By Rohit Talwar and Steve Wells

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rising to the top of the business agenda. Literally every day we see ever-more breathtaking announcements of its capabilities from technology vendors and increasingly stark warnings of its potential to automate knowledge, expertise and advice based sectors such as accountancy and thus render millions of professionals unemployed in its wake.

Within the sector, many firms are already deep into their exploration of the potential uses of AI inside their firms and advising clients on potential AI opportunities and impacts. However, hesitancy still dominates management thinking, with innovation being held back by fears about the potential for AI to automate and eventually commoditize large parts of a US$450 Billion sector.

However, these concerns seem to miss the bigger picture opportunity – namely that every sector in the US$78 Trillion global economy will be transformed by the combined effects of AI and a range of other technologies. The speed, power, scope, and capability of these disruptive change agents is growing at an exponential rate or faster. Developments in fields such as quantum computing, blockchain, the internet of things (IoT), big data, cloud services, smart cities, human augmentation, 3D and 4D printing, smart nanomaterials, and synthetic biology could provide solutions that will be hundreds or thousands of times more powerful and impactful within a decade.

The resulting changes will literally bring about the total transformation of every business sector, the birth of new trillion dollar industries and a complete rethinking of business models, accountancy standards, risk assessment approaches, financial reporting practices, legal and regulatory frameworks, and the supporting governance systems for literally every activity on the planet. By 2025, the global economy could reach US$120 Trillion with over fifty per cent coming from emerging sectors and those that don’t even exist today.

Servicing this new world offers the potential for exponential growth in accounting firms and could bring about the biggest transformation in the sector since its birth.

The scale of this opportunity is lost on or ignored by all but a few genuinely forward thinking players in the sector. The majority are either unaware of AI’s potential impact or focused on relatively narrow internal applications of AI. Decision making is clouded by fears of commoditizing premium revenue streams, losing out to technology providers, depersonalization, and the loss of professional roles. These fears have in turn driven reluctance to understand and embrace the real opportunities that could emerge as AI and its disruptive relations facilitate the reinvention of our world.

There are clearly benefits to be gained from automating internal functions, building real-time accounting and audit analytics into clients’ transactional systems, providing rigorous and comprehensive decision support to professionals in key areas of legislative complexity, and automating the analysis of client financials. However, the potential gains are almost trivial compared to the opportunities that arise from supporting the emergence of the AI-enabled new economy.

Winning in the Next Economy

Whilst AI can clearly be disruptive within accounting firms, the core opportunity lies in the broader marketplace. AI and the technologies it enables such as robotics, blockchain, FinTech, InsureTech, and Medtech, will drive the reinvention of existing sectors from media, healthcare, education, and transport to retail, construction, and financial services. AI is already enabling the next wave of trillion dollar sectors and developments such as autonomous vehicles, employee free distributed autonomous organisations, 3D printed buildings, superfast Hyperloop rail transit systems, synthetic fuels, self-repairing construction materials, intelligent cities, blockchain data networks, and smart contracts. AI is also driving interest in new economic paradigms, new notions of money, and digital currencies.

All these developments will require the interpretation, reframing and redrafting of accountancy standards and practices, audit procedures, risk management, valuation techniques, reporting frameworks and the creation of new accounting and legal concepts and financial dispute resolution mechanisms to encompass new political, economic, social, and business paradigms. So, while AI will have a big impact on the internal functioning of accounting firms, the true exponential growth opportunity lies in helping, governments, businesses and civil society to understand, account for, adjust to, and manage the risks of the coming waves of AI-enabled disruption.

Here are a few examples of these new accounting sector opportunities that are emerging:

The emergence of autonomous self-driving vehicles opens up the potential for self-owning assets including buildings and public infrastructure – what new accounting practices would be required to govern, audit and assess the viability of this new asset class?

• New business models such as per second pricing for insurance will require new approaches to accounting, risk and viability assessment
• How will we account for transactions conducted in digital currencies and via blockchians where the source of the funds and information is not known and traditional money laundering rules may be impossible to administer?
• What are the procedures required for rollback, recovery, contract review, and dispute arbitration for fully automated, blockchain based financial transaction systems?
• How should we account for and address the taxation implications of firms that are using AI systems to move their financial assets around the world on a continuous basis in real time to attract the best second-by-second interest rates?
• How should we value goods and services and their relative profitability when delivery may be several decades into the future e.g. cryogenic freezing of humans for regeneration at some unknown point in the future?

The next three to five years will see these and many more opportunities emerge through as old sectors transform and new ones emerge. AI and the related technologies will enable the creation of new markets, commercial concepts, business models, and delivery mechanisms – ideas we couldn’t even begin to imagine or describe today. Future focused accounting firms have the opportunity to embrace this new world thinking and achieve exponential growth in revenues – but we must give ourselves permission to invest the time to really understand the new generation of technologies and what they can make possible.

There is no doubt these opportunities are already emerging and many firms will be able to capitalize on them – the big question now is what will it take for our firm to be among the winners when we write the history of the next five years.

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By Rohit Talwar

Image: www.businessrevieweurope.eu/

By Rohit Talwar

Clear away the vendor hype and desperate “me too” announcements from across the sector, and the evidence is starting to mount that financial services is exploring serious applications of artificial intelligence (AI). The technology is being deployed in everything from complex internal reconciliations, risk identification, and fraud detection through to customer service chatbots, robo trading, and targeted marketing based on deep customer profiling. Furthermore, in the fast-paced world of fintech start-ups, we are seeing AI-powered hedge funds and advisory firms, personal finance managers, and a host of sites that offer us the potential to streamline traditionally slow and expensive processes for everything from invoice financing to personal insurance.

So, now the game is on, where can we see it evolving to in the coming years? One area is in real-time fraud detection for banking and credit card transactions – spotting and preventing situations that might otherwise take us weeks to resolve. At another level, investors and regulators could eventually be able to monitor the behaviour of fund managers and personal advisors. These systems would examine transactional behaviour, personal spending patterns, and social media activity to detect the potential for insider trading, market manipulation, and misuse of client funds.

