Lizzi Collinge

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Lady. Having that visionary view of science—looking beyond what is to what could be—is absolutely essential. The providers and the businesses that she talked about are essential to that. Ada contributed to a debate that is extremely pertinent today when she discussed the possibility of machine intelligence back in the 1800s. She said: “The Analytical Engine has no pretentions…to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform… Only when computers originate things should they be believed to have minds.” That is in contrast to Alan Turing’s later thought that computers should be understood in terms of their ability to appear to think. He termed her thoughts “Lady Lovelace’s objection”, which I think is rather beautiful. What developments would we have seen by now if we had understood earlier the potential that Ada saw? What developments do we still lose out on because we do not see the potential in women? The barriers keeping women and girls back from STEM do not just disadvantage them; they disadvantage all of us. The 2025 Lovelace report, written by Oliver Wyman in collaboration with the organisation WeAreTechWomen, found that the tech industry loses between £2 billion and £3.5 billion every year through a broken career framework that drives out talent, with women bearing the heaviest cost.