About Richard Foster-Fletcher
Richard Foster-Fletcher works at the intersection of advanced artificial intelligence, executive decision-making and organisational capability. As the author of The AI Gap, his focus is on a question that matters increasingly to leaders: as AI becomes more capable, what does that make an organisation capable of doing?
Rather than approaching AI purely as a technology story, Richard examines its impact on intelligence, judgement and decision-making inside organisations. His research explores how advances in AI can change what organisations understand, how leaders make decisions and what teams and institutions can ultimately accomplish.
Richard has been named among the UK’s Top 20 AI Researchers and Entrepreneurs in 2026 and is recognised as a LinkedIn Top Voice in AI. He also chairs MKAI, the independent institute researching AI’s effect on organisational capability, which he founded in 2019.
Testing advanced AI
Richard works directly with the latest generation of advanced AI systems, testing them at the limits of their reasoning and judgement. He works across models from leading AI labs and is regularly invited to evaluate new releases.
This firsthand research gives Richard a close view of how rapidly AI capabilities are developing, where current systems perform strongly and where important limitations remain. His work investigates what increasingly capable AI systems can contribute to executive decision-making and how advances in artificial intelligence expand the range of things organisations can understand, decide and accomplish.
For audiences trying to make sense of fast-moving developments in AI, Richard connects emerging technical capabilities to the questions facing leaders and organisations. His talks help turn advances in AI reasoning and judgement into a clearer understanding of what these changes could mean for organisational performance.
Independent research through MKAI
Through MKAI, Richard publishes independent empirical research into how advanced AI changes organisations. The institute provides a platform for examining AI through the lens of organisational capability, looking beyond individual tools to understand the broader implications of increasingly capable artificial intelligence.
His research is grounded in direct engagement with advanced AI systems. By testing models and examining their reasoning and judgement, Richard investigates the practical relationship between improvements in AI and improvements in what organisations themselves may be able to achieve.
His work centres on questions such as:
- How can advanced AI contribute to executive decision-making?
- What happens to organisational capability as AI reasoning improves?
- Where can AI strengthen human judgement, understanding and performance?
- What can organisations realistically accomplish with increasingly capable AI systems?
These questions give Richard’s talks relevance for executives, leadership teams and organisations that want to understand AI beyond the latest product announcement or technology trend.
From AI capability to organisational capability
Richard’s central area of research is the connection between advances in artificial intelligence and advances in organisational capability.
As AI systems become more capable of reasoning, analysing information and supporting judgement, organisations gain access to forms of intelligence that can influence how they operate and make decisions. Richard examines this shift with a particular focus on executive decision-making: where advanced AI can contribute, what leaders should understand about its capabilities and how improvements in AI may change the boundaries of organisational performance.
This makes his perspective especially relevant at a time when organisations are moving from asking what AI can generate to asking what it can help them understand and accomplish.
Richard brings the latest developments in AI intelligence and judgement into an organisational context, helping audiences see the connection between the capabilities emerging from leading AI labs and the decisions being made in boardrooms, leadership teams and institutions.
Experience with global institutions
Richard Foster-Fletcher has advised UK Parliament and the United Nations on AI strategy, bringing his research and perspective into discussions about how institutions should understand and respond to advances in artificial intelligence.
He has also delivered talks for organisations and institutions including Salesforce, Telefónica, Oracle, ARM, the London School of Economics, Imperial College London, UCL and the University of Oxford.
This experience spans technology, business, policy and academia, reflecting the breadth of the questions raised by advanced AI. Whether addressing executives, researchers or institutional leaders, Richard focuses on making the implications of increasingly capable AI understandable and relevant to the decisions organisations face.
Book Richard Foster-Fletcher for your event
Book Richard Foster-Fletcher for a research-led perspective on what the latest advances in artificial intelligence mean for leaders and organisations.
Drawing on his work as an author, independent researcher and chair of MKAI, Richard connects developments at the frontier of AI with their implications for executive judgement, decision-making and organisational performance. His talks explore what happens as AI becomes better at reasoning and judgement, and what those advances could enable organisations to understand, decide and accomplish.
For audiences looking beyond AI hype towards the deeper question of organisational capability, Richard Foster-Fletcher offers a perspective grounded in independent empirical research and direct testing of advanced AI systems.
