Fetch.AI appear on panel at The Economist Innovation Summit
Yesterday Fetch.AI attended a leading business conference in London. We enjoyed the opportunity to share ideas and held several promising meetings with investors and members of the media.
In the afternoon our Chief Executive, Humayun Sheikh, sat on a panel discussing the power of algorithms in artificial intelligence. The panel was chaired by US Technology Editor at The Economist Alexandra Suich Bass and also included Kacy Harding (Head of Data Analytics at Philips), Joe Baguley (Chief Technology Officer at VMware) and Ajit Jaokar (IoT course director at Oxford University). The panel began by assessing the implementation of algorithms in society today and how the technology has helped companies such as Uber and Alibaba to prosper.
Humayun was asked about his background as an early investor of DeepMind. He voiced his belief that individuals should be able to own and monetise their data, without requiring the cooperation of major businesses. In addition, Humayun emphasised his desire for technology firms to adopt a collaborative, bottom-up approach in order to avoid slowing the AI and machine learning evolution. Such a move, he believes, would leave the power in the hands of a few companies who alone would be able to store and profit from individuals’ data. At Fetch.AI we have created the framework to free data from these corporate silos and allow it to be fully utilised to everyone’s benefit.
At the end, the panel opened up the floor to questions. Humayun used the opportunity to explain his passion to decentralise data, asserting it will enable us to provide solutions, not only to the problems of today, but also to tackle issues we haven’t yet begun to address. He did though acknowledge the inherent lack of empathy in current algorithms and suggested it may be many years before they are able to understand the wider context of complex issues in the way human brains are capable of.
The panel were each asked which sector they believed would be impacted by AI soonest. All four answered differently. The panellists put forward ideas such as the financial markets, the military and politics. Humayun’s own prediction is that the most immediate changes would be felt in the healthcare industry. AI is already being increasingly used in the sector for multiple reasons. One of these is that the technology allows data from an almost infinite number of sources to be analysed, far more than any doctor could realistically use, to inform a diagnosis or treatment plan. Another reason is that AI has the potential to dramatically improve the allocation of resources such as beds.
Everyone on the panel agreed that AI will be a crucial component in tomorrow’s economy and we believe Fetch are at the forefront of this new age.
