Annual Meeting 2024: What just happened in Davos?

Fareed Zakaria, host, GPS, CNN: Alright. This is the panel people have been waiting for.

Robin Pomeroy, host, Radio Davos: Welcome to Radio Davos, the podcast from the World Economic Forum that looks at the biggest challenges and how we might solve them. This week: days after the Annual Meeting we ask: what just happened in Davos?

Fareed Zakaria: We are going to try to solve the problem of AI in this panel. We have 45 minutes.

Robin Pomeroy: Yes, AI was on everyone's lips - and everyone wanted to hear from pioneers like Sam Altman.

Sam Altman, Chief Executive Officer, OpenAI: We are going to have better tools. We've had better tools before. I admit it does feel different this time.

Robin Pomeroy: There was a lot of talk, sure, but how did Davos change the world?

Ajay Banga, President, World Bank: Equally important, if not even more important, is measuring the outcome, the impact.

Robin Pomeroy: For the Forum, Davos is the culmination of impactful work going on around the year. I ask Forum leaders: just what was the impact of Davos 2024.

Jeff Merritt, Head, Centre for Urban Transformation, World Economic Forum: This event is more than just a convening. It's a way in which we commit to doing real, tangible action on the ground.

Kiva Allgood, Head, Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains, World Economic Forum: This week at the Annual Meeting, we've got strong commitment from some of the largest CEOs to help small, medium sized enterprises reduce their scope 3 emissions.

Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director, World Economic Forum: We've had dozens of amazing impacts. Our Edison Alliance initiative for digital inclusion in health care, education and connectivity. We initially set a goal of a billion by 2025, we're on track to meet that at some point during 2024.

Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director, World Economic Forum: There are 20 countries that are now building lifelong learning systems. And that's really going to be the lasting legacy of this work.

Robin Pomeroy: Subscribe to Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts or visit wef.ch/podcasts, where you will also find our sister programmes, Meet the Leader and Agenda Dialogues.

I’m Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum, and with this look of the impacts of Davos 2024.

Jane Goodall, Founder, Jane Goodall Institute; United Nations Messenger of Peace: Once you are empowered to take action, there's no stopping you.

Robin Pomeroy: This is Radio Davos.

That was the Annual Meeting 2024. It started with an opening concert featuring Angelique Kidjo, and ended after countless discussions between some of the world's best minds and most influential figures on the biggest issues we face: the economy, jobs, inequality, war, climate change, health, technology. The list goes on.

But is the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting just a big talking shop, or does it have tangible impact?

What you may not know is that the Forum is not just a week of frantic activity at the start of each year in the Swiss Alps - in fact my colleagues work throughout the year on projects in all those sectors I just mentioned, aimed at making a difference. And in this episode I speak to the heads of the Forum's many Centres to see what impact they felt Davos had this year.

You'll also hear clips from some of the most impactful discussions - they are still available to watch in full on our website, and also on the podcast Agenda Dialogues.

As artificial intelligence was perhaps the most discussed issue this year, let's start with the Forum's Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, to see how the global conversation, and action, on artificial intelligence moved forward in Davos.

Cathy Li: Cathy Li, Head of AI, Data and Metaverse, World Economic Forum.

I'm really, really proud of the presence of all of the key AI voices. But, at the same time also the key debates and the outcomes as well.

We did cover from the technology itself, the latest breakthroughs in the technology to AI's impact on the economy. How does it transform industry sectors and job markets, to how do we regulate and govern the technology and its applications, as well as the geopolitical implications brought by AI such as national security, diplomacy, and many other international fronts.

We also covered a very important aspect which is the access to AI models and data and applications and how do we ensure that we don't further exacerbate the digital divide that's been existing for a long time.

There's also key debates, around the near term risks versus long term, and, again, how do we put the guardrails in place to make sure that we cover the risks from both.

I would encourage as much discussion as possible, but very importantly, among a very diverse community of opinions. Because only by doing that, we will be able to understand the technology better, not only among the general public, among the policymakers as well.

Fareed Zakaria, Host, GPS, CNN: Alright. This is the panel people have been waiting for.

We are going to try to solve the problem of AI in this panel. We have 45 minutes. Henry Kissinger used to say, people who need no introduction crave it the most. So I'm going to abandon that rule. I think nobody here needs an introduction. You know who they all are and I'm going to assume none of them particularly care.

Let me start with you, Sam. I think most people are worried about two, kind of, opposite things about AI. One is it's going to end humankind as we know it, and the other is why can't it drive my car?

Where do you think realistically we are with artificial intelligence right now? For you, what are the things it can do most effectively? And what are the things we need to understand that it cannot do?

Sam Altman, Chief Executive Officer, OpenAI: I think a very good sign about this new tool is that even with its very limited current capability and its very deep flaws, people are finding ways to use it for great productivity gains or other gains and understand the limitations.

So, a system that is sometimes right, sometimes creative and often totally wrong, you actually don't want that to drive your car, but you're happy for it to help you brainstorm what to write about or help you with code that you get to check.

