I am on the high-speed train that connects Beijing to Tianjin, flashing above 300 km/h. We have just spent an inspiring week at Summer Davos, aka the Annual Meeting of the New Champions, where I was invited by the World Economic Forum to proudly represent the Global Shapers Community and the Geneva Hub. We met with more than 2000 of the most innovative leaders, heads of state, scientists and CEOs, talking about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the future of artificial intelligence. We are exhausted from the top-level session, and we are now seated in this quiet and clean futuristic train, with high-speed free Wi-Fi and colorful LCDs.

The speaker announces the journey and the rules: “Make sure you comply with the rules so as not to affect your social credit.”

Wait. I am looking, puzzled, at my fellow Shapers, Gemma and Gio, who are sharing this adventure with me.

Yes — I understood correctly.

“Social credit.”

Have you seen the Black Mirror episode where the society is based on a rating system? I knew that China was piloting the “Social Credit System”, but I did not know it was already live and working!

After a week spent discussing the future of artificial intelligence and how it will change our lives, the Chinese government is already implementing big data collection to build a national reputation system. This takes me back to everything I learned this week, and I will try to set out my three main lessons from Summer Davos on artificial intelligence. How will AI change our lives?

1. AI is enhancing our understanding of the world

Ten years from now, our understanding of the world will be different. The use of free data is an unprecedented resource that became exponential from 2007 onward, as big data expands to personal data. People are now aware that sensors and devices are collecting large amounts of personal information in real time, from our smartphones to the car GPS. To take a step back, artificial intelligence started in 1950, when Turing invented a test to check if machines could communicate with humans without people recognizing that they were speaking with a computer

So why there is a big buzz about AI now? This topic was dissected at the session “A Global Conversation on Artificial Intelligence”, where one of the main reasons highlighted is the fact that computers and storage are becoming cheaper and moving into real-time. Hardware enhancement is allowing machines to compute big data and to learn: this is at the foundation of deep learning, and is unquestionably behind the explosion of AI from a developer’s laboratory to its massive exploitation with real-time applications. While we are still in the early days of real application (86% of AI technologies are not mature yet), we know that 85% of AI technologies will bring real transformation.

2. AI is changing the power structure

Artificial intelligence is a unique opportunity to bring equality and overcome infrastructure limitations. A great example was brought by Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance: a Silicon Valley robotics company has teamed up with the Rwandan government to speed the delivery of blood. Zipline, also called “Uber for blood”, can deliver the blood requested in remote areas, decreasing the delivery time from four hours to an average of half an hour, and dramatically reducing blood waste.

How can we democratize AI, exposing many people to new technologies? We need to make sure that AI is not increasing the gap between high-skilled and low-skilled workers but is actually empowering the broader population. This can be achieved through:

1. Open access to data: it’s important to balance data protection and data availability.
2. Accessible and trustworthy data algorithms: transparency and visibility are key to building trust in the results that come out from deep machine learning, often seen as a “black box”.
3. Lowering the bar in the capability set: the average citizen can still benefit from AI if trained properly.

AI needs to be addressed positively, or it could eventually bring devastation. Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, recently predicted that the internet will bifurcate into Chinese-led and US-led versions within the next decade. Technology has a key role in new governance, with tech companies becoming bigger than countries, and with new firewalls and new power structures ultimately redefining the geopolitical set-up. It’s not new news that AI is highly used by defense departments; Jack Ma reminded us how the first wave of technology brought the First World War, and the second wave actually resulted in the Second World War. So we really need to be very cautious on managing AI: Jack assures us that the Third World War will be fought against poverty and the destruction of the planet. But we all have a role to play to make it happen positively.

3. The importance of human skills in an AI world

This might sound a bit counterintuitive; when I talk about artificial intelligence with my family, everyone jokes about Terminator and the moment when machines will overcome humans, replacing us in our jobs and ultimately attacking us. On one hand, it’s true that machines will replace part of our jobs’ repetitive tasks in the future; on the other hand, the tasks that are not repetitive and where human skills are needed are irreplaceable. I talked with Ann Mettler, head of the European Political Strategy Centre, about how Europe is focusing less on education and more on skills. So how do we train the new generations to learn the new skills?

