 Ladies and gentlemen, a special welcome to this second Vrienden van Kopenhagen Lecture. It's a great honor to have you all here. A special welcome, of course, to onze Vrienden, our students, because they are the most important persons in this room, because they will determine our next generation, and other special guests, our keynote speaker, and of course our panel members. Special welcome to this afternoon here in Tilburg, and we are very pleased that you are here, and that's a large number of guests, and we hope we can offer you a very interesting program this afternoon. Before I go into a further introduction update of the Vrienden, I just want to show you one thing. This is a, well, it's famous Belgian chocolate. I won't explain it to you, but what I'd like to show you is just this. Why I'm showing this is, because with this I will come to why we think this afternoon will be very important to all of us, maybe one of the most important subjects for the coming years to discover. I'm normally in my day-to-day life, I own a large Dutch technology company, and I had my annual Christmas dinner with management. I gave them two things. One is a book of our keynote speaker, but I leave that to you, not to me. And the other thing I have given them this, why? They are all around 40 years old, some are 45 years old, and this is a robot. We won't go into a robot this afternoon, but this robot, it has a camera in it. It can speak, it can react on my voice. I can teach it. I can demonstrate it with my iPhone. I can control it from a large distance. And it keeps all my data, and it brings data to some place in the world where I don't know what happens. And I told my manager, please, this is probably one of the most crucial developments in the coming years. We have to deal with it. Why I'm showing this is, because I think this is exactly... I can turn it off. That's still the interesting part. This is exactly the subject I think we will deal this afternoon, because this small robot, and you can buy it for 80 euro at intertoys. My management and myself took it a half day to get it in control. When you give it to a five-year-old child within 20 minutes, it has more control than whoever will get it in this room. But it generates, it stimulates, or it explains, probably where we are heading to, towards a digital or digital society and everything related to that. And for that reason, we are very pleased to have this program this afternoon, and to have a very distinguished keynote speaker, which gives a very broad view, I think, about this subject and leave us with a lot of questions probably, and also with a lot of panel members, which can have this discussion. So once again, welcome, and we hope that you will have a very pleasant and interesting afternoon, and it all brings us something to our own mind. Well, before we go into the real program, I'd like to take a few minutes to explain why we want to have this lecture, because I will turn into Dutch, if you will forgive me. The slides are in English, because this is oorspronkelijk voortgekomen, deze bijeenkomst vanuit de vrienden van Kobbenhagen. En voor degene in de zaal die dat niet weten, de vrienden van Kobbenhagen is een groep van zeer betrokken alumnie van deze universiteit, die de universiteit met raad en daad terzijde staan. Er zijn ook een aantal alumnie hier aanwezig, die volgens nog geen vriend zijn, en wij zijn heel blij dat u hier aanwezig bent, en we hopen natuurlijk ook mede door deze programma vanmiddag, dat u onverhoopt één van ons aanschiet en onmiddellijk een handtekening zet, liefst Blanco om vriend te worden. We zullen het niet mistrust toepassen, want wij vinden het heel belangrijk vanuit alumnie dat wij een grote verbondenheid houden, dat hebben we altijd gehad, maar ook naar toekomst met de universiteit. En onder andere deze lecture is daar een middel toe om ons te demonstreren, de brug te slaan tussen studenten, maatschappelijke thema's, en vanuit alumnie. Dat brengt ons iets als alumnie, maar dat brengt ook iets naar studenten en iets naar de universiteit. En daarom vinden we het heel prettig om deze opzet te hebben. Het is de tweede keer, en we hopen iedere keer het weer verder te kunnen verrijken. Dan mag ik de volgende sluit. Nou, wat ik al zei, er zijn een twintig taal gasten hier die nog wel alumnie zijn, maar nog geen vriend, en speciaal welkom, zelfsprekend, los van natuurlijk de vriend, en studenten en andere gasten. We hopen dat jullie inderdaad vriend willen worden en de universiteit en het betrokkenheid met elkaar, alleen maar willen vergroten. Nou, misschien toch ook nog even voordat ik echt naar het programma gaan. Kleine update. We bestaan 25 jaar, en we zullen dat 4 op 1 juni aanstaande met partners voor de vrienden. Noteren we er vast in dag en dag. Het wordt, denk ik, een heel boeiend interessant programma. Het thema is generaties, zeer actueel, en we willen een heel interactief, leuk, ontspannen programma eind van de middag op vrijdag, met de avond, met alle ingrediënten, denk ik, die ouderen, minder ouderen en jongere alumnie zullen boeien. En ik ben ervan overtuigd dat we dan een hele mooie lustrum hebben en dat we met z'n allen stil kunnen staan bij het feit dat wij het enige instituut in Nederland die Joe iets heeft, de enige universiteit die iets heeft zo alle vrienden van Kobbenhaag. En daar willen we speciaal bij stilstaan. We hebben recent ook een oproep gedaan voor een aantal nieuwe bestuursleden, omdat er een aantal van ons, inclusief mijzelf, ja, de termijn zit er opgegeven met op. En dat moet je ook terugtrekken. En we zijn heel blij dat er grote aantallen hebben gereageerd van vrienden die graag lid van het bestuur willen worden en we hopen op hele korte termijn daar een definitieve besluit over te kunnen nemen en dat ook te kunnen communiceren. Dus bij deze alvast dat we daarmee ook de continuiteit in ieder geval voor het bestuur, maar ook voor in ieder geval de vrienden hopelijk weer veilig heb ik steld, want dat hoort er ook bij. Dan nog een aantal andere activiteiten, een aantal zogenaamde boardroom meetings, dat zijn eigenlijk kleinschalige bijeenkomsten van vrienden, vooral voor andere vrienden om eens keer vaker dachten te wisten over diverse onderwerpen, wat ze in het werk bezig houden of andere maatschappelijke thema's. En u ziet hier, Hupdekker zal in 1 maart een boardroom meeting geven, Wouter Schepers zal 17 mei een boardroom meeting geven en we willen in het najaar een boardroom organiseren met professor Marcel Poorthuis over zijn recentverschene publicatie over de managing with Moses. Zeer inspirerend, kan ik iedereen aanraden om te lezen. En natuurlijk vragen nogmaals we gaan naar een digitale solliciteit. Maatschappij bedoel ik, dan is het ook heel belangrijk dat wij daar maar gewoon de stad nemen. We hebben al een paar jaar een app, een app zijn in en we doen ons dringend beroep om vooral te registreren als je dat nog niet gedaan hebt in de app, want dat maakt communicatie en informatie delen, alleen maar makkelijker, los van het onderwerp en rest van de middag. Nou, ik wil switchen naar Engels omdat ik jullie dit update over de vrienden van Kobbenhagen gelegd heb. Ik wil vooral om een programma te introduceren, verder en dan geef ik de floor naar professor Dignen Hechtoch, hoe verder de thema van deze avond introduceren en ook een introductie naar onze keynote speaker. Het is een simpel programma. We hebben een introductie door professor Dignen Hechtoch, dan hebben we een keynote speech door professor Victor Marja Schoenberger en dan willen we een interactieve panel discussie hebben. Dus we proberen jullie te komen op de vraag met onze panel en met onze keynote speakers, want ik denk dat het een van de elementen van deze avond is dat we de interactie krijgen en dat we een soort akademische en praktische discussie over deze belangrijk thema en dan komen we terug naar jullie omdat we ook willen awarden onze so called scholarships, prizes, die we hebben introduceren vorig jaar, maar ik zal dat verder introduceren voor jullie later in het programma. Dus ik wil nu de floor naar professor Dignen Hechtoch om een verder introductie naar deze thema van deze avond en een introductie naar onze keynote speaker. Dank u en bedankt. Afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Dichter Hechtoch, professor of business analytics, praise research at this university and also scientific director of the data science center Tilburg. In this short introduction I would like to introduce the topic of today but more importantly also the speaker of today. So the title of this conference is towards a digital society. And to be honest, I think we already living in such a digital society, but I agree that the society will certainly become more and more digital in the future. The developments in this respect are enormous. Many countries now start or have started big initiatives on the topic of data and algorithms. I just mentioned here some very recent or recent news. One news item. China is building a 2.1 billion dollar industrial park for artificial intelligence research. The United Arab Emirates is the first nation with a government minister dedicated to AI. Artificial intelligence. Another news item. Artificial intelligence can diagnose heart disease and lung cancer more accurately than doctors. Bill Gates purchased an enormous amount of land to build his own smart city. And it's almost 25,000 acres of land in Arizona. But data science is also an important topic for the Tilburg University. Several years ago, we started a joint data initiative together with Eindhoven University of Technology, which is now called JETS, Herodomus Academy of Data Science. JETS is located at three locations. Eindhoven, Tilburg, but also an important part in the monastery Marienburg in Settogenbosch. And moreover, Tilburg University recently started what is called the impact program. To really use science to have impact in our society to make this world a better place. Science with a soul as we call it. And one of the three impact themes is creating value from data. And personally, I strongly believe that data science can be used to improve the world a little bit. I'm convinced that Martinus Kopenhagen, the founder of this university and also the lecturer is called the Kopenhagen Lecture that he would agree with me to use data science for this purpose. In this respect, I cannot resist the temptation to shortly mention one of the data science projects I'm personally involved. Using data and algorithms, we were able to optimize the food supply chain for the world food program of the new United Nations. This has been applied to countries as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia and now also to the countries that suffer from the effects of El Nino. And due to this data science techniques, world food program could feed one million more people in Syria. Yes, a digital world can be a better world, but not necessarily. I also refer to the book Weapons of Math Destruction written by Katie O'Neil, but also to several interviews. For example, the interview with Stephen Hawken and he's saying, I fear that artificial intelligence may replace humans altogether. Ellen Musk who claims that we only have a 10 percent chance of making a safe. The role of data in our society and economy is exactly the topic of the Copenhagen lecture of today. And I think our keynote speaker is the most ideal person to talk about this topic. And also at this point, I would like to announce already the topic of the fifth Copenhagen summit on March the fifth and the topic of that summit is artificial intelligence. Ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure and the big honor to introduce the speaker of today, Professor Victor Mayer Schoenberger. Many of you do know him from his book Big Data, a revolution that will transform how we live, work and think 2013. This book has also been translated into Dutch and I think it's a bad translation to be honest. The Dutch translation is the Big Data Revolutie hoe de data explosie al onze vragen gaat beantwoorden. So Victor, do you understand Dutch? Enough. Enough? So do you really think that maybe you can also come to that in your talk. Do you really think that this is true? That the data explosion will answer all our questions. We'll see. But I think he wrote also other books. Another book that I also like is the book Delete, the virtue of forgetting in the digital age. So Victor is the professor of Internet Covenants and Regulation at Oxford. And earlier he spent 10 years on the faculty of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He has co-authored 11 books. You know, I'm writing a book now and took me already seven now five years and still not finished. So and his recent book is reinventing capitalism in the age of Big Data. I think we will hear more about it today. And he's also the author of more than a hundred articles on the economics and governance of information. He studied in Salzburg, Harvard, London School of Economics, but he's also an entrepreneur. So in 1986 he started he founded Ikaren Software which became the best selling Austrian software product. And he was voted the top five software entrepreneur in Austria in 1991. And in 2014 he received a World Technology Award in the law category for his work. He's a frequent public speaker. So interviews and articles on Victor and his work can be found in example given New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Economist, Nature Science and last week was also an interview with Victor on the Dutch television in Buitenhof and also interviews with him in Financiel Dagblat NSC Armin Dagblat. Victor was also the keynote speaker at the opening of the Hieronomous Academy of Data Science. He set a bus in 2016 and during that event Queen Maxima performed the official opening of Jets and I still remember that the audience was very enthusiastic about your talks. So Victor the expectations for today are sky high. So may I invite you to deliver your speech. Thank you very much. Oh boy. What will I tell my wife tonight? Now better. Thank you very much. Dick, I come here with incredible delight. I'm deeply honored to be here this afternoon and to speak to you but also to engage. I have had the tremendous fortune in my life of being able to teach at Harvard and at Oxford. And that's pretty much winning the lottery if you're an academic. But I I must say and you may not know it completely but when when I want inspiration when I want to find out what's the next new idea when I want to be inspired in my own research I make sure that on SSRN that's the Social Science Research Network I read what comes out of Tilburg University. And so I've been a friend of Tilburg University for quite some time and I every time I come back here I am inspired again and I learn. I don't can't I can't say that of all academic conferences. So today I have had a chance to meet with some of you but also with my dear friend Dick and with Sylvester and just listening to them over the course of lunch taught me so much and I was able to learn so much that for me this trip has already paid off. So now I need to do the work to actually make this. So with that in mind let's talk about the the data society as I call this and a lot of people out there think that this digital this data society is all about speed. It's all about doing what we're already doing but just doing it faster. Doing it at breakneck speed and perhaps more efficiently. I have a very different view of what this new age is all about. My view is not that it's faster although it may be faster but that what the data revolution does to us is that it opens up a new perspective on reality. It gives us a new look at the world and how it is. And so that we we see the world more precisely better perhaps differently than we saw it before and with that in mind with that knowledge in mind we can improve as we inform our decision making because that's ladies and gentlemen at the end of the day what much of our life is all about making decisions. Going left or right A or B and when we do this we can rely on our gut reaction on which way we got up this morning when we get out of bed. We can rely on pure belief or we can rely on facts. We can rely on thinking and putting those facts into a perspective. Here in this country in the Netherlands you have a long and proud tradition of enlightenment and to me in a way the big data revolution and the data age is about taking the ideas of enlightenment into the next century. The ideas that more knowledge is better than less knowledge that understanding the world helps us make better decisions not just about ourselves so about making money but about how to help the common good how to improve society and the plight of people all around the world. Now you'd say but wait a minute Meyer Schenberger haven't we done that all along? Using data and facts to inform ourselves and to understand yes you're right since the very beginning of time we have looked at the world observed it and then analyzed the data that we gained from it the facts that we learned from it in order to understand the world but you know what all throughout time we also knew that collecting such data and analyzing it was hard and difficult and time consuming and so what we did was that we collected as little as we absolutely needed squeezed it out in order to get the insights that we wanted because we feared we would never have enough data we accepted that we live in a world of small data and we designed our methods and our ways of understanding the world so that we could use the least amount of data to have the biggest impact but what if that changes what if our ability to collect and analyze data changes well then we need to rethink perhaps the approach and the process by which we make sense of the world we live in it's a little bit ladies and gentlemen if I want to make a connection to or a metaphor like photography think about it if you take a picture of a rider on a horse what you have is a picture of a rider on a horse but let's improve the quantity let's take a picture every second of a rider on a horse what do we then have more pictures of a rider on a horse but let's increase the quantity even further let's do 16 pictures per second of a rider on a horse then what happens then then the quantity of additional information translates into a new quality and that is the hope that is the promise of the data age that is the promise of digitization that the quantity translates into a quality into a quality of insight and improved decision making and the world now as we do this we also must understand how we have advanced in academia as well as beyond it see we humans always have used data I mentioned that but in a particular place in the process of understanding the world see we begin with a question the question comes from us a concrete hypothesis as the academics call it then we go out and collect data and analyze it in order to tell us what are the hypothesis was right or was wrong and that has helped us advanced us but you know what that progress was fraught with difficulty setbacks detours dead ends why because it all hinges upon our ability to ask the right question are we always asking the right question are we always coming up with the right hypothesis that we then need the data to just show that we are right or not maybe but maybe not and the promise of the data age is that we can actually change the process that is that we can begin with the data and the analysis in order to drive hypothesis to help us look at hypothesis that we we we didn't think before off now let me give you an example on how this plays out and this example has to do with a a group of human beings that are particularly vulnerable a group of human beings like this one a prematurely born baby prematurely born babies are disproportionally more afflicted with deadly infections than ordinary babies and these infections are discovered too late so more prematurely born babies die of infection that are discovered too late Dr. Carolyn McGregor and her team at the at the university outside of Toronto had a idea how they could help these prematurely born babies and it has to do with data so what did they do they attached sensors to these babies to capture the vital signs of the baby in real time like blood oxygenation level heart rate blood pressure and so on they did this and they collected one thousand two hundred vital sign data points per baby per second and they did this over days and weeks and months and over dozens and dozens of babies and then they said you know what we don't know exactly what we are looking for but what we are looking for more generally is a pattern in the vital signs that would predict with a high degree of likelihood the later onset of an infection we have no concrete hypothesis how this pattern looks like at this point in time but maybe we can find the pattern and they found it doing big data analysis so today just by looking at the change of the vital signs they can discover with high degree of likelihood if a prematurely born baby will have an infection 24 hours before first symptoms manifest themselves and that means being able to give medication earlier and save baby's life when I when we interviewed Dr. Caroline McGregor for a book big data we asked her so Caroline what's the pattern what's the pattern tell us what's the pattern and she laughed and she said you know you would think that the pattern that indicates a later infection is when the vital signs go crazy but we discovered that the pattern of a later infection is when from one second to the other the vital signs stabilize which pediatrician would have come up with the hypothesis that when one second to the other the vital signs of a