Fareed Zakaria: Help us understand why can't it drive my car.

Sam Altman: Well there are great self-driving car systems but like at this point, you know, Waymo is around San Francisco and there are a lot of them and people love them. What I meant is like the sort of OpenAI-style of model, which is good at some things but not good at sort of a life-and-death situation.

But, I think people understand tools and the limitations of tools more than we often give them credit for. And people have found ways to make ChatGPT super useful to them and understand what not to use it for, for the most part.

So I think it's a very good sign that even at these systems' current extremely limited capability levels, you know, much worse than what we'll have this year, to say nothing of what we'll have next year, lots of people have found ways to get value out of them and also to understand their limitations.

So, you know, I think AI has been somewhat demystified, because people really use it now and that's, I think always the best way to pull the world forward with a new technology.

Fareed Zakaria: I want to hear from you what you think, what do you think is left for a human being to do? If the AI can out-analyze a human being, what's the core competence of human beings?

Sam Altman: I think there will be a lot of things. Humans really care about what other humans think, that seems very deeply wired into us.

So chess was one of the first like victims of AI, right? Deep Blue could beat Kasparov whenever that was, a long time ago, and all of the commentators said this is the end of chess. Now that a computer can beat the human, no one's going to bother to watch chess again or play chess again. It’s over.

Chess is, I think, never been more popular than it is right now. And if you cheat with AI, that's a big deal. No one, or almost no one, watches two AIs play each other. We're very interested in what humans do.

When I read a book that I love, the first thing I do when I finish is I want to know everything about the author's life and I want to feel some connection to the person that made this thing that resonated with me.

And, you know, same thing for many other products. Humans know what other humans want very well. Humans are also very interested in other people. I think humans are, we are going to have better tools. We've had better tools before, but we're still very focused on each other and I think we will do things with better tools. And I admit it does feel different this time.

Robin Pomeroy: Sam Altman, if you hadn't guessed, CEO of OpenAI, the company that brought you, a little over a year ago, ChatGPT. He was talking to CNN's Fareed Zakaria in a Davos session called Technology in a Turbulent World. Before him you heard Cathy Li, who heads AI work at the Forum's Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. That Centre is run by our next speaker.

Jeremy Jurgens: Jeremy Jurgens, managing director at the World Economic Forum.

We've had dozens of amazing impacts. But maybe I could just highlight the three that were particularly special for me.

First is we've continued to make progress on our Edison Alliance initiative to improve the lives of 1 billion people through improving their digital inclusion and health care, education and connectivity. And we're making good progress now with over 700 million lives touched, across 330 projects in more than 127 countries. And so while we initially set a goal of a billion by 2025, I think we're on track to meet that at some point during 2024. So it's really just great to see that kind of progress.

Also in the digital space, we had the opportunity to welcome new members into our network of Fourth Industrial Revolution Centres, making agreements with the government of Germany, where we’ll work together on GovTech; with, Vietnam, where we'll be working on AI in manufacturing; and, as well, with Qatar, where we'll also be looking at how to extend the benefits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to citizens in each of those countries and sharing, exchanging best practices.

And maybe the third area, which is more in the launch stage, is something new. We've put together an initiative on women's health. Studies show that by 2050, we could have $1 trillion impact on the economy - a 1.7% improvement in global GDP - if we just did some basic measures to improve quality of health care for women. And so we'll be kicking that off and looking forward to making progress on this initiative during the course of the year and reporting back in the years to come.

Robin Pomeroy: We'll be hearing a bit more about that in a moment. On the EDISON Alliance, that Jeremy Jurgens just mentioned, you can read an Impact Report, published during Davos, on its work which is finding ways to close the so-called digital divide and bring the benefits of technology to more people around the world.

The Forum’s Centre for Nature and Climate has a huge challenge: finding ways to bring together businesses and government to seek solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises. They had a busy week. Here’s the Centre's Jack Hurd.

Jack Hurd: My name is Jack Hurd. I am co-head of the nature pillar within the Centre for Nature and Climate here at the Forum.

One of the things that's been going on this week is the continuation of a whole number of conversations, going back last month to the climate conference in Dubai. And the thing that's been most powerful is the discussion of money, the financing for things that need to be done under nature and climate.

And I'll just give a couple of examples of how this has come through over the last little bit of time.

The other day, we had a centre plenary session for Centre for Nature and Climate, and it involved Ajay Banga, who's the president of the World Bank, and Kristalina Georgieva, who's the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. You had these two big global organizations talking specifically about how they need to change and alter their strategies to start driving resources to a low emission future, the conservation and protection of nature, and adaptation to climate change. That's a really important thing because tha doesn't often happen.

Robin Pomeroy: So let’s hear from World Bank chief Ajay Banga then. Here he is, in conversation with Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab, saying that the Bank is paying ever more attention to the challenge of climate change. In the interview - which you can hear in full on our sister podcast Agenda Dialogues, Ajay Banga says he views the Bank’s mission as tackling a ‘triangle’ of challenges: inequality, and poverty; humanity’s impact on nature; and the big political dilemma: the tradeoff between long term and short term goals.