As part of Global Shapers, the World Economic Forum’s community that brings together young leaders who are active in local communities, I was invited to participate in an exclusive session with Jack Ma, founder of the global giant Alibaba. Jack recently announced that he will leave Alibaba in one year’s time to refocus on teaching; he has been incredibly inspiring on the future of education and the importance of lifelong learning. Skills needed are changing rapidly and the best skill to learn is actually the “skill of learning”. If you want to learn something for your future job, you will be disappointed. You need to learn what you love, and to keep learning constantly. For a long time we’ve talked about IQ and EQ — now we need to think about LQ, Love Quotient!

In 30 minutes we have already reached Beijing, and all the memories of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions, all the amazing people I met, are flashing in front of me.

Artificial intelligence is already changing our lives and we will recognize it more and more. But one question is hammering in my mind: “Would I behave exactly as I do, if I had a personal social credit score?”

Willing to read more about the Annual Meeting of the New Champions?

What just happened? Catch up on an extraordinary week in Tianjin.

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Machines may do more than humans by 2025. How workers can win in the robot age.

Goodbye drugs, hello electroceuticals. The top 10 emerging technologies.

#AMNC18 #SummerDavos #WorldEconomicForum #GlobalShapers #ShapeTheWorld #artificialintelligence #China #socialcreditsystem #entrepreneurship #motivation #lessons #innovation

About the Author: Giulia Zanzi is passionate about combining IoT and mobile technologies with science to improve people’s lives. As Head of Marketing Fertility in Swiss Precision Diagnostics, a Procter & Gamble JV, she led the launch of the first Connected Ovulation Test System that helps women to get pregnant faster by detecting two hormones and syncing with their phone. A former member of theEuropean Youth Parliament, Giulia is currently serving on the Advisory Council of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers and she is a Lean InPartner Champion. Giulia graduated with honors at Bocconi University in Milan and holds a Masters at Fudan University in Shanghai.

How AI will change your life: 3 lessons from Summer Davos was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ten years ago, I graduated from my master at the Fudan University in Shanghai and this week I’ll go back to China, humble to have been invited to attend the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin by the World Economic Forum (also known as Summer Davos).

I have been to China many times in the last decade and like in every long-term relationship, there have been ups and downs. High moments, like when I managed the launch of Clearblue, making it n.1 Pregnancy test brand in China, or when we have been the first students from Bocconi university to embark the Double Degree adventure in Shanghai.

Low moments, when we were not even able to communicate to the taxi driver to stop, or when I spent the first Christmas day 12.000 kilometers far from home, studying for my exams (and if you know me well, you know that Christmas is my favorite day of the year, to spend with my extended family in a traditional never ending Italian celebration in my hometown).

High moments, when I made friendships that last forever and I appreciated a way of doing business that is not only different, but also innovative.

Next week it will be one of the highest peak of my long-term relationship with China, and it’s a huge responsibility to attend the Annual Meeting of the New Champions, the world’s foremost innovation meeting with 2.000 selected innovators like Jack Ma, Fabiola Gianotti and Fe-Fei Li.

My personal agenda at the Annual Meeting of New Champions:

Immerse myself into the artificial intelligence global hub: China’s 2030 plan envisions building a $1 trillion AI industry and I can’t wait to be inspired by the future applications of AI and machine learning

Represent my generation: millennials believe that technology has a unique role to improve people lives. My mission is to support the ecosystem to democratize innovation.

Connect with disruptive thinkers working on image recognition, seamless sensor devices and future consumers’ platforms, especially in reproductive healthcare.

Are you also going to be in Tianjin? If you are working on Artificial Intelligence, healthcare platforms or image recognition or if you know anyone I can’t miss at the Annual Meeting of New Champions, please reach out and connect.

About the Annual Meeting of New Champions: World Economic Forum Announces Record Participation for Summer Davos

The Annual Meeting of the New Champions is the foremost global summit on innovation, science and technology, promoting entrepreneurship in the global public interest. This year for the first time, the Annual Meeting of the New Champions will also convene experts and decision-makers in the World Economic Forum’s newly launched Fourth Industrial Revolution Councils in areas including:

Artificial intelligence and machine learning

Internet of things and connected devices

Blockchain and distributed ledger technology

Autonomous and urban mobility

Drones and tomorrow’s airspace

Precision medicine

More than 2,000 leaders from government, business, science and civil society will join the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, taking place on 18–20 September 2018. 111 countries will be represented.