For individuals, the aggregation of our personal data with that of millions of other people will allow our intelligent finance advisors to recommend cheaper alternatives for goods and services we buy regularly. The next step would be to aggregate our purchasing to secure discounts from key suppliers. Indeed, we might authorize these advanced comparison tools to switch our purchases, insurances, and even savings on a continuous basis to whoever is offering us the best deal.

Taking this a stage further, new opportunities might arise for those who have a detailed understanding of our lifestyles from travel, to dining, and clothing purchases and link this to our personal financial management. Such sites might be authorised to trade unused airmiles and store loyalty points on our behalf, negotiate entertainment discounts for us, accept paid adverts to our social networks, and rent out our driveway as a parking space. Such systems would then invest any cash surpluses earned on a moment by moment basis using our preferred risk profile as a guide.

The next evolution might to employ a personal AI clone or “digital twin”. These applications would build a detailed understanding of our lifestyles and be authorized to buy, save, sell, or trade on our behalf. Depending on the level of authorization, they might undertake credit card purchases, bank transactions, and bill payments, complete loan or mortgage applications, and even make impulse buys. The system might report back on every transaction or simply deliver an end of day voice or video mail to update on the day’s activities.

The list of potential applications is literally limitless. From streamlining and reducing the cost of activities that are currently an expensive hassle, through to finding new ways of making our finances go further, AI seems increasingly likely to become a vital part of the financial ecosystem. While many of the new AI ventures will go the way of most start-ups and fade away, some will survive. Furthermore, the best ideas are likely to be adopted by more established players as they seek to transform themselves into more customer centric enterprises. The hope is that successive waves of AI innovation will help us make far better use of all the assets at our disposal – not just our cash.

Image: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/time-clock-fractal-art-digital-2919087/

By Rohit Talwar and Katharine Barnett

How might emerging generations embrace an optimistic technology-enabled future?

Millennials and the generations that follow them are facing and shaping a radically different future from their parents’ world. Powerful digital technologies are poised to bring seismic changes in lifestyles, opportunities, privileges, and choices experienced by young people compared to their ancestors. This letter from the future draws on some of those key developments to give dads a glimpse of what’s over the horizon and what they should prepare themselves and their children for.

Dear Dad,

As I send you this message from December 31st 2030, here are some things I want you to anticipate and tell me about while I’m still young enough to listen to you! In short, the world has transformed because of exponentially improving digital technologies that are coming together to change every aspect of our lives.

Everything and everyone is hyper-connected; all the big internet systems that dominate our lives talk to each other and combine our data—social behavior, viewing preferences, purchasing information, and other activities—so we get tailored content, news, and products. I’ve saved a huge amount of time because I started to watch only the shows that match my interests and preferences. The data gathered about us and our movements is used in so many different ways to help enhance every aspect of our lives—although you might think that intrusive. For example, our whereabouts data is also processed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to help predict, pre-empt, and prevent crime. Moreover, when combined with data from traffic, construction areas, police, and planning departments, it can highlight possible danger zones and suggest ways to make them safer.

While all this surveillance has raised privacy concerns, the benefits more than compensate for the risks. I never worry where the kids are or if they are safe. I can see where they’ve been, track their location, and predict where they might be going on my holographic display mobile device. The new connectivity era has made constant interaction normal; the boundaries between private and public have been blurred—we are always in touch with others in some way.

I have an intelligent digital assistant (IDA); it lives in the cloud and accumulates all my data. It carries out everyday tasks, from booking a restaurant to searching for a travel route, to even updating my doctor with my health status. Dad, I want you to know that there’s been a revolution in healthcare. Now I don’t need to concern myself with conditions like high cholesterol, hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes.

Personal health devices use nanotechnology, AI, and a wealth of web-based bio-tools to help manage our wellbeing. They don’t just diagnose and treat illnesses, they also identify the underlying causes of conditions years before they appear and help prevent them. I have nano-devices medicine in my bloodstream, waiting to be activated to remove cancerous cells, perform tissue repair, or release drugs when needed. Again, I know you might think that this is invasive and doesn’t give us healthcare choices, but Dad, you won’t have to worry about remembering to take your medications—it’s such a weight off our minds.

Almost everything has been automated—blue collar and white collar jobs have been taken over by machines. The traditional notion of working for a living has all but disappeared, and I have the option to work if I want to. This technological revolution has funded the provision of universal basic income (UBI) and universal basic services (UBS) for anyone that wants them. I never need to worry about paying the bills or the mortgage. There is so much freedom to pursue enjoyable activities, sports, and hobbies. I can watch the kids play football, drive to the countryside, or work on some DIY—without worrying about upcoming deadlines at work.

Burn out, anxiety, and stress are pretty much things of the past. Dad, you would really enjoy our lifestyles. This work revolution has changed our social system, too. Healthy life spans and UBI have negated the need for retirement plans—my family and I are going to live healthily into our nineties with a secure income. I don’t have to worry about a retirement plan! It’s wonderful to know that we can spend so much more time with our families and loved ones; I think I’m even going to get to see my great-great grandchildren.

Things in 2030 have transformed so dramatically, and all the things I can see and experience are so radically different from my childhood. Dad I know you think that these changes are extreme and revolutionary, but they are so wonderful that I must share them with you. The future is, quite literally, awesome.

I can’t wait to see what you do with the information.

With love,

Katharine

• How might different societies and governments react to receiving this information about the future?
• How might such an optimistic image of the future encourage people to shape their aspirational choices?
• Which aspects of the future are most and least appealing to you personally, and which would most enhance your life?

This article is excerpted from The Future Reinvented – Reimagining Life, Society, and Business. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-534120/ by alan9187

By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, and Alexandra Whittington

How might the next wave of AI impact the workplace?

How far has the use of AI in the workplace come in the last five years?