Ajay Banga, President, World Bank: One of the challenges in the World Bank is that we have been focused over the years, for good reason, on input, as in projects and lending and dollars applied. And those are important. But I think equally important, if not even more important, is measuring the outcome, the impact of those projects and dollars in terms of how many girls went to school, how many people got a better job because of a skilling institute that we invested in, how many tonnes of carbon emissions we avoided because of certain things we funded, how many private sector dollars we crowded in, along with our own capital, in a project to help drive impact.

And I think measuring impact is really important. We are changing the entire Corporate Scorecard of the World Bank to focus a great deal on these measurements of impact along the dimensions of that triangle in terms of both quality of life, in terms of inclusiveness and driving against inequality, but also in the case of climate and nature, and doing so with long-term thinking.

Robin Pomeroy: World Bank chief Ajay Banga at Davos 2024. His counterpart at the International Monetary Fund was also there, another important figure in the fight against climate change. Here’s the Forum’s Jack Hurd again:

Jack Hurd: The second thing that happened was a pretty robust set of discussions in a few sessions around subsidies, fossil fuel subsidies in particular, which, according to the IMF, come out at about $7 trillion USD a year. Now look, every country is permitted to subsidize what is important to achieve certain policy objectives. But with the phasing out of fossil fuels, or the transition away from fossil fuels, being a stated imperative, we now have the opportunity to retool that subsidy regime in many countries around the world.

Robin Pomeroy: The IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva was in Davos, and you can hear an exclusive interview with her on our sister podcast Meet the Leader - coming soon. Here she is speaking at a session in Davos about the importance for all leaders to prioritise action on climate change:

Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund: For all these leaders. I have one advice. Get your kids, and especially your grandchildren, if you have some, on your phone, put their picture there. And when you don't know what is the right thing to do, look at them and it'll come. It always comes to me and I know it comes to Ajay. We have a responsibility to be stewards of our beautiful small planet's future. Because this is the home for the future generations. We have to pass it to them the way we inherited it from our parents.

Robin Pomeroy: Staying with climate, we are learning more about the impacts of climate change on health - an issue tackled by the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Health and Healthcare.

Shyam Bishen: Hi, this is Shyam Bishen and I head up the center for Health and Healthcare at the World Economic Forum.

We highlighted some of the key challenges on the health and healthcare side. One is on the climate and health side, where we brought in multi-stakeholder panelists from industry, from the public sector - the minister of health from Brazil, who's leading G20 health agenda, was there - to highlight the impact of climate change on human health, looking at some of the adaptation and preparedness strategies.

Robin Pomeroy: You can hear the Brazilian health minister on a session called When Climate Impacts Your Health - she spoke in Portuguese, so for the sake of this podcast, let’s hear what another speaker on that panel had to say. This is Vanessa Kerry, ​​CEO of Seed Global Health, a non-profit that helps provide nursing and medical training support in poorer countries.

Vanessa Kerry, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Seed Global Health: The climate crisis is a health crisis fundamentally, and that actually means it is a crisis, therefore, also of our stability, our security, our economic growth and our fundamental future as a globe. When we think about it, health is fundamental to everything that we are trying to do.

This is not a future problem though. We always talk in future numbers. This is a problem happening here and now, today. 2023 was an apocalyptic year in terms of extreme weather events. And what we've seen happen that is about to get worse. We are on a target now for 2.4°C. Optimistically, if we come out of COP and we hold it, we could stay a little bit lower.

But we're really at a crisis and it's going to come down to two things. We have to phase out fossil fuels, because this is a crisis of burning fossil fuels, and we have to mobilise more money, not only to the mitigation, but to the adaptation and the resilience so we can offset what is happening and protect communities.

Robin Pomeroy: You can read the Forum’s report called Quantifying the Impact of Climate Change on Human Health on our website.

Here’s Shyam Bishen again, the head of Health at the World Economic Forum, on that Women’s Health Initiative that Jeremy Jurgens mentioned earlier.

Shyam Bishen: We just launched a Global Alliance for Women's Health, in collaboration with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which again, has representation from governments from G20 as well as from private sector. So this work will go on throughout the year. It's a three year long, initiative. So we come to Davos to highlight, to amplify our work, to get, public perspective, and feedback. But then we continue, working on the initiative, throughout the year.

Paula Bellostas Muguerza, Senior Partner and Europe Co-Lead, Health, Kearney: It is a reality that is just not a North reality or South or East or West or developing or developed. It is a global problem and is one that urgently and deliberately needs to be addressed.

And we see three themes. The first one starts with biology. We do not understand female biology as well as we do that of men. And that is not only on what traditionally has been understood as women's health. So reproductive health systems in, for example, endometriosis, which is a disease that affects 10% of women of reproductive age. Yet it doesn't see the level of investment or interest in finding a diagnostic or finding a cure.