prematurely born baby stabilize 24 hours later you have a likely infection this is the kind of unintuitive counterintuitive insight that we can get out of data analysis and looking at new patterns Dr. Caroline McGregor the star of my story here the savior of thousands of babies doctor Caroline McGregor doctor Caroline McGregor not a medical doctor computer scientist that's the age of a data driven machine learning where we are learning from what is happening out there and you have already seen every one of your I'm sure the Google self driving car as looks a little funny and so forth I understand but what is important about it is how it learns to drive see if you if you compare the Google self driving car with self driving cars of any of the large European car manufacturers here is what you see this is a distance in kilometers to the next human intervention so when a human needs to intervene as the car is driving itself and this is by the end data from the end of 2015 so when you have the average car producer then the car can go about 400 kilometers before a human needs to intervene at the same time the Google self driving car could go 2000 kilometers but five times better why why is Google so much better because a typical car manufacturer in Europe has a given budget for the sensors that they put in the car en they say we'll spend 5000 euros on the sensors so we economize on the sensors and therefore we reduce the amount of data while Google says we optimize on innovation we don't optimize on cost so we put lots of sensors in there got lots of data in fact Google self driving car analyzes and gatters a billion data points a second when it self drives and so therefore does it much better now because you have so much data and because you gather this data and then you do an analysis over and over again your advantage continues to grow when the car manufacturer realized what I just told you they put a couple more sensors in the cars and you know what a year later their self driving cars had improved by 30% an amazing improvement year over year but let's look at what the Google car did Google at the end of 2015 about 2000 kilometers before human intervention just one year later because of lots of data to learn from 8000 kilometers so were the car manufacturers improved by 30% Google improved by 400% that's data driven innovation at work data driven machine learning and the interesting thing isn't the self driving funny looking Google car the interesting thing is that when we have cars that drive themselves we don't need to own them anymore see I have a car that I only use 4% of the time why can't I give my car to somebody else to drive it while I am at work you know why dick because you don't drive as well as I do and so I would never entrust my beautiful car with you but guess if the car is self driving it doesn't matter whether I sit in the back or dick is sitting in the back it doesn't matter because it's the same self driving algorithm and so therefore we could share cars rather than possess them and my colleagues at the London School of Economics have shown that this would free up 25 to 30% of space used now for streets and parking in metropolitan areas can you imagine what this does in a society like yours or think about medical advances we are when I have a cold I am taking an aspirin and the aspirin was designed for an average cold by an average male you know what I'm not an average male and certainly my cold is never an average cold much worse than that so when I take that dosage of aspirin I over or under dose why don't I get the right dosage because my doctor doesn't have the data the data about my metabolism about my illness if we could be more precise about that we could improve not just efficiencies in the health care system but we could improve life quality in the health care system at lower cost or think about education my son is almost eight years old he's going to a great elementary school I couldn't be happier but the truth is that all of the kids in the class that he has are taught the same way but humans aren't the same we have different ways to understand the world we have different ways to understand mathematics or languages why are we using one particular pedagogical approach only because we don't have the data and when we have the data and we can analyze it we can get better and not just become a new Harvard that doesn't do much but of taking students and taking pupils in schools and enabling them to reach their individual potential because that's really what educational institutions should be all about now let's think about that one big part of our lives that's the economy how is the economy changing and amending because of that data age when we think about markets when we have a picture of markets we know what a market is a market is a great place to coordinate and to work with each other and to get what you want but in a market you need to know a lot in order to make a good decision so you need to have a lot of information en then transfer that information into decisions in a small village market you can do that but in global markets you can never do that and therefore we came up with a shortcut hundreds of years ago and how to ensure that on markets we have enough information to make decisions and that shortcut was that we would take all of our preferences and all of a product's qualities and condense them into one number through price how much we are willing to pay how much we want for a product we communicate in markets it's extremely efficient I only need to say a number that can easily be compared and then we know whether we have a transaction or not but you know what, as we do this it also causes difficulty but through price we communicate and of course money is the medium of communication to communicate in price traditional markets work because money and price informers and they help us decide but when we look more closer we understand that of course that's not so good a solution through the condensation into one single figure a lot of details gets lost and we humans have difficulties comparing lots of different qualities including price and making a decision think about just choosing from different sets of strawberries are you going just for the cheapest or compare the cheapest with the color of the strawberry and then with the origin and then maybe whether or not it was biologically harvested or not if we have markets that could be rich in data that where we had data beyond just price we could improve buying and selling we could improve the fit between transaction partners and that's precisely what is happening think about how my parents made a choice on where to go for holidays we would look at the catalog like this we would know that all the photos were fake and all the language was done by marketing and so we would look through the lines trying to decipher what this means like if it said a stunning perspective from the hotel it meant that the hotel wasn't at the beach and these type of things and then once we made a decision we would go there if it wasn't too bad a hotel we would come there next year because the risk of making a bad choice next year was much too high compare that to how we are booking hotels today I do my students do platform we look through we select what exactly we want where we want to be we then look at the reviews we look at the pictures that were taken not by marketing photographers but by actually guests in the hotel we go to google street view and look around and then we make a choice the choice isn't primarily informed just by price anymore these are data rich markets that we have and this is not about just hotels there's a start up company called blah blah car do you know them who has a ride sharing company who has done rides with them yes some of you great they do 30 million rides a month around the world now if you try to select a rider and a driver that's going to then price isn't the huge factor in the selection process but other factors like how talkative the driver and the rider are blah blah blah blah blah blah and you know whoever has driven with somebody who is very talkative when you want to be silent for 3 hours knows how good that is in the market of ride sharing this is the kind of data rich market we are looking at and what helps us in these data rich markets is diverse data beyond price but if we don't want to spend an hour or two trying to find the right transaction partners we also need that other thing that is data driven learning decision assistance and we have them they are slowly coming online you know that sort of alexis and series of the world they are not good yet they are doing better and better quite fast so the hope is that with data rich markets we can actually use data to informers and not money but that will have huge consequences for institutions of money look at the banks and their marble palaces take a good look because in 10, 20 years they may not be around anymore in the way we use them money will still be important as a method of payment of course we need to pay but that's a commodity function that's something that you can produce relatively cheaply the other function of money and price has been to informers in the market and if that is being at least in part replaced by data the banks lose some of their fundamental value proposition but it's not just the banks they need to think about themselves it's also the firm because the firm of course works with the market but it's also a competitor of the market oops what do I mean by that see when we want to organize and coordinate human activity we can do it through the market or we can do it through an organization a more hierarchical organization called the firm almost 100 years ago Ronald Koos said that we have the firm because there are certain things that we cannot do as cheaply on the market and if we can do it more cheaply on the firm we should but what if the market becomes really cheap because we have better transactions then the firm will become less important as a vehicle of coordinating human labor it may still be an important vehicle of capturing profit in the legal sense but that's a different thing now you come back to me now and say I understand what you're saying but this is a bit crazy here because there are superstar firms now like Google and Apple and Amazon and Facebook how can you say that the firm is getting less and less important and you're right there are these superstar firms and we could add more to them what are they doing are they large organizations where people work together not so much what are they they're data rich markets Amazon is a data rich markets of products Google is a data rich markets for advertisements so is Facebook Apple is a data rich market and it's app store for apps and it's music store for music and it's content and video and Airbnb is a data rich market