with a drinks reception at 17:45. Joining instructions with the entrance, the arrival time and a map follow one week before the day.
Is travel or accommodation covered?
For speakers and chairs, the University of Oxford can reimburse travel where it is needed: up to an economy air fare from outside the UK, rail including Eurostar where the journey allows, and public transport within the UK to and from the venue, with no taxis. Accommodation is covered up to £150 per person per night.
Speakers book their own travel, keep the receipts, and are reimbursed after the event; the process follows as soon as we have it. A limited number of travel bursaries are open to participants who could not otherwise attend: to ask for one, write to westminster@polariscollective.org.
Can you provide a letter for a UK visa?
Yes, for speakers and participants alike. Answer yes to the visa question when you register: once your place is confirmed, you receive the University of Oxford’s Visiting Speakers Form, which allows its HR team to review immigration requirements and prepare necessary documentation. Questions: westminster@polariscollective.org.
Are meals provided, and can you meet dietary or access needs?
Food and drink are provided throughout the day, and it ends with a drinks reception. The registration form asks what you need, for food and for taking part; answer there and the convenors arrange it with the venue.
Can I change my answers, or say that I can no longer come?
Yes. Your confirmation email carries a link back to your own answers. That page states the date after which answers are fixed; after it you can still say that you can no longer come, which frees the place for somebody else.
What comes out of the day?
The closing plenary signs a short public pledge on worker voice in AI governance, with a commitment to carry draft amendments into national company law and forthcoming AI statutory frameworks. Participants receive a two-page readout within a week, under the basis each session ran under, and the convenors publish a short public memo on lessons learned and next steps from this day in Westminster.
Who do I ask about anything else?
westminster@polariscollective.org. The convenors read it, and answer.
Convenors and partners
- Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford
- Convenor.
- Accelerator Fellowship Programme
- The Institute’s programme through which the day is delivered.
- Center for Labor and a Just Economy, Harvard Law School
- Convenor.
- Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE
- Host, House of Lords.
- Polaris Collective
- Coordinator.
Polaris Collective