In the last five years the stage has been set for what’s being called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The technological ability to compute at the scale and speed needed for widespread artificial intelligence (AI) has been achieved. At the same time, the rise of cloud-based digital services via Amazon and Google have essentially outsourced AI and put the technology in reach of even the smallest of organizations. This levelling of the playing field has been a core benefit of technology shifts in the last five years, and is a key reason why we’re about to see an exponential rise in the implementation of AI in the workplace— everywhere from retail to law firms—and in activities ranging from sales and service to product design, finance, and HR.

How is it currently being used in businesses? In what forms and ways?

Research from McKinsey suggests that:

• Less than 5% of jobs can be fully automated by adapting currently demonstrated technology—up to 20% for middle-skill categories;
• 60% of jobs have at least 30% of activities that are technically automatable, based on current technologies;
• Automation technologies could affect 49% of the world economy—1.1 billion employees and $12.7 trillion in wages;
• 47% of workers in the USA have jobs at high risk of potential automation; 35% in the UK, 49% in Japan.

It depends very much on the sector, but in a general sense, tools such as WorkFusion are being used to break high volume, complex data processing, and analysis work into discrete tasks and algorithmically assign them to appropriate machine and human resources. Such platforms look to improve human productivity by leveraging a combination of internal, outsourced, and crowdsourced workers. Users control which types of workers contribute to externally crowd- sourced work. The software learns a broader range of activities from its human counterparts and extends the scale and complexity of what it can handle. Over time, humans are engaged only when algorithms face new obstacles or challenges for any task.

Wearable devices such as health and fitness trackers are increasing in power and popularity and gradually becoming part of the work- force management toolset. These wristbands and tags can be worn as fashion accessories and monitor multiple aspects of health and fitness. It seems inevitable that some employees will be required to wear these devices as a condition of employment, while others may expect employers to provide them.

How are these disruptive technologies affecting people’s jobs?

Here are some key trends that have caught our attention recently:

• Tractica predicts more than 75 million wearables will permeate the workplace by 2020.
• A PWC survey found 49% believe wearable tech will increase workplace efficiency, while 37% expect their company to adopt the latest technology even if it doesn’t directly influence their work.
• 67% of consumers said that employers should pay for their device.
• Only 25% of respondents said they would not trust any company with personal information associated with wearable technology.

These insights point to an evolution in the relationship between employees and employers centered on the right to use personal data, purpose, and trust, all of which are more important than ever in the workplace and essential to any sane rollout of AI in the work- place. To retain credibility, it seems essential that employers express openness and transparency around the use of their people’s personal information.

Chatbots have been used in customer services for many years but are now being used for other functions such as coaching and in HR to answer general employee queries—where do you see this progress going in the future?

Future chat bots will use AI to become increasingly intuitive and predict customers’ needs and wants before they express them. This ability to make decisions for us, particularly the ones that can be made on our history, is one of the key promises of AI. It’s also the thing which could potentially make us lazy and stupid—not having to think for ourselves, so it’s a double-edged sword. So, for example, in the future, you might not have to really read over and understand different employee benefit plans. Your personal AI might decide for you. It would be a convenience, but it would also involve turning over a lot of trust to what’s basically just a computer program—the same one that performs autocorrect on your phone. Would you trust it to negotiate your salary, decide on which employee benefits to choose, and make other important HR decisions on your behalf? The technology hasn’t yet reached that point, nor has the level of trust between humans and technology.

Can you remove the human element completely?

Not for some time. However, although we can expect to see more and more such organizations run entirely by code in the future, and they will have no people—no bosses or workers whatsoever. There are already live examples of this type of company, called a distributed autonomous organization (DAO). For example, one is currently set up as an investment fund to allow for digital currency owners to vote with their invested currency on start-up/investment ideas. The company then executes the investment and recoups the investors’ rewards through a series of smart contracts.

We can expect to see many more DAOs in the future, some running with a combination of smart contracts and AI, but there will still have to be a human element behind it. Once AI gets to the point where it can write its own code, we may have to make stronger safeguards to keep it from, say, investing against the votes. A lot of people lost money on a DAO a year or so ago—it wasn’t because the technology went haywire, but good old-fashioned human crime. We will still need to protect against that.

Looking ahead, will they replace or merely reconfigure the role of the HR function?

We are heading into a world that will require not “Ordinary Management,” but “Extraordinary Leadership.” The leadership and management style required when working in uncertain situations can be challenging. For “Ordinary Management” we apply accepted best practice approaches; it’s the domain of tame problems and technical challenges. But in the increasingly disruption-filled world we are heading into, we require “Extraordinary Leadership,” where tasks are sometimes difficult or impossible to complete because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to reconcile or even recognize.

Determining the organizational capacity to work in new ways— envisioning the future and making sense of complexity – seem to be critical tasks for HR to take control of. The challenge is to explore different ways that AI could enhance and complement humanity, rather than overshadow and form a threat to prosperity. There are several authors whom we’ve interviewed and talked to in depth about the future of HR, and the actual extent that robots will take jobs is highly debatable.

Even among the world’s foremost experts, there’s no real agreement as we are at such an early stage in the evolution of smart automation— will robots take 10% of jobs? 50%? 70%—or create 30% more? We don’t yet know. That is why we use scenarios, for example, to explore the future of AI in business: Telling different stories of possible futures helps us wrap our heads around a very big picture. Visualizing the different possible outcomes is one of the most valuable parts of our foresight work and our books and articles. It helps to articulate the drivers, the fears, the possibilities, and the risks. Understanding different possible trajectories helps organizations make more robust choices and move forward.

Some of the key questions arising for leaders include:

• How can we create a generationally and technologically diverse culture?
• How can we drive culture change that aligns with evolving business propositions for evolving customers?
• Does Human Resources need to transition to Resource Management and adopt a more business–wide strategic role to match all the resource options—human or otherwise—to meet the organization’s business objectives?
• Chatbots are one manifestation of AI—what other things can we expect to see, particularly with regards to HR, but also other process-driven departments, such as IT and accounts?

