MBZUAI Joins Aspen Institute’s Technology Leaders Initiative

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has joined the Aspen Institute’s newly launched Technology Leaders Initiative as a founding partner. The two-year program, part of the Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN), brings together senior leaders from across the global technology ecosystem to explore ethical innovation and responsible leadership. Alongside the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford, MBZUAI will help guide conversations on power, trust, and the societal impact of technology.

The program will bring together 20 senior leaders from across the global technology ecosystem, from policy shapers to industry pioneers, for a journey of deep reflection, cross-sector dialogue, and enduring peer connection.

The initiative addresses three critical challenges:

• A leadership gap where most global alliances in frontier technology focus on products and policy but do not always build the networks necessary to counter distrust and wrestle with critical ethical questions.
• The emerging concentration of power in new technology landscapes that requires working directly with leaders of today’s most critical platforms to effect change.
• The need for global collaboration at a time when the race for dominance threatens to eclipse the potential for cooperation.

Chosen for their capacity for outsized impact, this initiative will challenge a select group of global leaders to think beyond innovation and to explore the implications of power, responsibility, and the future they are building. These leaders will grapple with what makes us human in this digital age and how to foster moral imagination around what the future of technology leadership could look like.

“For 75 years, the Aspen Institute has ignited leaders to think through the lens of human values, just as our founders envisioned when they called for ‘humanistic leaders who valued reason, knowledge, dialogue, culture, and moral inquiry,'” said Dar Vanderbeck, Vice President, Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute. “The Technology Leaders Initiative continues this legacy by creating the conditions for influential leaders across the technology ecosystem to deepen their understanding, connect across perspectives, and turn insight into action. It is about igniting the kind of values-driven, ethical leadership this digital era demands.”

“MBZUAI was founded to advance AI openly and responsibly, grounded in the belief that innovation must serve society. Our partnership with the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Global Leadership Network on the Technology Leaders Initiative brings together technologists and policymakers to foster responsible innovation, build trust, and ensure AI advances the public good while expanding human opportunity,” said Eric Xing, President and University Professor at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.

“As AI continues to reshape our societies, there is an urgent need to equip senior leaders with the frameworks and ethical grounding to make values-based decisions. By joining forces with the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Global Leadership Network, we are creating space for robust dialogue, cross-sector connection, and the kind of principled leadership this moment demands,” said Dr. Caroline Green, Director of Research at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford.

As part of the AGLN, technology leaders participating in the initiative join a community of more than 4,000 Fellows who have gone through one of the AGLN’s 16 cohort-based Fellowship programs focused on igniting the values-driven leadership needed to drive positive societal change around the world.

Structure: The Technology Leaders Initiative follows the proven fellowship model established by the highly successful Henry Crown Fellowship in 1997 and tailored to meet the demands of today’s technology landscape. The experience consists of four seminars totaling approximately 25 days, held in different locations around the globe representing technology power centers. Candidates must be nominated by a third party and selected by the Aspen Institute. The program seeks leaders who represent unique nodes of influence in their respective domains within the global technology ecosystem.

Learn more about the initiative here.