of course for accommodation and we can add to that so they prove my point data rich markets win but they also lead to huge concentrations of information power we are rightly worried about the size of them but we should be even more worried because they have so much data en in some ways this is worrying because that gives them an enormous innovative power but there is another problem with it and that is if we have only a few of those players out there then that's also a single point of failure if we trust Alexa with all of our buying decisions but Alexa has a problem and therefore gives us the wrong decision suggestion then we all make the same mistake which undermines the fundamental quality that makes the market so advanced and robust it's the resilience that is being driven from decentralized decision making if that goes away because we have basically a centralized decision assistant then we have a single point of failure it's much like discovering that your car has a faulty break and a lot of cars have the same faulty break too and so we need to do something about that and and we need to ensure that we have diversity of these decision assistants and in the book that I just published in Dutch this week the data economy we suggest a progressive data sharing mandate and that is a mandate for large corporations the larger they get the data they have to share with smaller players in the market to ensure that there is competition I need to talk about one more important element about the story and this is an important element that has to do with the distribution of wealth and the in equal distribution of wealth Mr Piccadilly has written a very impressive book a couple of years ago about the inequality of our economic system and the one central argument that he used was to show that the labor share that is how much of the money of the GDP of the gross domestic product is dedicated to paying employees how that labor share over time has become less and less in our society basically the development of labor share now I am following here a lead of Sylvester who has worked in this and talked about this Sylvester a-finger who has worked on this before and so my apologies for repeating something but it is crucially important labor share has reduced we pay less for employment in the United States but in many other countries as well and so the argument that Piccadilly made was laborers lose but the capital is gaining but there is new work just coming out over the last year or two including by wonderfully young new scholar called Simcha Barkay who has shown that that's not right I'll show you now the calculation of capital share that is how much of the product goes to capital paying interest for example and how that decreased over the years oh no laborers have lost but capitalists have lost even more ha! you say but then the question is who gained where is the money going is it all going to rush offshore accounts well actually not is is where it's going profit share is way up that is a small number of companies makes a grandiosly disproportionate amount of profit and you know who those companies are the same superstars that I just mentioned earlier and so what are the consequences of this consequence number one is that we need to tax them more effectively consequence number two is I got it right my theory about data rich markets is right because it just proves it ha! but thirdly if labor share goes down and capital share goes down there is an irony in that that is apple makes a lot of money but once they have made the money they can't do much with it when they are invested as capital it doesn't give them much of a return so they have a money printing machine but then they burn the money at the end by not investing it with a high return this is not sustainably points torvids a market that has lost its competitive force and we need to bring that competitive edge back to the market so that we can have more and better equity as well we think about unbundeling work as work becomes not just less but different perhaps we need to pair it with the partial universal basic income there is one more element a lot of people are worried about data and its use and we need to look at how we can instill trust trust that the data is used appropriately we can only do that we create responsibility of those that use the data and trust and responsibility to me are the currency of big data sustainability if we don't have that we cannot have a sustainable data age now I come to the conclusion a big data analysis in the united states found out that colors of the color of the colors of the color orange have the least repair cost stop you guys stop stop stop stop stop half of you are already thinking in your mind why is this the case is it because an orange car is more visible at night is it because an orange colored car is specially manufactured is it because an orange car driver is a better driver stop no causality in this this is correlation as statisticians tell us and the biggest problem for us humans is that we imbue and give meaning to data that it doesn't have that we don't understand not just what it means but also what it doesn't mean it's inherent limitations the problem isn't the data the problem is us so what's next ladies and gentlemen as we go ahead and learn to harness the technology we must that just as there is a vital need to learn from the data there is also a need to carve out a space for the human for what isn't so easily captured in data for what doesn't show up for our originality creativity for our irrationality for sometimes having the freedom to not do what the data analysis says because at the end of the day the data is always just a shadow of reality and therefore always a little bit imperfect and a little bit incomplete so it behooves me and everybody to remember here in Tilburg University in particular that we are human and that there is more than just data there needs something beyond that that needs to guide us and that needs to point us in the right direction because as much as we need to learn from the data we need to do so with a great portion of humility and an equally great portion of humanity thanks very much thank you we have now the next part and that's a panel discussion or as Oswald put it interactive panel discussion we do our best to make it interactive as possible Victor you promised me a dazzling presentation you kept your promise it was a doubly dazzling and of course in de presentation we tried to have this dazzling interactive panel session and first I ask Dijk den Herthog also to come forward to take part in the panel and you make choose your own place what you want it's not preselected so it's just at random then I ask Claudia Mannen also to come forward to take her place at the panel session and of course my dear colleague Corrine Prince Corrine please of course I don't have to introduce Victor and Dijk anymore but I should introduce both Corrine and Claudia let me first start with Corrine Corrine is of course a dear colleague of mine we've known each other for many years I don't know who works longer but we know each other for yes sir 1994 professor well it's almost comparable a little bit more years but it doesn't matter in this perspective and Corrine is now the chairman of the scientific council for government policy very prestigious body in the ache the government has real influence on government policies she's the first woman who occupies the prestigious chair of the there the scientific council of government policy so first applause then I would like to introduce Claudia Mannen she's also a colleague of mine but in a different perspective Claudia a CFO brand loyalty and had a very distinguished career is CFO in many important firms but Claudia is also a colleague of mine because she is in the supervised board of the Efteling BV very important and it's also very nice and very nice it's like a fairy tale but we have to make money sometimes so some people want to take notice of the money and she is also in the audit committee my function is that different because I'm in the Stichtingfistuur Natuurpark de Efteling so we are the shareholder only a unique shareholder I do the money there so I'm the vice chairman and we of course we have a very special governance structure with the supervised report and I would say the Stichting, the foundation it's almost like we are family business but we are not family of each other that's the only difference so here we are with this fantastic panel and first of all I would like to give the floor to Corrine and Claudia for their first reaction on Efteling's speech Corrine may I ask you oké, thanks Victor thanks Sylvester thanks Victor for a wonderful and truly inspiring presentation I haven't read your book yet but that's to come yes what struck me, what inspires me what motivates me in your presentation of course that's thinking of you as well as Dick driving the same car but not together sorry and then that's an illustration of a question I have and a point I would like to make is you argue that from data with data more quantity more quality in choice in between data and choice there's judgment one of the issues that came to my mind is in judging driving a car and perhaps you know the well-known audio on the internet that can be found of a self-driving car in a situation where it almost bumps into the front car and you have to make in a split second a decision if you move to the right or to the left or you put your brakes on the right there is a motorcyclist on the left there is a huge a very fortified car what do you do do you move to the right where you're less vulnerable do you move to the left where you're more vulnerable in other words that's a judgment to make I don't know whether Dick or you make a different judgment to choice a first reflection I had during your presentation what exactly do you mean with data what exactly do we mean as a society as using data as thinking about progressive data sharing markets what is data it's no longer the simple data that used to be it's partly judgment in the full-fledged manner that we as humans judge or perhaps that might be so trust and responsibility one of your final observations makes me think of what is data what is data related to judgment in ending up with choice so that's the first part I don't know, Sylvester, how long well, you're almost at the end ok, well because we we truly want to make this interactive no, yes, that's really I think let me put it for this I have one other comment but that could be later, thanks ok, thank you very much first reaction by Claudio what I realized I actually went I came halfway through your book because I only got it yesterday but what I realized reading the book and thinking about what you were going to say and what I heard you say today is that we as companies and then I see myself as I think the