This leads me to my second point that is an economic argument. We're not understanding it, the biology, because we're not investing in it. And it is not just about the investment in research and development of these conditions. It's also the investment, for example, in technology where we see digital health being a real area for investment from the private equity community, the VC community. But only 3% of that investment is going into what we know as Femtech.

Robin Pomeroy: That was from a press conference about women's health. You heard Paula Bellostas Muguerza, Senior Partner and Europe Co-Lead, Health, at the consultancy Kearney. The press conference was called Redesigning Healthcare with Women in Mind - you can see the whole thing on our website.

Another Forum Centre working to improve the lives of women around the world is the Centre for the New Economy and Society which published the annual Gender Gap Report. They also publish the Global Risks Report which came out just before the Annual Meeting and set the agenda for many of the discussions - we dived into that on Radio Davos - please check out that episode from a couple of weeks ago.

At the end of the Davos week, I asked Forum Managing Director Saadia Zahidi who heads that centre to pick some of her highlights from this Annual Meeting

Saadia Zahidi: Saadia Zahidi, I’m a managing director heading the Centre for the New Economy and Society.

For me, it falls into three categories. The first is really the outlook around the economy and around the risks that we face. So one thing is simply having a good radar, and that's what we did with our Chief Economists Outlook, with our Global Risks Report, and that provided a good backdrop to understand what the uncertainties are, what are the reasons behind them and what might be some of the scenarios moving forward.

But a second element within that category was our Future of Growth initiative. That's a two year campaign that's going to bring together policymakers, economists and some business leaders to try to unpack this whole topic of how do we look beyond GDP. We say we want to look beyond GDP, but we don't actually do that. And so we've provided this Future of Growth framework that brings together GDP along with metrics on inclusion, sustainability, resilience and innovation. And now we're going to work with about 15 countries to try to see what does that look like when you localise some of those learnings.

The second big area is around human capital, and that's where we have two avenues of work.

One is around really the development of human capital. So education, skills learning, how do we do all of that much better, much faster. And I'm happy to report that the Reskilling Revolution initiative that we started four years ago announced this week that over 680 million people have been reached against a target of a billion by 2030. But more importantly, there are 20 countries that are now building lifelong learning systems. And that's really going to be the lasting legacy of this work.

On the other angle of that is around jobs. So we know jobs are going to get disrupted. Our data, a lot of other data that was presented here, showed that. But there's an opportunity for both automation as well as augmentation. And so how do we actually create the right incentives for augmentation and for augmentation to be done. Well, especially in an age of AI? There's a lot to unpack there.

So this is not only about protecting certain jobs. This is about trying to figure out how do we get people to work alongside technology in very different ways than they have in the past, and that can only be good for all of us, because it's going to improve our productivity and perhaps make all of us a lot richer in terms of the leisure time that we have.

Robin Pomeroy: Yes, AI again - let’s hear from a session that Saadia hosted at the Annual Meeting called Thinking through Augmentation. This is Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of the UNI Global Union which represents more than 20 million workers in the services sectors in 150 countries.

Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of the UNI Global Union: So I represent workers across service industries, including, ranging from professional athletes on one side to, you know, caregivers and cleaners on the other, but also including finance, IT and call centres.

You know, everybody's afraid, what does this mean for me? The reality is some sectors are going to be way more heavily, as you pointed out, call centres, that's the big one where there's already been LLMs in use for a few years. So we have some data to look at.

And then on the other side, in the media industry, we've seen two strikes this year, over like getting the right to negotiate guardrails around the use of their images and their writing. So I think in the creatives, there's a lot of fear and they're taking steps to address that through bargaining.

But, in the other industries, I think there's a mix of this could be great. Some of the evidence coming out of call centres, for example, is, yeah, this makes our job easier and better. The other hand, we need the opportunity to sit down and negotiate with the employer to make sure it's fairly implemented, to make sure we get our fair benefit from it. Not all the gains flow to the business, that, you know, it's fair and and that some of the risks are mitigated, including job security.

I would say if two year, ten year horizon, I think it will be more gradual than what people are fearing right now and that, you know, we've seen some of these big transitions in bank for bank workers, for example, where many jobs have been eliminated over decades.

And it's been done in a way, at least, where there are unions, which is respectful of, you know, managing through attrition and early retirement and so on. So I don't think it necessarily means a huge displace, just an adjustment.

Robin Pomeroy: Just an adjustment. Well, it could be a big adjustment for some of us. Read more on this issue in the Forum's annual Future of Jobs Report. The last one came out last May, but it's a great one to look out for. That's produced by the centre for the New Economy and Society, which is headed by Saadia. Here she is again.

Saadia Zahidi: Now, the third big area is around equity, and that's where we had a couple of different tracks. So a big focus on gender equality. We launched this week the Gender Parity Sprint. Now every year we say that it's going to take 100-plus years to get to gender equality through some of our data. And we said, well, how do we actually skip ahead? How do we get there in six years? How do we get to 50-50 by 2030? That's what this big effort does around the Gender Parity Sprint.

A second big area is around the equitable transition. So we know much like the digital transition, the green transition and all of the focus on sustainability will disrupt jobs across various sectors. It's going to create wholly new ones.

