Day 2 in Davos: Trust, and Harnessing Blockchain and AI for Society

I’m writing to you from a Davos in full swing, brimming with new ideas, insights and inspiration that constantly challenge our collective, conventional wisdom. Something that I’ve been reflecting on is trust – and the impact that important technology innovations in Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence can have on trust among individuals and institutions.

I believe we are on the brink of creating a new engine of trust for the global economy ? unleashing a whole new paradigm for how people, society and businesses cooperate. Radically transforming how we exchange value, Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, is set to revolutionize how we do business.

Unprecedented reliability and security. Transparency. An open platform with no middle man. A single record of the truth – immutable transactions; whether funds transferred between banks, goods transferred through a supply chain, or healthcare documents transmitted between providers. At the most fundamental level, Blockchain ensures digital trust and digital trust is a hallmark of Responsive and Responsible Leadership ? the theme at Davos 2017, and a crucial component for every successful organization in the digital era. While the technology is in its early stages, there’s no question it has huge disruptive potential for all sectors of economy.

In fact, Blockchain is stimulating a significant amount of interest from different sectors of the economy. For instance, the Estonian government offers Blockchain notarization services to e-Residents. In 2015, the government announced the launch of The Estonian e-residency service which provides a smart card enabling digital identification, digital signing of documents, digital verification of document authenticity and document encryption. This is a great example of how Blockchain builds credibility and trust online Recently the Estonian government launched an initiative to secure all of the country's 1 million health records with Blockchain.

I participated in a thought-provoking session “The Blockchain Revolution: Re-inventing Business?” where Kim Hammonds, Group Chief Operating Officer of Deutsche Bank, raised the point that in healthcare, Blockchain may support everything from drug inception, to R&D, to go-to-market. Contrary to what many people expect, the uses and practical implications of Blockchain go well beyond banking and financial services. Identity management, Healthcare, Trade Finance, Smart cities, Micropayments, Machine-to-machine payments, Loyalty, Internet of things and Smart Lending are just some of the applications of Blockchain technology. Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, talked about transformational opportunities in banking, including retail banking, which will result in greater efficiencies and therefore lower cost. The man on street will directly benefit from such applications of blockchain technology. 

Imagine a society powered by Blockchain. Better, more accurate health services that put patients in control of their information and care. The gift of identity ? when refugees lose almost everything, immutable shared ledgers could give those without a country a proof of existence. Safer air travel ? every part, every maintenance record, shared across all touchpoints. Freight and trade finance ? streamlining systems, freeing, efficient supply chain management. The Global Blockchain Services Market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 60+%, topping $1 billion in 2017 and nearly $7 billion by 2021. Of course it is important to also recognize that blockchain technology is still in its early days – and there are challenges that must be overcome in scalability, throughput and other areas. However, now is the time to understand how and where blockchain can disrupt current approaches, and to begin laying out the roadmap.

Artificial Intelligence: With Great Opportunity comes Great Responsibility

Over the next few days, I will be participating in a several Artificial Intelligence sessions at Davos and I’m looking forward to diving into the challenges and opportunities AI presents. Here’s what’s top of mind for me that leaders from all walks of life need to be thinking about.

There’s a lot of discussion and concern nowadays around the impact of AI on jobs, about AI displacing people. I agree that AI will impact jobs. But fundamentally, smarter machines are a good thing – they extend our human capability and allow people to achieve more. 

That’s why it is absolutely critical that we take a People First approach. It is our responsibility as leaders to invest in our people. People will always be our most important asset. We need to invest now in education, in reskilling and in digital tools. We need to look ahead at jobs that will be needed in the future and provide job training to employees now so companies are well positioned to succeed in the future. Leaders should focus on building a liquid workforce for this new digital workplace that is highly adaptable and change-ready. Companies need to introduce constant learning models that give employees the skills they need to adapt and thrive. People will need to become agile at each level of their business: their skills, their projects, and their organizations. Digital aptitude, creative thinking and experimentation, data analysis and interpretation, and strategy development are some of the new top skills that will be required in the future to thrive alongside AI. As I blogged about this week, we also need to reexamine our education system overall.

I believe we have to look through the lens of broader impact of AI on society. If you look by any measure at metrics like disease, poverty, infant mortality, nutrition, a wide variety of other issues, technology and automation has led to a far better place than we were before. Artificial intelligence is going to lead to far better, greater good in a lot of domains, limiting disease and other things for society and I don’t think we should lose sight of that.

Government and businesses need to work hand in hand to develop a Code of Ethics which includes tangible standards and best practices in the development and use of intelligent machines. There were many productive discussions on this topic in Davos.

We also need to work to integrate human intelligence with machine intelligence; effectively and collaboratively leverage our respective strengths to improve how we live and work as a society. Our focus should be using machines to augment and extend human capabilities for the broader benefit of humankind. We’re already seeing people using AI technologies to tackle big problems and also do smaller things like make our daily lives simpler, more convenient and of course, smarter.

Artificial Intelligence – and Blockchain – will both be big agenda items for business and government leaders in 2017. We will use both to help enter a new era of invention and human amplification, bolstered by an engine of trust that will unleash unimagined levels of creativity, ingenuity and productivity for humanity. It’s up to us to make this possibility a reality by ensuring we design technology for people. 

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Paul Daugherty is the chief technology and innovation officer at Accenture. He is also co-author of “Different Everyday”, a management guide on applying AI to achieve transformational and responsible outcomes, to be published by Harvard Press later in 2017.