representative of the companies I think we have an enormous challenge because these mega firms are coming up because they have the platform or these enormous markets with data rich markets they have it and what are we as traditional companies going to do about that and I think we as brand loyalty but also I think a lot of people are thinking how should we do that and I think the only answer to that is innovate, innovate and innovate because that's the only way to compete I think in this world is very important but what I also hear you say is that the traditional way of looking at things changes and for me as CFO that means I cannot be cost focused anymore but I need to start looking at innovation and I also need to steer the organization differently and making sure that people also start looking with different glasses at how we as a company have continuity and how we keep growing as a company but what I also see is that I see a lot of challenges ahead but I also see a lot of opportunity actually well we are in the consumer space but for us as consumers in this big data you were talking about personalized medication well I think it's also nice when you walk into a store and you feel that people recognize and you're being treated as people know you so I think stores will become much more of an experience and it's really nice that the data helps to personalize things and you're really recognized as a consumer so I think I also see a huge opportunity for us as people in big data and being recognized and then it all comes down to trust can we trust the person who's handling our data because I'm really willing to share it who's handling our data with our data and I think that's also a big responsibility of all of us to make sure that that happens but that's I think my reflection moment Thank you very much Victor do you want to respond to these first reactions Yes, let me take a moment to reflect on that thank you very much both for your comments in the book we write quite a bit about the need for augmenting reporting lines inside organizations to improve the richness and the comprehensiveness of data far beyond the classical accounting and reporting that is being done today so I fully and fullheartedly agree with that Karine, with respect to the two questions that you posed one was what's data and I get quite worked up about this because I think that we should not mythologize the definition of what data is or isn't because at the end of the day to quote Shannon and Weaver their seminal paper data is any meaningful signal and that's a pretty good but also a pretty minimal definition in the sense that is there a difference between raw data and curated data and judgment data at the end of the day I think that when we start differentiating there we don't I can't see much of improving the process I think that the way by which we need to focus on improving the process or making sure that we don't make any mistakes we need to start at a different level or a different layer and to me that is and has to do with the role of the humans as decision makers or as judge jurors if you want judges and to me that is one of those fundamental ideas of fundamental elements of a human right in the 21st century namely that humans retain their liberty to decide for themselves whether they want to decide or whether they want to delegate a decision to some other decision assistant in other words the danger that I see is that for example our health care system will be so good in data that it will come to me and say Victor I know that you really like red meat but it's really not good for your health so you better not eat red meat anymore and then I am worried that this sort of reduces dramatically my freedom of decision making my human volition and so I want to make sure we retain we humans we as individuals not the collective but the individual retains the liberty to decide even to decide irrationally and to decide crazily if we want to and at the same time we need to educate our children I think that's one of those very important cultural skills of the future to make choices about who they want want to make decisions themselves or some delegated assistant because that is where liberty I think in the future will be gained or lost Can I interrupt given it's interactive I fully agree but to put the normative aspect to decide if data becomes money becomes value in the European regulatory framework on consumer protection you can pay with your data instead of with money old fashioned money then I'm wondering what equivalent do I relay data to money is euros, rubles et cetera so the value of a currency I'm always thinking how do you relay data to value then and isn't that at that point you need to distinguish between different sorts and types of data because it represents value and if we equate it with a currency then you would like to know the value of a currency yes and I don't think the data is going to be a very widespread currency precisely because of the quality you just described when we developed money and economists and business professors remember that when we developed money in a way we first had something that was inherently valuable in itself for one reason or another whether it was a fur piece of fur or something that we exchanged but over time we moved to fiat money that is something that is inherently not valuable a piece of paper is inherently not valuable it just is valuable because of the attributes that it comes with but the thing is not valuable and that is a good thing for money we want something that is inherently not valuable because then the value is in the attribution now the worry that I have is that if we moved of its data of being currency then we have something that is inherently valuable being also a means of payment and that is confusing two functions with each other that's quite abstract now and I apologize for it but it's why I am so hesitant to sort of see data as a replacement of money beyond certain niche areas it's a replacement a function of money as informing markets but it's not a replacement for the payment function of money in many areas oké, thanks Dijk 1st reaction of the lecture and then we go to the primary discussion I think many thanks for this very interesting talk I've heard some talks already but again new elements for that so my reaction is also a reaction of a nerd of somebody who is really in the heart of data science because you were talking about data as had a new currency data economy and I think we all agree that data is a very important and valuable resource but what is the role of algorithms so I was thinking about it is that maybe not more important even than data and maybe also in the future becoming more and more important because I think we will also see a trend that data is shared more and more and then I think finally the value of a company is in the algorithms that they develop and I think then also maybe a market of algorithms will come up where everybody is selling and buying pieces of codes smart algorithms and that's becoming more and more important and also if you see it many applications nowadays then sometimes you know even it's not big data that is used but really the secret is in what I call the big search space where you really want to find the best solution out of an enormous amount of possibilities and if you do it just with a computer in a stupid way then you need thousands of years but with smart artificial intelligence or optimization algorithms you can really find the best solution so that's in fact my reaction I think in my opinion algorithms will become even more important than data and of course we need data like oxygen but algorithms is more important yeah, first also and then we go to the plenary so I don't disagree with you it's never good to disagree because you are right not because I want to be friendly I see it I see a slightly different nuance and that is in the book that Ken and I did on big data we described the power of algorithms and we called for algorithmic accountability and algorithmic accountancy algorithmic transparency we even called for algorithmists a new profession that would look at algorithms that they show that they are okay and that they are not biased in one form or another 5 years later I think we got it wrong and we got it wrong because when we look at how data driven machine learning works the actual algorithm only exists for a very short snapshot of time because the machine learning system changes the algorithm based on new feedback data that comes in constantly so to me the specific algorithm isn't so valuable but the meta algorithm that is the machine that takes data and then translates it into algorithm that it constantly adapts based on new feedback that kind of a system is incredibly valuable and an incredibly interesting differentiator at this point in time thanks to the market concentrations that we have most differentiation in the market is based on data that is based on raw material that's terrible that's particularly terrible for innovation because we want innovation on the meta algorithms we want innovation in machine learning and if all the current differentiator is data and how I get more data than you get then I don't focus enough on improving machine and enhancing machine learning systems so in that sense that's one of the reasons why we push for the progressive data sharing mandate because then the data becomes less important it becomes wider spread as you suggested more companies have the data and then in order to differentiate themselves they need to invest more in the meta algorithms in the machine learning systems where the real differentiation I agree with you is to be had thanks ok, so we go now to the more interactive part which Oswalt announced and that more interactive part has two components if you look to the interview Victor gave in Buitenhof financiële dagblad it's clear what is worse is about the superstar firms Gavas Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and you can add Alibaba whatever what is the monopoly power of these Gavas of these superstar firms and what does it mean for society how do we deal with that should we go to regulation of should we get startups who challenge these Gavas or not so this is a serious problem not only for the organization of our firms and our marketplaces but also for society so what I would like to ask people from the audience to ask their questions related to this topic and then we do that in an orderly way as we do that normally that you stand up you say who you are maybe also which position which function, which firm you represent and you end your question with a question mark so we don't need testimonies we ask questions with a question mark at the end and then maybe you could also ask which person of which persons in the panel you would address this question so who may I ask to ask the first