Upcoming Events

Date: 6^th October 2025

Time: 1-2:30pm (BST)

Join this webinar which will showcase findings from five BR-UK projects, outline our cross-disciplinary approach to tackling urgent challenges in health, sustainability, and safety, and illustrate the value of behavioural science in informing evidence-based policy.

Rapid presentations are:

1. Behavioural interventions to reduce speeding on public roads
2. Development of ontologies to improve integration of theories, datasets, and concepts in behavioural science.
3. How lifestyle clusters, demographics, and country contexts shape support for environmental policies in energy, transport, and food.

Q&A

3. How statistical and anecdotal evidence influence public perceptions of policy effectiveness and support
4. Behavioural and social science advice shaped government decision-making during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting barriers and enablers to use

Q&A/Discussion

Dates: 19^th November and the 13^th January.

Facilitators: 

• Dr Janna Hastings
• Professor Susan Michie
• Professor Robert West 

Date: 24^th November 2025

Time: 10-11:30am (GMT)

Chaired by BR-UK Co-Director Professor Susan Michie.

Speakers:

• Holly Marquez
• Dr Moira Nicolson
• Dr Amy Rodger
• Dr Maggie Guanyu Yang

Current AI safety discourse disproportionately centres on highly salient technical risks such as algorithm bias and hallucinations. While these concerns merit attention, they overlook a fundamental truth we've learned from other safety-critical fields like aviation and healthcare: catastrophic risks often arise from the way humans interact with technology, rather than from the technology itself. 

The Cabinet Office Behavioural Science Team has developed a novel framework to anticipate and mitigate AI risks arising from human-AI interaction. Rather than relying exclusively on technical safeguards and disclaimers, this methodology expands risk mitigation beyond inherent LLM limitations (e.g., bias, susceptibility to jailbreaking) to mitigate those risks that emerge from well-intentioned AI use. The framework also shows how seemingly innocuous micro-level decisions accumulate to generate systemic macro risks (e.g. labour market discrimination) that would remain invisible through conventional risk assessment lenses until harms had already occurred. 

The framework has informed the risk-managed deployment of an internal Cabinet Office AI system and carries implications for how AI risk is managed globally. The work demonstrates that effective AI governance requires expertise beyond machine learning specialists. The contemporary AI implementation landscape, however, continues to frame challenges predominantly through technological and economic paradigms rather than socio-technical ones. While major AI organisations employ ethicists to “align” AI with human values, philosophical frameworks alone will be insufficient for identifying and mitigating latent behavioural risks. This oversight risks undermining the very efficiency and impact that AI promises to deliver.

BR-UK researchers Dr Maggie Yang and Dr Amy Rodger will present an overview of the BR-UK AI Resources Repository and provide an update on BR-UKs statement on AI.

Date: 30^th June 2026

The first joint BR-UK and Centre-UB conference on Building National Capability in Behavioural Research will be held on June 30th 2026 at the Teaching and Learning Building, Edgbaston Campus, University of Birmingham. 

Stay tuned for our announcement of the keynote speakers and themes of the conference in our next newsletter.