Personal AI assistants that operate as a sort of “digital twin” may  be on the horizon—these constantly learning assistants would be an algorithmic stand-in for any given worker in terms of having access to and knowledge of their behaviors, assumptions, calendars, customers, projects, and contacts. This would be a highly valuable innovation in HR because it would essentially double the workforce by cloning every employee “in the cloud.” This would allow for much more effective training, transfer of knowledge, and transparency across the organization. It would also require a considerable amount of trust from employee to employer. Can we trust our employers to essentially hack into our brains and possess whatever exists inside that they deem theirs? Although AI is likely to be increasingly cheap and ubiquitous in 10 to 20 years, human brilliance may become a rare and nonrenewable resource.

Additionally, brain scanning technologies are already in place to monitor rising and falling emotion levels, concentration, and productivity. If used properly and ethically, these technologies could present HR with new opportunities to truly monitor workforce health and well-being. Data collected from wearables and brain monitors could be analyzed using AI to enable continual performance feedback.

• What conversations is your organization having about the extent to which it wants to pursue AI in the workplace?
• What does your business see as its responsibility towards those displaced by automation?
• How can we retain the capacity for free thinking, creativity, and problem solving when standardized and automated thinking is becoming the prevailing mindset?

This article is excerpted from Beyond Genuine Stupidity – Ensuring AI Serves Humanity. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-890171/ by lalelu2000

A version of this article was originally published in People Management.

By Rohit Talwar and Alexandra Whittington

How might blockchain technologies impact the future workplace?

Blockchain and the Future of Work

A new world of work is on the horizon. Specifically, the development of blockchain technology has created new opportunities to rethink how and where we work. How has blockchain impacted the workplace so far, and where is it going in the near future? This chapter explores how blockchain might play a role in the new world of work.

Blockchain is the distributed ledger technology that provides the transaction platform for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Essentially, blockchain is a financial transaction tracker, but that isn’t all it does. Smart contracts are one of the most common examples of blockchain being used for non-currency purposes. A smart contract represents tasks that can be executed without human intervention. An example would be a smart contract for the shipment of tangible goods. New office furniture could be ordered using a smart contract that releases payment via blockchain once the delivery of the furniture is confirmed via Internet of Things (IoT) sensors located within the product itself that verify its physical location. Once the conditions of the contract are met, payment is made instantaneously. The advantage is the automation of many business processes. The disadvantage is the displacement of people who once did most of the jobs to complete the process described above.

Blockchain for Workplace Education and Training

Eventually, blockchain ledgers might replace CVs as the best and most immutable representation of one’s professional, educational, and training history. This would prevent people making fraudulent claims and protect against identity theft. For example, as a database of transcripts and credentials, blockchain-based education credits are universal, transparent, and easily verified. Human Resources could make use of such a blockchain to offer company webinars, wellness counseling, and explain employee benefits to new hires, and enable the firm to track who has completed each training module.

Learning about non-traditional subjects could also be managed with blockchain technology. There could be emphasis on numerous areas of learning besides work-related topics, including personal development and mental health. In fact, one type of course that might be offered in a co-working or flexible working environment could involve new employee orientation to the space with safety, environmental, legal, and ethical training related to the job role or guidelines for use of the facility. Proof of training completion would be stored in blockchain for future reference. Already, a company called EchoLink, a training and skill verification start-up, has developed a blockchain token akin to Bitcoin. By applying the blockchain concept to hiring, EchoLink has created a global digital currency designed exclusively for confirming job candidate work history, education, and skills.

Blockchain is a Catalyst for Future Jobs and Industries

As a catalyst for new jobs, blockchain’s key capacities make it possible to imagine positive future job roles like food supply chain tracking, counterfeit prevention, and certification of cruelty-free consumer products. For example, blockchain is bringing transparency to the food industry with distributed ledgers that verify everywhere a piece of produce has traveled along its journey to the market. Is it possible that eventually it will be someone’s job to track grocery orders on the blockchain, ensuring that food hasn’t been tampered with or traveled through ethically dubious routes? As the blockchain industries grow, they will extend their reach into the business community. The industrious city of Berlin is home to a location called Full Node, a new co-working space devoted exclusively to blockchain experimentation, community education events, and hackathons. Full Node is one example of the emerging need for workspaces dedicated to creating clusters of blockchain innovation and raising public awareness for blockchain technology.

Blockchain is Essential to Emerging Future Business Models

A start-up called Primalbase allows lifetime universal membership to co-working spaces via a sharing economy blockchain model which permits coin owners to experience peer-to-peer workspace arrangements. The model allows for completely automated and anonymized real estate transactions Airbnb-style, but transactions are one hundred percent machine-to-machine. Smart devices using a combination of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain would most likely form the basis of a real-life decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). These entities have no human workers or bosses, just a chain of smart contracts triggering—and being triggered by—one another to achieve digitally-enabled tasks across the organization. Eventually, blockchain could allow for co-working and flexible office space that can automatically invoice and collect tenant fees via pre-agreed conditions enabled with a smart contract.

The future of work rests not just upon blockchain; other exponential technologies like AI and IoT are amplifying the smart objects and systems context that characterizes the workplace of the future. Blockchain may disrupt the future workplace in several ways, having many effects on an office and its inhabitants. Decentralized technologies such as blockchain may in fact create some of the best opportunities for flexible working in the future. The most important point for business leaders to remember is to use technology in the service of humans, and not the other way around.

• What is the potential of blockchain to automate existing inefficient workplace processes and activities?
• How well understood is the disruptive potential of blockchain technology in your organization?
• How might blockchain enable a more human focus in the future world of work?

This article is excerpted from A Very Human Future – Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-4242170/ by jplenio

By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, Alexandra Whittington, Helena Calle, and April Koury

How can business and society ensure a more positive future for women?

