World AI Week: What will it take to create an AI future that leaves no one behind?

Over the past decade, we have seen artificial intelligence (AI) move from a quiet “AI winter” to a blossoming “AI spring.” AI is now certainly redefining how we live, operate and interact with the world around us - whether it’s helping doctors with diagnostics, assisting engineers in designing vehicles or altering the ways we communicate and work every day.

Yet, even as the UK emerges as a major economic force in AI, questions persist about how we realise its full potential while ensuring its benefits are responsible, equitable and widely shared. It is here that Professor Elena Gaura, Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) and AI Lead at Coventry University Group, explains how and why AI must be developed collaboratively and adaptively to create an inclusive, future-ready approach that leaves no one behind:

Connect your disciplines

After more than three decades of research and exploration in sensors and artificial intelligence, I am still captivated by how data, when understood and used wisely, can change the world for the better. AI is the most powerful expression yet of that idea: the ability to see patterns in complexity, to make sense of the world’s noise and to help people solve problems that once seemed impossible.

But AI is not just a technology story; it’s a story about people, and what we choose to do with our collective intelligence.

At Coventry University Group, our guiding belief and first principle is simple: if you want to do something that really works, you must bring all your competencies close together. That’s why our AI mission operates as a single, connected system - what I call an Integrated AI Commons - that links education, research, innovation and skills. It’s the combination that matters when researchers, educators, innovators and learners share data, insight and purpose, AI moves from theory to practice and delivers real public value.

This autumn, our connected approach comes to life. Through the AI Skills Academy, the AI Adoption Lab and the Coventry Centre for Doctoral Training in AI, we are creating a clear pathway from discovery to deployment. Students learn alongside practitioners; researchers design with industry; communities help define the tools that will shape their lives. It is AI as collaboration, not consumption.

Build trust through co-creation

The second principle that defines our approach is: leave no one behind. AI must serve the whole of society, not just a privileged few. Inclusion means not only access but understanding. People must trust the systems that increasingly influence their education, health and livelihoods, and that trust grows only when AI is transparent, fair and co-created. We measure progress not by the number of algorithms built but by the number of citizens, clinicians, teachers and small businesses co-authoring them. Civic trust is earned through participation, not persuasion.

Evolve and adapt with the technology you create

Finally, we must look to the future while responding to the present. AI evolves at extraordinary speed and our responses must evolve just as quickly. Every project we deliver includes an adaptation plan with data pipelines, model registries and modular components designed to evolve as technology advances. Solutions are engineered by those who will use them: discipline specialists and problem owners working hand-in-hand with AI experts. This partnership between domain knowledge and digital capability makes our work both rigorous and resilient.

This integrated, inclusive and adaptive approach is how we translate the UK’s AI Industrial Strategy into lived reality, connecting national ambition to local capability and global opportunity. Coventry University Group is proud to lead by example: a university where research meets industry, education meets innovation and technology meets humanity.

I believe deeply that the world can be a better, fairer and more creative place if we use AI wisely. When we bring our competencies together, ensure that no one is left behind and design for a future that adapts with us, AI becomes more than a tool. It becomes a shared act of imagination. A way to build trust, understanding and possibility into the very fabric of the world to come.

Visit Professor Elena Gaura's profile. 

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