 and much good in the world. But the speed at which this technology revolution is taking us to task is changing how we think about how we live, how we work, and how we relate to one another. And so in that context, I think this question about what does it mean to be human in the fourth industrial revolution becomes a very, very relevant one. And I can think of no better group of people to have with me for this conversation than the panelists we have assembled here today. And so let me just quickly introduce them in their affiliation, and we'll jump into this conversation. To my right is Tracy Fullerton, who is a game designer and professor at USC. Next to her is Alan Blue, the co-founder and product vice president for LinkedIn. In the center is Ahmad Iravani, who is the president and executive director of the Center for the Study of Islam and the Middle East. On the right, Nicole Schwab, author and founder of the Gender Equity Center. And on the right, Minister Melanie Jolie, who is the minister of culture and communication in Canada. So welcome, all of you. Thank you for joining us here today on a bright sunny day here in Davos. I think it's a technology miracle that you managed to turn on the sew machine last week for us and managed to turn it off today so we could all walk around the streets. And it's quite a miracle. But let's first start with the audience. Let's ask quick questions for you. These are hands up kind of questions. So suppose you came in here today and realized that you'd forgotten both your wallet and your cell phone. How many of you would actually go home for your cell phone? All right, come on, be brave. Hands up here if you would go home for that cell phone. You'd come back to listen to us. But how many for your wallet? And you can only get one. I think we're leaning in towards the cell phone here. So the cell phone becoming an ubiquitous piece of our lives, a piece of who we are, is definitely in line with this. And suppose I told the audience that we had out front of the building a brand new self-driving vehicle. How many people would be willing to go out there and be one of the first people to jump in that vehicle and let it take you for a ride around town? All right, much more enthusiastic. So the people with the cell phone in that vehicle are going to have a good time today. Well, I think it shows us, though, that technology is becoming part of our lives. And we're even willing to take chances with that technology. Do we know it's perfect yet? But where is it going? Does it going to allow us advantages, adventure, freedom? So we're going to jump into this conversation and actually open with each of our panelists sharing just two minutes about what's their take on this angle of what is technology bringing to us as humans. And then we'll weave this into a conversation for about a half an hour. But then we'll go to the audience and have you in this discussion with us, asking questions, and we'll go back and forth and then see where all of this discussion goes. So minister, would you please share your thoughts first? Yes, thank you, Cheryl. Well, first, it's a pleasure to be here. I would like to talk about the fact that certainly we see the Fourth Industrial Revolution as presenting two important opportunities and one challenge. And first off, it's the first time I'm here. And I'm very happy to be here. And it's the first time that a Canadian Heritage Minister, so basically a minister in charge of communications and culture in Canada, is here. And it talks about how, as a government, we see arts and culture. For a long time, arts and culture were seen as presenting important social benefits which is the case. But we also see arts and culture as having an important economic potential. And why is that? Because first, we see the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and that's my first opportunity, as a creative revolution. And nothing is more human than creativity. And this is why also, as a government, we decided to invest $1.9 billion in arts and culture in our last budget. That's our biggest reinvestment in 30 years in Canada, but we're also the only seven countries we're investing so much in arts and culture. Why? Well, because it's linked to our innovation agenda. Investing in arts and culture will lead to innovation, and that will lead to economic growth, which is inclusive growth. And Canada, when you think about it, we're extremely strong when it comes to our creative industries. We are the third biggest exporter of musical talent in the world. We're the third biggest producer of video games in the world. We are leading the way when it comes to developing video game, virtual reality, and augmented reality content. And we reinvented some of the arts and culture sectors, such as the performing arts sector and certainly entertainment sector with companies such as Cirque du Soleil and IMAX, which are Canadian. So, this is how we see it. It's important to invest in arts and culture. Now, the other opportunity is also the one that is not linked necessarily to only economic activity, which is also much more linked to the social benefits. And for us, investing in arts and culture in the context of Fourth Industrial Revolution is really tapping into humanity's inclusion and actually humanity's connection. And we see the social benefits of investing in arts and culture more than ever. We're an inclusive society. We believe in diversity. And we believe that throughout the world right now, there is a global hunt for stories. And stories are when they're local and of course authentic are extremely compelling in a universal nature and teach us what we must know about one another. And so that's why also we believe that this is an important opportunity. Now, what is the challenge? The challenge is one of access, the one of inclusion. And we think that more than ever there are tools to misinform people. And when you see the spread of fake news and propaganda and extremism on the web, you see that people feel left out. Interestingly enough, there is an important community foundation in Canada, which is the Vancouver Foundation, which made a study, did a study on what was the biggest challenge facing the Vancouver community. And when you think about it, Vancouver is one of the, if not the place in Canada where the cost of living is the highest. And what was interesting of that study, it wasn't the cost of living that was seen as the biggest challenge facing the community. It was actually the sense of belonging, the fact of not being part of something that of an inclusive neighborhood. And so this is why it's important in this context, to invest in arts and culture, to have people know each other, to forge a much more inclusive society, to also invest in creative industries, which include journalism, to make sure that we foster a healthier democracy. And also to invest in digital literacy, to make sure that people take sound and good decisions about their digital lives. And that's why as a government, this is extremely important. Governments don't tend to be part of this discussion. And we wanna make sure that we lead the way because this is about the future of a democracy and tapping into also a good economic opportunity. Yeah, no, this is great. And Nicole, your perspective, I think, blends in really nicely with Melanie's. Thank you. So this is a topic that I'm very passionate about and I am also very concerned about. And what I want to start with is I want to share the paradox that I see that we're faced with today. I think that we're at a time today where more than ever, we need to be able to connect with one another, to connect very deeply in a very human way and that this deep connection can actually help us understand each other across cultures, across religions, across any other differences. So I think there's a deep need for human connection. And another factor is, of course, we know that human connection is what gives us joy, it's what gives us happiness. And a lot of people, when they're at the end of their lives, when they're asked, do you regret anything? A lot of them will say they wish they had spent more time with the people they love. So deep connection with others is definitely a key of our own well-being of our happiness and a key to solving the challenges that we're facing. But this connection doesn't just happen. I mean, it's something that can result only from our presence, from our presence to ourselves and our presence to others and from the development of certain qualities that we have such as empathy and compassion. And the paradox that I see is that