Davos 2024: Hard Power of AI | World Economic Forum
From diplomacy to defence, AI is markedly changing geopolitics. Shifts in data ownership and infrastructure will transform some stakeholders while elevating others, reshaping sovereignty and influence. How is the landscape evolving, and what does it mean for the existing international architecture?
This is the full audio from a session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024. Watch it here.
Speakers:
- Nick Clegg, President, Global Affairs, Meta Platforms Inc.
- Mustafa Suleyman, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Inflection AI, Inc.
- Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach, Government of Ireland
- Karoline Edtstadler, Federal Minister for the European Union and Constitution, Federal Chancellery of Austria
- Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director, World Economic Forum
- Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine
- Andrew R. Sorkin, Editor-at-Large; Columnist, The New York Times Company
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Podcast transcript
This transcript has been generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio.
Andrew Sorkin:
Good afternoon and evening everybody. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin. Thank you so much for joining us. We are going to have a conversation. I think one of the most important that's happening here in Davos. Not just about AI – which you've been hearing a lot about over the past several days – but really the geopolitics and the implications, for nation states, for regulation, for what this all looks like when it comes to defence and so much more. And we have such a great group and we want to make this as interactive a conversation as we can as well. Sitting next to me, the Prime Minister Leo Varadkar of Ireland is with us.
Next to him, Karoline Edstadler, Austrian Minister for the EU and Constitutional Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. And we're going to get into AI and its role in the war there. I also want to point out that next to him is Nick Clegg from Meta, a former politician. I want to talk to him about sitting on both sides of this discussion. And then finally, Mustafa Suleyman is here.
He's a co-founder and chief executive of Inflection AI. He's also the co-founder of DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014 and really one of the earliest innovators in the AI space. So thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to go to Nick, if I could first, because as I said to you, as I said at the beginning, you've sat on both sides of this discussion, being a politician and thinking about technology and its impact on society, its impact on the state, if you will. And now you are sitting in the role of corporation and business and I think a lot of people oftentimes now look at businesses as nation states unto themselves. And so I'm curious, sitting where you sit today and also looking at how, the conversation about social media frankly, where you work now and your speciality. For many years, people say, could this be regulated? What's its impact going to be on the nation state, elections, defence – all of these issues? Can government ever keep up with business?
