Dan Aldridge

I think we will need a longer debate next year. I am hugely positive about our technological future, but I also recognise that we are grappling with serious questions that will define our future. Like it or not—trust it or not—information technology defines our age. There is not an off switch, and it is a dereliction of duty to pretend that there is, or to blithely insist that we can roll it back or that halting progress would mean that we somehow protect a version of our lives. If we do not endeavour to understand and take control of this industrial revolution like we mastered the last one, it will inevitably assert unacceptable influence over our lives and our national sovereignty. Ada Lovelace’s legacy presents profound opportunities for us all, but there are risks that we must mitigate. Those risks are undeniable, but there are benefits to the industrial revolution that we are living through. We must all work together to ensure that Ada’s computational legacy benefits all, with women and girls, and diverse communities, included by design, not as an afterthought. That is why I was so proud to support my constituents Hazel McPherson and Jess Matthews to develop a national first in Weston-super-Mare: the CSIDES coastal cyber event at our awesome conference venue, the Grand Pier. Hazel and Jess brought internationally renowned cyber experts to join over 300 local business leaders and educators and 80 students to talk about cyber knowledge and resilience. Cyber is not just for the city—it is for the seaside as well. Such events are how we embody the spirit of Ada Lovelace, how we innovate and how we engage our communities—nothing about us, without us. If the UK hopes to fulfil the ambition of the AI opportunities action plan, we have a lot of work to do to encourage women into STEM. BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, found in its annual gender diversity report, which will be published next week, that if gender representation in the tech sector was equal to the workforce norm, there would have to be an additional 530,000 women working in the UK��s tech sector. The gap is huge, and closing it will take a whole-system approach from schools, apprenticeships, universities and lifelong learning. There is loads more to say, but I have run out of time.