while this is needed more than ever, we are being distracted more than ever. So we spend less and less time reflecting, we spend less and less time in a state where we're not, you know, on our apps, we're not distracting our minds. And when we're in a state that we could call the state of presence, so we need more presence, and yet we're making less time for it. And I think there's this paradox also because our human behavior in a way makes us resist change and makes us resist the messy complexity of human relationships. And we have this escape opportunities, right? We can always go back to our phones. We don't have to face the reality, which sometimes is messy. And I think we need really to make presence an intentional practice. I'm sure all of you have experienced talking to someone and you're talking to them and they're physically in front of you, but you know that their mind is running about the tasks they have to do today, what they're gonna cook, what they're gonna speak about on the next panel or whatever. But you can feel the difference between that and someone who's in front of you and from the outside, it looks exactly the same. And yet, if someone is truly present, we can feel it. So my, I would say my main concern is that we need to intentionally make more time to practice presence and to engage in processes that will help us develop empathy and compassion. Exactly. And Ahmad, from your perspective, I think again, you've used presence and people understanding each other quite a bit. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Well, it's my honor to be here before you seeker of truths, those who are sitting here and those who are watching us online. And also I would like to offer my thanks and appreciation to you and to the rest of the panelists who are here. As an introduction to get us into the discussion, I would like to talk from a religious perspective, mainly since I'm a Muslim, from a Muslim perspective, how I see this productical issue that you referred as well and the others are referring the issue of being human and also living in the digital age. You know, as a Muslim, we believe in that God creates us for a reason. There is a philosophy behind that. And the main philosophy, according to Quranic verses, that we don't have time to go in details, that to get as much as closer to Him when it creates you. And Him for us is absolute being, absolute good. So how to get to that position, that's the key element for a Muslim, to submit himself or herself to God's order to become like Him, because He created us in His image or in His nature. So anything that keeping distance or any distraction that bring distance between us and God is something that we have concerned and is not recommended and we should try to avoid it. Now, based on time and place, things are changing, but the principle remains the same. Now, anything in digital age that can bring us closer to absolute being, highly recommended to get into and be encouraged. For example, from Islamic point of view, and that's, I'm not limiting it to Islam. I mean, we know that our religion, or even atheists in my belief that who have a inner kind of nature that encouraging doing good things, helping doing charity stuff. So if we can use digital medias, digital tools towards helping others, as minister said, towards education, the right education, that's something highly we recommend it. And if it's something evil, then we have to avoid it. Later on, I'm going to share more of my personal experience and how we can introduce this to the others as well. Yeah, to the good. Excellent. Alan, in your perspective. Sure, so, hello everybody. So for those of you who don't know what LinkedIn is, and some of you probably don't know what it is, it's basically a large social network, a bit like Facebook, and it's mainly for work. And so a thing that we spend a huge amount of time thinking about is what is the future of work actually look like? So every year we do this thing where we look at the most important skills that people are hiring in the world. And for the last few years, every one of the top 10 skills has been a technology skill. So for 2016, the top skill was data scientist, which is a very technologically focused skill. And the main reason that I'm here at the forum is to talk to people from companies and governments about how we help people make a transition from a world which is focused on a very diverse collection of skills to one which is focused primarily on technologically enabled skills. Because that transition is an important one for us to remain employed, to remain part of the economy and to remain part of our communities. It turns out that the most important single factor in terms of being able to get that job once you have the skills for it is the people who are right around you. So at LinkedIn, that's represented as a network, as a group of people who you can call on in order to essentially make connections to find a job. And it's very powerful when you're actually out there in the job market. But when you're talking to people online, it has a very different impact. And this is something else, it's a big part of what LinkedIn is. And LinkedIn, if you're interested in talking about sort of let's just pick a professional topic. If you're interested in talking about basically the way you should set up compensation policy at your workplace. It doesn't matter what it really is. You can find people on both sides of that conversation. People will take one perspective or people will take the other perspective. At LinkedIn, we have made it very easy to surround yourself with only people who share your own perspective. And that's true in general about Facebook, about Twitter, about all the forms of media that we consume online. So a big challenge for us going forward is how do we find that connection with each other again to allow us to have the kind of diverse and productive conversation which has made our democracies and our culture successful in an environment where it's very easy to only be surrounded by people who agree with you. No, important perspective. And so Tracy, let's share your perspective in and then we'll jump into some of these subjects we've opened up. So, you know, I'm just fascinated first of all by all of the perspectives we've just heard. And I feel somewhat, I guess of an outsider in some of these ways. As a game designer, people immediately assume that I build technology. But interestingly, I would say that games predate what we mean when we say technology. Games are really an organizational process, a principle that the earliest humans used to help ourselves make those kinds of connections, those social organizations, right? So when we create a rule, I say, okay, we're gonna flip this coin and you're gonna try and guess what side of the coin comes up and then we'll make a decision based on the chance of whether you're right or wrong. We agree to that. That's a social contract. And the fact that we act upon what happens is a deeply human moment of play and organization. And it's something that we built into governments, we built into many ways of interacting with each other. And now we have these technologies. We have these technologies that allow us to play with one another through the internet, through digital media. And we can say that now it's not you and I deciding to flip the coin. Now the computer is going to decide what gets flipped and what gets decided. And we're gonna submit ourselves to that computer's rules. And I guess for me, the question of the day is how does that change us as humans when some of the most deeply practiced human activities such as play become adjudicated by AI or by digital media and technologies and social networks? How do we move forward when we are no longer the ones making those rules or adjudicating those rules? And it's really important to me that we maintain as humans the ability to grow from those experiences. And so for me, that's why I'm a game designer. I don't feel that I design technologies. I actually feel that I design opportunities for humans to grow. Well that's a very counterintuitive perspective to where I think where we all probably came in, right? That technology and artificial intelligence is the growing nature. But the idea that for us it's a really big opportunity which I think speaks to the theme of creativity and that theme for us of being what part of that, the inherently human part of that that we need to hold on to. And so maybe we can go back and open up in the varying pieces of conversation here. How and why you see creativity being brought