Technology in a Turbulent World
Logical Design Solutions
We create employee experiences that transform enterprises & help people succeed in the new digital organization.
LDS Commentary
Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies extend and transform digital systems in significant ways. They scale exponentially, emerge physically, and embed themselves in people’s lives.?Their disruptive power is amplified by how they combine and generate new innovations.?In combination, these technologies upend existing ways of sensing, calculating, organizing, acting, and delivering. They represent entirely new ways of creating value for organizations and citizens. And they will, over time, transform all the systems we take for granted today.?
For its part, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is evolving at a time when concerns about inequity, social tension, and political fragmentation are rising, and where vulnerable populations are increasingly exposed to economic uncertainty and the threat of natural disasters. So, while the benefits of the 4IR seem to rely almost entirely on technological breakthroughs, when and how they materialize, and to whose benefit, is uncertain.
Panelists: Sam Altman, Chief Executive Officer, OpenAI; Marc Benioff , Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Salesforce, Inc.; Julie Sweet , Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Accenture; Jeremy Hunt MP , Chancellor of the Exchequer, HM Treasury of the United Kingdom; Fareed Zakaria , Host; Albert Bourla , Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer, Inc.
Summary
As technology becomes increasingly intertwined in our daily lives and important for driving development and prosperity, questions of safety, human interaction, and trust become critical to addressing both benefits and risks. How can technology amplify our humanity?
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, described the current systems as ‘extremely limited,’ but that people have found ways to use them productively. Lack of trust was pinpointed as a problem – why does AI do what it does? Do we have to trust the black box? According to Altman, we need AI to explain its reasoning in reaching certain conclusions, not to understand all the processes it went through to do so.
In terms of Altman’s recent issues with the OpenAI board, he responded: ‘As the world gets closer to AGI, the higher the stress levels will become. Everybody’s character gets plus ten crazy points. We need to think of all of the things that can go wrong.’
Altman has a sign on his desk saying ‘No one knows what happens next.’ Zakaria asked,
‘Why are people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates so worried about the use of AI?’
Altman admitted it could go very wrong, but believes that guardrails can be put in place and that ‘general purpose cognition is so close to what we all value as humans.’ We can draw on lessons from the past, but he empathizes with those who distrust GenAI. He advocates putting the technology in the hands of the people and allowing them to guide its usage. In answer to the question ‘What is left for the human being to do?’ Altman responded that we will all function at a higher level of abstraction and have a lot more capabilities at our fingertips.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, cited the example of digital doctors as having to establish a high level of trust. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘We have hallucinations. We talk to these models. They are fun, and then they lie. We are at a threshold moment. We’re not totally there yet. We must cross the bridge of trust.’ Adding that: ‘Social media is kind of a total f-ing shit show today’ and needs to be regulated.
Benioff used the example of the Salesforce call centers that are using Einstein (their AI platform). Productivity, cross-selling, and morale have skyrocketed. He added, ‘We don’t want a Hiroshima moment due to the use of AI’ – core values and trust are critical.
Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, recalled when email was introduced and how her bosses at the time forbade workers from attaching anything to the email, ‘because it’s not safe.’ Just like today, leaders must learn and trust the technology and apply it responsibly. It's basic digital literacy. AI is not new, it’s just more powerful, but in a way, it is no different from what we have been doing for many years. She cited the need to have common standards globally, and the use of AI in collaboration with others. She stressed the need for humility among global leaders, who ‘must educate themselves’ on its usage.
Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, said that technology is revolutionizing life sciences. ‘With AI we can make biological breakthroughs faster and better. This is the renaissance in life sciences.’ He said that Pfizer is moving from Discovery to Design in as little as four months, thanks to AI. When asked if there is a way to alleviate the wrongful use of technology, he responded: ‘We need regulation – the right balance to protect the world, but enable it to move on.’
领英推荐
Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer UK, said we need to be ‘light touch.’ For example, ‘There is a certainty about the responses we get that today is not justified. Can AI shrink the time to get a vaccine for the next pandemic to one month, then it is a very big win.’ Referring to China, he stated that liberal democratic values must be upheld and that he hoped the sharing of knowledge would take place.
Fareed Zakaria brought up the court case of GenAI purportedly using New York Times material to populate its databases and make language predictions, without compensating the original authors. Sam Altman distinguished between training OpenAI databases and what the system displays when the user asks it a question. ‘We don’t need to train on the NYT data.’ He also responded that OpenAI is linking out to and compensating original content owners and that the court case came as a complete surprise.
Recommended Readings
Related #WEF24 Readings
Logical Design Solutions (LDS) is a digital strategy and design consultancy for global enterprises. We create experiences that transform business and help people work successfully in the new digital organization. Clients come to LDS because of our reputation for intellectual rigor, our foundation in visionary experience strategy, and our commitment to enabling digital transformation inside the enterprise. Learn More about how LDS has dramatically improved the way that some of the largest corporations in the world do business.