Rethinking the Future of Women

In the recent past, the issue of ensuring a truly equal future for women in society has risen up the agenda of global challenges—while at the same time indicators suggest the actual equality gap is growing globally on many indicators. From harassment and #metoo to #timesup and the rights to equal pay and equal access in education, the workplace, and the boardroom, women have been succeeding in spotlighting the issues and arguing for their rights. So, as we look to the future, some fundamental questions arise: What are the many possible futures of women? Are women’s futures different from men’s futures? How do we proceed in the coming years to embed a gender equality mindset while accounting for the unique challenges women face?

This chapter explores how business and society can adjust to ensure a more positive future for women, focusing on what we consider to be critical agenda issues. We conclude with our advice and dreams for the future of women.

Which Areas Could Benefit Significantly from the Increased Participation of Women?

As we look to the forces shaping our world, it is clear that society as a whole could benefit significantly from the increased participation of women in literally every domain, and in particular in the future of technology development, elected governmental roles, and higher education. For example, the 2018 book Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism by Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble, highlights the kind of critical thinking the technology sector needs to be embracing about its broader social implications. The technology sector and governments need to better understand that an algorithm can be racist or sexist before rushing to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into our social systems and institutions.

An increased participation of women in technology development could contribute significantly to the creation of more female-oriented products. For example, Natural Cycles, created by a woman, is an effective contraceptive app that gives women a natural choice over family planning, without the hormonal side effects of the pill. Many other similarly clever and effective technological solutions could be developed with an increased participation of women in technology. If automated systems, including those powered by AI, are representations of those who created them, then maybe those systems need to represent the gender split we see in society. More women in fields such as programming machine learning could help to create a gender balance within our intelligent technologies.

The Evolving Role of Women in the Workplace

In some domains and countries, the evolving role of women in the workplace is engendering a more confident and empowering attitude. Women are taking control of their own workplace situations and actively tackling inequalities. A variety of studies suggest that women’s confidence when asking for a raise or a promotion is growing year by year. Women are realizing that the first step to change starts from within and these small changes can have a major impact on their work environment.

The future, as currently envisaged by many, depicts a world where much of the work that goes into creating products and services will be automated. Hence, what we offer our customers and clients could become increasingly commoditized, so our new propositions will need to focus on something different. Being more human and focusing on the relationship between businesses and customers could become a critical differentiator. As a result, the focus might shift to building propositions on a foundation of competences and values that are typically thought of as feminine—such as collaboration, relationship development, and empathy. Such an approach could help firms create the differentiated and more sustainable competitive advantage they need in the future. The role of women across business could become increasingly crucial here in leading the culture change required to underpin the development of new propositions.

Significant Challenges Facing Women Professionals in the Years to Come

Many women professionals face the continuing challenge of leading a household and maintaining a career. Societal pressure to “have it all,” however, may be taking a new shape. Evidence suggests that women from the millennial generation across the globe have not married or had children at the same levels as their predecessors. Hence, a woman’s versatile balancing act across various personal and professional roles in the future may not necessarily be due to motherhood, but rather, a choice made for personal fulfillment.

Women professionals face the challenge of establishing a new relationship with the men in their lives. Men, as working colleagues or as relationship partners, are used to the stereotypical idea of providing higher economic support and assuming leadership roles. The challenge now is to create new ways of relating to each other based on an authentic mutual partnership.

Cultural norms vary significantly across the world, but evidence on the rise of women in business and being more prominent in society is clear in Asia, for example. And yet, even in the developed world, we still see institutional discrimination. The cultural and deep-rooted context for discrimination is likely to take some time to clear and is only likely to change through a combination of active campaigning, legislative change, behavioral modification, and generational trends.

Will the Man-Woman Divide Persist in the Next Decade?

The gap is a big one. In November 2017, the World Economic Forum (WEF) estimated that, at current rates, it will take 217 years to close the gap on pay and employment opportunities. Sadly, this estimate has risen by 47 years over the figure calculated a year earlier. Perhaps nations should look to follow Iceland’s fair pay example and eliminate the idea that women and men at work deserve different treatment in the first place. The WEF also estimate that the broader gender gap—that takes account of factors such as healthcare, education, and participation in politics—has risen from 83 to 100 years over the same one-year period.

If we define “the man-woman divide” as sexual dimorphism, for example that our differences extend beyond just our physical organs, then certainly it seems likely that this will continue. The man-woman divide will probably persist, although there is some concern that male fertility in the West could be threatened by hormonal disruptions in the food chain and our natural ecosystems. However, the roles of each of the genders might become more similar. There could be less men- or women-oriented services, products, or roles. This might be the beginning of the next era where, in 20 years from now, the man-woman divide could become much less perceptible.

As with many norms that become unacceptable as our collective sense of right and wrong evolves, from one perspective, a gradual erosion of alpha male domination looks set to take place. Through the empowerment of women, supported by the increasing enlightenment among men, societies could start to accelerate the agenda for equality. This will be aided by the power of technologies such as social media as platforms for campaigning and “outing unacceptable practices.” At another level, the dominance of strong male leaders of major economies such as Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin, suggests that traditional male hierarchies may be hard to dislodge.

Women’s Ability to Manage Risks and Challenges

Is society responsible for preparing women for the risks and challenges of the future? How should we help them respond to economic shocks, the failure of social institutions, and the challenge of adapting to the automation of work—potentially displacing many jobs? Perhaps the best way to do this is to increase the participation in and completion of post-secondary education by women worldwide.

It has been thought that men are more prone to taking risks and overcoming challenges than women. Psychological research has debunked this myth and now we know that these differences depend of the type of risky behaviors we include in the research questionnaires. It is not that one gender is more prone to risk taking than the other. Rather, we are all capable of developing these capacities depending on the experiences we have had and the situations we face.

Are there innate abilities that women have that can be nurtured through education, in work training, and coaching? Could this help raise women’s awareness of their own capabilities, while also allowing them to demonstrate competence in managing risks and challenges in leadership positions?

Advice to Women on Tackling the Future

In a world increasingly dominated by the hype and reality of technology, women need to adjust their expectations of this growing force in society. Even though we encounter abundant conventional wisdom that says humans will be replaced by technology, this is a line pushed by the technoprogressives with a vested interest, and women in particular shouldn’t fall for it. The future, especially one highly imbued with AI, needs humanity, and especially women, more than ever.

