AI Powered Industries

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning everyone Welcome to our session on AI powered Industries I'm VJ vtis Warren I'm the energy and climate Innovation editor for The Economist it's my great pleasure here to be your immoderate moderator today for our session uh and to have such a distinguished panel uh joining us I'll introduce them in in just a moment um but the topic uh you really can't swing a cat these days without hitting an AI session or debate or discussion but we promise you this will take you further than the ones you've been to that's that's the aspiration I've set for my experts uh to to produce some breakthrough insights today uh we all know something of a golden age is coming a golden age of innovation that's going to be enabled by AI now this is not the first time in human history right there have been waves periodically we can look back to the great Victorian age of invention for example uh nearly a couple of centuries ago where uh much of modern chemistry modern science was invented uh Often by uh individuals at that time working uh collectively or uh in competition with each other but much of the basis of uh the modern 20th century advances the internal combustion engine the uh modern uh biology were invented in at a time of extraordinary ferment in just a couple of decades uh that took 100 years to unpack and unfold the value that was created by the basic science it takes decades sometimes to develop the Industries or the Technologies like the power grid or the the Nexus of internal combustion engine um and uh gasoline the energy industry that powered at 20th Century of Mobility for example uh so we're at that early stage uh where the opportunities will be ahead of us the opportunities to seize but as well false leads and dead ends as well we'll find that out as well there pitfalls at plenty if AI lives up to the potential that's being uh investigated today there are estimates that we could see uh two to four trillion dollar additionally in G Global corporate profits that are added uh potentially could deliver the biggest impact in some sectors like banking or high-tech Life Sciences we'll talk about uh what our experts at the uh table think about this and the ways that it might raise productivity have been highlighted by analysts uh whether it's interacting with customers or uh creating content uh which of course as a content creator I'm very much against that particular application I think we should put that on the side but nevertheless um software code natural language applications we'll hear much more about this so uh dozens of potential applications but as well there are pitfalls we're about those as well along the way um in this particular session we're going to uh also try to focus in a little bit with specifics uh get down from the 30,000 foot level uh let me introduce our our panelist to who get us going here uh to my immediate left Abdullah fakra who is the Minister of industry and Commerce in Bahrain we have Jean Pascal triar who's a chairman of Schneider Electric we have uh cheral s Co co-founder and chief executive officer of bota biosciences um we have Robert FAL founder and CEO of einride and Simon freakley who's CEO of uh Alex Partners give them a nice round of applause to welcome them get them warmed up thank you and We're Off to the Races Minister let me start with you um you have uh thought deeply about this topic in your country you've already uh undergone something of a transformation and diversification of the economy of course from energy into Services uh and now you're looking at the opportunity that's being presented by AI can you give us your governmental perspective on how you're looking at this opportunity sure uh VJ thank you firstly for uh for having me here um as you mentioned VJ um the government of bahin has is on its way to being a a properly Diversified economy so over the past 20 years the government of bahin has Diversified away from the oil and gas sector into um sectors which are basic service based sectors um about 20 years ago oil and gas sector made up above 40% of contribution to GDP and today it's below 18% um and it's no longer the number one contributor to GDP Financial Services is so Financial Services as well as other Service uh sectors service based sectors such as the logistics the ICT sector are playing a more and more important role uh when it comes to contribution to GDP and it's these sectors which are uh uh well placed to benefit from the AI kind of Evolution um so services such as Financial Services Insurance Legal Services Health Care cyber security are really um at the top of our uh kind of priority list at the government so AI will do things faster for these sectors productivity in these sectors will go up um considerably and as a result of course uh contribution to GDP uh in turn will go up but as a government I think some of our priorities really have been investing in the technology infrastructure to allow um uh you know um businesses to benefit from uh from this wave and these are backend infrastructure Investments absolutely uh backend infrastructure Investments and when when we see that the return on these Investments are significantly higher than other infrastructure Investments um and you know there is of course a socioeconomical return um and also we've realized that The Importance of Being quick to respond when it comes to new technologies and new