And the outlook is net positive, but it's also going to lead to a decline in certain types of jobs. And some of those people will need a serious, concerted effort to get that reskilling and upskilling done. But also it will have an impact on the affordability of services in the short term. And so if we take the consumer into account, if we take entrepreneurs into account, if we take employees into account across all of the key sectors that will be going through a green transition, how do we get that done? And we launched the Equitable Transition Alliance here this week. And that's exactly what that group is going to focus on.

Robin Pomeroy: Find out more about the gender parity sprint and the Equitable Transition Alliance on our website. Let’s hear something more on gender parity from Davos, speaking at a session called The World in Numbers: Gender Parity, this is former Spanish foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez.

Arancha Gonzalez, Dean, The Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po: No, we are not making this world more equal. We are moving in the direction of making it more unequal. So we've got a problem.

We should not make this an issue of women against men or men against women, because this is not how we will be able to advance. We've got to be very clear that it's men and women advancing together, that it's not a zero sum game, that we will be making business more profitable, that we will make the administration more solid, that we will make the government more responsive.

It's an endeavour of men and women working together, but with better parity.

Robin Pomeroy: Arancha Gonzalez, Dean of The Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po.

On now to another part of the Forum - Advanced Manufacturing.

Kiva Allgood: Kiva Allgood, and I am the head of Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains for the World Economic Forum.

This week, we had a lot of really good discussions around net zero and specifically scope 3. So for those that don't know what scope 3 means, it's basically everything in your supply chain upstream and down. So it's how consumers use your products. So recycling things and it's also how your suppliers manufacture your components.

And the reason why that's important is because that's the biggest driver of greenhouse gases. It's also one of the most complex spaces to really attack.

And this week at the annual meeting, super excited because we've got strong commitment from some of the largest CEOs to really go after and partner to help small, medium sized enterprises reduce their scope 3 emissions.

Robin Pomeroy: Let’s hear from one company working in an emissions-intensive industry - cement. Holcim is certainly not a small or medium sized company, but as one of the world’s biggest cement makers, it is working on decarbonisation and recycling.

Nollaig Forrest, Chief Sustainability Officer, Holcim: Our whole adventure started in Zurich, actually, because the public authorities made it mandatory to recycle at least 20% of materials in all of their public works.

So our research teams had to figure out, okay, how do I put 20% recycled content in cement and concrete? And that's what gave us the platform to get going on this.

And we produced the world's very first cement, that was four years ago, with 20% recycled construction demolition materials inside.

And we realised that by doing this, actually, we're taking the concrete at its end of life. And if we process it and crush it down to its most finest level, we can actually recuperate the cement paste and it becomes a decarbonised raw material in the formulation of new cement.

So today we can basically take the demolition, we recuperate the cement paste to actually reduce 40% of the footprint of new cement. That's a pretty significant breakthrough.

So by doing this, we can literally take old buildings and reduce the footprint of the next generation of buildings by basically having this closed loop system.

But what we can to scale this up, our vision is in every single metropolitan area where we operate, we want to make circular construction happen.

Robin Pomeroy: Nollaig Forrest, Chief Sustainability Officer of cement maker Holcim, speaking at a session called The Right Stuff – A New Relationship with Materials.

Also on that session was Jeff Merritt, head of the Forum’s Centre for Urban Transformation which works to improve cities and the lives of people who live in them. Jeff told me about the impact of one project that he had been working on over the last year.

Jeff Merritt: I'm Jeff Merritt, I'm the head of Urban Transformation here at the World Economic Forum and I'm a member of our executive committee.

Last year at Davos, we announced something, that now we call Yes San Francisco or Yes SF. And it was the idea, could we work together in our hometown, San Francisco, to help to revitalize the downtown, to help diversify the economy and bring back that vibrant downtown?

And it's pretty remarkable in some ways that we're here one year later after just an idea. And not only can we say that, you know, we have worked closely with the mayor's office, the Chamber of Commerce, and brought startups that are now setting up in downtown San Francisco, deploying state of the art sustainability solutions in the city. But now also our partners are doubling down on that commitment, and we're going to be taking that model and seeing how we can replicate that in cities around the world.

And so this event is in so many ways more than just a convening. It's a way in which we come together, it's a way in which we commit to doing real, tangible action on the ground.

Robin Pomeroy: Another part of the Forum working to impact people’s lives for the better is the Centre for Financial and Monetary Systems. Let’s hear from its head, Matthew Blake, on an initiative to help people plan financially for a longer life.

Matthew Blake: My name is Matthew Blake. I run the Centre for Financial and Monetary Systems here at the World Economic Forum.

We had an amazing week here, with the team. I think one piece that we're very proud of and where we went live to a public audience on a deliverable, was a set of six longevity principles that are grounded in making, strong and smart financial decisions over one's extended life period.

Now that we as human beings are living 15, 20 years longer than we did historically, that's especially true for generations that are being born today, how do you think about the financial consequences associated with that longer life as it relates to your goals as an individual, buying property, going to school, various other life moments, how do you finance those things?