into technology and being helped by technology. Let's stay on the positive side of what technology can do for us. So I don't know if anybody wants to jump into that part of it but you all kind of threaded pieces of this. Well we certainly decided to invest in production of the arts and culture sector. As a government we decided to double the budget of the Canada Council which supports artists to develop their works and visual arts and in theater and in film, et cetera. So now the questions we're asking ourselves is how can through technology and what Alan was referring to which is kind of that filter bubble where basically you are within your own algorithm friends, how can we have cultural diversity? And Canada has led the way to the development of the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity and that was a year, well 10 years ago. And now we're trying to work within the UNESCO to talk about what is cultural diversity in a digital age. How can we make sure that our artists or content creators, our citizens in general have access to the world not being filtered? And also while we know that our entire system is being disrupted in terms of distribution, the broadcasting system certainly and everything in line with the analog system, how can as a government we have an action that is relevant in the digital age? And what is the government action? Is it just to left lead the way, how can I say to leave the entire forum to companies and multinationals? Or do we have a say? And this is exactly what we're studying right now in Canada and this is why I'm here and I'm really happy to be talking about these important issues because I think it's time for governments to get involved also. Absolutely. Ahmad, maybe jump in with a piece around what you've seen of this cultural diversity piece certainly as it relates to some of the work that you've been doing. Yes, you know about creativity in the positive way. I think from Islamic again perspective I just want to stay on the limit I have today to present. You know from Islamic point of view, Muslim highly encourage or even as a part of their obligation to give away some arms and donations to certain elements or certain issues which has been limited to a few. But based on today's need, I think that's the way that scholars, Islamic leaders should come up with new Ishtar we call it, with new methodology that encourage the whole Muslim communities to help. These people who want for example, the game designers who want to do something in positive way, they need donors, they need the sponsors. So here is the task of governments, the task of private sectors to come and help that side, that comes the issue of responsibility that the whole way of this year is talking about. So if we are responsible then we have to step forward and we have to do something. And from Islamic principle that's something we can bring it and even put it as an obligation on the shoulder of every Muslim to be part of these initiatives in today's world in digital age. Alan you look like you're gonna jump in there. Oh I was, so on the point of creativity, I was really taken by what you said earlier about the notion of creativity and the arts and driving innovation with it. It's actually something we find. I work in Silicon Valley and so I, people ask me all the time why does Silicon Valley work and so forth and the simple answer is that Silicon Valley works because there are lots of people there who have different perspectives and those people come together in different combinations to do stuff together. That's basically kind of all it is, it's recombination of ideas. That's something which technology actually can be very, very helpful in trying to encourage and as well as the arts but it's also one of those things which is a little bit difficult to make sure actually happens. So let's say that I'm starting something. Today, here in 2017, I have more opportunity to find ideas, I have more opportunity to find partners, I have more opportunity to find funding for my idea than has ever existed before. So whether it's something in the arts or something in culture, research you wanna do, a company you wanna start, whatever it is, you have so many more resources in front of you. But we also have this problem that those same tools bring us into, they tend to focus us into groups of people who are quite like each other. So the real challenge for us is to figure out, first, are there ways out of that problem? And then second, to really think about what it is which motivates people to reach out to people who are different from them. When you are feeling economically, especially economically, if we're here at the World Economic Forum, when you're feeling economic pressure, the thing you normally do is you go back to your tribe, right? You go back to the people who are right around you, your family, your friends, people who are like you. When you feel economically empowered, you reach out to people who are different than you because you know that they will bring value to the thing that you're actually trying to create. And to me, this is actually part of the answer about what the role government actually has is. Because if government can say, how do we bring together the tools which lead to a certain amount of economic empowerment that will lead to a more diverse, a more diverse set of ideas coming together in one place. It's a challenge and especially a challenge because everybody's in a different place in this conversation right now. And there's a lot of pressure all around the world, economic pressure, which is affecting this conversation. Absolutely. I know Nicole and Tracy both started to jump in. So Nicole and then Tracy. I just want to pick up on the issue of diversity because obviously having worked on gender issues, I see a huge development. I mean, there's a long way to go, but in terms of having more diversity in the workspace and not just gender but of embracing any type of diversity. So I think on one hand, we have a huge potential to have more inclusion and this is happening slowly. However, I also believe that on this question of biases, I mean, you mentioned the confirmation bias, right? We all have biases. We're all programmed in a way. So it's kind of interesting when we think about artificial intelligence and about technology because we ourselves are running our own programming. And I think that the challenge here is to precisely be able to break through the situation where we're just reinforcing our own programming. But on the contrary, find an opportunity to break through and to actually transcend our programming. And I think that's also what makes us human. It's this capacity to go beyond and this capacity to actually have a distance and see, okay, these are my biases. And that's where I think it's exciting to hear that there is potential to use technology in that way as well. But I think, again, it requires intention because if we just let it run the way that is more natural and effortless, it will run in a direction that confirms our own biases and our own programming. I just want to try and draw together some things I'm hearing which are very interesting to me and that is when I think about technology, I think about the old saying of everything looks like a nail to a person with a hammer, right? So we're not only just running our own programs, we're also running the programs of the tools that we've developed and the tools that we've inherited and the tools that we're questioning right now. One of the things that I often ponder as a game designer is people often say, oh, I want to build a tool to make something easier. So just example, let's say I have a tin can, I want to get into it, well, I build a can opener because that makes it easy, that's giving me a mechanical advantage for opening a can opener. As a game designer, I would not actually design a can opener, I would give a person a can and I would say you cannot use a can opener. You have to get into the can but you cannot use a can opener. And by putting that creative constraint on them, now they have to think outside the box to get into the can. And that's one of those sort of beautiful things about sort of turning this on its head and saying, okay, let's maybe not build technologies, let's actually think about how to build human reactions that foster creative solutions that then the human might actually wind up building an entirely different technology that got them into the can in a creative way and it might solve some new problem. So for me, I think there's this opportunity in the moment we're in where there's