Hello Tomorrow 2019: meeting the entrepreneurs who want to save the world with science
Forget James Bond, deeptech entrepreneurs are here to save the world. We met them at Hello Tomorrow and they won’t do it alone. Here is what they need.
Last week, a special breed of entrepreneurs gathered in Paris for their annual High Mass. Far from the luster and quick money that others are looking for in some shinier corners of the innovation world, those attending Hello Tomorrow Global Summit know they are in it for the long haul.
The challenges these deep-tech founders face are immense because, not only do they have to develop revolutionary technologies, but they also have to deal with legislative hurdles, public image concerns and financial hardships.
These entrepreneurs and their investors know that their projects will not see a return on investment in the first 5, 10 or even 15 years. However, they are absolutely certain that the research and technology they are working on will bring positive value to society. In the end, it will most likely be these companies who are flying us above cities, taking us to Mars, and powering our lights with nuclear fusion here on earth.
So, at a time when people feel more anxious every day about the future, with CO2 levels rising and AI being pictured as a threat — we all have the images of the “Terminator” movies at the back of our heads — seeing all these entrepreneurs talking about how they are going to save the world with science is an uplifting sensation. But optimism itself won’t suffice: they need support.
A demand for money and data
A large part of the discussions at the summit revolved around how to create the perfect conditions for these startups to achieve their goals and reach the market. Naturally, the main topic is money, since deep-tech ventures are both high-risk investments but also money-hungry operations, even when compared with conventional startups. The good news: money is eagerly flowing into innovation right now. With the USA, China and Europe fighting for dominance in the AI space, public money is readily available to fund data-based initiatives.
Yet, many speakers still lament the lack of a truly moonshot-oriented funds in Europe, an entity that could rival the likes of DARPA in the US. Some private initiatives have the will to take on extremely ambitious innovation projects — a great example is Alpha, Telefonica’s GoogleX-inspired moonshot factory which was represented on the Hello Tomorrow stage by its CEO, Pablo Rodriguez.
Although such ventures are able to demonstrate the ability to deliver solutions just as disruptive and large-scale as outputs from DARPA, the question one must ask is how far a private company can go. Would it have the guts and conviction to continue investing the large sums of money required to develop innovations like GPS for instance? This product was indeed funded by the deep-pocketed U.S. Department of Defense but which one could argue was one of the wisest investments in history.
Besides the somewhat obvious need for more money, many entrepreneurs are also expressing a need for more data. With AI becoming more and more accessible, many view it as a powerful tool that can help accelerate their research. Their ubiquitous influence was impossible to miss, especially in the startup corner, where we found startups leveraging their potential in various fields from aeronautics (Hionos for a drone autopilot system) to healthcare (RxAll, this year’s grand prize winner, for a non-destructive fake drug detector). Many of these solutions are built on top of open datasets. Their availability plays a key role in accelerating the development of new projects. This is what happened for Earthcube & their CTO, Renaud Allioux, explained:
“Thanks to open data we were able to build in 3 months what otherwise would have taken us 10 years to achieve”.
Data itself, however, is not enough. Some speakers, such as André Loeskrug, head of the European JEDI fund, suggested that there are other pieces of the puzzle that are necessary to take full advantage of the newfound availability of data:
“The problem is no longer the availability of data, but what you can do with it and the skills”
An ethical framework for innovation
The right conditions, namely increased access to funding and data, will allow technology development to accelerate moving forward. But how can we ensure that technology develops in a way that improves human society and does more good than harm?
Conferences like Hello Tomorrow are filled with deep-techies who optimistically tell us about how they use algorithms to give autonomous cars superhuman reflexes, how they use AI to help farmers feed the growing global population, how they use chemical methods to obtain gold in an environmentally friendly manner (Euan Doidge, Imperial College London), or how they use big data to reduce CO2 emissions of airport operations.
For a moment, we almost forgot about the articles we come across every other day that question the ethics of new developments in deep-tech. Companies like Uber and Facebook have shown that they are not afraid to play fast and loose with people’s lives and data, leading some people to develop negative views towards technology as a whole.
Who can step in to help address these questions surrounding ethics and morality? Who can help create the framework to ensure ethical technology development? One possible idea: an effective, well-thought out legislative plan, to create market forces that incentivize environmentally friendly, sustainable, and ethical decisions.
Better communication for a more desirable future
What if, more than data and money, the real challenge is in creating such a framework? The challenges are tough, and they concern all members of the extended scientific community, not just the engineers and scientists in the lab. Politicians, technologists, and the general public each have their own responsibilities and roles to play.
Starting with politicians, the importance of legislation in technology cannot be understated. Yet, in many cases, politicians are unaware that their lack of knowledge in technical subjects can cause them to make poor decisions. By becoming more aware of their incomplete understanding of these subjects, and by finding a way to supplement their knowledge, politicians can put themselves in a better position to push innovation and technology forward. This could perhaps even lead them to embrace the go-getter perspective shared by many at Hello Tomorrow. Markus Larsson from Xerox PARC, said for example that we should “Try to solve really hard problems, even though they might not have any commercial application at the moment”. Why? Because sometimes tackling impossible problems is the only way to discover the limits of technological advancement.
OK, so what about scientists and engineers? They are great at putting their heads down and getting the work done. But they have not yet mastered the ability to communicate clearly the key points of their work, an important skill especially when there are non-technical people involved. This is no easy task — to understand the difficulty of this, one only need to go check out a few 3-minute startup pitches at a conference like Hello Tomorrow, where deeply technical people are asked to explain the culmination of years of research in a mere fraction of the time. Expecting scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to create easily digestible content is a tall order, even though we have already seen a lot of tech entrepreneurs with a technical background starting successful businesses. More than individuals, companies should also be aware that they must mix the skills of people in their teams and make them work together.
Perhaps there is also a role to play here for journalists and authors, who have a talent for effective communication and already have the ear of the general public. They can create worlds where imagination and fiction are mixed with the realities of current advances, a form of design fiction that can help ordinary people become familiarized with innovations that are likely to impact them in the near future.
In short, it’s time to get around the table and create a common language. Ineffective communication is one of the main reasons why legislation often lags behind innovation. Uber and Facebook, along with the GAFAs and BATXs of the world, are not waiting for Europe to create these legal frameworks to push innovation forward. They will continue to develop technology and use it on the world as they see fit. One can also point the finger at miscommunication when trying to understand the muddled public perception on topics such as climate change and machine learning.
So what?
The future seems more threatening than ever. Limiting global warming in reasonable proportions already seems impossible, and the extremes are raising from all sides thanks to the new means of communication. Without neglecting the role that science and technology have played in the creation of the woes of our time, it is essential to remember that it is first and foremost a tool at the service of the fulfillment of man’s will.
It is therefore important to give those who are willing to direct progress in the right direction all the support they need.
- It is their responsibility to explain what they are doing, and to convince public opinion of the merits of their approach.
- It is the responsibility of governments to identify and put on hold the initiatives that are not consistent with the goals of society, and, conversely, to create a framework for entrepreneurs and scientists seeking to change the world for better to succeed.
- Finally, more than ever, companies have a role to play. They must share their resources: infrastructure but also knowledge — especially data. They have started to do so with some open innovation initiatives, but this should become part of the companies’ DNA.
