AI keynote speaker on human oversight and accountability.

Rahim Hirji is a London-based keynote speaker specialising in AI and human judgement, and the author of SuperSkills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page, 2026). He speaks on the gap between oversight as a legal requirement and oversight as something that happens: what meaningful review costs, and whether the override has ever been used. He founded the skills platform EtonX, later acquired by Eton College, and led Quizlet's international growth across more than 60 countries. The material is published in full before the room books it, including 1245 questions answered or marked open and 537 graded studies with what each does not establish.

Article 14 of the EU AI Act sets out what an overseer must be enabled to do, and names automation bias in the legislation itself. The practical test this research applies is narrower and harder: whether the person exercising oversight could perform the work being supervised, and how the organisation would know. Most arrangements record oversight as satisfied without ever testing that.

The evidence says no. Dzindolet et al. (2003) found that explaining why an automated aid might err increased reliance on it, restoring trust even where that trust was unwarranted. Parasuraman and Manzey (2010), reviewing decades of work across aviation, medicine and the military, found automation bias resists training and worsens under workload; that review predates generative AI. The implication is to design the conditions of the decision rather than the disposition of the person.

No, and the distinction is deliberate. What the law should say is the ground of people who have written it. This is what oversight means operationally once the obligation exists: what an organisation has to be able to do, who owns it, and how it would know the control is real.

Six to twelve weeks is comfortable for most dates, and short notice is often possible from London or for a virtual session. Ask earlier rather than later: there is one of him, and the advisory clients and writing sit alongside the speaking, so not every date can be taken. Each city page carries the real lead time and travel position for that market rather than one number applied everywhere.

Most conference keynotes come in around £10,000. What moves it: the time I commit, travel, how full the diary is that month, and how far the talk is built for your room. What moves the number is set out at what an AI keynote speaker costs. Schools, universities and charities are quoted differently. A London booking carries no travel, accommodation or expenses at all.