a plethora of foundational tools that can be recombined and remashed up to allow people to come up with new kinds of solutions that offer the kind of diversity and creativity you're talking about. Absolutely. Minister, you were nodding your head there. Is there a particular piece of a can that needs to be opened up here? You know, I was just thinking actually quite frankly that this is a complicated question we have to answer, Cheryl. Yes. What is to be human in the fourth industrial revolution? We will give our own definition as humans and certainly what we're referring to is the importance of education, the importance of creative thinking, the importance of educating our children to make sure that they are human first, not necessarily only end users. They're human, they're citizens, then eventually they become people that work in the workforce. And so that's a combination of the definition that a human being adds on throughout his own living. But I think that what is interesting recently when I was talking to young people and young global shapers here at Davos, people tend to think about their values when referring to technology. And I think that there should be a kind of a sound, how can I say, step back to say these are our values. This is what we want to convey. Technology is embedded in our life and we'll make sure that technology has a positive impact. I really think that technology is neutral by itself. Humans decide whether technology has a positive or a negative impact. And so this is why it's not the Minister of Canadian Heritage speaking right now, it's Mirani, you know. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. But I think that is an important point, right? That there's choice and who gets to make that choice. You've drawn that out a little bit is where the machines make choice or the technology where we make choice. So maybe let's unpack that one a little bit. How do we understand that when it gets out in front of us? Maybe what's the role of government in that? What's the role in peace process and in understanding around this? But where there's the choice and the obligation or not? In terms of choice, if I may, for a long time governments especially in Canada and many places in Europe and throughout the world had protectionist tools to make sure that choice was in line with the production of content in the country. We know that that's not the case anymore and that we need to be able as a government to support creation of content and actually promote. And this is key to make sure that we have languages that can be spoken. We have two official languages in Canada, French and English. We have 60 indigenous languages which we have to support and promote. What is this cultural diversity? What is this choice in the digital world? Absolutely. Ahmad? You know, one thing I would like to mention here is we have to be aware of that and we are that what we are talking about the digital age is not the problem of all the human being in today's world. There are million, if not billions of people living in poverty as said. And illiteracy is a big problem. People in Africa or elsewhere even do not have access to their water or their main needs, daily needs. So, and even in some area that I'm working in, mainly in Middle East, in some countries in conflict resolution or I have been in Africa, I have seen that the media and especially in this intensive way that we are dealing with here is absent there or at least partially has been used. So that's something we have to keep in our mind if we want to talk about this on address different issues, different challenges. The challenges that we are facing here, mainly in the West, although it's becoming soon the same challenge for everyone due to this technology or the creation of this all these new inventions. But however be aware that this is in my opinion a production of modernity which came out of the Western culture and now having that ability, somehow we are imposing it to the other cultures and to the other nations. And so naturally there is a reaction towards that. Here there is a philosophy behind that. There has been a philosophy, mainly a kind of positivist philosophy that you see the result of that. But that would face some resistance in other cultures and in other societies. So these are also the issues that we have to reflect about and think about. Now when it comes to the issue of dealing with this, again from Islamic point of view, we have three types of responsibility that each one has, each person, each individual. One responsibility towards himself, then the second responsibility towards the family and the third towards the rest, the society, the world, the environment and everything. So it's not like this that we don't have responsibility towards ourselves. No, we are responsible towards ourselves. God is going to ask us, what do you have done with your time? How did you spend your time? To whom you share your values? So based on that, we have to have a plan of our actions. So going to the places that is considered waste of time, dealing with books, medias or whatever you want to call it, that doesn't help you to become a better person, it's just wasting of time. Alan, you were wayin' in there I think, as leaning into thought there. So it's interesting, I think that picking up a sort of thread from the question of game design and a can opener, I think the real challenge for us is to say that there are issues, there are problems with technology, here they are. You can do everything to fix that except you can't eliminate technology. So there's a sense in which we have to be creative about the solutions that we have. This particular, the value of this technology as it grows is so gigantic that in terms of making us a more peaceful society, a richer society, a more capable society, we can do so much more with the technology in place. We just have to figure out the way we would like to impact its growth so that we can bring it to everyone, so that we can make sure it has the impact we would like it to have, so that we can figure, so that it doesn't define our values and our morals, but rather we define them and it follows us as we go. So the real challenge, and this is I think a great thought experiment and it's the kind of thing that to the point of games in game design, this is under Silicon Valley thing, you take an interesting problem, you put a constraint on it, you say, go solve this problem. So our problem and maybe our problem here in this room is what would you do differently? What would you like to see different about the technology that's out there? What do you think is going wrong and let's propose some solutions for how we might actually address some of those things. And we're not gonna get it all right today. It's gonna take us, it's gonna take us years to answer many of these questions, but if we're all bringing our ideas to it, I think we can come up with some good stuff. That's really wonderful. I really love the way that you put that. And I'll sort of just throw back at you something that I've been pondering. It seems to me having been involved in technology and development of technology for a quarter of a century now that there's a premise in digital technologies that things should be more efficient, continue to become more efficient, that we should be reducing friction in our systems using these technologies. And recently I began to ponder that perhaps that isn't the end all be all, that perhaps friction in fact is something that humans need to keep us from harming ourselves and each other. That in fact we should think about places in our technologies where we would slow things down or have some friction and that it isn't all about sort of creating the fastest spread of ideas or the easiest movement through systems, but that we allow places for those choices that you're talking about to be present for those moments of choice to have importance for us and resonate with us in ways that our current technologies are not acknowledging the human experience so much. So to me that's something I ponder a lot in the next generations. How can we introduce responsible good friction back into these systems? We work so hard to reduce friction in. It's a great question and just one quick thought on this. This is actually this notion of reducing friction. This is one of those like principles of software design which is in fact kind of a crazy non-moral, non-ethical thing that we do. I mean so at every company you go and talk to in the Valley they will talk about reducing friction. They will talk about a bunch of other things like