Nigel Cannings is the author of The Displacement Dilemma: How Human Expertise Survives an AI-Driven World. The second edition is published on 30 September 2026.
The first edition argued that automating junior work removes the training ground that turns juniors into experts. The second is built on interviews with practitioners across law, medicine, accountancy, architecture, recruitment, design and education, most of whom disagree with him about something.
He has spent more than two decades in AI and speech technology. A former City lawyer, he is the named inventor on twenty-two granted patents in natural language processing, cryptography, AI and speech processing, and was the first to bring GPU technology into commercial speech recognition, in 2014. That work led on to explainable AI, AI ethics, secure search and confidential inferencing.
He founded Intelligent Voice, the speech and language provider to the financial sector, and ran it until its sale to Verint in October 2024. He also founded clause.watch, which detects unfair contract clauses and tracks changes to privacy policies.
He is an Industrial Fellow at the University of East London, an AI Adviser to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Balkan Trade and Security, and an Industry Secondee at the Home Office Joint Security and Resilience Centre.
Coming up
Thursday 22 October 2026, 6pm. Launch of the second edition, at Kingsley Napley in London. Everyone welcome: luma.com/328ekvvr
Wednesday 11 November 2026, 6pm. The Missing Rung: AI and the Route into Work, a panel at the House of Lords hosted by Lord Clement-Jones CBE, with Christopher Perrin, Professor Julie Wall and Alfonso Padro: luma.com/5ddtca3i
Based in London.
email: nigel {at} nigelcannings.com
