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When

Tuesday, January 25th, 12pm to 1.30pm UK time

Where

Online symposium via Zoom.

Format

There'll be a great line-up of speakers plus ample scope for discussion and debate.

Why you should attend

Urgent questions around the transparency, accountability, scrutiny and governance of our financial ecosystems need to be asked, not least because terrorism, human trafficking, drugs, corruption and money laundering breaches by the banks are all contributing to the harsh reality that the world is awash with dirty money; a dark world that the UK seems to be pretty much at the centre of. These are the investment concerns we are aware of. What about the money we don’t see, whose is it, who controls it and what does it control?

Illegal and rogue financial transfers are only half the problem. We know that economic crime is rife, but so too is the murky funding of an explosion of AI-enabled emerging technologies that are making the science fiction of killer robots a frightening reality. To make matters worse, the enabling algorithms are often being innocently developed by companies, universities and research institutes, unaware that their creativity may have unintended, lethal military applications, potentially used by malignant actors and rogue states. Meanwhile, contracts are awarded by the government to developers who are funding and lobbying parliamentary activity, or worse, preventing necessary legislation to regulate and establish limits to this technology.

There is an insidious flow of legal money funding potentially harmful tech development and influencing policy, away from the eyes of investors, government and the public. This undemocratic form of public and private funding is seeping into the mainstream world of pensions and investments. None of us want to be unknowingly giving financial support to bad ideas and bad actors with our own money. This event will shine a light on whether that could happen; or might already be happening. It will also alert us to the related risks that our democracy is exposed to, in the opaque world of corrosive funding behind policy.