Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell, AO FAHA FTSE is the Director of the School of Cybernetics and 3A Institute (3Ai) at the Australian National University, and a Vice President and a Senior Fellow in the advanced research and development labs at Intel Corporation.
Genevieve holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University and is a renowned anthropologist, technologist, and futurist, having spent more than two decades in Silicon Valley helping guide Intel's product development and social science and design research capabilities. She is best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technology development and for being an important voice in the global debates around artificial intelligence and human society.
Current Work:
In 2017, Genevieve returned to Australia and established the 3A Institute at the Australian National University in collaboration with CSIRO's Data61, with the mission of building a new branch of engineering to safely, sustainably and responsibly scale AI-enabled cyber-physical systems. In 2021, she was appointed Director of the new School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University, which as well as housing the 3A Institute, will build out capacity in Systems and Design.
Genevieve is the inaugural appointee to the Florence Violet McKenzie Chair at the ANU, named in honour of Australia's first female electrical engineer, which promotes the inclusive use of technology in society. She also presented the highly acclaimed ABC Boyer Lectures for 2017, in which she investigated what it means to be human, and Australian, in a digital world.
Genevieve is also a Non-Executive Director of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Board, a Member of the Prime Minister's National Science and Technology Council, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH), SRI International Engelbart Distinguished Fellow and an Officer of the Order of Australia.
She has been appointed the role of Vice Chancellor for ANU in 2024.
Talking Points
Managing the Machines: building a new applied science for the 21st century
Managing the Machines: building a new applied science for the 21st century
The Future is Already Here
The Future is Already Here
More data equals more truth?: the future of diversity & inclusion in a data-driven world
More data equals more truth?: the future of diversity & inclusion in a data-driven world
Circulating Connubium: lessons from anthropology for a world of data
Circulating Connubium: lessons from anthropology for a world of data
Designing & Driving Transformation!: Lessons from Silicon Valley & beyond
Designing & Driving Transformation!: Lessons from Silicon Valley & beyond
Making Sense of Artificial Intelligence: Anthropological Encounters
Making Sense of Artificial Intelligence: Anthropological Encounters
Video
Cybernetic Systems & An Approach to the Future | Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell’s 2021 Garran Oration |
Our Director Genevieve Bell delivered the 2021 Garran Oration, the Australian public sector’s most prestigious address. The Garran Oration honours the memory of the first, and one of the most prominent Australian Commonwealth public servants, Sir Robert Garran GCMG. It has been held every year since 1959.Genevieve Bell: The future is already here (Breaking the Data Silos keynote speech)
The future is already here, and governments and individuals need to learn how to deal with the loss of privacy, the rising power of data and algorithms and the growth in robots, says Professor Genevieve Bell. Professor Bell delivered the keynote address at ANZSOG and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Breaking the data silos conference in Canberra on March 27. She warned that that the rise of data would not necessarily make society more democratic or more equitable unless we consciously redesign social structures, and governments work to ensure people are treated as citizens as well as consumers. “Every new technology cleaves to the same lines of inequity as the previous one did and often reinforces them unless you choose to intervene,” she said. Professor Bell quoted science fiction writer William Gibson, as saying: “the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed”. “This is a wonderful provocation. The future is not some other country that you can just land in, there are bits of the future all around, we just need to look for them,” Professor Bell said. She said the future would be messy, and the rise in data, robots and decisions made by algorithms without human intervention would create new challenges and require governments to make conscious choices about the kind of future we wanted.
