THALES IN THE UK
“ If you’ re just taking computer scientists and developers to develop these systems without considering the psychologists, without considering neurologists or medical professionals, then your AI is always going to be biased”
Ajay Chakravarthy, Chief AI Officer, Thales
The homogeneity has consequences beyond representation.“ If we don’ t prevent a groupthink culture evolving in these tech markets, the AI, the large language models, are going to give you answers based on that groupthink approach,” he says. When development teams share similar backgrounds and perspectives, the systems they build reflect those limitations.
Building teams with varied backgrounds matters for the work itself.“ If you’ re just taking computer scientists and developers to develop these systems without considering the psychologists, without considering neurologists or medical professionals, then your AI is always going to be biased,” Ajay says.“ If you really want to enable trusted AI, then that level of diversity needs to be there.”
This thinking extends to how Thales approaches talent development. The company regularly hires apprentices and graduates, providing opportunities to work across multiple business lines and move between research, applied and deployed phases of AI development.
Education represents another priority for shifting organisational culture.“ If you really want to make Thales an AI-first company, you need to start with the mindset and culture,” he says. This includes understanding when AI applies and when it doesn’ t, recognising that large language models represent one technology among many, and maintaining a problem-centric rather than solution-centric approach.
Keeping humans in the loop For mission-critical systems, human accountability remains non-negotiable at Thales. Ajay observes a societal split between those resisting AI and those adopting it without caution. The anxiety manifests in unexpected places.“ Even when I get into taxis in the morning, the first question I get asked – when they know I’ m working in the AI space – is, am I losing my job to a robot?”
62 February 2026