And in addition to that, how do you finance a longer life in terms of health and community and so on?

So this is a vital issue. We've issued six principles in conjunction with Mercer. And 20 companies have endorsed those to integrate those principles into their business operations, actually, and how they think about longevity in the context of their corporate responsibility. And so we're extremely enthused and delighted to have that outcome.

Robin Pomeroy: You can read those Longevity Economy Principles on our website - links in the show notes.

Let’s take another look at tech. With artificial intelligence the most spoken about topic in Davos this year, one of the increased risks is in cybersecurity. Here’s the head of Interpol - an organisation with 196 member countries aiming to fight crime across borders. Jürgen Stock sets out the huge challenge from cyber crime:

Jürgen Stock, Secretary-General, Interpol: The global law enforcement community is struggling with the sheer volume of, let's say, cyber-related crimes or high-tech crime.

Perhaps we know something between 8 and 30% of all the cases have been reported to the police. All the rest is not reported to the police. So we only see the peak of the iceberg.

I mean, cyber criminals are organised in a very different way than the way that that I learned when I was young police officer, we were dealing with a typical, let's say, traditional kind of Mafia-style crime. So people knowing each other. So it's same geographical relation and so on and so on. So that that was the principle.

Now the key word today, we all know that, cybercrime as a service. So the criminals are organising themselves based on expertise and through the underground economy. They already know that their nicknames, they get a certain rating, a triple A, perhaps, if they are providing reliable services.

So this is the dynamic way in which they organise themselves. And you do not any longer need to be an expert. So even perhaps I, as a non-tech person and a lawyer, I could conduct a denial of service attack because the tools are available for little money in the underground economy. And AI as a service for criminals is already there.

So we all know these kind of deep fakes, these phishing mails, more sophisticated, business email compromised. And we have seen now the first cases of a kind of deep kidnapping where voices have been cloned and a family thought, oh, our daughter has been taken hostage, but it was a cloned voice at the end of the day.

So that gives us an an understanding what is coming up.

So AI drives also scale, sophistication and speed in terms of online crime. And the criminals are already there and we are running behind. And that is not a good position, not only for law enforcement, but for our communities and particularly the most vulnerable in our communities who might not have the resources to protect their their own systems.

Robin Pomeroy: Jürgen Stock, the head of Interpol, speaking at a session called How Can Cyber Defenders Win? So what can the World Economic Forum do in this area? Here’s our head of Cybersecurity.

Akshay Joshi: My name is Akshay Joshi. I lead the broader operations of the Centre for Cybersecurity here at the World Economic Forum.

So each year at Davos we launch our flagship report, the Global Cybersecurity Outlook. This year's outlook put the spotlight on cyber inequity. Now, cyber inequities, simply put, is the growing gap between organisations that are cyber resilient and those that are not. This is further exacerbated by the growing talent gap in cybersecurity, which is estimated at nearly 4 million cybersecurity professionals globally. The World Economic Forum's Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap initiative will launch a Strategic Cybersecurity Talent Framework this year, which will aim to help individuals enter and thrive in the cyber security workforce.

So, you know, all of 2023 we've been reading about AI, but in Davos, coming together, meeting with some of the world's biggest names in AI, and really having discussions about the infinite possibilities that AI has to offer. But at the same time, the importance of responsible approaches towards deployment was very enlightening indeed. As the Centre for Cybersecurity, we will be working together with the AI Governance Alliance to unlock some of the or uncover some of the key issues associated with cybersecurity as applied in the AI realm.

Robin Pomeroy: Akshay Joshi on the impacts the Forum is having in the fight against cyber crime.

From the threats posed by tech, now back to the opportunities - in this case for global trade. Here’s the Forum’s head of trade, looking ahead to impacts he expects this year:

Sean Doherty: I'm Sean Doherty. I'm head of Trade and Investment at the World Economic Forum.

I think the biggest shift has been in recognition that technology is really essential to making trade faster, cleaner, cheaper and more accessible.

One of the big things coming out of Davos is that next month the World Trade Organization will hold their 13th ministerial conference, and we'll be holding a big trade tech event alongside that, which is really focused on incubating new technology, accelerating new technology, and helping it be deployed to really make trade work better for everyone.

So it's really a broad range of things, from vehicle technology through to trade finance, through the management of information in the supply chain, really helping all the different parts of the trade chain work better together across multiple countries, multiple sectors.

I think my Davos moment this year was chairing a meeting of 20 executives talking about how their companies are responding to geopolitics very practically. And it was really a Davos moment because nowhere else, I think, would you have executives from so many different sectors and so many different parts of the world really, frankly, sharing the difficulties they face and how they're trying to overcome those difficulties and really look for opportunity in responding to the geopolitical changes.

Robin Pomeroy: The head of the World Trade Organization spoke at a session called No Recovery without Trade and Investment. It’s a great session that addresses economic nationalism, the diversification of supply chains, so-called friendshoring, and more. Here's the head of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization: We need to think of globalisation not in the way it was done before, but differently. And we need to make sure that those who did not benefit during the first round benefit this time.