Industries uh it's critical um that we don't over regulate especially when it comes to for example AI but at the same time because of course too much uh regulation can limit creativity and Innovation but at the same time uh keep our finger on the pulse and be aware of what's happening so that we can react quickly to opportunities but threats as well so what's an example of um area of Regulation where you have taken some steps I imagine uh there's a debate about how far to go with data privacy and nationalization versus global data yeah so so what we did um an example for example is is uh we had a cloud first policy in the government of bahin and now over 90% of all government data is on a cloud and services are all cloud-based um bahin introduced the first um uh data jurisdiction law which allows um uh give Sovereign treatment to data um so basically data stored in Bahrain is treated similar to how an embassy would be treated you know as only a court a court in uh uh only a court uh in the nation of origin will be able to access that data um and as a result of course we we saw a lot of demand from companies such as AWS who decided to set up uh their First hyperscale Data Center in bahin as a result of course the uh inexpensive energy had nothing to do with it no I don't think not at all okay okay all right well no it was and and we were and we we were able to um uh introduce this uh jurisdiction very this this sort of Regulation very quickly MH uh within a few months which is really what we see as the opportunity so agility matters agility is great those are some great examples thank you thanks for setting us up um now let's let's start with an industry perspective then uh je Pascal let's turn to you your company uh our audience will know uh has a a deep experience uh with many customers uh in energy management uh you've have uh uh you look across sectors and so what do you see when we ask this question about the most promising industrial applications as well as maybe some of the challenges where do you see the opportunity set I would say probably all applications um on AI is a is a big disruptor but you have to put inside a wider range of Technologies or transitions which are happening at the moment but we are impacted as a company we we are the partner of many companies in the field of digitization on energy transition that's what we do decarbonization of their processes and um when you look at AI it's impacting Us in two ways and it's a major disruptor number one one we are the biggest supplier of energy solutions to Data Centers and data centers are booming because of AI when you change a CPU by a GPU that energy need is much bigger right on today we started with 0% of our turnover 15 years ago in data centers today it's 20% of our total turnover 8 billion do of turnover that we do every day supplying those Energy Solution to hypers scalers Data Centers a lot of them in Saudi Arabia for instance as we speak but at the same time this digitization is the biggest disruptor to efficiency the biggest provider to efficiency in smart building smart manufacturing smart cities and it brings much more efficiency on much more savings than the consumption which is coming from data centers so now so you actually do believe that uh it's not just a a double-edged sword Cuts both ways you think one side of that ledger is stronger the efficiency side yeah I don't believe and we are doing it every day with our customers right okay good to hear yeah so when when you put it's not AI in itself you have to put it together with other energy trans other technology transitions iot which is connecting everything so generating data big data which allows you to store a lot of data on work on it and then software digital twin on AI that you can only build meaningfully because you've buil the rest now in the industrial world all the customers in this room will recognize that there is no point to do AI if you cannot feed back to the physical world you cannot improve an industrial process if your machines are not reacting to the inside of AI so so you need to turn those rapid Innovation Loops yeah and all of these are fitting the more products are connected the more they generate data your your AI is not is as good as the best of your data this data needs to be structured and we at Schneider have developed I would say the most adopted database for for industrial infrastructure but but but on on industry but the benefits are all in all directions like its Energy Efficiency its productivity its worker safety when you can give insights to your worker with augmented reality or Trend them without risk because of virtual reality it's optimizing everything on the shop floor at the control level at the level of your factory on across your factories across your supply chain we use also AI to optimize the flows with your our larger ecosystem so it's absolutely vital that you build that quality of data and then build the algorithm on the capacities on the data and the best of results you can attain is when you go beyond your own company and you reach out to what we call the scope three on all the people on on the actors so benefits everywhere but it's not only AI for AI it's AI connected to the physical world and it goes into much bigger Loop of digitization and all of this is happening as we speak so the train is living from different stations and we better Bard on it so and you're on you're on board all these