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The Ada Lovelace Institute is an independent research institute established in 2018 by the Nuffield Foundation in collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute, the Royal Society, the British Academy, the Royal Statistical Society, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the Wellcome Trust, techUK, and Luminate. The Nuffield Foundation committed £5 million over five years to launch the institute, which is named after Ada Lovelace, the 19th-century mathematician widely recognized as an early computer scientist.

Based in London, the institute's mission is to ensure that data and AI work for people and society, with equitable distribution of the opportunities and benefits generated by these technologies. The institute focuses not on what technologies to build, but on what kinds of societies to build, aiming to ensure that the transformative power of data and AI is used in ways that maximize social wellbeing and put technology at the service of humanity…

The Ada Lovelace Institute believes that AI and data harms arise in part from weak governance frameworks, insufficient evidence about real-world impacts, and the exclusion of public and civil society voices from technology development and deployment decisions. By generating rigorous research on how AI affects people and society, engaging directly in policy processes at the UK and EU levels, and amplifying the voices of affected communities, the institute aims to reshape the incentives and norms that govern AI development and deployment. Impact flows through five pathways: influencing policy and law, changing practice among developers and deployers, building public and institutional understanding, shaping attitudes toward AI governance, and building governance capacity. The institute positions itself as a trusted, independent broker that can convene diverse stakeholders and translate technical and social research into actionable policy change.