Nell Watson
Making advanced AI safe, transparent, and worthy of trust
I chair IEEE standards on transparent agency and chemical hazard labelling, serve as President of the European Responsible AI Office, and advise institutions on responsible emerging technology. My books Taming the Machine (2024) and Safer Agentic AI (2026) offer a practical path through the era of increasingly capable machine minds.
The books
Taming the Machine
How to ethically harness the power of AI: a practical guide for using artificial intelligence wisely, safely, and to genuine human benefit.
Safer Agentic AI
Principles and responsible practices for systems that plan, act, and pursue goals, and for the safeguards their growing autonomy demands.
"Magic often happens where ostensibly very different disciplines finally meet."
— Nell, in her own words
Current work
Psychopathia Machinalis
A diagnostic framework for AI behavioural dysfunction: a taxonomy of the ways machine minds fail, from confabulation to value drift, and what each failure mode demands of engineers and policymakers.
Standards & governance
Chair of IEEE 3152-2024 (Transparent Human and Machine Agency Identification) and the approved IEEE 3173-2026 (Endocrine Disrupting Chemical Hazard Labelling); Vice-Chair of IEEE 7001-2021 (Transparency of Autonomous Systems); Chair of the ECPAIS Transparency Experts Focus Group.
EURAIO & Creed Space
President of the European Responsible AI Office, advising enterprises and governments on responsible AI. Founder of Creed Space, building tools for personalised alignment and constitutional governance of AI systems.
Speaking
Keynotes on AI ethics, agentic AI safety, and what machine minds mean for organisations and society — delivered to audiences from the World Bank to the Royal Society, the United Nations to SXSW.
Recent essays
A Flywheel for AI Safety
Compounding mechanisms that make AI systems safer over time.
Bilateral Alignment Strategy
Why alignment must run in both directions between humans and machine minds.
AI is Compelled to Confabulate
The structural reasons language models invent, and what to do about it.
Explore my research, standards work, ventures, and creative experiments on the Projects page.