train uh trains as it sounds like and you're certainly giving us a sense of that dynamism of the industries you're working with uh although I'm reminded by your point about the need to connect with real data uh quality data the old adage right garbage in garbage out so you need to have uh constant updating and connection with uh updated information um that's a very optimistic perspective we've been given um we'll we'll dig into that a little bit more but um as you noticed my my distinguished speaker would not select one or two industries to say they're most likely to see the um early applications I want to dig into a case study um where I think we can turn to our next speaker Cheryl I think you do have a favorite sector where you'd like to see AI have a big impact or already beginning to see it can you tell us about um the sector you work in uh yes uh I'm trained as a biomedical engineer uh and then what Boda does is that we try to accelerate uh the shifts uh from the biological design to scale of manufacturing and to produce uh sustainable Goods so what we do is that we engineer microbes uh so it can mix chemicals uh but um being able to engineer the microb groups very efficiently uh that takes a lot of human intelligence in the past and then um there's a lot of unpredict uh unpredictability involved and then what we can see is really um we first started the generation of biotechnology uh with the intersection with the information technology and then now is to uh take it to the next level and then really to embrace uh what AI can contribute to the field and then for us um The genome language is the language of nature uh atcg but how much do we truly understand it and then for the past two decades um people have tried accumulate a lot of data uh from the human Human Genome Project but that's from Human but there's a lot of organisms that exist uh in nature right uh but uh how does that um genotype uh link to the phenotype of the function of the proteins of the organism that enabled uh certain Behavior Uh that's a big gap and then uh I think the uh in the next portion I think all the biologists will turn into um information technologist and then uh we have to embrace the new technology to enable newer Discovery uh I think it's the AI for science it's in a sector where we hope AI doesn't just generate things that exist for us but able to discover things that we don't know uh and I think that's what's intriguing uh for us in this so you cetch that a vision of convergence really uh is what I'm hearing between the the biological world and in this case the it or technological world uh very much uh happening uh and and you see the potential for accelerating Discovery presumably uh is it um uh drug Discovery we're looking at where you know bioprospecting uh or do you see this uh with Health Systems data for example this one could go a lot of different directions here too where do you see some of the promising applications I think it's already happening uh in the whole bioscience industry uh from Dr drug Discovery all the way to Health Science datas um for the sector we're in is called industrial biotechnology and then uh one of the component involved is like enzyme designs uh you have enzymes that works in nature uh you get it from a biodiversity search uh but how can you increase the efficiency of that uh under certain industrial settings uh with the temperature uh with the ph and then able to predict uh the sequence of the enzyme uh using uh AIS and with computation biology uh is where we can make a difference we already see like there's the acceleration of at least uh 5 to 10 fold uh from what we can do uh just from um the scientist alone so um every day I think we're working with a AI companion right now do you have access to all the data you need uh it there has been a bit of a movement towards Open Access open science open publishing even of scientific reports um but a lot of data is still held behind silos am I right yes uh yes definitely and it's a biologist is like a Not Tourist for keeping the data consistently uh data right yeah yeah and and it's actually I think it's the digitalization that will make a difference uh just like uh in in the energy sector is the same so it's how we able to generate data more efficiently and then able to keep High Fidelity data uh in and um that's able to share across the board I think that will be uh really make a difference in the future yeah great thank you um Robert you come from another industry as well uh vertical uh Innovative startup um Mobility uh autonomy uh all of the cool buzzwords right you can you know dine out for for weeks on on the cool stuff you've been doing how do you how do you see this question of the AI opportunity yeah man we started with using AI to actually find all the bus words for how to create a cool company exactly and to get the funding rounds right exactly you tied all the boxes exactly now all y's aside I I think that I see AI as a toolbox it's like when we invented a steam box or steam engine the can it had the literally the potential to uh industrialize the entire world AI is little bit the same it's the first digital tool that can apply to completely change the way we're working and in way first tool that we have to optimize the digital world previously we have been utilizing digitalization to apply the entire make the world digital now we literally have the steam engine that can Propel the entire industry