
MIT Technology Leadership Summit 2019
What do the global leaders in the industry say about emerging technology impacting today’s business? This year’s MIT Technology Leadership Summit had as a main theme ‘Breakthrough to Impact’, focusing on all major disruptive technologies. On the 1st of November 2019, experts in AI, Blockchain, 5G, Cloud, and Quantum computing had come to provide insights within their domain, analyzing the emerging technologies and offering relevant examples that shall shape the future in business. In general, Artificial Intelligence was one of the most discussed topics, appearing in almost all debates, such as security, ethics, and within the workforce. Here are the main takeaways from the summit.
Today’s AI: What issues does this impose?
There is a crucial need for Big Data in Machine Learning and Neural Networks training, however, this is affected by certain biases that must be taken into consideration. Dr Cansu Canca, Founder and Director of AI Ethics Lab explained why ethics in AI is so important. Artificial Intelligence is kept ethical through two main processes; externally — through regulation, and internally — through oversight and compliance. The competition between companies that care about ethics within AI and those that do not are levelled through external factors. However, legislation is much more rigid and quick regulation may even stop innovation to a certain degree which does not help the society. Therefore, it is in every company’s self-interest to show that they respect the ethical norms and do not need to be controlled. Oversight and compliance within each company can assure that the AI model does not harm society in any way. This can be done during three distinct phases:
(1) Training phase — by catching and eliminating (if possible) all ethical problems as they appear during the process
(2) Analysis — by determining and solving complex ethical issues to enhance technology
(3) Strategy phase — by setting out principles and procedures that offer the company ethical guidance

AI for Good: Humancentric Technology
Michael Beck, the Global Head of Threat Analysis at Darktrace, discussed how the battlefield is changing due to technology. Offensive AI is almost impossible to compete with due to the constant escalation in the complexity of the program. Thus Mr Beck states that there is a need for an AI-based immune system, that would have an autonomous response, which can be just as quick and can narrow the effect of the attack the most. Nonetheless, building trust is one of the greatest impediments in the field, as people do not understand how AI can be humancentric. But this can be seen in all fields, as people believe emerging technologies are here to replace them in the workforce. Steve Leonard, CEO of SGInnovate, emphasized how AI is still very much human-centric, and how it complements, rather than replace the workforce. However, he pointed out there is a need to change the existing discourse referring to AI and to focus more on humanity and society regarding Artificial Intelligence strategies. Furthermore, Professor Loredana Padurean, Associate Dean for Action Learning at Asia School of Business, MIT Sloan, considers that Artificial Intelligence may only remove some unnecessary stress from people’s lives, as it can be used to attack the existing pain points in the society. She believes that even in the far future, humanity will still have its purpose, and technology is only one tool to may help us to reach it.
Technology will never go slower than how it does today
Axel Karlsson, a Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company, based his first part of the speech on one statement: “Technology will never go slower than how it does today”. The increase in technological developments is growing exponentially, and while we may consider that technology is developing at a fast speed now, this will only increase in the future. Nonetheless, the basic human needs remain the same and it is only the way we supply products to meet these needs that change. The challenge we face is to find a way to supply the customer’s needs innovatively. Creativity (both in humans and machines) can help us reach this development and cater to society’s demands. Creativity can be reached by working together within the community or through the newest emerging technologies.
The concept of open-source can provide innovation through transparency and the opportunity to work within the community. Cheryl Hung, Director of Ecosystem at Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), talked about fostering and sustaining open-source projects. As an example, she highlighted Kubernetes, a container-orchestration system for automating application deployment, scaling, and management. This is an open-source application that has been initially developed for Google Maps. Now it is one of the extremely few container-orchestration systems and by far the most known. This shows how open source has become far more than just a competitive advantage and can be considered the new default. The greatest impacts CNCF will have are to provide open source within the telecommunication networks, as well as to offer communities the ability to work together.
Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence can help us achieve this innovation in creative ways, says David Cox, IBM Director at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. He discussed broad AI, which represents the next step in the evolution of Artificial Intelligence. As the main characteristics of this phase, AI will be distributive, explainable, and creative in a certain sense, combining AI applications from various fields into one. One of the most important features it has is that it will augment creativity skills.

Conclusion: What is the future?
Mr Karlsson’s presented his view on the future, which is represented through (1) Technology, (2) Ecosystems, and (3) Asia. This emphasized the growing importance that Asia has not only in technology but as a global power. First, when customers choose providers, they base their decision substantially on the ecosystem. Bundling applications together is considered convenient (ex. Spotify became famous this way) and China is a major player in ecosystem thinking. Second, Asia has shown remarkable development in terms of technology, and unicorn start-ups are a good way to quantify this. Not only do 36% of unicorns come from Asia, but the average time it takes to become a unicorn is even faster in Asia than in Europe or the US.
Overall, Artificial Intelligence represents a great potential out of which humanity can prosper. Its great capacity can help us better understand and answer some of the greatest challenges we encounter. Focusing on ethical AI and the integration in the workforce are two ways in which we can overcome today’s framing of emerging technologies and build trust. Technology is here to make our lives easier.