question the gentleman there you have to wait till the microphone is there so much women lettering simple social psychologist I'm asking myself what will it mean to the average citizen will he be lazy will he be a new slave is it slavery of all what's coming to him or is there some way to deal with it ok, clear question, thank you Victor maybe slave or not master something in between yes, something in between to me there is no easy no easy overall answer to it because it will mean different things for different people I'm afraid and I use I'm afraid with much prepudation one of the the worries that I have is not just about distributional issues that is who is getting the money I'm more worried about what is the role of individuals in this society when employment not only may go away in some sectors but when employment itself changes some jobs may go away some jobs may start but for the truck driver whose job is taken over by the autonomous driving truck it doesn't help very much to tell him or to tell her that there is a job available as a nurse in the hospital or as a PHB programmer in the IT shop down the road in other words we need a massive re-skilling of certain areas of our of our labour force that is a huge challenge and a lot of people will feel that they are the losers of this development like a lot of people felt that they were the losers of the industrial revolution and so we have a a society a system of government called democracy that turns out to be much more brittle than we thought it would be we thought it was extremely robust en so forth and now we discover that there is quite some brittleness in the system and so we are facing these challenges so I worry how can we as a democracy master these challenges in a way that it doesn't create massive upheaval in our society and I'm not sure I'm not convinced we can do that sometimes I am an optimist sometimes I am a pessimist but we need to look at the reality of what is going to happen and that means different things for different people if everybody would be 10% worse off if everybody would be enslaved I actually then would be able to start a revolution that would be relatively straightforward the problem is it's different for different people and that means the answer to that problem requires much more differentiation than a simple let's stop it yeah but of course we are all worried about we saw the labour chair we saw the profits we forgot to mention the fact that these gavas don't pay so much so much taxes absolutely and then there is this president don't get me started this American president out there who is sort of celebrating the fact that Apple has now decided to repatriate unpaid tax profits right so Apple is said to repatriate about 278 billion US dollars okay and you know what how much taxes they are supposed to pay if they had paid it normally an American tax bracket 40% you know what they negotiated 15% so Trump says victory I look at it and I said you just lost 25% tax rate you just lost more than half of 278 billion dollars you just cheated the American taxpayer out of about 160 billion US dollars thank you very much Mr. Trump no no no actually actually I had a discussion in Sintra I lost the ECB forum with Hal Faryon who is the chief economist of Google and it was at the day that Google received a fine of 2.7 billion of the European Commission and I ask him is there a relation between your tax evasion and perhaps the fact that the European Commission in this these fines of course he denied it but there is a relation because we know what proper taxes are and so we have an idea what you should pay as a citizen as a firm and if you don't if you optimize taxes as they call that then of course there is in the sense of equity a problem but anyhow other panel members who want to have a reaction to this slave or master nobody we go to the next question thank you my name is Janneke Sankova Tilburg Law School and Outreaching program director thank you to the friend of Copenhagen our biggest sponsor my question relates actually to this tax issue of how do we deal with all those companies and I was wondering do you think that it might be a good idea in view of also what's going on right now in the United States to actually give private enforcement an important role in dealing with those companies and giving private individuals the right to to undertake civil actions and in I'm saying that because I know in the US and Europe we have different views on that but maybe that is a way to have some checks and balances over there to not get in that situation ok, clear Victor and then other panel members if they want to I have a very controversial answer to that let me try to restate the question ever so slightly today or was it yesterday Max Schrenz lost his court battle against Facebook he tried to have a collective action before the courts not just representing himself but lots of similar class action before the courts and he failed in Europe currently when it comes to data protection privacy but a number of other consumer rights as well we hope that individuals will go to court to fight for their rights now that sounds wonderful and I have been writing about this and advocating it for many years but the truth is individuals don't the truth is we all click ok most of us without reading and so I have become incredibly dissatisfied and disillusioned with an individual rights regime that pretends that we have rights but that in effect doesn't give us protection and so I want a data protection and privacy regime that actually gives us accountability and responsibility irrespective of the existence of Max Schrenz and so I want to actually collectivise data protection whereas I want a government regulatory agency to check up on data users and make sure that they don't misuse data irrespective of whether we find an individual who is willing to sue the large gaffers or anybody else because I think that against those large organizations an individual has all disincentives to go battle against no we need as a society to step up to the plate we have done that before when we think about car safety in the 1960s Ralph Nader went to court first because there didn't exist any of the collective regulatory systems but then we put in place regulatory systems for car safety that don't rely on Ralph Nader anymore asking for seatbelts but that require that new cars are being tested we had a few years back then it cannot be solved but need to be re-engineered and we need the same kind of ex-anti-regulatory setup with sensitive data use as well Thanks I fully agree I think that we have to step towards a different era in enforcement because you can no longer expect from us individuals to uphold their rights I've argued in different publications that we need to step towards more enforcement by government, more new instruments but one additional remark I think that we also have to introduce mechanisms and I think there's an interesting example in Germany that companies can sue other companies for unfair well for now unfair competition and that within the market there should also be instruments to put your competitor in the right spot as regards how to use data and be responsible as regards to use of data so in between companies I think that also there's much to do in better enforcement and providing companies for mechanisms there Thanks I'm not sure how that would work because I think where the companies would really start suing each other but I completely agree but also from a company perspective I think it's also clearer when there's government enforcement around data protection because otherwise you're operating in an environment that's also less predictable I think for a company so I think I would really encourage that I think in the world of advertisement company A as regards advertisement company B can sue for misleading advertisement companies can sue one another in different areas and by way of example we could think of similar instruments with respect to data the question is whether I would when I would say for example my competitor is not handling the data well enough when I would say that how my clients would look at me in terms of data unfair given what they say to us consumers and what they're doing and not acting in accordance with that you can in between companies sue for misleading behavior Think maybe No, okay Okay, it's clear we go to the second part because we have limited time the moderator determines how limited that is is a second part and that's also already discussed in Victor's speech and also in his interviews that's about the next step the next step big data but the next step is artificial intelligence does that mean and we are encountering a new era of automation and what is artificial intelligence I should define it of course because everybody has a different definition artificial intelligence you can simply say there's machine learning, there's one I think there's three elements autonomous non biological learning those three elements I think are the key elements the key elements of artificial intelligence is a very good report which was published by the RAND Corporation more than a month ago a survey where you see all the elements for cyber security but also for employment very interesting, very important it's also in the economists discussed this last week not only about the titles but also about what does it mean for our society so I would like to ask people from the audience whether they have a question which is related to artificial intelligence and of course the implications for society in economic growth employment, social cohesion all the elements, all the dimensions not only economic but also social and also legal yes please good afternoon everyone my name is Anna and currently I'm studying master in global communication and first of all thank you Mr. Victor for a very inspiring presentation and I have one questions for you it's like there is no doubt that big data is very important in our daily life nowadays but keeping it between qualitative data and qualitative data is also very difficult and from your point of view what you're going to do to keep it like keeping the balance between that to make sure that people is not being a slaver of the machine that is my question thank you thank you very much I take your question also to focus on the tendency that we have of quantifying so much about ourselves and then therefore focusing only on what can be quantified rather than on what cannot be quantified and need to be captured qualitatively I think that is a danger now that was a danger particularly in the small data world where it was so hard to capture quantitatively many elements it's getting a little easier but I fully agree with you that we need to be careful that we are that we don't think that this is a magical black box throw something in and then crank the handle