AI for the Considered Executive
Two days of grown-up conversation about applied AI for senior executives who are tired of the product demo and want the operating questions, the procurement questions, and the labour questions instead.
About the day
Most AI events sell you the demo. We are doing the opposite.
Over two days at the Royal Institution, fifteen senior practitioners will work through the questions that actually land on an executive desk in 2026, governance, procurement, vendor lock-in, the labour question, the legal question, and what to do when the chief executive has read one article and made up their mind. There are no vendor stages and no product pitches anywhere on the programme.
The speakers are commentators, operators, and one senior UK regulator, and the format is closer to a working seminar than a conference. We cap the room at one hundred and sixty, and we publish the speaker briefs in advance so that the day itself can be spent in disagreement rather than in introduction. There is no recording.
What you will leave with
- A working framework for evaluating AI proposals brought to your board
- Direct access to operators who have already made the mistakes you are about to make
- A printed AI governance reader, written for executives rather than engineers
The chair
Technology Editor, formerly of the Financial Times; independent commentator
Ellis Caine was technology editor at the Financial Times for nine years before going independent. He writes a fortnightly note read by board directors and senior officials, and has a reputation for asking the question that the rest of the room was thinking but would not raise. He lives in north London and refuses to be called a thought leader.
The schedule
- 09:00
-
10:00
Procurement, plainly
Jonathan Adeyemi
How AI vendor contracts go wrong, and the three clauses no one negotiates.
-
11:30
The labour question
What the literature actually says about workforce impact, away from the headlines.
-
13:00
Lunch
Long, seated, no panels.
-
14:30
The regulator’s view
A working session with a senior UK regulator on what they are looking for in 2027.
-
16:00
Closing fishbowl
All day-one speakers
Fishbowl format. Four chairs in the centre, three open, anyone can sit.
-
17:30
Day one close and drinks
Drinks at the bar until late.
- 09:30
-
10:00
The integration question
Sunil Choudhury
Operator’s view from inside a hundred-thousand-person organisation.
Tickets
Early
£980
Early bird
Both days, printed reader, drinks reception. Capped at forty.
Standard
£1,480
Standard
Both days, printed reader, drinks, lunch, and post-event briefing note.
Patron
£1,980
Patron
Both days, evening dinner with three speakers on the twelfth, and a one-hour follow-up call with the chair.
Register
How to book
Booking is at the register form above. Payment is taken in full at the time of registration. The venue is The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London. If you have a question that needs a conversation rather than a thread, send us a sentence on the contact page and we will reply the same working day.