forward and I think that's where it's also so hard to predict exactly how it could be utilized but in our industry we use we use digital electric and autonomous and what's fascinating with these three Technologies is when combined the more powerful that they are by themselves mhm because if you want to for instance digitalize if you want to go electric for heavy duty Freight you can't do that without digitalize it and if you make it autonomous it's actually a superior business case total but none of that is doable without digitalization and tools like AI to enable the speed of transitions that required make these things happen what would you like to see as change in the way that we think about AI based on your your assessment there uh really um like what already been said here because it's a cons duration of digitalization it's still the prediction models is based on underlying data that means that if there is no quality of the data it's no business case what actually going to be achieved and I think that the physical world will be quite um unchanged because even if you digitalize a factory that do necessarily mean that you become more efficient yep it's what you utilize it for that creates the wealth right and that's the same with for me with AI as well great uh we're going to pick up on that point too I'm sure because I heard some comments from our our fellow speakers uh Simon uh coming to you um you uh your company consults widely with the leading Fortune 1,000 companies um so you have a inside perspective on what the seite is thinking uh when I hear um uh analyst calls the quarterly results calls that CEOs and CFOs give uh this is what we do journalist at Economist we read the transfer this is our bedtime reading uh a few years ago uh you couldn't get by without seeing conventions of ESG for example right now those are dropped off dramatically and instead you hear AI every company talks about this AI strategy AI this AI that um give us a reality check what are you finding when you look under the hood what what's actually going on well thank you VJ and as you say we have the privilege as Alex Parts is having a front row seat sitting with our clients as they look at their biggest opportunities and their biggest challenges but one Insight I'd give you is that uh in the 2024 budgeting round um Ai and generative AI occupies about 80% of boardroom discussion and strategy meetings it occupies about 3 to 4% of their budget line items on cost and so the um the amount of thinking time that's going into this is huge the amount of budget dollars being applied to it a relatively small why is that well it's because people understand that uh generative AI is going to disrupt every company in every industry and every geography they just don't know quite what it'll mean for them and their company now um what we're seeing is that people are leaning into the efficiency plays that AI provid and we heard earlier from Schneider exactly um some of the ways that can be done so whether it's the efficiency of supply chain or the efficiency of deployment of Labor or the efficiency for instance of pricing models if you're in consumer products or retail people are leaning into that because they can see how to do it that's that's a low hanging fruit right it's low hanging fruit uh what they can't see yet is how AI can drive Revenue growth generally and that's why people are holding back in terms of deciding how to apply their investment dollars um just to push ahead on that a little bit further the um uh surely the efficiency plays themselves can show quick Payback right presumably that's one way to Show additional revenues even if you're not creating entirely new business lines right uh are we seeing that yet or not yet yes and we've all read the examples of efficiency of call centers the efficiency of um business modeling and those efficiencies are now well documented and obvious it's just we haven't seen how to drive Revenue growth not just important by the way to drive company performance but important in terms of dealing with societal issues growth in economies you know with the major economies of the world actually having a shrinking labor force unless AI can generate efficiencies how our econom is going to grow and I do think by the way that one of our insights uh is that the gains are going to be through the fusion of artificial intelligence and human capital so it's going to be the combination of those uh that's why I think Microsoft was so smart calling their product co-pilot I wonder actually whether there's we should have badged our artificial intelligence augmented intelligence is going to be the fusion of human capital and artificial intelligence that produces much of these gains the um uh so that raises a very interesting U Prospect if we begin to see uh I hope it becomes the vision of augmentation that you're talking about but at least in the first instance the efficiency uh will lead to headcounts being reduced for example uh as technology substitutes for humans um we know historically throughout history new technologies that have this kind of disruptive effect in the long run more wealth is created potential jobs are created in new higher value areas we know that's a long run story The Challenge with AI it is posited is that the change is happening much more quickly this time that the ability of societies to respond um uh at the pace the human pace of response is slower than the pace