The future is waiting for women to take on any leadership role where they feel they can contribute to society. The world as we know it is changing, and now is the time to evolve a new generation with higher expectations of what women can do. The critical challenge here is for women to believe in themselves and encourage other women to do so as well.

The key here is for women to focus on maximizing their potential as women. This means celebrating their natural skills and sense of the importance of relationships, empathy, collaboration, and caring. Ultimately these are the traits that could make the difference between a dystopian technology-enabled world and a very human future.

Achievements in the Progress of Women We Hope to be Talking About in Five Years’ Time

In five years, we hope to see better legislation worldwide to protect women’s health and access to education. Hopefully more countries will adopt gender-blind wage policies like Iceland. Also, we hope to see greater priority placed on bringing maternal and infant mortality rates down to near zero globally within five years, using strategies that empower women and make best use of local knowledge.

In five years, we truly hope that we will finally have zero tolerance of female genital mutilation everywhere. We hope that all women in the world have full access to education. And that women participate in at least half of the leadership roles in the corporate and political sectors.

Across the next set of electoral cycles, it would be a pleasant surprise if half of all the developed world’s major democracies were led by a woman and if the supporting legislatures were gender balanced.

• What are the hurdles that women face in reaching their potential in your organization?
• What can we do to ensure that enlightened views on the role of women in society can penetrate the traditional and cultural norms that exist in some countries?
• How might more women in senior roles in politics and business change how society responds to challenges and opportunities?

This article is excerpted from A Very Human Future – Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-966056/ by uroburos

By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, Alexandra Whittington, April Koury, and Maria Romero

How might technological advances in data management, artificial intelligence, and energy help shape the future of cities?

A vision of the “city of the future” is often presented as a compelling symbol of the direction in which society could progress. Whilst visions differ, the common element is the notion that in the future, Earth’s most concentrated populations will occupy city environments where a digital blanket of sensors, devices, and cloud-connected data are brought together to enhance the living experience for all. Smart concepts encompass a range of key elements of what enable effective city ecosystems—from traffic control and environmental protection, to management of energy, sanitation, healthcare, security, and buildings.

Scenarios are a helpful tool to envision how human city visions might take shape over the next 10 to 15 years. Here we explore three 2030 scenarios showing how data, artificial intelligence (AI), and clean energy might deliver interconnected and seamless mobility in healthy, clean, smart, and livable cities.

Data

In 2030, Transport for London (TfL) runs Greater London’s multi-modal transport network using a fully integrated AI-based Travel and Transport Management System (TTMS). Vast amounts of data are processed using human expertise, AI-based transport infrastructure planning and traffic management algorithms, and predictive analysis—drawing on sensors in roads, pavements, and public transport access points. These are supplemented by video interpretation from 60,000 closed circuit TV (CCTV) cameras, which re-established London as the world’s most watched city, surpassing Beijing. Traffic and pedestrian flows have grown exponentially, transport’s environmental impacts have declined dramatically, and globally in 2030, London is ranked first on mobility.

A single control center automatically manages and matches services to demand—combining autonomous buses, surface and subway trains, and road and rail signaling. Live predictive analytics allow greater use of road and track space. Autonomous boats ply their trade on the Thames from Putney in the west to Woolwich Royal Arsenal in the east. An automated fail-safe mode restricts public access to capacity-sensitive areas like underground stations and riverboat piers.

Manual drive cars of all fuel types are still visible but only autonomous electrically powered vehicles are permitted in the city center Congestion Charge Area—a toll fee is automatically charged against the vehicle’s account information held in a blockchain-based payment system. In the late 2010s, traffic controllers still manually changed timings at three quarters of London’s traffic signals to reduce queues; now, the process is automated. A constant flow of data between autonomous vehicles (their current location, destination, purpose of the journey) and the central system is used to re-route traffic around congested areas. The system also gives priority to public transport and emergency services. The system’s associated app also provides navigational information to pedestrians’ personal digital assistants.

Embedded road sensors monitor surface and sub-surface conditions. Traffic types and flows are constantly tracked against th

e TTMS’ comprehensive historic road status database, which drives a program of proactive maintenance. This reduces requirements for lengthier and more extensive subsequent repairs. It also minimizes traffic disruption by accurately re-routing transport resources during repairs, maintenance, and emergency situations, and predicts the implications of any such situations.

For the first time since the horse and cart, London is (for the most part) moving freely again thanks to its fully integrated TTMS. Not only is London moving, but other major cities around the world are seeking London’s expertise, creating unexpected revenues for TfL.

Artificial Intelligence

It’s New Year’s Eve 2029 and several hundred thousand people gather in Times Square to see in 2030. The all-encompassing role of smart, autonomous, self-managing vehicles is in full evidence across the city. As of tomorrow, only autonomous vehicles will be allowed on the streets except in a few designated zones and “drivers’ parks” where enthusiasts will be able to take the controls.

Vehicle ownership is almost obsolete as most new vehicles are effectively self-owning. These independent taxis earn a fare for each ride and share revenues with those who manufacture, service, and refuel them. The cars work in self-managing, self-insuring networks, covering each other in the event of increasingly rare incidents. Autonomous technology grows ever smarter and accidents only tend to arise when human-driven vehicles are in collision with autonomous cars.

Revelers at the NYE celebrations can rest assured that a smartcab or personal drone will reach them within five minutes. Autonomous ambulances patrol the city with in-vehicle robots providing immediate first aid and carrying out more complex tasks under the guidance of remote doctors observing via video. Personal drones are used to extract the injured parties from their location and transport them to the ambulance. Autonomous food trucks serve revelers in public areas with drones delivering the food to the individual wherever they stand without having to navigate through the crowd. Single user “Dronejohns” or “Droneloos” can also be summoned on demand—dropping into the midst of the crowd to enable those caught short to relieve themselves in privacy.