how do you build game dynamics? How do you build fear of missing out? How do you build sort of stickiness and increased time on site? None of which are specifically valuable things for the user or for the society or for improving people. This is one of those places where the technology leads our ethical development in a way which I think is actually not very healthy for us. Please say it. Sorry that was my only note. I find it very interesting and I want to transpose that to other thoughts about creativity I had earlier on which is that artists know that creativity arises when you're stuck. I mean creativity and inspiration comes when you're in that moment of emptiness. And so it's precisely the opposite of the efficiency. So it's kind of interesting because I think that gets us back to that human element that's beyond the technology. That it's this empty space, this conflictness and then something else can arise. And I think I just want to reflect one more thing on choice which was said because I think it's important and it's something I think about a lot is do we really have choice? I mean what does choice mean? And if we come back to this question of our programming, you know we may think we are choosing but actually we're running the program. And I think real choice requires an awareness of ourselves that is quite deep and awareness of our biases so that we can actually be much freer in the decisions we make and know that we are actually choosing with a full understanding of ourselves and of our biases and of the context. Yeah, Ahmad you were jumping in too. I think the concern I have here as again a clergyman about this ethics of what kind of ethics is going to be behind these actions? Who is defining those principles? That's the big concern we have especially if religion institutions and the spiritual paths are going to look at this issue in a passive way and do not face these challenges that the new generation are facing and they are keep emphasizing on very old traditional way of knowledge or presenting whatever they have and the moral believes in the moral issues then we are going to give it away to those that maybe do not have any principles. So not having a principle can be become a principle for the moral base of all these technologies. That's something that we are really scared of of that issue isn't it? Yeah and just one quick comment on that. The great thing is that when I talk to people who are building technology they have these sort of strange set of principles they use which are based out of the technology itself but they also still talk about moral and ethical principles as part of it. For instance, I mean not to put LinkedIn in the spotlight specifically but because I think every company thinks about this. For us, LinkedIn is all about creating economic opportunity for people in the world and that is kind of our moral center as a company and it's actually part of our day-to-day conversations at the company. So it's actually tension in people who are building technology feel the pressure for building from a traditional moral set versus what they're learning that technology is teaching them. But always there is a gap between what these engineers are thinking are doing and what society is about. Always especially when you go a little bit further to the third world countries. So here it comes a kind of dialogue and cooperation needed between these technology makers and between the people. So here it comes again the role of government and private sectors to facilitate and help and sponsor all the research mainly was happening in the field. Yes, can I? I think that's an interesting segue because for a long time I think governments were not getting involved into this discussion because these were private entities of multinational entities and many of them were not headquartered in our own territory. So developing laws and regulation about the internet actually talks about the relevancy of state action and the digital age and extraterritoriality, sorry it's my French, the extraterritoriality of laws which is something that as a government we must acknowledge. Now I think talking with many of my counterparts around the world and ministers of cultures this becomes the one priority in their own portfolio. And this is why also we're willing to have lots of conversations with digital platforms in order to give these the point of view of citizens not of government but of citizens we're representing and maybe like you were talking about a bit of a friction in the sense of we need to make sure that there is some cultural diversity within the algorithms that you are creating. You must assess the impacts of the filter bubble. We need to make sure that we have a healthier democracy. It's not up to governments to say how to do it. It's up to digital platforms with their creativity to be able to answer these important questions. Yeah, no exactly. Well and speaking of interaction why don't we give time and jump out to our audience with some questions to feedback. So let me make sure I see the process here. We've got microphones on both sides and I've seen, I see three hands, four hands here. We've got one on the aisle, one in here and two in the back. I'm gonna kind of run up that back five right in front of the camera. If you could, your name and affiliation and your question. My name is Alec Gagnu. I'm very glad that you are talking about democracy. I'm very glad that you were talking about ethics and about empathy. And I think we see many forms of technology which are not really useful and beneficial for the big amount of human beings and also animals and plants. For example, in Canada there is for example oil sand which is exploited. So what can we do in this direction to stop that and to protect the nature? To the games, for example, most of the games, the more I kill in the games, the more points I get. What can we do in that direction to protect our young generation? And for example, drones. This is a very technical stuff. Obama's drones are killing every day human beings. What can we do in this direction? Okay, great. And why don't we collect a couple questions and then we'll bring them back up here. That way we can make sure we're gonna collect as many and I'm sure there's some themes. And if anyone would like us to speak in German and we'll translate back, just let us know. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for such a thoughtful conversation. My name is Alex Forrester, Chief Operations Officer of Rising Tide Capital. To take up the challenge posed by Mr. Blue about a creative problem solving that's needed, one of the challenges that we're faced by the Fourth Industrial Revolution is that we operate in a market economy that assigns value based on scarcity, but technology is driving the marginal cost of production of all kinds of things, services and products down to zero and also driving the marginal cost of labor down to zero. And so how do we rely on the North Star of believing in the value of human in the Fourth Industrial Revolution to come up with political and economic philosophies that can engage with this shift from scarcity to an economics of abundance? Mm-hmm. Okay. We got a couple more. Let's go back to the back. I won't miss you. Yeah, we got one here. Good to talk. And my name is... Anna Amad-Hankan is my name. I'm from Rudao, a news broadcaster. A news broadcaster in Kurdistan. And we're here for the fourth time. I thought this was an excellent discussion. I work for television. I know how important it is for us to keep pace with technological advances. But what about the developing world, the third world? How are these countries that have problems with hunger, how can they really harness this technological change? So my question, really, is, in light of the question that you put about the self-driving vehicles, the situation we have at the moment is that drivers are very important. It covers a great deal of jobs. But isn't there a real fear of unemployment? All of a sudden, if all of these drivers are made unemployed by this technological change, that's an issue. Want to bucket up a few of these, and then we'll come back. We've got one here, one there, one here, and one up in the back in front of the cameras. So why don't we bucket a couple of these up? And we're touching on, you guys, we only got a half an hour left. We've got a lot of ground to cover. All right, so we're talking about technology in the third world and being able to use that to address global challenges. We have the whole idea of technology taking us from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance, which