at at which technolog is advancing if I may come to you Minister on this question because you not only think about the technology you have a a mandate also for the people of your country and then the jobs when you encourag all those efficiency Investments and productivity gains um how did that work work out in in the population at large or amongst your fellow ministers who think about employment for example um I I don't I don't see um major disruption to employment because as you said there would be new Industries coming up uh uh while AI will replace uh you know some of the lower value jobs um some of the higher value jobs will be created as a result that's the theory are you finding this in practice you've been pursuing this for we haven't seen uh AI being implemented um in full scale uh in practice so it's early days for you it's early days um and I think for everybody but um when we look at for example industry mhm um AI will play an important uh part of uh in industry but um most uh of U factories or many factories um are already automated so um they the high value jobs we foresee in Industry specifically uh will remain um and uh you know the Major Impact uh is possibly going to happen in the service uh sort of Industries um but as I said you know we feel um confident that that there would be new emerging emerging Industries which will will come up and create as a result of the growth in in Glo in the global economy of course new sectors new Industries uh will create um New Opportunities and new jobs so definitely there will be a shift um does someone else want to jump in on this particular question about the the human impact of the pace of change yes II is actually solving one of the issues that we have today which is the speed of deploying things I'm speaking about the energy equation where one year ago in in one panel I think in Versa the world needs to go at least twice faster uh on Energy Efficiency what we need are people able to implement and intervene in buildings in Industries in cities to make it happen right when you use Ai and you apply it on the chet on you will get a saving of 20 to 30% you will be warned of issues before they happen when at aramco uh we work together to uh deploy Predictive Analytics on 2,500 rotating machine soon to be 10,000 that means we're put on the monitoring for up time I mean avoiding breakdown outages accidents but we are also allowing people to intervene much faster and much more precisely on S that's number one so predictive maintenance but the next generation of it yeah no the existing generation of it on working on the next but that means you avoid tons of outages and potential accident which could have huge consequences thanks to that we do that on buildings on chers say that on so on then you AI is taking a lot of boring jobs like visual inspection on production chain where it's difficult to find operators let not fool ourselves right not many people want to work on the shop Flor those things are getting automated with a better result because it's machines are pretty good at doing those repetitive recognition jobs so I think we are solving actually a problem of Labor shortage coding for instance automation system is highly facilitated by Ai and today you don't have enough operators to do all the things that you guys are needing on the shop floor so yeah there is a the sort of some jobs are disappearing but there is the fact that we are resolving a massive problem of Competency on labor shortage all all around the world so that that's um I want to come to you something because you you have a global perspective on this the story I just heard very exciting story um I wonder if it uh the idea of Labor shortages of substitution uh the boring jobs maybe being done by AI is um more relevant in developed economies uh where in emerging economies where you have a demographic boom in many countries subsaharan Africa in India sub South Asia um uh where there are people looking for those factory jobs um and we may see what economists have called a premature de-industrialization a trend that people have worried about that is that you can't have have the China effect again for India or China uh we'll come to you both let me build on JP's point I mean I think that um you know if you look at any of the major sort of developments whether it's the wheel or the plow or the printing press or the steam engine or the internet none of those have resulted in a massive drop off of employment so I don't think that AI is going to be the exception I don't think this will result in mass unemployment this dystopian view that somehow we'll all be out of a job I think is just wrong uh I think the labor shortage question is key because as demographics show a shrinking working population in developed economies I think this is going to be a way that we can drive growth not withstanding that but your question about developing economies take India for instance now the most populous nation in the world it's the most digitally enabled nation in the world over 95% of uh the population of India now have digital identities in Europe it's about 35 in the US is it's maybe about 34 the point of the story is that a massively growing Workforce but digitally en work force so I think that actually it's going to be a boost to digitally enabled developing nations rather than inhibitor and of course what we're all seeing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is