Ajay Chakravarthy

Chief AI Officer Thales

Professor Ajay Chakravarthy is the Chief AI Officer at Thales and a Visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield, where he earned both his Masters and PhD in Computer Science. A Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, Ajay brings over two decades of experience in Artificial Intelligence, spanning academic, governmental, and industry settings. He has held a range of distinguished roles across the public sector, including serving as Chief Scientific and Technology Officer for Counter Terrorism Policing and as Chief Scientist of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. Ajay also served as a Senior Civil Servant at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (BDUK), where he was Director of Digital, Data and Technology.

Responsible AI Summit Main Conference Day 1 - Monday 21 September

9:00 AM Opening Panel Discussion – Faster Than We Think, Slower Than We Feel: The Real Pace of AI Adoption

Frontier AI capabilities continue to leap forward, reshaping expectations and recalibrating what “state of the art” means almost monthly. Yet inside most organisations, adoption remains steady, deliberate, and constrained by governance, infrastructure, and readiness. This widening gap creates strategic confusion: are we preparing for a world that’s already here, or bracing for breakthroughs that won’t materialise evenly?

This session aims to disentangle technical progress from real world absorption capacity, clarify where agentic systems may genuinely transform workflows, and offer a pragmatic lens for prioritising what matters amid hype cycles.

• Accelerating capability growth outpacing enterprise and policy absorption curves.

• Harnessing agentic systems where frontier advances drive real operational uplift.

• Prioritising durable shifts while filtering out performative or premature noise.

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Ajay.

Download The Latest Agenda