The Tortoise AI Summit

8:00 – 8:45 GMT

AI & solving the big issues: pandemics, climate change, and inequality

Artificial intelligence has been represented as a possible solution to many of the emergencies facing our society today. From the development of a vaccine for COVID-19, to effectively tackling climate change – are we right to view AI in this way? Or does this type of thinking compound a bigger problem – our tendency to regard technology as a magic bullet?

9:00 – 9:45 GMT

AI as a national strategy: will the race continue as before?

The global ‘race for AI’ is likely to continue even after the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided. But will the crisis see a move away from zero-sum competition between big AI players and stimulate wider global cooperation on AI research? The traditional champions of AI development in Europe are pooling resources, and yet the relationship between the US and China has never looked more strained. What is happening to AI as a national strategy and how have recent events shaken the world order?

10:00 – 10:45 GMT

AI: privacy versus safety

The global pandemic has incentivised governments to prioritise data tracking over personal privacy as they seek to contain the virus. Traditionally privacy-fixated countries like Britain, Germany and The Netherlands are using tracking mechanisms or apps to check on social distancing and analyse the spread of infection. Have such techniques gone too far? Millions of individuals are now being surveilled for the purposes of containment – is the use of this system open-ended, and how may it be repurposed in future?

11:00 – 11:45 GMT

The business reset: AI’s role in the recovery

Will automation and the movement towards robotics accelerate as a consequence of the COVID-19 outbreak? As companies move towards more efficient and less labour-intensive work, is there empirical evidence in the flow of investment to show that a new way of working emerging – a new normal driven by AI?

13:00 – 13:45 GMT

The New World Order after COVID-19

The pandemic is likely to cause a reshuffling of many global systems. Everything from immigration and supply chains, to knowledge sharing and privacy is in question. This may have major implications for diplomacy and technology like artificial intelligence. How might the geopolitical structure crystalize as the COVID-19 crisis eases?

Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize winning author, in conversation with James Harding

14:00 – 14:45 GMT

Sovereignty & surveillance

A vast and frighteningly obscure system has engulfed the citizen in today’s digital economies. The use of personal data is central to the working of this whole new form of capitalism; and the threat it poses to our privacy may be the single most considerable issue of our age.

In The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Shoshana Zuboff illuminates the darkness shrouding an economic system in which people and their data are neither client nor product; but raw material.

What role might artificial intelligence play in this system, or the fight for a future where human dignity comes before profit-seeking interests?

Shoshana Zuboff in conversation with James Harding.