just a massive investment going into making sure that many of these um opportunities are Leading Edge so there's a potential for leap frogging if you do the right investment there absolutely a potential for leap frogging I think that the the shortterm issue which is quite different to the long-term issue is that much of our current Workforce do not have the digital skills to be relevant in a far changing Marketplace and that is a challenge and the responsibility for that upskilling is with the individual the company and every government but in the um successive Generations that will have those skills I think we'll find that uh unemployment will not be an issue great Rober you want to come in on this I think one of the things that make this technology slightly different is that historically efficiency gains has been done in the labor segments that means that often being quite often that quite I want to say unskilled labor but that's has mostly been where we utilize robotics for and so on the area we're going into now with AI is had potential to replace a lot of middle class jobs it's lawyers it's computer uh programmers it's high skillful well-paid jobs so the impact from society's perspective would be felt not necessarily in the blue coral labor part but in the middle class economy so in a way it's has the potential if not used properly to increase the picket effect that's um yes please jump in show yes I want to bring a different perspective other than the efficiency increase sure um I think in our field this will really enable um unparalleled creativities I think that's something quite different um because right now as how the discipline is structured um people are so specialized in their own areas um like you know chemist a biologist um like a process chemistry like each have its own discipline and then it kind of become a barrier for Innovation um and then what we see AI because of the knowledge structure is so different from human like education uh it become a journalist in many disciplines um and then you would be a you would enable some of the specialized um researchers or like uh you would say like the um I use biologist as a example have a cohort of chemists and then programmers working for it to enable its ideas I think that's kind of the beauty of AI that would open up something other than uh just the uh the labor efficiency aspect of things but uh bring some Novelties and Innovations to the world yeah that's that's a very a powerful and beautiful idea you know we know from the history of innovation that many breakthroughs came because not the expert in the specific subject but someone with an adjacency exactly uh one or two steps away comes and looks at a problem orthogonally and has the Breakthrough and so it's interesting if AI can open up that potential uh that really is could be transformative not just a a step change a not linear but rather a step change increase if I can't build on that sorry go ahead I add to that I those things that AI brings to operators workers creators as you say is is huge uh I'll take the example of our customers they have people going on the shop floor of factories dangerous processes opening the doors of electrical substation so the nightmare of anybody including me is waking up in the morning and knowing that there is an accident that took place now you've got people going around with a Google or tablets that tell them before they open the machine or before they approach it every digital parameter of what is happening and telling them what to do and what to avoid the number of accidents that you can avoid with that is huge speak about generative um AI we do with our customers digital twin from the design to the build into the operation before it was Engineers training to design on its 3D models and we do ship building we do refineries we do chemical plants now generative AI proposes you scenario proposes you ation to optimize things probably there no new things that people didn't think about so I think one of the stakes of AI is actually to democratize AI so the things we are working on at the moment is low code no code AI so that everybody can prompt some functionalities which today is not obvious you have to called specialist to do it right uh the second thing is use gen to formulate your request in an intelligible manner before you were saying you are programming things now you say tell me if my windmills are working properly today and you're going to have a report of all this and that's it's going to come naturally on on the ultimate goal which we are already doing is AI working in P of people you don't want uh to manage a micro GD right to make sure that it's The Greener the cheaper sort of energy except exceptions on AI should call you at that time but you want it to run naturally on its tons of parameter that you have to you have to integrate before we're making coal systems which were a lot of programmation now that works by itself which raise a lot of time for operators to do the added value things I think a few elements but never forget all the the other benefits which are far beyond efficiency safety of workers uptime on real ability of your application when you go in a hospital like you who work with Suman Hab Hospital priority is reliability when you go into a surgery room you don't care about Energy Efficiency you want no outage those are things that digitization on AI allow you to uh uh to ensure so um you made both