Rachel Adams, PhD, is the Founding CEO of the Global Centre on AI Governance. She is the author of The New Empire of AI: The Future of Global Inequality (Polity Press, 2024). She is a Senior Research Associate of the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge, and an Honorary Research Fellow of The Ethics Lab at the University of Cape Town. She holds degrees in English Literature, International Human Rights Law and Philosophy. Her PhD was published as a book: Transparency: New Trajectories in Law (Routledge, 2020).
Rachel previously served as the Director of AI and Global Programmes at Research ICT Africa. Before joining RIA, she spent five years at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa, where she led various projects on AI in Africa and was the lead author of the book Human Rights and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa (HSRC Press, 2021). Prior to her appointment at the HSRC, Rachel was the Senior Researcher for Civil and Political Rights at the South African Human Rights Commission.
Rachel serves on numerous international expert committees including for UNESCO, the UN, UNDP, WEF, the Gates Foundation and the Global Partnership on AI.