James M. Manyika

James M. Manyika is a Zimbabwean-American academic consultant, and business executive. He is currently a Senior Vice President at Google-Alphabet and a member of the senior leadership team. He is also known for his research and scholarship into the intersection of technology and the economy, including artificial intelligence, robotics automation, and the future of work. He is Google's first Senior Vice President of Technology and Society, reporting directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. He focuses on "shaping and sharing" the company's view on the way tech affects society, the economy, and the planet. In April 2023, his role was expanded to Senior Vice President at Google-Alphabet and President for Research, Labs, Technology & Society and includes overseeing Google Research and Google Labs and focusing more broadly on helping advance Google’s most ambitious innovations in AI, Computing and Science responsibly. He is also Chairman Emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute.

Previously, Manyika was director and chairman of the McKinsey Global Institute, where he researched and co-authored a number of reports on topics such as technology, the future of work and workplace automation, and other global economy trends. During the Obama administration, Manyika served as vice-chair of the United States Global Development Council at the White House. He has served on various advisory boards to US Secretaries of Commerce and State and as the vice chair of the National AI Advisory Committee established by Congress to advice the President on AI.

As a board-member, trustee, or advisor, Manyika has been involved with think tanks, national and international commissions, academic institutions, and non-profit and philanthropic foundations including the Council on Foreign Relations, the MacArthur Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute, the Oxford Internet Institute, and the Aspen Institute. He is a fellow at DeepMind. He is also a visiting professor at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government.

Trained as a robotics, while at Oxford Manyika studied computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and topics such as Bayesian networks and decentralized data fusion. He and Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte published the book Decentralized Data Fusion: An Information Theoretic Approach in 1994. Early in his career, Manyika was awarded a research fellowship at Oxford's Balliol College and served on the engineering faculty at Oxford. During that time he was also a faculty exchange fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a visiting scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Labs in California.

He joined McKinsey & Company in the United States by 1997, then became senior partner and a member of McKinsey’s board. He was chairman and director of the McKinsey Global Institute for 13 years and published extensively on technology, competitiveness, productivity and the economy.

In 2022, he became Google’s first Senior Vice President of Technology and Society, reporting to CEO Sundar Pichai, where he helps shape Google's views on issues such as AI, the future of work, the digital economy, computing infrastructure and sustainability, focusing on how all of these benefit and affect societies, their economies and the planet as a whole. In April 2023, his role was expanded to Senior Vice President and President for Research, Labs, Technology & Society and now includes overseeing Google Research, which works on fundamental advances in computer science across areas such as AI and ML, algorithms and theory, privacy and security, quantum computing, health, climate and sustainability and responsible AI, as well as Google Labs. Also in 2023, Manyika, Jeff Dean, Demis Hassabis, Marian Croak, and Sundar Pichai published a letter on Google's approach to AI entitled "Why we focus on AI (and to what end)". In 2025, Wired detailed Google's effort to catch-up on the "chatbot revolution" and Manyika's role, along with Hassabis and Dean, in both those efforts and the launch the Gemini program.

As for his roles on government advisory boards, in 2011, he was named to the US National Innovation Advisory Board at the Department of Commerce. During the Obama administration, from December 2012 until 2017, Manyika served as vice-chair of the United States Global Development Council at the White House. In 2017, he resigned from the Commerce Department's Digital Economy Board of Advisors after Donald Trump made controversial comments about deadly violence against counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia. In 2022, Manyika was appointed as the vice-chair of the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee established by Congress to advise the US President and the White House on a "range of issues related to artificial intelligence" and served until the end of this 3 year term in April 2025. Also in 2022, he was appointed by the US Secretary of State to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board and served until December 2024.