of you have made a great case to keep that open mind about the potential for transformation um I want to come back to a topic that I promise promise that I would return to uh Jean Pascal you had previously put on the table the energy consumption of AI and also argued about the efficiency gains and you argued one would be uh outweigh the other I want to give others a chance to weigh in who may have a different perspective uh as we know uh this is one of the hottest topics I was recently at the main energy conference in the world in Houston where this was the top uh issue the energy consumption and guzzling of AI people like Sam mman and AI Pioneer is investing in nuclear power he thinks that's the only long ter solution uh but of course yeah there are big debates about how much more energy will be needed I know you you've thought about this Robert what's what's your perspective on this I think that I'm just very glad that also this kind of awareness because I'm a big believer that AI has huge potential to be one of the most gamechanging tools that we have in society but if that's going to be fully deployed it need to be in parallel and back to what you said about ESG for me the question about the climate change can take the back seat because if AI becomes the dominant driver in business then suddenly we're going to lack we're going to miss the opportunity to actually take the responsibility for uh stopping the climate change and for me it's just good that we have that discussion where we can actually utilize AI for the Energy Efficiency gains and um that we actually use this tool to become and create a better society and that discussion requires for me awareness and if you go back two three years years is no one realized the fact that we needed to build huge data center to generate Ai and now people starting to see that's going to ca a lot of energy and I think that what kind of ships we're going to choose going to depend on how they much the energy they consume but I just want to be sure that we create a society that is sustainable because we can't have a literary Society where um the AI stopped working because the wind is not blowing that's not a smart way to do with either well you you you you point me to a question I want to direct to the minister um you happen to be in a part of the world that's blessed with u natural uh resources both of the hydrocarbon kind but also wind and solar resources are plenty we just have to step outside to discover it uh very quickly uh there what do you think about this uh the energy consumption of AI and could it be turned to your advantage could we see uh uh this become a source of advantage for Regions like this part of the world because of the access to expensive energy that you become a cluster um and maybe even related uh Industries uh we see a new map of industrialization where both with the AI related Industries but perhaps hydrogen green hydrogen other things that are energy intensive might actually begin to come here from other parts of the world I think that's that's already happening I think and and uh but it's a it's a I think it's an important uh point to recognize it's good to have ambitious goals and targets um but but we need to look at at how we will get there of course uh investment in Ai and cloud computing and and new technologies require um big amounts of energy how will we get there is an important question um I think the region yes is well placed not only because of their uh natural resources because but also because of their progressiveness and their you know their keenness to invest in new technologies and infrastructure um and so uh I think uh absolutely it's it's a kind of an opportunity for the I would say the GCC or U the GCC region to to benefit from uh you know the the the trend towards AI Sim you look you talked to a lot of industrial companies including ones that are restructuring um uh there is this discussion particularly in Germany about potential de-industrialization or a new map of industrialization that could emerge because of where clean energy is coming up um how seriously should we take that discussion uh if we Zoom ahead a couple of decades are we really going to see traditional Industries move to where the energies of the future are or is it something you think fundamentally that's not going to happen that politics will intervene won't let it happen so I think that absolutely energy transition will be key to all agenda but you mentioned Germany Germany of course is comprehensively being reimagined industrially the automotive industry which has been core to the German industrial machine is being recreated on the back of transition to electric vehicles autonomous driving not maybe a transition happening as quickly as people thought but it's happening um what we're finding from our uh client work is that the winners in AI are the people who have the best data not the people that have access to the best large language models and so interestingly in 20 23 $150 billion doar was spent developing large language models and that there are now uh you know quite a number of First Class models but the people with the best data are going to be the winners so you think about what that means in financial services think about what that means in healthcare not just what it means in automotive and Industrial Nations I think as people understand how to deploy their dat of for commercial advantage and then work out