Biography
Alia Zafar is Director of HR & Facilities Management at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, bringing nearly three decades of experience across banking, energy, telecoms, and international development. A certified expert in Business AI from London Business School and Negotiation from Oxford, she is a keynote speaker on AI governance, digital transformation, and DEI at forums including London Tech Week and the Change Now Summit. Beyond her institutional role, Alia made history as the first woman elected to a cricket board in South Asia, and is a social entrepreneur, published author, and one of the global managers of the Hans Wahl Impact Entrepreneurs Community.
Session
- AI For GoodSpeaker
Keynote 53 - The Wrong Question: Why Human-in-the-Loop Is No Longer Enough
Wednesday 23 September, 14:20 – 14:35Auditorium StageHuman-in-the-Loop has become a technical checkbox: a person somewhere in the pipeline, approving outputs. Alia Zafar argues that is the wrong question. The decisions that determine how AI reshapes work, inequality, climate and national competitiveness are not made in the loop. They are made in governance, and largely by whoever holds the technology, the capital and the infrastructure. Drawing on three decades across banking, energy, telecoms and international development, she sets out a practical framework for keeping people at the centre of AI transformation: where oversight actually has to sit, which risks are being consistently underweighted, and what intentional governance looks like inside an organisation rather than in a principles document.