Hello, I'm Richard
I work on artificial intelligence — how organisations use it, and what it means for the way we live.
I'm a Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group. Before that I was Chief Operating Officer of Faculty, a founding director of the UK's Government Digital Service, and a policy adviser in the Treasury and at Google. I write essays about technology and work, and occasionally about faith, films and family.
More writing
All 20 pieces- 2022 · Work
Defeating the Great Stagnation
For Technology to raise productivity, we need to do more than just plug it in. Given the challenges of the moment, the Chancellor’s Spring Statement last week was somewhat inevitably focussed on short-term cost-of-living mitigations, with much less discussion of the most important structural challenge facing the UK today: the Great Stagnation. UK businesses produce …
- 2021 · Film
Film: Don’t look up – review
Netflix’s latest comedy (released 24 Dec 2021) is a laugh-but-cringe satire on the inability of our modern institutions and social systems to respond to existential threats. As the US President (Meryl Streep) says early on “You cannot go around saying to people that there’s 100% chance that they’re going to die.” Specifically the film dissects …
- 2019 · Faith
AI: the future of work (hallelujah)!
A lightly edited version of a talk given at St. James Clerkenwell, June 26th 2019 Tonight I’d like to ask two questions: Is a Robot going to take your job? And what has faith got to do with the future of work? First of all, what is AI? AI is computer software that is designed …
- 2019 · Work
AI Safety: correcting 200,000 years of human error
Text of a speech given at the Slaughter & May Data Privacy Forum Amid the dizzying possibilities within the future of technology, AI, and data, in recent years somehow we have often wound up worrying about how AI is going to go wrong. Sometimes apocalyptically wrong – some of our greatest scientists and engineers like …
- 2019 · Essays
University Digital Services: is an avalanche coming?
Boards (exec and non exec) should consider technology integrated with university services, not a separate concern the ‘IT department’. This is not yet the default behaviour within the HE sector. Specific opportunities include: faster assessment & feedback, personalised tuition, and paperless administration processes. These reforms will increase University efficiency and effectiveness. Digital is not the …
Faith in Action
All 16 episodesA podcast about how faith affects the way people live and work today.
