 Welcome to the ITU Studio in Geneva, where I'm joined today by Dr. William Lair, who is research scientist and economist in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of MIT. Dr. Lair, thank you very much for being with us in the studio today. It's a real pleasure to be here. Now, perhaps we could just briefly talk about your work at MIT and what's happening in terms of computer science and artificial intelligence at the moment. Well, as you explained my introduction, I'm an economist. And I sit in a laboratory at MIT of mostly engineers and computer scientists that are inventing the future. So all these sorts of buzzwords like internet of things and big data and super fast networks and next generation wireless, all of those sorts of things at the software application device level is being done. And they're building robots that can fly. They're the size of insects and worrying about how do you teach those to land. They're trying to figure out how to have low powered devices that can be powered by the bones in your ear. So all these sorts of things that are like, wow, the future. And so one of the issues obviously comes up is as you think about embedding all these ICTs, all this technology in our real world, that requires adjustments that go way beyond the invention of these neat, cool things. Now we've asked you to come into the studio today because ITU is preparing a study on ICT for STGs. And it's actually also the 25th anniversary of the ITU development sector. The ICT landscape obviously has changed tremendously in these past decades. I wanted to ask you, how do you think that this study on ICT for STGs will contribute to responding to some of today's challenges? Well, there's a couple things about this project that I'm really excited by. First off, that the ITU is involved. The ITU is the only international organization that is trying to coordinate activity in this space. And I think that the role of international coordination in this space is really important. I don't think there's any single institution that should have a monopoly on that or should be in control of that. But certainly one of the organizations that I think is critically important is the ITU. As you embed these technologies in our world, you will disrupt the world. And when you embed these technologies in New York, it has ramifications all across the world. So the question about what you should do about ICTs, should you adopt ICT, should you not, to minimize impact is not really an option. They're coming and the question is, what are you gonna do about them? The issues about trying to promote development goals and sustainability in particular around the world is a problem that's confronting the whole planet, largely because of ICTs. ICTs have made the world a lot smaller place so that when someone has an idea in a small village in Africa, if it's a good enough idea, you can find that idea and it can end up being manufactured, researched in Finland and manufactured in China and bought and sold in San Francisco. And that kind of reduction and sort of fluidity of the world, the liquefying of the constraints that otherwise have controlled the ways of which we can, the way we use resources is the capability that ICTs bring. And the problem is that when you put those in a society, they have the potential to amplify and accelerate change. And that's a good thing. If the change that's happening is a good thing. They also have the great potential to augment markets. They create new markets, new market opportunities. They also create new kinds of problems, things like e-waste and so far, for example, expansion of inequality. The way ICTs have been benefiting the world have been, the benefits of that have been unequally distributed. And so going forward, I think we need to consider how better to marry and bring together the international goals of sustainable development with the productive use of ICTs. And I think the marrying the organization of the ITU with an international collection of academics that are thinking about this and then bringing together both the insights on the technology with development and trying to think about and talk about how these implications go way beyond any particular single stakeholder group, any single policy domain, any single sector is really important. And that's, so there are books out there that talk about what's the right technology. Should it be LTE or fiber or whatever the flavor of the day is. And those are important. There are also books out there that are documenting the scale of the challenges. So how many people are going to school and what that problem is. And are focusing on the needs of particular groups or particular sectors. What should happen about development in the healthcare sector or what should happen in the energy sector. And all of those things are important. One of the things this book will do is point people to the resources elsewhere, both from the ITU and more generally that address those things. The idea is to have a fairly short book to address a really big topic to bring people attention to this, hopefully in a new way. And the one that makes the point that it's not an option that ICTs won't impact you. And it's not an option that ICTs won't change things. What we'd like to have happen is we'd like to have innovation manage that change. So take you from, take you towards what the idea of the sustainable ability development goals are. And in terms of the outcomes of this study, and specifically with regards to its contribution to the sustainable development goals, what do you think that that will be? Well, I think some of it's going to be helping to set the agenda in terms of what are sort of the key things and some of the recommendations that are going to come out are going to be what are sort of base level things you need to do in a realistic way. And I think part of that you can sit there, you can say there are certain essential things that you need to focus on that if you can't get those things dealt with, then you're not reasonably going to be able to take advantage of them. Then the thing is there are things you need to do to manage. And one of the things you need to manage is you obviously have to have the right skill sets in your workforce, in your communities, in your citizens. Your citizens have to be digitally aware. Your policy makers have to be digitally aware. The businesses have to be digitally aware to adopt the right equipment, the right processes, all those sorts of things, but that's not enough. It's not, awareness is not enough. You also then have to actually have people use these in the right way and that's very context dependent. And it's, again, it's something that you need to then think about how you're going to sustain this. So for example, a lot of the discussion can focus on what we need to do is make sure that the right wires go to the right places or the right spectrum. That's certainly an important thing, but that's not, that's just sort of the first step. And in many cases and in many countries we've gotten well down the way in terms of getting the basic access there. What we don't have is we don't have affordable access and the capabilities and the skill sets that the people need and we don't understand what to do when people start actually using them and then how do you grow that virally across an economy in the context of the global markets. And that the kind of learning and skills you need is it's not teaching someone a particular programming language. It's not anymore rote learning. You need to re-engineer your education systems for lifetime learning and skills development. There are a lot of developing countries that have benefited from developing call centers. So they outsource call centers. And one of the issues that's happened is that those call centers have now been chasing cheap labor around the world. So the conclusion from that is not why invest in call centers? There's no benefit because they'll be here for two years and then they'll be gone. It's no, how do I develop workers who have the ICT savvy to be in a call center? And then if the call centers leave because they're no longer the right thing to do in this country, I know how these workers with skills, what's the next set of skills that they can use to go on to the next thing? And that sort of lifetime learning, the changing of the skills is really important. And I think also highlighting the need to have all segments of the policy sphere engaged so that if you want to have ICT based businesses be successful, they need to be operating in marketplaces where the business law and the labor laws for the whole economy, not you don't have ICT specific sector law is conducive to that. And if it isn't, then you need to understand what those limitations impose and figure out how you can work around it until you can get that fixed. Well, Dr. William, thank you very much, Steve, for being with us in the studio today and we look forward to the publication of this study. Yes, well, it was certainly a pleasure. I do too.