The reason globalisation got a bad name is some poor people in rich countries were left out, and poor countries or developing countries were at the margin.

We don't want to repeat in the new paradigm the same story where in diversifying supply chains and rejigging the way we do business and building resilience, we leave out a set of countries at the margins.

So I must speak up for developing countries. We have to, we fortunately, we have a paradigm at the WTO that to help us do this. We believe very strongly that we can both diversify supply chains and build resilience.

We can diversify our supply chains, concentrate those sectors and geographies that are causing a problem by diversifying them also to developing countries, other parts of the world that have the right business environment.

And we are calling this re-globalisation. So you can, yes, inevitably you can reshore some, nearshore some. But please let us also diversify some supply chains, build them in developing countries, help to create jobs.

Robin Pomeroy: Energy now - a topic that impacts so many of the other things we have discussed in this episode - the economy, trade, climate. Here’s the head of energy at the Forum with his take on the week:

Roberto Bocca: Roberto Bocca, head of the Centre for Energy and Materials at the World Economic Forum.

We have three big, big themes. The first one was how we move forward with the business case and the economic case for the energy transition. The environmental case is very clear. But now we need to make things happen. We need to accelerate. And the business in economics is a critical one. That is first topic.

The second one is the element of addressing energy demand, how we can be more efficient in the way we use energy.

And the third element is the element of energy equity. There is no transition if there's not an equitable transition. And so we really had a lot of conversation between the so-called global South and global North to make sure there is not such a division, but we really focus on a transition that is for everyone.

We have announced here in Davos three additional industrial clusters, one in China, one in Europe and one in US, that are going forward with concrete action to, (a) decarbonize their cluster, their industrial zone, but also to maintain or create more jobs and to maintain or create more GDP growth. So these are now part of 20 clusters that we have been working with, and we are working with, around the world all the way from Australia to Japan to the US, China, Europe, really to try to tackle the energy transition where the energy is consumed. And these are the industrial zones where multiple companies, are working together.

Robin Pomeroy: Let’s hear from the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, looking ahead to the next climate COP where he hopes there will be a bigger investment in green energy in developing markets.

Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency: When we look at the last five years, clean energy investment increased from $1 trillion to $1.8 trillion. Big increase. But as the fossil fuel investments remain the same. But the problem is all of this increase came from the advanced economies and China. What about the rest?

So we need everybody to be on board. So therefore it would be great if the next COP, COP29 in Baku, can have a look at this missing bit, for me, the fault line of our fight against climate change and how we are going to support emerging and developing countries for clean energy investments.

Robin Pomeroy: Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, speaking in Davos at a session called Transforming Energy Demand.

Let’s hear now about impact from the Forum’s three communities - Young Global Leaders, Global Shapers and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship - they are all overseen by Francois Bonici.

François Bonici: I'm Francois Bonici. I'm head of foundations here at the World Economic Forum.

The foundations are three special communities created intentionally to bring perspectives, voices from young people and social changemakers from around the world into the conversations, into the initiatives, and into the magic of the Annual Meeting.

The Global Shapers are an amazing community of 10,000 young people in 500 cities, in 150 countries in the world. Having that representation and having those voices spread throughout that annual meeting is in itself a highlight and special moment. But for them this year, they're meeting with Al Gore right now as we speak, they're giving their perspectives on issues that are very important to them, around climate, around inclusion in the world.

This year, the Young Global Leaders community celebrates 20 years, at the annual meeting. It's an incredible community of young, dynamic leaders under the age of 40 young ministers, CEOs and entrepreneurs, civil society leaders and academics. People like Adam Grant, for example. These are incredible, leaders who are facing some of the biggest challenges in the future. And we bring them together as a community, to support each other, to navigate the bold decisions that need to be made over the next decade. 20 years of celebrating and looking 20 years ahead.

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship is the World Economic Forum's oldest foundation. 26 years old this year, bringing the leading change makers from grassroots to, for profit social enterprises, to the World Economic Forum.

A social enterprise as an organization that puts people and planet before profit but can run sustainably as well.

For the first time, we released a global data set on the scale of social enterprise as opposed to a set of individual nice to have examples. We know now that there are 10 million social enterprises in the world, creating 200 million jobs with annual revenues of 2 trillion. That's bigger than the apparel industry. This is no longer a marginal, interesting nice to have set of projects, but actually, growing sector that can build a sustainable economy.

This year, we've launched an innovation prize to scale up and provide support to 15 of the best projects. There are 2,500 each year from around the world.

Each hub each year produces a project that is important to them at the local city level or a national level. These could be engaging policymakers around climate change in the country or could be addressing a particular need: homelessness, diversity and inclusion, that is important to them and, in their cities.

Robin Pomeroy: You can watch the 2024 Social Innovation Awards on our website.