Autonomous vehicles have changed city life, cutting congestion, reducing pollution, providing services on demand, and freeing up car parking for new uses and pop-up activities.

Energy

Martina and her friends have a meeting at the library after school. Even in 2030, homework is still an everyday occurrence here in Paris. Taking a driverless car from school to the library—a standard transportation option for schoolchildren—the girls walk in through the grand entranceway of the library. The historic library building is retrofitted with the smart technologies of 2030 without sacrificing the charm of the 1970’s façade. Old buildings are precious in the city—the cost to upgrade them is offset by the carbon neutrality of new transportation solutions. The building is old, net zero, and smart: When someone is dropped off at the entrance, it lets the autonomous cars know which library patrons are ready to leave, or sends the car to another passenger nearby.

As the girls complete their work, they are earning social credits that will provide more free rides in the future; doing homework and other good deeds are a currency children use to get around town. Mobility had become a service as basic as electricity and internet access—and completely clean, safe, and renewable. Electric transportation options are around every corner in the form of public mass transport (self-driving buses and trains), drone taxis, and self-driving electric cars.

The scaling of apps and technology to intuitively offer “Mobility as a Service” (MaaS) across the city mean private cars and driving have become obsolete. Smart technologies are so advanced that users rarely need to request rides; they are predictively hailed by internet-connected things such as their watch, phone, home, or desk.

From the library, the autonomous car drives the girls to their various homes, lessons, or practices. The parents’ digital assistants communicate with the city’s main brain to agree different drop off locations for their children, ensuring no wasted trips. The smart city offers a lot for families: Parents are no longer caught in gridlock on long commutes to the suburbs since efficient city planning allows large numbers of residents to live in urban places comfortably and abundantly.

Planning for the Future of Cities

The smart city 2030 scenarios envisioned here are vibrant, high-tech places with transportation strategies that ensure a high quality of life. In this future, data is wealth, and physical infrastructure is a tool to extract benefits for the greater good.

The smart city movement has the potential to transform the organization of people and physical objects in a way that transcends urban development as we know it. The shift to smart infrastructure is not simply fashionable or aspirational; in many ways, it appears to be a critical enabler of the future sustainability of cities. It can be argued that the future of human life on the planet rests on a smooth transition to cities that are more efficient, less wasteful, and more conscious of the impacts of the individual upon the greater good.

To achieve this vision, society must harness the impressive and increasing potential of the collective data drawn from large groups of people living together in cities. Who owns the data? Who decides how it is to be used? Where does the greater good overshadow individual free will, and vice versa? These are some questions that city planners and residents will need to build more dialogue around in order to ensure that future cities are intentionally wise and human, and not just smart.

• How might social and family dynamics change as a result of these technological advances in the city?
• How might government, businesses, and society address the emerging issues of data privacy and security?
• How can we ensure genuine citizen engagement in envisioning smart cities and realizing the full benefits when they are in operation?

This article is excerpted from The Future Reinvented – Reimagining Life, Society, and Business. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-2269890/ by 95C

By Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, Alexandra Whittington, Helena Calle, and April Koury

How can we address a rise in the number of “technologically unemployed” and fund the costs of navigating a turbulent economic transition period?

People and Money

This is the second part of The Big Reboot—a two-part exploration of how we can rethink and experiment with the mechanisms that might help prepare society for technological disruption, automation, and continuing global economic shifts. Part one explored ideas for reskilling society and creating new job opportunities. In this chapter, we explore different ways of supporting the unemployed as they look to transition back into work and at mechanisms for funding all of the ideas explored across both chapters.

In The Big Reboot, Part 1—Rethinking Education and Employment in an Automated Era, we suggested that society cannot possibly know or predict the true impacts of technological disruption on the economy and workforce over the next 20 years. We also argued that our response should not be to sit and hope for innovation and growth to save us. Instead, we believe that now is the time to be thinking the unthinkable, challenging old orthodoxies, and doing experiments that can provide the evidence on which future strategies can be based.

In particular, we want to stimulate new thinking about:

• preparing the workforce for an uncertain future;
• creating new jobs and businesses;
• supporting the unemployed in a fair, dignified, and straightforward manner that enables their search for opportunities; and
• funding the transitions from this economy to future ones. To help stimulate action, the two chapters build on some of the concepts presented in our recent books Beyond Genuine Stupidity—Ensuring AI Serves Humanity and The Future Reinvented—Reimagining Life, Society, and Business to present a range of experimental ideas. Here we focus on the latter two domains—supporting the unemployed and funding the transition.

Rethinking Unemployment

Even before the potential crisis of persistent technological unemployment is upon us, the battle lines have been drawn between those for and against ideas like Universal Basic Incomes (UBI). We would argue that the debate should be informed by a wide range of policy experiments that reflect views across the entire spectrum of opinions. The key seems to be ensuring that unemployment is not stigmatized. Rather, it should instead be treated as a period where the individual is rebuilding their confidence, acquiring news skills, developing a new business, or serving the community. The discussion and experimentation can then shift to exploring how best to support them to feel like a valued member of society. To that end, here are some of the ideas we have been exploring.

Guaranteed Basics

Universal/Guaranteed Basic Incomes—There will inevitably be employment casualties from the process of automation. The question arises as to the extent to which people will be able to afford the goods and services now being produced by the machines if they no longer have jobs. Many are arguing for provision of a guaranteed UBI across society—that pays a living wage to everyone—at a rate typically higher than unemployment benefit. Countries around the world from Canada and Finland to India and Namibia have been experimenting with different models for how this might work. At the time of writing, the newly elected coalition government of Italy has a manifesto commitment to introduce such a mechanism.

The risk of rising long-term unemployment is a real one, and something will need to be done. Simply ignoring the reality and insisting that people find work won’t solve the problem or feed their dependents. We believe governments could work together to conduct a range of UBI experiments. The aim would be to test different delivery models and payment levels to see the impacts on take-up, funding costs, economic activity, the shadow economy, social wellbeing, crime, domestic violence, and mental health. There are already strongly polarized political views on such an option. However, doing the experiments is not committing to the policy, but will provide evidence on which to base policy decisions when the need for action arises.