could sound like almost the contrasting question, but I will actually throw that out there to tackle that. And the whole idea of technology, not just for humans, but on the whole world and the environment we live in, and are we really taking into account all the implications of technologies? That's kind of broadly how I heard some of that. And so, see, and Alan, want to jump in to start with, and maybe go out and talk a little bit about some of these technologies from a government in Canada perspective, and then we'll jump across the panel, and then we'll come back out, okay? I can only say, regarding the third world or through developing nations, right now some of the most interesting innovations are actually occurring in those places. So I guess I'll make a couple of points. The first is that there is a kind of silver lining to the issues for developing countries in the sense that they can leapfrog a collection of existing technologies. So if you look at, for instance, and the very first example of this was South Korea. So South Korea basically went from a country which had very little telecommunications infrastructure to one which is entirely based on wireless communication, kind of like that. They didn't actually have to work through the entire period of wired communication and move into the wireless. They were able to jump directly there. So there are similar leaps which are possible in places where major infrastructure is not yet in place. In other words, you can start at a higher level in terms of the capabilities. The second thing is if you look at Africa right now, some of the most innovative payment platforms are arriving in Africa. India is currently creating the first society which has biometric measurements for citizens, not for citizenship, but for identifying citizens so they can take action with a totally reliable form of self-identification in addition to the very first fully demonetized society. I mean, it's a pretty remarkable collection of improvements which are coming out of the developing world. Yeah, maybe Minister Renle. Well, I think that all the questions are, well especially the second one regarding how I would read it, monetization is interesting. Certainly on the government point of view, it's extremely difficult to develop a public policy while the business model is in constant evolution. And I think this is one of the biggest challenge of what we're facing at Heritage. One of the issues that we're certainly looking into is the issue of fairness. Fairness for content creators. When I said at the beginning that the most important thing for our government was to be able to still continue to be able to support and promote content creation is in line with the necessity for artists and content creators to be able to live from what they do. And certainly when you look at the impacts of streaming, for example, in the music sector, we see that there's an issue when it comes to fairness. At the same time, we see that as an opportunity, an opportunity for our content creators to have access to means of distributions like they never had before. And bearing that in mind, and that goes to the third question about the third world's relationship to this technology, it was interesting to be at UNESCO with my colleague from Paraguay that was talking about the fascinating impact that the web had on its own culture because there was a democratization of means of distribution that had never had happened for its own country. And what Alan was referring that leapfrog was certainly happening in countries in Latin America, American countries. And to go back to the first question, I think in general, certainly as a government we've been using technology to communicate directly on a variety of issues. And that's exactly what our prime minister is doing in Canada right now. Doing townhouse throughout the country, meeting with people, and this is live broadcast through Facebook and a constant Twitter feed. But at the same time, we value the importance of media. We value the importance of having intermediaries that can develop content that is based on reliable sources, credible sources, and that will lead to sound decision-making on the part of our population. And this is certainly something we're looking into because the impact of technology on journalism right now is increasingly rapidly growing and we're asking ourselves some important questions. And we're weighing on, yeah, Aman? I mean, I want to come in at a completely different angle but it's to address the question on scarcity and abundance which I feel is fundamental. And I'd like to take it to the human level because I think that we must not forget that any system or economics is composed of humans. And I think that the first shift that needs to happen is an inner shift from scarcity to abundance. I mean, when we talk about human augmentation, why do we want to augment ourselves? Why are we looking at all these apps outside of ourselves? If it's not because at some level, we have a belief in our human incompleteness, like in our human scarcity. And so I think that the first shift that needs to happen is also an understanding that we are whole, that we have a universe inside of ourselves so we can base ourselves on this inner abundance. And I think that will shift the way we look at the outside world as well. So this is just a small element because obviously your question is huge and if I had the whole answer, I would be rolling it out but I think we must really start with our human beliefs in ourselves. And yes, if the first question, if I understood him well, I think he has a concern about misusing of technology in human way and how we are going to stop it. I think there are different ways dealing with that. First, governments and NGOs, United Nation. Recently, European Union, I think just a few days ago, there was a law implemented or something, I'm not sure, but about making robots responsible. There was a law passed or beginning of making robots responsible for what they are doing. So some of this technology is, as she said that it doesn't have any direction, is silent. You can use it in the right way or in the wrong way. Like using the drone, you can use it for useful purposes. Now if someone using it for killing innocent people, then there must be taken to trial and there must be punished by international community, by, I don't know whatever you want to call it. However, that's in the larger scale. If I want to mention it, that goes back to the issue I raised before, to the definition of the human being. Who defines the values? What kind of values we have? Even some people who are using the drone, they have justification for that, from ethical perspective. So this is a very big challenge and very paradoxical to deal with these issues. It's not very easy. Now going back to the third question about the issue of hunger and poverty and the problems we are facing these days, I completely agree with here. And again, this is the responsibility of, I mean, if you look at the Middle East, for example, I'm coming from Iran and the Middle East and we have gone through different wars. The war has been imposed to us, our neighboring countries now living in the chaos these days and as you know and as you witness every day. If you really want to deeply go inside of those problems, what's the main cause behind that? The main cause coming from the West, mainly, I mean, some of the superpowers, to be honest with you, who made Iraq like this? Who invaded the other countries? Who, I mean, did with Afghanistan? So the people here who owns the technology, who owns this, they misuse it. And they are responsible now and they have to pay the price. They have also to go and help rebuild these countries. They cannot just leave Iraq now and say, okay, we made a mistake and now you go and build it and you have to pay the price for that. It's not fair. It's unjust. No, we're certainly speaking to the role of humans in choice in all of this, in all of this theme here. And I think there's a lot of examples where there have been some really good choices of technology to help with some of these issues and figuring out how do we scale these things. But it is a choice of people, which brings us to the conversations that we are endeavoring to have and how to be transparent in what we do and don't know about technology. So there's obviously, we could have whole panels. And actually, I think some of the upcoming discussions this week are gonna touch on some of these subjects. So you might wanna come back for those as well. But let's go, let's