Brazen Summit 2026, Day 2: AI, Work and the Infrastructure Behind It

Day 2 of the Brazen Summit moves past the headlines to examine what artificial intelligence is really doing to work, careers and the infrastructure that underpins it. The morning is designed for leaders who need a clear, evidence-based view of AI to inform strategy, investment and workforce planning.

Dr Daniel Duma opens with a keynote on what agentic AI can do today and what that means for the future of work. A panel with Emily Armstrong, Joel Gibbard MBE and Caelum Rosenkranz of Google Cloud then takes on one of the most pressing questions for employers: if AI is taking on entry-level tasks, how will the next generation of technology leaders gain the experience they need?

Attendees will then hear directly from people putting AI to work. Kirstine Dale of the Met Office, Su Crighton of KPMG, Andrew Ward of nLighten and Katie Gallagher OBE share what is working, what is not, and what it takes to move beyond pilots. The morning closes with a fireside chat with Dame Dawn Childs, CEO of nLighten, on sovereignty, compute capacity and the infrastructure choices facing the UK.

Between sessions, there is time to connect with technologists, business leaders, policymakers and talent specialists working through the same challenges, making the morning as valuable for the conversations it starts as for the content on stage.

Who should attend: business leaders, technologists, HR and talent leads, policymakers and anyone planning for AI adoption.

The Summit runs each weekday morning from Monday 9 to Friday 13 November as part of Brazen, Bristol's festival of technology, creativity and culture. Sessions begin at 09:30. If you'd like to book a week pass follow this link https://techspark.co/brazen/passes/

Info: AI can now write the code, run the research and build the product. So where does that leave you? Dr Daniel Duma, an AI PhD and former Google and Amazon engineer, explains what agentic AI can really do today, whether your job is about to be automated, and how to become the person who directs the robots rather than the one replaced by them.

Info: AI coding tools are already doing the work that used to train junior developers, and the entry-level and mid-level roles that once built expertise are quietly disappearing. What happens in ten years when there is no pipeline of people who have done the groundwork to become the next generation of senior leaders? This panel looks honestly at who wins, who is at risk and what is at stake, including the danger that a smaller, more automated talent pool becomes a less diverse one. It explores where human judgement still beats the machine, how companies should rethink career pathways, and what it takes to build a future technology workforce that is both AI-fluent and genuinely representative.

Info: Every organisation can create an AI demo. Far fewer have AI in production, delivering measurable results. In this session, speakers from the Met Office, DSIT, nLighten and KPMG share what they are seeing on the ground: where AI is paying its way, where the promise still outruns the reality, and what separates the two.

Info: The AI boom runs on data centres, chips, energy and cloud capacity, and most of it is owned by a handful of companies, mostly American, with the UK depending on their infrastructure. This fireside chat asks what that means for a country that wants to shape the technology rather than simply rent it. Should the UK build sovereign compute, or is that an expensive vanity project? How do we power AI without straining the grid or our climate targets? And when public services, startups and citizens all depend on systems owned elsewhere, who really holds the power?

Event venue & nearby stays

St Nicholas Church, Saint Nicholas Street, Bristol, United Kingdom

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