Whereas the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, taking place in Davos at the beginning of the year, emphasises the geopolitical, economic and social agenda, its sister meeting in China brings together the key decision-makers related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Now in its 12th year, the main objective of Summer Davos is to create a global community to ensure that emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and the internet of things are used to benefit society and that they remain human-centered. This requires global collaborative efforts to define the necessary principles of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the standards to ensure global interoperability.

The meeting will be strongly outcome-oriented and different from traditional conferences. In addition to the opening plenary and over 20 high-level panel discussions, the programme will feature over 100 working sessions aimed at engaging every participant in specific issues and policies related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Annual Meeting of the New Champions will be a showcase for China’s rapid achievements in scientific and technological development. It will also provide an opportunity for international leaders and their Chinese colleagues to discuss issues of global importance.

“The World Economic Forum is celebrating 40 years of close cooperation with the People’s Republic of China. I am proud that we can celebrate this special year with a meeting that brings together leaders at the highest level from government, business and other sectors of society to advance global cooperation, particularly in the field of technology and science,” said Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. Source: https://www.weforum.org/press/2018/08/world-economic-forum-announces-record-participation-for-summer-davos

Follow the conversation using #AMNC18

#artitificialintelligence #IoT #blockchain #precisionmedicine #China

First — relax. You are not the only one asking yourself this kind of question. Social media and new technologies have transformed personal branding and made it part of our daily life. When Apple introduced the first front-facing camera in 2010 with the iPhone 4, nobody expected that the selfie trend would change our social life so much: a survey from Luster Premium White determined that young adults will take more than 25,000 pictures of themselves during their lifetimes. From such a huge quantity of pictures taken, how can you select the best picture to use on your social media? And what does it communicate?

Second — allow technology to help you.

Artificial intelligence can reveal the secrets behind your picture — and what people think about you.

I can just see your grimace. Artificial intelligence might seem something very complex and far from our daily life. But it’s not. So let’s take a step back. What is artificial intelligence, often abbreviated to AI? Professor Malone, founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, defines AI intuitively as “machines acting in ways that seem intelligent”. We use artificial intelligence every day when searching for information on Google or checking our Facebook wall — machines are working to deliver a better result, in line with our interests. So why shouldn’t we actively leverage AI in our daily life? How can AI help us to select our best picture and to boost our personal branding?

Three tips for using AI to boost your image:

1. Test. There are free computer vision APIs that you can use very easily.

I would recommend trying Amazon Web Service Image Rekognition; AWS is always at the top of the cloud business (source: RightScale 2018 State of the cloud report), so it’s a good idea to start your learning journey with the market leader.

You simply provide an image or video to the AWS Rekognition API, and the service can provide highly accurate facial analysis and facial recognition on images. You can detect, analyze, and compare faces for a wide variety of user verification, people-counting, and public safety uses.

I find the age estimation especially amusing. While far from accurate (of course, I look much younger than that!), it still gives you a good sense of what AI will read into your image; keep in mind that APIs are improving day by day, so they will be very accurate soon. Anyway, aren’t you interested to know the age estimate that the automated HR machine screening your CV for your dream job will assign you?

2. Focus. The rules of marketing don’t change, but are just amplified by AI.

Think about your audience. Think about the environment you are in. A picture with your trendy flipflops at the beach might not be the best profile picture for LinkedIn. What are the three top messages that you would like your LinkedIn picture to communicate?

Google Cloud Vision API provides powerful image analytic capabilities as easy-to-use APIs, and it can detect and extract information about entities within an image across a broad range of categories. Google has a function called “Label Detection” that helps you to objectively understand what the main take-aways are from looking at your picture.

3. Be yourself. “There is only one you for all time. Fearlessly be yourself,” as Anthony Rapp said.

Be yourself, and be yourself consistently. If you think of yourself as a brand, it’s crucial that people recognize a branded product easily. How quickly do you recognize the iconic Coca-Cola bottle shape? How quickly will a hurried Instagram user recognize your face while scanning his stories?

