Wilton Park Roundtable (11-13 December 2024): Role of UK-Japan Partnership in a Contested World
Organised by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) under Chatham House rules with representation from the Japan Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, British Embassy in Tokyo, this brought together key officials from the Japanese and UK governments to explore key areas of mutual cooperation in the changing world. The strategic areas included Digital and AI, Energy Security and Deterrence. Professor Vijayakumar represented The Alan Turing Institute and the University of Edinburgh and provided key inputs to UK-Japan collaborations in the area of AI, Robotics and Machine Learning that is already bearing rich dividends including the possibility of developing these bilateral cooperation further. The outputs of these workshops were taken as recommendations to the ministers, who attended the last day, to enhance strategic areas of cooperation including the expansion of the Japan Moonshot Projects and UKRI bilateral funding initiatives.
Japan House London (3 February 2025): Japan and the UK: Governing in the Age of AI
As a follow up of the Wilton Park Discussions, Professor Vijayakumar was invited as a panelist to a strategic event just before the AI Summit in Paris. This event, held in partnership with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and Embassy of Japan in London, brought a panel of experts to Japan House London to discuss how public and private sectors can collaborate to shape AI’s transformative potential. The panel explored the importance of AI and technology, the trajectories of AI development and the support measures needed to unlock its role in transforming public services. Through the lens of liberal democracies such as the UK and Japan, the discussion examined strategies for governing AI effectively and fostering global cooperation.
