Davos 2018 Dispatch
By David Shrier, Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School
University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School was well represented at this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. Outside of the vibrant Oxford Nightcap at the Belvedere Hotel, Andrew White, Peter Tufano and I barely saw each other as we ran pell-mell from one fascinating panel or program to another. Visiting Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland and I hosted a lunch together around AI, and passed out our new book (New Solutions for Cybersecurity, MIT Press 2018), but otherwise were at opposite ends of the Promenade at any given point in time.
The Executive Summary
Major themes that I observed this year:
· Artifical Intelligence (AI) was on more lips than blockchain, and more to the point the symbiosis of AI and humans versus the opposition of one over the other;
“there will be blood — job substitution is inevitable”: 17% of all jobs will be automated by 2025, per a new report by Forrester Research, but as they said “for every robot, you need a robot repair person”. “The subtext of the fourth industrial revolution is the first industrial evolution”;
Accenture is investing over 60% of its savings from automation into reskilling workers into higher-order tasks;
· In the new era of AI + human collaboration, creativity, philosophy, and empathy are more critical job skills than the so-called “hard skills” — and industry has historically been bad at teaching these;
· New organizational models of corporations will be needed, and enabled, by the combination of AI and analytics;
· Food security started showing up in unexpected places, like on a panel on analytics;
· Regulators and governments are grappling with how to shape the fintech revolution without quashing it.
Responsible Innovation and the Weaponization of Artificial Intelligence
I’ve been developing the idea of Responsible Innovation: that we need to not only create and drive adoption of innovation, but the leaders of today and tomorrow need to do so in a fashion that takes into account the impacts and ethical responsibilities of those actions. If Facebook had been a bit more responsible about deploying News Feed, the complexion of Western Democracy would look different today (underreported: how could 1 billion fake news impressions be delivered to Facebook users without anyone noticing?). If British industry had been more proactive about reskilling workers in the Midlands when automation eliminated their jobs, voter discontent might not have been susceptible to manipulation around Brexit (ditto, the U.S. auto industry and the U.S. Presidential Election). More on Responsible Innovation in the wrapup below.
Where are Women?
CEO Lloyd’s of London
The self-reflexive part of the week (and Davos loves nothing more than to talk about itself) saw a heated debate about the role of women and their visibility (or lack thereof) on panels and discussions. Inga Beale, the CEO of Lloyd’s of London, publicly declared she wouldn’t do any more appearances on panels without gender parity. While restructuring all of WEF is beyond my own personal capabilities, I observe that one of my former students was forced to leave Davos early because she was being repeatedly groped and harassed at events. I also point the reader to the Presidents Club scandal breaking in the same week. It’s clear that even in 2018, we have a long way to go. As a self-professed technocrat, I take a data-driven approach: Sandy Pentland’s quantitative study of thousands of teams shows that gender-balanced teams are far more productive and successful than all-male, or all-female, teams. We need each other.
Select Highlights:
Here are a few highlights from my Davos activities on behalf of SBS:
Idea Hack: Design Your Own Blockchain Token
Working with Jeremy Millar ’06, we constructed an “idea hack” at the ConsenSys pavilion, where participants designed their own blockchain token in alignment with one of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. In the end, we liked two of the ideas so much we awarded them both free enrollment in the new Oxford Blockchain online programme. One of them, “Trash Token” (incentivizing a community around recycling), was in turn picked up by some blockchain entrepreneurs later in the week.
CNBC Sanctuary
CNBC hosted me for three different panels, on the future of fintech, the commercialization of blockchain, and predictive analytics. Co-discussants included Inga Beale, the CEO of Lloyd’s of London; Hikmet Ersek, CEO of Western Union; Greg Medcraft, OECD Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs; Nick Ogden, Executive Chairman of Clear Bank (and guest speaker in the Oxford Fintech online programme), Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture North America, and legendary Igor Tulchinsky of WorldQuant.
VIDEO: Here’s a bit of the blockchain discussion with Inga:
VIDEO: And here’s my separate interview with Greg Medcraft on regulation and fintech:
Learning Innovation
I participated in a fascinating discussion about the reinvention of education alongside the former Dean of IMD and others. Everyone agreed that the current model of education was going to be forced to change in the face of digital. I put forward the idea that established institutions have a role to play in the future, if they reinvent themselves. Best quote: “Assessments are the silent killer of education”
In Conclusion…
To wrap up the week, I had a nice chat with Henri Arslanian of PwC about AI and responsible innovation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6362720674938712064/
We’ll be spending the next many months following up on, and expanding, the ideas we discussed this week. I look forward to your own thoughts, you can find me at david.shrier@said.oxford.edu
The views in this article are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Oxford or its faculty.
David Shrier is an Associate Fellow with Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. He is a globally recognized authority on financial innovation, entrepreneur, author, and creator & co-convener of the Oxford Fintech and Oxford Blockchain online programmes.