You can use CompareFaces API from AWS, which compares the new image and the reference image, returning you a similarity score.

These are just some first easy examples of what AI can do to help you select your best pictures for your social media, but that’s just the beginning.

Are you curious to find out what artificial intelligence thinks of your profile picture?

Leave a comment below or send me a private message; I’ll select three contacts to run computer vision APIs on your personal picture.

About the Author: Giulia Zanzi is passionate about combining IoT and mobile technologies with science to improve people’s lives. As Head of Marketing Fertility in Swiss Precision Diagnostics, a Procter & Gamble JV, she led the launch of the first Connected Ovulation Test System that helps women to get pregnant faster by detecting two hormones and syncing with their phone. A former member of theEuropean Youth Parliament, Giulia is currently serving on the Advisory Council of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers and she is a Lean InPartner Champion. Giulia graduated with honors at Bocconi University in Milan and holds a Masters at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Users are progressively asking for more detailed data about their files and uploads: which API do you use to integrate powerful image and video analysis into your app?

Here I am trying Amazon Rekognition: it can identify the objects, people, text, scenes, and activities, as well as detect any inappropriate content. Amazon Rekognition also provides highly accurate facial analysis and facial recognition.

With the facial analysis, you can analyze the attributes of faces in images and videos to determine things like happiness, age range, eyes open, glasses, facial hair The AI landscape is taking off, and with it we see up and comers like Clarifai and Imagga, as well as tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services. It feels like there is a newcomer every few days, and competition is good!

Which tool are you using? My next article is about image tagging and image analysis. Let me know what you are using, pros and cons!

#AI #ImageAnalysis #ComputerVision #MachineLearning

To learn more about AWS Rekognition: https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/

About the Author: Giulia Zanzi is passionate about combining IoT and mobile technologies with science to improve people’s lives. As Head of Marketing Fertility in Swiss Precision Diagnostics, a Procter & Gamble JV, she led the launch of the first Connected Ovulation Test System that helps women to get pregnant faster by detecting two hormones and syncing with their phone. A former member of theEuropean Youth Parliament, Giulia is currently serving on the Advisory Council of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers and she is a Lean In Partner Champion. Giulia graduated with honors at Bocconi University in Milan and holds a Masters at Fudan University in Shanghai.

During this year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, I had the privilege of spending one week with the world leaders in business, government and civil society, discussing predictions about technology and politics. Three months after that intense week spent in the Magic Mountains, now that the snow is melting, have those predictions become reality?

The coverage of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum 2018 was dominated by tech and innovation, in addition to Mr. Trump’s attendance, of course. Tech issues dominated the scene and the discussion both on social media (source: Brunswick Insight) and at the event. The conference’s agenda is a roadmap to key digital transformation technologies empowering the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, a disruptive economic and societal concept introduced at the event in 2013, predicated on the confluence of physical, digital and virtual technologies. Five years later, the embracing of digital transformation, Artificial Intelligence and blockchain were among the most discussed topics in Davos.

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is the new technological frontier over which companies and countries are vying for control, especially the US and China. According to the latest report from McKinsey, Google’s parent company Alphabet invested roughly $30 billion in developing AI technologies. Baidu, the Chinese search giant, invested $20 billion in AI.

AI has been on the scene for many years, and it’s now evolving so fast that it is going to change our lives. Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai compared artificial intelligence to the discovery of electricity or the mastery of fire, describing it as “probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on.” “Even more than fire, as steam AI will act as a multiplier of human work,” reinforced Christian Lanng, CEO at Tradeshift. The role of AI to leverage the power of data is key. For me it was an honor to be part of the panel for the SOLVER Series in Davos to discuss data for healthcare. With Kees Aarts, Beth Weesner and Olivier Ouiller we discussed how data from different businesses can be used to better serve people’s lives and revolutionize preventive tech. AI combined with IoT will change the rules of the game completely.

Davos 2018 Prediction: Artificial Intelligence & Tech Geopolitics

The most mentioned business leader was George Soros, the investor and chairman of Soros Fund Management, who made headlines with his speech about tech geopolitics. “It is only a matter of time before the global dominance of the US IT monopolies is broken. Davos is a good place to announce that their days are numbered,” predicted Mr. Soros, as tech giants “are poised to dominate the new growth areas that artificial intelligence is opening up.”