Conditional Basic Incomes—One of the arguments against UBI is that a large proportion of the population simply don’t need or want it and that the money would make little difference to them. To address this, a conditional scheme would make payments available to those below a certain income level as a top-up to get them to a guaranteed earnings level. This could replace a lot of unemployment and work-related benefits, be available to all to apply, and administered in a fairer more transparent way with AI ensuring equitable treatment for all.

Community Service UBI—Under this model, the receipt of UBI would be tied to the individual undertaking some form of community service reinvestment. With public sector budgets being cut in many places and declining provision of services such as libraries, health visitors, and maintenance of public spaces, UBI could be delivered in the form of community grants meant to counter austerity measures. In return for the receipt of UBI, individuals would choose service projects (community gardens, walking trails, artwork, etc.) that would deliver a public benefit, give the individual a sense of purpose and achievement, create new connections, and enable the acquisition of new skills.

Such schemes could also be supported with technology that encourages local programs that promote socialization: clubs, groups, hobby networks, for example, that encourage people to get away from screens and spend time with their neighbors. Overall, this idea is about using UBI to build civic culture and counter the negative impacts of technology on communities. This may mean rethinking how technology is used to bring people together and making the most of it. Another approach would be for individuals to pool their UBI to start and run these programs themselves—which might help them qualify for additional funds and resources for their projects.

Guaranteed Basic Products—Some might call this a modern-day version of food stamps. Under this model, which might run alongside some form of UBI, all that were eligible would receive credits to be used on key products such as clothing and healthy foodstuff from a range of stores. Government might seek to use such a measure to tackle critical food-related health issues in society. So, for example, certain unhealthy products might be excluded selectively or universally on a health basis. Hence, diabetics might be completely excluded from purchasing anything adversely indicated for them.

Guaranteed Basic Services—Here, those who claim the option could receive services free at the point of consumption—from travel and all forms of healthcare through to water, electricity, and gas. Again, governments might use such measures to nudge desirable societal health and environmental behaviors—through free gym access and free public transport as an alternative to private vehicle ownership.

Funding the Transition

The experiments suggested here have not been costed as they could be applicable to nations across the globe and the experimental models adopted for similar ideas might vary dramatically. Our view is that doing nothing is not an option. The population needs to see governments facing up to radical shifts in society with investment in equally radical policy experiments. Here are a few examples of what could be done.

Robot Taxes—A lot of the potential issues around the introduction of AI and other disruptive technologies will arise from the choices made by employers. Will they retain the staff freed up by technology or release them in pursuit of cost saving and higher profits? While we cannot and do not want to hold back innovation, there is a need to explore how to fund the resulting social costs. One option being proposed is the use of so-called robot or automation taxes. Here firms would pay a higher rate of taxes on the profits they derive from increased automation. This has met with a lot of opposition from businesses and many economists but has some support from technology pioneers in Silicon Valley.

Tax Enforcement—A less radical option would be for governments to start using technologies such as AI to beef up enforcement and collect what they are rightly owed under the law. Globally, governments are struggling to fund their current commitments and many services are overstretched. There is also strong opposition to raising taxes to fund service improvement. However, this might not be required if people and companies simply paid what they are legally supposed to and didn’t use avoidance mechanisms. For a fixed period of time, loopholes, avoidance opportunities, and so-called “negotiated sweetheart deals” would be abolished. Using AI, governments would systematically check every individual and business to ensure they were paying what they should do under the law and collect retrospective debts going back as far as the law would allow.

The New Tax Collectors—Rather than recruiting more tax inspectors, government could outsource collection to lawyers and accountants who would do the investigations on a “no win, no fee” basis—investigating those that are not their own clients. Having advised for years on how to avoid tax, they know where to look for the gold. They could be assigned lists of targets to go after and paid a proportion of the fees collected. Of course, they might also generate fees from advising their clients on how to deal with such investigations.

Taxation at the Point of Purchase—Large companies, particularly those in the technology arena, have often avoided paying taxes where the transactions are undertaken. Instead, they have issued invoices and reported their profits in a different lower tax location. Simple rule changes would require firms to pay the tax in the markets where the clients reside. Again, tax lawyers and accountants would be able to provide long lists of reasons why this is not such a simple move. However, as this would be an experiment, we could find out quite quickly what the potential gains and issues might be.

Delegitimizing Tax Havens—A more drastic measure would be to ban all use of offshore tax havens and tax avoidance schemes. A short grace window would be provided for citizens to bring their money back onshore to be subject to national taxation rules. Those who failed to conform would be faced with hefty penalties.

Higher Rate Taxes for a Fixed Period—Of course, the above measures may not work to provide the funds needed for the proposed measures. If so, then the targeted application of increased taxes to higher earning individuals and businesses could help provide the interim funding to finance the measures described above and in the previous chapter.

Bold Experiments and Courageous Leaders

There are no magic beans or money trees that can fund the costs of helping economies transition to the next model that serves the whole of society. At the same time, fundamental changes are taking place that will render people unemployed, and there is the potential for large-scale job loss if the more dramatic forecasts about the impacts of AI come to fruition. To avoid a medium- to long-term crisis, we need to be experimenting now with a range of policy measures to raise skill levels, generate new employment opportunities, and support those who lose their jobs in the transition process. Clearly these policy measures will require investments—these need to be offset against the potential costs of large-scale unemployment and a decline in global competitiveness. In the search to secure the future there are no guarantees—only bold experiments backed by leaders with the courage to pursue them.

• How might we replace work with meaningful activity for the technologically unemployed?
• What issues beyond funding do we need to consider in making the transitions from this economy to future ones?
• What do we do to change the “sit and hope” mentality, and create an experimental mindset, that values trial and error?

This article is excerpted from A Very Human Future – Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-1292294/ by geralt