work from the back. We've got a gentleman all the way in the back here in front of the camera, all the way back, back, back, back. Who's had his hand up for a while to ask a question and then move forward. And we've got someone here in the front. Okay, sorry, I don't wanna lose you. My name is Swami Agnivesh from New Delhi, India. And I work for the poorest of the poor in the world who are victims of modern-day slavery. I've been for nine years chairperson of the United Nations Trust Fund on contemporary forms of slavery. My organization is called Bonded Labor Liberation Front. And I've been its founder chairperson. Now, I'm sorry for this long introduction, but why I'm saying all of this is, in the whole question or discussion about technology, first and foremost, we should know that what we call technology is not something out of nothing. The God creates this beautiful universe for all, for all living creatures. And then some people, those who have the capacity, the money power, they buy up naturally. Do we have a question? Yeah, the question is, why do we allow privatization of natural resources? Number one, once we allow air and water and mineral wealth and everything, everything to be privatized, which belongs to everybody, all human beings, we inherit the earth, the people of the earth. But why is, should be given to some individual corporations to make profit out of it? Number two, there is a saying that- We only have 15 minutes left, so if the question is about allowing privatization- Who controls the technology? That's the most important thing. It is the military industry today in the world. And that is, they are calling the tunes. 1 trillion, 700 billion dollars, their annual budget. And all technology is being used for this killer industry. Are we ready to question that? Thank you. Thank you. Down, Ted turned the middle. We'll take a couple of questions. Yep, we're coming through the middle here. And then we'll come over here to this side. Thank you for the interesting discussion. My name is Alfa Demilash from Rising Ted Capital as well, CEO. A lot of the discussion around the fourth industrial revolution and its relevance is driven by and large, the urgency of it at least, is by the fact that there are investors who have invested significant dollars on the expectation of a return that is based on the human labor side of the business model disappearing and there's a lot of efficiency there. And so there's tremendous return there that is expected. And so when you're thinking about shaping values and principles, what is the mechanism that you can, in all of your specific industries, think of for informing investor values? How do we do that? Informing investor values. Okay, thank you. And we'll go here and then there was one or two here. And then we'll jump into answering some of these. Hello, my name is Eugene. I'm from China. I've worked many years in the automotive industry. And now I'm also a PhD candidate in the University of St. Gallant in the Switzerland. And my question is that so far I've heard all the wonderful opinions from the panelists on the stage, but I think we only touch half the point here. It's more about, because the whole topic today is the 4.0 industry revolution, but so far I've heard predominantly about the revolution side, about the digitalization, about creativity. That's all about how we will new technology revolutionize our life. But I want to ask from the perspective from the stability side, that is, I would say more from the industry side. So how would you explain that the disruptive power of digitalization of creativity can help the industry to create jobs to bring more stability? For example, now China is also aiming to create more jobs in a manufacturing industry, also even in the States. So how do you really think about the tension between the stability and the disruptive power of technology? Thank you. Okay, we've got a question here and one here. Yeah. My name is Christian Ratzfeld. I'm a team manager at Simba Biomed in Winterthur. And my question is around to think about we all, I think there is a common agreement here that we all want to make good things in the world. However, what I wanted to mention is that also chief can be under the impression that he's doing good things in the world. So he's taking from poor giving to the rich. So my question would be to the audience, how can we make sure that we are aligned here, that we all understand the same thing when we're saying we want to do good things? There's a common definition of good when we move forward. All right, and this gentleman here has been very patient. Thank you. My name is Luke Eagley. I'm working here as a scientist in Davos in these research centers, but I'm not only a scientist, I'm also like very much art and culture. And I've been very amazed about this revolution 4.0 simply because of this huge data set about human beings. And my hypothesis is that these data sets really can help to understand human being better. Like thousands of philosophers, leaders from religions, art people try to do. And I was discussing this also with some friends and my question is now, will this data set be open to let's say research or people trying to get these informations out of this data set? Because now it's in the hand of companies and I don't assume that it's really the goal to make people better or to learn more about human being. So is there also a governmental rule to say to the companies, give some of the data set free for this goal? Okay. Again, this is an awesome audience. You guys cover a lot of ground. But I think if I draw a couple of threads through this, this whole question of informing values and the balance between disruptiveness and the obligation to create jobs, right? So the values of people and what makes society work and creating jobs, right? Is a big theme that's running through here. And another piece around and the openness of the data and the business models, right? So we kind of have that bigger obligation of ownership of companies and others in a bigger question. And then we have a whole piece around how are we get aligned on doing good and on who in different versions of that owns technology and makes some of those rules about doing good if I bring our first question back into that. So maybe if we can kind of pursue some of those two themes, anybody jumping in on the balance of where we are with data and models and business objectives and creating jobs at the same time we see this tension? I can talk a little bit about that. So it's obviously, for what it's worth, this is a huge topic here at the WEF. This is a really big area. Specifically due to the speed of the current industrial revolution, the level of disruption that we would expect should be equivalent to the level of disruption that we saw with the industrial revolution which is usually called the industrial revolution, the one that moved us from the agrarian economy to the industrial economy. But that took about 90 years to play out. We should expect that same level of disruption in a period of just about a quarter of that time, so about 25 years. Well, that is faster than our institutions can normally keep up with. So it's going to be difficult for us to actually manage it and that's why we have to work very proactively to try to address some of those issues. There will be very substantial change in terms of what kinds of skills are valuable for us as people because the things which will be asked of us as individuals will be different. It's already different than it was even 10 years ago or 20 years ago. The kinds of things you need to know to be successful in the economy are just changing and they're changing very rapidly. So a big area of focus is on education. How does education keep up with that? How do we form, create new forms of education which will help people do that? And then on the side of job creation, there are going to be a lot of things which automation will actually be able to do very, very well. And those things don't simply impact the kinds of jobs that you would expect. Like for instance, they don't simply impact, say, assembly line work, which is where we see robots mainly today. They affect, somebody brought it up into one of the questions in the first set, they affect people who drive cars or people who drive trucks. They affect people who plan your retirement savings. They reflect journalists who are writing stories. Many of the stories that you see right now are already written by computers and not written by human beings anymore. Usually those things are about sports and about finance and