Three Months Later: Reality

China has taken the crown in AI funding, overtaking the US: a Chinese facial recognition surveillance company is now the world’s most valuable AI startup. In April 2018, SenseTime Group has raised funding from Alibaba and other investors at a valuation of more than $3 billion, becoming the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence startup. “In China there is an advantage in areas like facial recognition because of the privacy that exists in the U.S. and elsewhere in the EU, and some of the very best facial recognition technology in the world that I’ve seen is in China,” said Breyer Capital founder Jim Breyer, an indirect investor in SenseTime through IDG.

2. Blockchain & Crypto

Everything this year in Davos was about cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin. While in 2017 the event organized by WISeKey on “Blockchain and the Internet of Value” was an exclusive meeting with 300 delegates where the leading Blockchain expert Don Tapscott presented his book Blockchain Revolution, this year Carlos Creus Moreira, founder and CEO of WISeKey, was assaulted by a huge crowd in Davos. And blockchain came up in one panel discussion after the next. Everyone was excited about blockchain technology, naturally. And even more so about Bitcoin. Bitcoin value is ten times the value of the previous year, so this is not a surprise. What is behind Bitcoin and other crypto? Blockchain is a shared ledger technology that powers cryptocurrencies but also allows encrypted data on anything from money to medical records to be shared between companies, people and institutions. This protects data from fraud while instantly updating all parties concerned. There is an incredible number of businesses outside of cryptocurrencies that are leveraging blockchain and that will change the way we work dramatically.

Davos 2018 Prediction: Blockchain & Crypto

While the potential of blockchain, the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies, was praised, bitcoin got slammed. “Bitcoin is a fraud,” a statement made by Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, raised many discussions, and in Davos he stated, “Cryptocurrency: it’s not my interest.” “There is no intrinsic value for something like bitcoin so it’s not really an asset one can analyze. It’s just essentially speculative or gambling,” reinforced Stephen Poloz, the governor of the Bank of Canada.

Three Months Later: Reality

We all know that after Bitcoin almost hit 20,000 USD in December 2017, it had a big drop, and the decline continued after Davos: the BTC-USD rollercoaster is now between 7,000 and 9,000 USD.

Orbis Research has just released its new report, “Blockchain Technology Market Forecasts, 2017–2025”: the blockchain technology market, valued at approximately USD 350 million in 2016, is anticipated to reach up to USD 10.5 billion, growing at a lucrative rate of more than 50% over the forecast period 2017–2025. The market’s growth is attributed to the increasing penetration of cryptocurrency and ICO, and to the growing adoption rate of blockchain-as-a-service, blockchain to enable faster transactions. Moreover, the rising rate at which the blockchain technology is being adopted for payments, smart contracts and digital identities is creating significant opportunities for the global blockchain technology market.

The bottom line? Blockchain and crypto can no longer be ignored. Banks are calling on regulators to tackle the new crypto-markets such as ICOs quickly. “We can’t deny that things are changing,” says Benoit Legrand, chief innovation officer at Dutch bank ING. “The world will include cryptocurrencies in the way we work in the next ten years.”

Conclusions

Three months after the event, the big Davos predictions about AI and blockchain have not only been realized but have also become exponential We still don’t know how the future will look, what will work or how it will work. But there is no doubt that everyone is rushing to get ready for this evolution. Companies, sectors and countries are running a critical race to invest and discover the best technologies to leverage AI and blockchain. The time is now.

What were your Prediction? Have they become reality? Comment below with your perspective or connect with me here

About the Author: Giulia Zanzi is passionate about combining IoT and mobile technologies with science to improve people’s lives. As Head of Marketing Fertility in Swiss Precision Diagnostics, a Procter & Gamble JV, she led the launch of the first Connected Ovulation Test System that helps women to get pregnant faster by detecting two hormones and syncing with their phone. A former member of the European Youth Parliament, Giulia is currently serving on the Advisory Council of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers and she is a Lean In Partner Champion. Giulia graduated with honors at Bocconi University in Milan and holds a Masters at Fudan University in Shanghai.