In addition to the work of the Forum’s centre and communities - which, as we have seen, is something that happen all year round - the Annual Meeting is also an important meeting place for political leaders. We asked Forum Managing Director Mirek Dusek for his reflections on geopolitics in Davos.

Mirek Dusek: Mirek Dusek, I’m a managing director at the World Economic Forum.

It's a tradition that the forum has, an important one, to provide a platform for dialogue on some sometimes very tough geopolitical issues.

Top of the agenda this week here was, of course, the tragic violence in the Middle East and the war in Gaza, and also Ukraine. So those would be the two things, that I would mention.

On Ukraine, we were very proud, it was a historic moment for the Forum. We had the meeting here of national security advisers on Ukraine's peace formula, over 80 of them here on Sunday. And, of course, this is a very, very pivotal moment for Ukraine in terms of having the support of the international community, not only in terms of the war that they're fighting, but also in terms of reconstruction. And on the latter, we were also able to convene here a special meeting of, business leaders, that are committed to helping Ukraine with reconstruction.

On Gaza. It is, an issue that is, top of mind, of the world. We were really glad that we could, here at the World Economic Forum, provide a platform for dialogue at a very sensitive time for all stakeholders. We had here leaders from the Arab world. We had here a leader that was nominated by the Palestinian president we had here the Israeli president. And we had here other stakeholders, including Secretary Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, really addressing the issue of the ongoing war in Gaza, but also what is next, what needs to be done to get, at some point, to a better future for the region.

Robin Pomeroy: Heads of state and government visiting Davos often give special addresses which you can watch live or on catchup on our website. Let's hear a snatch from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine: In such beautiful country, in Switzerland, we have made a key political contribution to the possibility of ending the war.

There was the most representative meeting of national security advisers regarding the implementation of the peace formula. More than 80 countries and international institutions were represented.

Yesterday I had a very productive negotiation with the president of Switzerland discussing the possibility of holding a summit at the leaders level in Switzerland. The Global Peace Summit. Today our teams have already begun work on organizing such assignment. Not the World War three, but the Global Peace Summit.

Robin Pomeroy: As well as being an exhausting week with, as I hope we've shown here, lots of impact, the Annual Meeting is somewhere that produces what are known as 'Davos moments'. These are the accidental meetings of or conversations between perhaps unlikely groups of people. Al Gore brushing shoulders with music legend Nile Rogers, for example, or fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg passing judgement on your suit.

I was trudging through the snow late one night during the week when I saw a familiar-looking woman of a certain age also contending with the snow and ice. Just a frail human like the rest of us, but Jane Goodall is a formidable figure: a tireless and inspirational campaigner for animal rights, the environment and the humanity in all of us.

Several of the people I asked about what were their Davos moments mentioned her, so let's leave the last word in this episode with Jane Goodall.

Jane Goodall, Founder, Jane Goodall Institute; United Nations Messenger of Peace: Well good morning everybody. Everybody here. Everybody listening.

I grew up in a world that's different from any of those that you grew up in. Because when I was a child, there was no television. It hadn't been invented. And I think young people today can't imagine a world like that.

So I was born loving animals and loving nature. And I learned by being out in nature. We had a big garden, and from books, those were the two things. We couldn't afford new books. This was during World War Two.

So I used to haunt a secondhand bookshop, and one day I found this little book. I just had saved up enough pennies to buy it, and that was called Tarzan of the Apes. So of course I fell in love, as a ten year-old-child can, with this glorious lord of the jungle. And what did he do? He married the wrong Jane!

So anyway, that's when I dreamed that I would go to Africa to live with wild animals and write books about them. No dream of being a scientist. And everybody laughed at me. How would you do that? You don't have money. Africa's a dangerous place, full of wild, fierce animals. And you're just a girl.

Not my mother, she said, if you want to do something like this, you're going to have to work really hard, take advantage of every opportunity, and then if you don't give up, hopefully you find a way.

We share 98.6% of our DNA with chimps, and it was amazing to find, in behaviour, how like us they are, and nobody else have studied them in the world before. So wasn't I lucky to discover all the way they communicate the same as us, that they use and make tools? That was something only humans were thought capable of.

Isn't it ridiculous that we're destroying the only home we have? And isn't it time now we are faced with the threat of climate change? And it's not the threat anymore, is it? It's reality. The changing weather patterns around the world. Last year, the hottest on record in human history.

That's my biggest hope for the future. All the young people around the world. Once you know, understand, the problem. Once you are empowered to take action, there's no stopping you.

Robin Pomeroy: Jane Goodall spoke on several sessions in Davos - they are all available to watch on our website.

There's be lots more from Davos in the coming weeks across our podcasts, Radio Davos, Meet the Leader and Agenda Dialogues, find them all at wef.ch/podcasts or on your favourite podcast app.

Thanks to everyone who helped me make this episode, including all those interviewees, and Gayle Markovitz, Linda Lacina, Juan Toron, Gareth Nolan and Taz Kelleher.

This episode of Radio Davos was written and presented by me, Robin Pomeroy.

We will be back next week, but for now thanks to you for listening and goodbye.