things like that. So that change is happening quickly. Our need is to make sure that we as human beings can continue to upgrade our own capability so that we're able to work better with those systems. But the creation of jobs is going to come, I think primarily through two sources. The first one's going to be entrepreneurship. Basically, we want to make it possible for, we need to make it possible for us to start more companies. And I mean companies of all different kinds because that's been the engine of economic growth and especially jobs. Certainly in the developed world for the past 50 or 60 years, most of the new jobs are actually created by small companies. The second thing is that there is a set of projects which we must undertake together, which we are going to need to address and it's going to create huge opportunity. The one that comes most firmly to mind is the opportunity around climate change. Climate change is going to have a massive impact on us in the world and it's going to take millions of human beings working together to try to address that problem, to manage refugees who are being displaced, to install new technologies, to develop those new technologies on our way to a world of abundance. Great, thank you. We're getting within 10 minutes so I want to try to bring some points through and on each of these question thoughts across the panel and then we'll come back for final wrap up. I think the issue of job creation, if I may, is in line with the form of economic anxiety that is certainly happening in the Western world. And this is why as a government, we, you know, I talk to you about, well, we believe in the importance of creative industries because when I said we believe in its economic potential, we want to grow our percentage of GDP, we want to create good jobs. If you look at just the video game sector in Canada, we have now more than 2,000 studios in Canada. Only in 2014, 2015, there was a 42% growth in the sector and these are well-playing jobs. These are jobs the average age of people working in the video game sector in Canada is 31 and the average wage is $71,000 Canadian. So it's really good middle-class jobs. People that do animated graphic design and that are, you know, artists that's heart. And, you know, I know the question was asked by a colleague that is Chinese. I've just come back, I was in Shanghai two days ago and I had a discussion with my Chinese counterpart and many Chinese representatives and it's also China's, you know, will to increase the creative industries for 4% to 5% of their GDP. So it's not as, it's not seen throughout the world as a potential sector of economic growth. I think in general also, you know, if you look at what is our innovation agenda to create growth in Canada, there are creative industries. There are, there is the creative industries. There is climate change. We certainly believe in the importance of investing in new tech. And I would add the other sector we're investing a lot in is infrastructure because we have an aging infrastructure and we have new infrastructure needs because of this new technology. And so these are also good jobs. And this is why we believe that there needs to be and in a clear government plan to deal with this economic anxiety and create growth which is inclusive growth. And I think to sum through a couple of the other questions about shared data and aligning on good, I think that is a place where I think the conversations we're trying to have now and through the year because it's multiple governments, it's public and private, it's the international organizations and the communities that have to be together in order to have some shared idea about values and some shared language about some of those pieces. And certainly understanding for companies data sharing and what's appropriate ways to do it to respect data privacy as well as competitiveness and allow the benefit and mitigate the risk is a key conversation. And again, whole dialogues on this that are gonna take us awhile to get through this. But more and more governments are focusing on how do we use more open data to get benefit to people who wanna build new businesses, use it for different types of social good. All right, so again, we could go on all day. We have five minutes left. I have five members of the panel here. And so I'd ask us to speed, what is the key takeaway that you'd like to leave with the audience in this area or the thing that caused you to have an aha moment in this discussion that will maybe change something you think about in the rest of the week here in Davos? Minister? Well, through things, I want you to remember that arts and culture are important and don't take it for granted. They're synonymous of growth and inclusiveness. First thing, what was my aha moment? It's interesting to see that there's openness on the part of people in Silicon Valley, for example, to address these important challenges. And so that's why I think a better conversation between governments and the tech sector is extremely important. Nicole? So in closing, I just wanna say that I share a lot of the concerns that were expressed in this room. And I think we have to remember that in this theme of responsive and responsible leadership, each one of us has a responsibility, especially when we're faced with technology. And we have a responsibility, for example, what type of cell phone do we buy? How do we use it? What video games are we buying for our children? And it's always easy to think, okay, the responsibility lies somewhere else. And obviously there are other actors that have substantial resources at their disposal, but that does not mean that we are disempowered as citizens. And I think that's a key point because ultimately we will be also shifting the direction of where all these products are going. Absolutely. Ahmad? Thank you. I think also I have learned a lot from this interaction and especially from the panelists. What I would like to take here is we have to be careful about making distinction between individual and person. Unfortunately, it seems that the kind of individualism taking over of using technology, rather than the person, as you were referring, is left out. So person, not in the legal way I'm talking, more in personal way is someone that his identity defines with living with others. Individual is just for himself or herself. So more going towards a kind of personalism. That's something we need it. And then we need also as a responsible citizen and responsive citizenship, that questioning those leaders and those who do not pay attention to the issue of justice, those who bring oppression to the oppressed people. So we have to question and we have to fight for justice. So it's been great. For me, the most important takeaway is that there are, is this reminder that there are, there are people whose work in this world is about how we live together in the world of government, how we understand ourselves and what we're capable of. And I think of artists as a primary force there. And then those who represent these tremendous sources of wisdom and insight, which are represented in the world's religions and among those leaders. I'm reminded one of the people I follow on Twitter using technology is the Dalai Lama. I don't know if you guys follow the Dalai Lama, but basically he has a little note about compassion periodically. It's actually a remarkable, and I don't know if you've ever seen that, I've heard the Dalai Lama speak, but that guy is awesome. It's a little breath of compassion and fresh air coming through the technology, which reminds me that there is a way for these ways we've always understood ourselves and the ways we try to live together to have an impact on what we build. And I think it's up to you and me to make sure we build the right thing. Tracy. So that was my aha moment. I guess I was weighed into the last minute, but that was a lovely example of how we as humans can keep from becoming the tools of our tools, making sure that we speak through them clearly as whole people. Thank you all for me. I think it is this discussion that there is room in our technology to create friction that allows us to get the time and the breath and the sharing so that we can do the right thing for humanity, ultimately. So thank you all very, very much for joining us. Thank you all for being here and those of you who are tuned in on the livestream and we look forward to ongoing discussions and follow some of the conversations going on this week via the technology tools that we do have available. So thank you. Have a wonderful afternoon. Thank you.