and then the solution will come out there will be mistakes there will be errors there will be a need to interpret there is a wonderful case Microsoft a few years back bought a very large software producer for hospital software hospital healthcare management software in hospitals that captured lots of health data of individuals and they did a data analysis there lots of data and they discovered that a particular surgeon was an older male had a disproportionate number of people dying on the surgical data at surgeries and so they said now we have a problem and we have identified the problem we need to have a conversation with this gentleman and then take him out of the system he was actually the head of the department doing the most difficult surgeries en so what was not captured in the data was actually that he did the high risk surgeries and of course he had a higher failure rate because this was sort of at the if you want the cutting edge nobody else wanted to touch it anymore and so if you don't have that interpretative context you make a mistake in interpreting what you see and so we need to be aware of the limitations and we need to understand en to learn from each other I have had the great pleasure just the last 20 minutes to learn from my panelists here from what Corinne said in particular about what the Germans do with respect to giving companies a right to see what are companies I think we need to continue and if anything increase this ability of ours to learn en to understand data in data results in context Dick, maybe? Ja, I would like to add that I think it's also important to look maybe we can apply these techniques to certain applications but maybe we should also think about should we really do that so not only thinking about other results, good can we also validate that but also is it ethical to do this and the second what I would like to add is I think transparency is also very important what comes out of it especially if we have decisions coming out of that that's transparent and I think there is also a methodological challenge to change in such a way no black box no black box we go to the next question Hi, my name is Agatha Chniel I'm a social scientist and a lawyer in a making I was wondering if perhaps you would have a comment on the transcendence of correlation between the digital society that we're talking about right now but also the globalizing society that we're we're still very much at in that process cause definitely not ended yet in terms of opportunities that digital era and with the help of AI could perhaps help with the improved inclusion of globalized society in other words what are the opportunities for an AI doctor serving Amsterdam or in de kwaas te help begenden of patients at the same time ok, thank you very much when I look at the have and the have nots then I am much more optimistic on the global scale that is on a sort of country versus country scale en I see a lot of applications of data analysis that actually help developing economies quite significantly and we learn a lot from this data analysis there is a phenomenal case study so some of you may heard of the payment solution based on SMS systems mobile phone context particularly in Kenya in a number of other African countries and it's very empowering of course as an app but it also creates data and they did data analysis on the data and what is amazing is that because of the micro level of transactions that goes on they can see pockets of innovation and entrepreneurship that a macro level view couldn't see and so they discovered for example that in some really difficult slum like situations there are pockets of entrepreneurship and so it would be terrible to say oh this is a slum, this is we need to there is no hope in there at all when we begin to understand on a micro level what actually is the dynamic going on there and we can help the people living there transcend by helping some of the entrepreneurial dynamic to take hold and so I think that these are incredibly inspiring applications and I think that we will have an ability to use those in order to overcome some of the have have nots on a global scale I am much less confident that we can do that within a nation the issues that I talked about with respect to employment for example I am less confident that we have a silver bullet that helps people who have been truck drivers all their lives to then find swiftly a new work identity for them when automation takes away their jobs ja ja, so I am very enthusiastic about all these developments but this is really my fear that the difference between the have's and the have nots is becoming even more bigger but I think we have the choice to really apply these methods to certain applications and I think we can we have the choice to also use them to decrease the difference between the have's and the have nots that's I think a positive thing but the negative thing is that I think it has to do also with moral values I am very old fashioned in that but I am not so optimistic if you talk about moral values and you should become a Catholic then maybe we have more hope you know the protest well anyhow Claudia no I think I agree with most of what has been said I think what this difference between the have's and the have's I think is also from a political perspective a risk that you get a lot of well you get the rise of the populism and you see all these differences and I think if we don't solve this difference between have's and has nots we have a real issue of society and I think the governments are not quick enough at solving that so it should really come from all of us I think to have a good solution for that but I don't have it either but I think together we can do that no let me put it differently I sometimes try to live without the what how did you call the companies the super sometimes I try to live without them not so much for reasons of privacy but as an academic and scientific experiment how far can you get without Google Facebook etc and the leeway for me becomes much more narrow during the years not only because I do not want to participate but also because I cannot use certain services without participating and I'm not so much worried about business related services but more and more the government uses these five companies for its services in order to use services from public broadcasting certain government organizations I need to enroll in Facebook and list up so what what then becomes reality is that Facebook becomes an identifier it becomes an identifier for certain services also services being financed with public money in doing an experiment trying to live without those super companies that's becoming more and more difficult whereas I also see fantastic opportunities let me make myself clear I'm not against the different applications I'm trying to retain a bit autonomous opting yes to use them and use the wonderful opportunities and not opting for those where I feel a bit more uncomfortable among others because I do not know what happens with data clear well this also this perspective for us from educational institutions what has a meaning for our students students in our audience students who study here other universities where we have to make the next step to algorithms legal tech, audit tech, finance financial fintech where you see that employment is important for employment in the future it's important to be adaptable adaptable in the sense that you only combine your profession finance, audit, legal but also with algorithms so my last question to you is how do you see that how do you see the adaptability of the younger generations in that and what should they do victory you always have those simple questions very simple so as I grow old I become less adaptable we all do it's a fact of life it's true I would never have thought it I thought that I was incredibly adaptable when I was young the truth is I'm not less I'm far more far less adaptable far more rigid now than I've been so in that sense just because people are young they're also more adaptable to me the question is less about adaptability than more about the role of what kind of preparation what kind of skills what kind of things do we as educators need to give them so that they can be successful in the next 10 or 20 or 30 years and over the last couple of years I have come convinced but maybe I'm completely wrong to be convinced that we need to stress far more than we do today not necessarily adaptability but our focus on creativity and originality on having crazy ideas because that is one of the redeeming capabilities of us human beings at least until machine learning tells me otherwise and so if that's the case then I tell my 8 year old not necessary to learn phone numbers by heart you know I'm told that it's terrible that it's terrible that we don't know phone numbers by heart anymore well I don't think that's terrible at all I think that that was a useless usage of our brains power and so it's good that this is going away but rather than learning phone numbers by heart I want my son to use the digital tools in a creative fashion to give him the space also to put the digital tool aside and to do something crazy with paper with wood with snow right now in Austria where he is right now to just experiment with life and experiment with what is out there because I think that that is where creativity is being fostered and that will prepare him well for the future whether I am right or not ask me in 30 years if I'm still around ok something to add briefly adaptability is very important because we now educate students for jobs that don't exist now so I fully agree it's important but I'm also very glad and there's no advertisement for this university but that we have knowledge skills and character and especially the last one and I think also that one is very important coming back to the discussion maybe it's my stockparch but I'd like to say it again also in this respect I think we can do a lot there and you know it's amazing and if I tell them that they can really do meaningful work and jobs later that is very inspiring and that is really inspiring Claudia nothing to add I think Karine trust and responsibility that's two key words with what you ended and to me learning the younger generation the new generation is learning what does trust and responsibility mean in relation to a new world so it's not so much that we have to learn them to use technology they learn it themselves but what does it mean trust and responsibility in relation to data ok ok a big hand for the panel first I go to thank panel members and you are last because you get a special present first of all Karine please flowers and a kiss Claudia thank you very much also flowers no kiss en Victor thank you very much don't I get a kiss well no that's thank you thank you and then it's my honour to give the floor again back to