At Davos, Business Leaders Seek a Human-Centered AI Future

Leaders from Dow Chemical Company, EY, and NTT Data Inc. shared their perspectives on the impact of scaling up new technologies like AI during a TIME100 Talks panel discussion in Davos on Jan. 20. 

The panel took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, which kicked off on Jan. 19 in Davos, drawing around 3,000 high-level participants from business, government, and beyond, in addition to many more observers, journalists, activists, and others.

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During the panel, titled “Innovation in a Multipolar Era,” the participants discussed the benefits of integrating AI, and its potential in areas such as health care and education, as well as some of the challenges of integrating the technology at scale within businesses. 

“We…see enormous benefits, whether it’s discovery of new materials, new drugs, or tech-driven productivity,” said Abhijit Dubey, CEO and chief artificial intelligence officer at NTT Data. “But at the same time we really have to watch out for what we’re doing.” 

He added that, unlike all other innovations before it, AI is the “first technology that will actually be non-human driven.” Not only can this lead to unexpected outcomes, but the technology requires vast amounts of energy and water, in addition to mining of rare earth minerals that are in some cases leading to tensions over resources. 

Another concern is the “paradox of massive abundance at the same time [as] a massive market labor dislocation,” said Dubey, noting it is “something that we really have to watch out for.”

“The pain is not the destination, it is in the transition,” added Debra Bauler, chief information and digital officer at Dow, who explained how the company is approaching its workforce during the AI transition. “We think about the way we work with our team members. We also want to move them from doers of tasks to directors of systems,” she said. “There will be job impacts, but we also think where we’re going, the destination is worth this transition period.”

In any tech transition, when it comes to jobs, “you lose one, you generate one-to-two,” noted Dubey. Protecting those who are negatively impacted can’t be entirely left up to the private sector, he argued. In addition to publicly backed mechanisms like universal basic income, he noted that a solution to generate funding that has been discussed would be imposing a tax on AI agents, the same way people are taxed. “There have to be structural mechanisms that need to be thought through right now, because we can’t do this reactively on the spot,” he said, adding, “There’s no government in the world that’s set up to do this.”

Raj Sharma, global managing partner for growth and innovation at EY, said that in order for AI to usher in an era of what he has called “super-fluid enterprises,” the key ingredients would be trust, tools, and talent. “You have to balance the equation between [the] three to make sure that AI is adopted.” 

TIME100 Talks: Innovation in a Multipolar Era was presented by Philip Morris International.