PAI honors Verity Harding and James Manyika as 2026 ChangeMaker Awardees

This year, PAI marks our 10-year anniversary, and as I wrote in February, the trust we’ve built together over the past decade is the foundation for what comes next.

More than 150 organizations across 19 countries share in our collective impact, made possible by people who commit, year after year, to the quiet, essential work of collaborating across sectors. PAI’s ChangeMaker Awards recognize the people whose leadership has shaped our Partnership and the broader responsible AI field.

Today, I am proud to share the 2026 recipients. Both have made huge contributions to our shared understanding of AI and its impact on society, and were also instrumental in the founding of PAI in 2016. Their leadership and support since has been a major contribution to our continued success.

• Verity Harding, Director of the AI & Geopolitics Project at the University of Cambridge and Founder of Formation Advisory
• James Manyika, Senior Vice President at Google-Alphabet and President for Research, Labs, Technology & Society

Verity is a pioneer in understanding how AI impacts society, convening leaders and delivering foundational work in this space long before AI entered the mainstream and dominated the headlines. She co-founded Partnership on AI while serving as Google DeepMind’s first Global Head of Public Policy, building the organization from the ground up and serving as Treasurer of the Board. Her book AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI’s Future and Save Our Own insists that the public has a legitimate claim on how this technology develops. Today, Verity directs the AIxGEO project at the University of Cambridge, where she advocates moving past framing AI as a great power competition to prioritize international diplomacy and cooperation. She also advises leaders and executives on how to navigate policy and influence in the age of AI.

“I’m honoured to receive this award from an organisation I value so highly. We co-founded PAI a decade ago because we could see how important it would be to have an independent, trusted space where those involved in building AI would have a place for the challenging conversations that were clearly ahead as the technology advanced. Ensuring that this conversation was widened beyond technology companies, but included civil society, academia, and non-AI businesses was also critical. The team has worked so hard since to make this a reality, and 10 years on, it’s been inspiring to see PAI flourish and meet the moment at a time when its mission is all the more urgent and necessary.”

-Verity Harding

James has dedicated his career to exploring the question PAI exists to answer – the impact of AI on people, work, and the institutions we depend on. At Google, he leads foundational and applied research across AI, computing, and science, with a focus on the areas where the potential for broad benefit is greatest. As Chair of the McKinsey Global Institute, he built one of the most influential bodies of evidence on technology and the global economy and was instrumental in providing PAI with the strategic and operational resources to get off the ground. James served as Co-Chair of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on AI and as Vice Chair of the US National AI Advisory Committee. Editing the Dædalus volumes on AI & Society and on AI and the future of discovery, he has consistently pulled together the researchers, practitioners, and public thinkers who rarely find themselves in conversation. That combination of rigor and reach is exactly what much of our work depends on.

“Honored by this award. Glad to have been involved in the founding and early days of the Partnership on AI and to see it grow in its membership and mission. The need for the work that the Partnership does and its membership has never been greater”

– James Manyika

Why this matters now

Trust between governments, industry, and the public is frayed. This is exactly this environment that demands people willing to convene instead of retreat, and those willing to build coalitions instead of fostering division.

Verity and James have spent the past decade doing exactly that. PAI enters its second decade with a sharpened mandate, focused on human connection and well-being, AI for shared prosperity, and trust across the agentic AI value chain. All of this lifts up the shared goal of AI that services the public interest. PAI’s forthcoming Global AI Progress Hub aims to make progress in this field visible and measurable.

It is leaders such as Verity and James that carry this momentum forward, and ensure that all of us – industry, civil society, academia, and governments – play a role in shaping the future of AI.

Join us, partner for impact, and help shape the conversation around what’s to come.

Verity Harding

One of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, Verity Harding is an expert on technology, power and politics.

She is Director of the AI & Geopolitics Project at the University of Cambridge and Founder of Formation Advisory, where she advises the world’s leading companies and public leaders on AI strategy. Her book, AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI’s Future and Save Our Own (Princeton University Press, 2024), was named one of McKinsey’s Best Books of 2024 and featured in the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Economist.

Harding was Google DeepMind’s first Global Head of Public Policy, where she co-founded the company’s external affairs function, its socio-technical research teams and Partnership on AI. Before working in technology, she was a political adviser to the UK Deputy Prime Minister, focused on national security. 

She is also Trustee of The King’s Trust, a charity founded by His Majesty King Charles III to support young people through education, skills and training.

James Manyika

James Manyika is SVP at Google Alphabet. He is also President for Research, Labs, Tech & Society, focuses on advancing Google, Google DeepMind and Alphabet’s most ambitious innovations in AI, Computing and Science and on their potential for broad beneficial impact on people and society. He also leads Google Research, Google Labs, Learning & Sustainability, and Technology & Society, and co-leads the DeepMind Institute. 

Most recently, he served as Vice Chair of the US National AI Advisory Committee (2022-25) and member US Secretary of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board (2022-24). He was appointed by the UN Secretary General to serve as co-Chair on the UN’s High-Level Body on AI (2023-24), and is an inaugural member of the advisory board of the International Association for Safe & Ethical AI. 

Manyika is a Visiting Professor at Oxford, an inaugural Distinguished Fellow of Stanford’s AI Institute, and in Ethics in AI at Oxford, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A Rhodes Scholar, James has DPhil, MSc and MA from Oxford in AI and robotics, mathematics, and computer science, a BSc in electrical engineering from the University of Zimbabwe.