what the consequent impact is on energy consumption and how they set it up for success is going to be at the core of those discussions that's very interesting that the old adage about the Gold Rush uh in California uh the minor 49ers they were called was uh the only people who made money for sure were those who sold the pickaxes to the miners right but I wonder in this case maybe the we should flip that analogy that these AI tools or the pickaxes we're focusing on the companies making them but the money is still where the gold is so which is the data interestingly enough if you look at hula Packard for instance which had a recreation of its own or look at Dell which has had a massive Recreation of its own their biggest opportunity May yet be coming because actually the infrastructure to support all of this analysis and data storage and processing is going to be where a lot of the money is going to be made they may be the new pickaxes there we go um I'm going to turn the audience if we have uh time for a quick question or two um anybody uh want to jump into the breach with a challenge or question for our experts uh if so let us know we have microphone Runners who'll come around I apologize I can't see people behind me um but if not I um I I want to put one thought while we're waiting for any potential questions from the floor and that is um uh that counterargument to the energy intensive narrative right um that in fact uh because of the efficiency opportunities The Innovation opportunities but also um when we actually look at early forecasts of of the internet if we go back a couple of decades there were respectable forecasters who said it's a few percentage of global energy now but this is going to be 20% 50% the entire economy will be taken over by the energy consumed by all these new fangled internet computer things of course they were wrong uh it's not because the internet didn't proliferate it's because of course there was a vast resource of efficiency that came to how we comput it and that it isn't a static resource nowadays it's being discussed as a Jensen law right in terms of the ability for the chips themselves to become more efficient but the ways we organize our searches can be more efficient um so I want to put put the challenge to my my my my uh uh experts here that in fact we will find a replication of what happened with initially with the internet itself that yes of course there'll be some initial disruptions and need for additional energy but especially because the big tech companies that are pioneers in this area have committed to net zero emissions uh and they've been pioneers and promoting power purchase agreements and so on for green energy that they're actually creating the conditions for a clean energy Revolution and efficiency Revolution that they could Kickstart a couple of other ancillary areas not directly related to AI but actually that could have very positive and pleasing effects um in energy in climate and sustainability what do people think of that am I am I too polanish am I too hopeful can can we put some simple figures that the all of it industry represents 2% % 2% of the whole energy consumption the application of digital on any process smart building Smart Home Smart manufacturing Smart City brings in average from what we can see and we help our customers save 100 million tons a year brings 20 to 30% of Energy Efficiency so 2% on the worst projection say it might double which is certainly exaggerated we think is going to go two to three on bringing 20 to 30% savings on 98% of the consumption so I think you what you are seeing is a technology that disrupts completely the old way of doing and brings a higher level of efficiency on the top of it you're right the hypers scalers on the data center operators are the most active today to look for green energy on they leverage a resource they have in data centers which are batteries also right because to support the proc process in the data center you have storage and you can use that to manage the volatility and the intermittency of of energy so that it's never one technology alone it's multiple technology and I leave you with that next thought is that as we get to the Cloud the next stage is AI on the edge on your phone on every machine because if you do that there it's faster less latency data remains here and energy consumption can be divided by a huge fact so just the beginning also of the architecture Pascal thank you you get the last word you brought us to the vision uh of uh ubiquitous Edge Computing light energy light massive potential gains um and and that's that's a terrific Vision now it's a robust conversation we of course did not Glide over the challenges uh whether it's a culture uh the governmental challenges as well as um having to do with organizational uh culture and committing resources to it uh and the data uh openness uh so there's Alles plenty but I think you'll agree our experts gave us a a very insightful and deep look into the potential for opportunities for industry please give me uh a round of applause for my experts thank you all very much and we thank you for joining us if you to tweet about this please use hash special meeting2 24 thank you and enjoy the rest of your day very much [Music]

Channel: World Economic Forum

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Id: OswA_BME6jQ

Length: 49min 50sec (2990 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024