Oswalt Koene the chairman of de Vriendenhof Kobbenhagen for the scholarship and prize thank you Sylvester yes well once again also on behalf of de Vrienden van Kobbenhagen thank you very much for your contribution especially professor Victor Marjas van de Vriendenberg, thank you very much it's very inspiring and also still a subject which needs a lot of thought for the coming years but we will see well we will come to the last part of this afternoon that is a great honour for me that we like for the second time to award the so called scholarships and prize and maybe it's good before I give the floor to one of our friends Nika which also has been a member of the jury we make a selection we will win maybe it's good that I give a short introduction why we have this because once again we like to be being alumni of this university be very much connected to the existing students because they are the next generation and hopefully they will be the next generation friend so by doing that by giving awards we try to have a better visibility among current students secondly we don't want to give this prize because it's only for academic performance because we are not the institute for that that's the university related to that but we believe that we can give an award to certain students which bring something extra during their student life societal relevant so that's the reason why we have introduced those awards both for bachelor and master students and we believe that the winners show somehow more than average engagement with the great challenges facing us today and also actively engaging society in order to find solutions for those challenges because we believe that's what is unique about Tilburg University and where we as alumni can contribute that so we like to enable excellent young people to further develop them self partly based on the award they will get by doing that I like to give the floor to Nikke Martens one of our alumni also a friend of Kopenhagen and she has been one of our leading members of the jury to introduce the students which have been nominated and then finally to to make the decision to announce the decision thank you Oswald and for me it's a real pleasure to stand here and actually it always reminds me of the days when I was a student I studied here in 1991 a long time ago and actually before I start with the prizes I would like to share one thought with all the students that are here because to me I also stand here as a very proud alumnus of Tilburg University and today is for me one of the signals university to study because the today's topic is really one of the topics that we need to discuss and where we need to exchange different views in order to advance society and I stand here as an alumnus of Tilburg University but of course I also have a job besides that and my job is to actually transfer I'm responsible for the digital transformation at Rabobank and actually I just learned from our keynote speaker Victor that I need to be fast at that because in ten years time I will not have a job anymore because banks will no longer exist but actually besides joking about that I really want to share with you one more thing and that is that the book that we have been learning a lot about today is actually been read by the whole executive board of Rabobank already and they were very very very jealous that I was here today and they asked me how did you manage how did you do that and I said well the answer is very simple you just have to study at Tilburg University and then the jury and actually I realized Oswald, we have a small problem because the jury exists of very wise men and women but we did not base our decision on data so next year we have to change that Frederik, we have to we have to change that and I also want to share with you that this year it has been really really tough because we changed the criteria like Oswald just said so we look at academic excellence so at least a 7.5 grade on average which is already quite an achievement but we also really look at how relevant are you for society and how engaged are you or at society and when I looked at all the contributions I got very optimistic because I thought wow we have so many talents here and people and students who are very optimistic about the chances and about the solutions very creative solutions over time and then I would like to share with you a number of the or who are the students that submitted their ideas and we thought well instead of giving you the academic research we will share some quotes with you so I will actually start with the oh thanks that's very convenient with the nominees for the scholarship and Ilaria we said it very nice nicely if an opportunity doesn't knock build a door well talking about creativity Sophie, Sophie Melgers I don't know I'm sure everyone of you is familiar with Pippi Langkows I'm reading it to my boys every day I've never I will say it in Dutch ik heb het nog nooit gedaan hartstikke mooi a very nice attitude we had just met this afternoon a longer quote but very important as well learning classes from teachers, classmates and books explore and experience the world with your senses and gut combine the knowledge you gain and share it in order to build actual solutions for those who need them and provide answers to those who ask intriguing questions Adriaan never doubt that a small group of faultful committed citizens can change the world indeed it is the only thing that ever has Kobanage could have said it himself and then the real tough part the winner is Sophie Melgers because first going to explain why and actually I was supposed to do that and then invite you but I thought it's much nicer to give you the compliments yourself standing beside me Sophie has really done a lot and what I think is really good is that you got your inspiration from the Arab Spring and the financial crisis and they happened when you were a teenager I was already at work that's the difference one of the differences between us when you looked at what happened and you thought what we need is different perspectives so if we really want to understand what happens we need different perspectives so that we understand each other and also can come to a solution and what you did is you started by studying psychology and maybe you met Victor at Harvard it could have been possible and then you continued your studies at international law a very nice combination of the two and you also you also have an idea about your scholarship and I can tell that but I think it's much nicer when you tell that yourself yeah so for years now China has really been interesting to me not because it has played a huge part on the front stage on the main stage but China has always been this sort of creeping big force coming up slowly but surely so I plan if possible and I think that now is possible to study Chinese law in Hong Kong Chinese state law Chinese business law then come back to the Netherlands in order to help build a bridge between the EU and China but the Netherlands and China specifically wow I would also like to share with you and the audience what your professor talked about you and I will quote this so nice that I do not want to forget a single word Sophie is not only an ambitious and talented student but she is also very engaging and intelligent in class discussions well once again congratulations and off all sorry ok but we are not there yet cause now we are, we have the second group and that's the vrienden van Kobenage Price I hope does it goes Victor Victor is very to the point stay hungry, stay foolish very important not always to be very rational and then Luisa Dekker just dump in the deep and start swimming just do it very nice and the winner is and I will do it in a different or actually I will do it in the same way the winner is Luisa Dekker I would like to share with you about Luisa is that Luisa has a real nose I would say for trends in society and Luisa wrote her thesis about a topic that is that will actually definitely attract the attention of all men in the room and I see quite a few so that's good your thesis was about sexuality amongst students and I read in the article that was written about it in the universe that's the word sex or came back 296 times so actually quite a different topic I would say for a thesis but the fact that you picked up on this before the Me Too campaign wow that also says something about understanding society I would say so really really really really nice and we also looked at what are you doing besides your study you've been very active in your student association very very nice and you've been organizing various international tours and events so you've been a very active student and I would like to share with you and the audience also about your professor told us about you it's also a real compliment so really try to listen once in a while a lecturer a student who from the start is showing a certain seriousness and the next ordinary sense of responsibility for an engagement with his or her surroundings and such a student I would really like to thank all students who submitted their ideas again we really had a hard time we'll give them applause ja, exactly well, thank you for your very important role to make a decision that's what we learned also this afternoon the judgment finally is important thank you for that we come now to the closing of this afternoon we all hope that you had a very interesting inspiring lecture including panel discussion en of course we all hope you to see you somewhere in time on one of the other meetings of de Vrienden van Kolbenhagen and before I like to invite you to go for a nice drink and the Vrienden will have a dinner afterwards I'd like to give the floor to Koen Becking the president of Tilburg University to do the official closing of this meeting once again thank you for being here and we hope to see you back soon thank you Oswald now that's a difficult position to be in between that lecture and the drinks so I'll keep it short thank you all very much on behalf of the executive board and our deans to be here today I really enjoyed the lecture and all the discussions the take home message for me is that education is key it's a free interpretation of something you've said Victor that we have to teach the children the next generations to learn how to make decisions to be able to decide to make them able to decide who is going to make the decisions for them or not so I think that's that's what we do here every day with a lot of passion and love and you've made it even more interesting to me as well so thank you all very much for being here because we want to reach out to the new generations we really want to to emphasize and to ask your attention for the next next years and also for that reason I decided not to wear tie today just to symbolize that we reach out to all you guys now let's have some drinks