For everyone who's just joining, we're getting ready to start. This is just informal banter you only can get on imagination action. Yes. So what was it like those days?
Yeah, I would, I would say it was a lot less pretty than, than than Argo. Even Oregon made this out to be. The colors were drabber. Certainly not in Technicolor. And I think the violence and oppression was more real. Great.
Hey,
Alison, great to see you. Looking forward to tonight's show. I know we have someone in London, someone in Seattle. And Sandy is in Boston. I know you're in Vermont. So we're we got a bunch of different zip codes covered.
So. So you guys, welcome to imagination and action. I see David Chang he's helping to produce tonight, this will be recorded long form. And at the end of the night, the whole show will be up. And there'll be a transcript created if you want to. If you want to listen, if you want to read you know what was discussed. So that's that. That's pretty cool. And we're getting ready. We're getting ready to start. And Sandy, how is your day to day anything interesting?
Well, let's see. I started off in Saudi Arabia, and then I went to Australia, and then to Denmark. So that was a reasonably interesting day.
So because you're sort of a hot commodity that everyone wants to get your counsel or advice, you must be spread around the world and your days are probably longer with zoom then then you would have been Oh, yeah. When you were limited by you know how far you could walk or fly.
Yeah, I try to start after 6am and then yeah, it goes pretty late.
Great canal. How was your day? Oh, it's been pretty eventful. I've been doing errands for my parents and my family on day that's what happens when your whole family lands in New York. You just India they were like they
Yeah, I the day they got out the day we could get them out was like the greatest day or not really feel blessed, right? Did a 40 day marathon to raise money and resources. You know, john, you help for us. You know, when it's been COVID-19 on the ground, bless you for showing up and being cliche, appreciate you so much.
Sure. Great. So we're getting ready to start a seat Carolyn is here. Carolyn is one of those child prodigies who has just gotten better and better and better at her craft as she's grown older. I think she's in her 20s now, and she's going to do the opening. She'll play some music. I want to welcome everyone this is imagination and action. This is going to be a night of creative, connected, compelling conversation with a dynamic mix of imaginators. That Sandy, that's clear, that's even, and you the audience, these three are people who are re envisioning the nature of their industries in their work, and in driving the action that will power our future. This is one of the most original engaging salons on clubhouse. This is the magic action. It's a catalyst where we're sparking thinking insight never captured before. I hear some feedback. So we're super excited. So join us as the thinkers and doers of technology and science and media and venture capital from from around the world come together. This is in comparable, this is gonna be a great night. This is moments of conversation and discourse and tonight's topic, the power of digital, and data to reshape our world is going to be all about better understanding the growing importance of big data, platforms and AI, and how it'll shape our future world. And I've known Sandy for years. I consider him one of the top data scientists in the world, me and Forbes. Forbes ranked him one of the top 10. And I think this is a great forum to have him share what's on his mind and what he's thinking. And we have two great peers and sparring partners to kind of, you know, discuss this this timely topic. So to begin with Carolyn, do you mind opening us up with like a two minute musical piece just to celebrate how we're gonna bring in sight to the world.
Absolutely. Yeah. Hopefully WCS Bill suar
Great. Thank you, Carolyn. Carolyn, can you say your name and Yeah, a little bit about you to so the world knows.
Sure. I'm actually it's pronounced Caroline. But it's okay. I get that all the time. But that's just for on the record. Um, I am 28 years old, I play the violin since I was three and a half. It's great to be here tonight, and to listen to this topic, the power of digital and data to reshape our world. I'm, I'm grateful to be here. This is the third or fourth time that I've been on this segment with john. And I'm, I am an avid Not only do I enjoy music, but I also am starting to learn to appreciate the art, the art of food and wine. So I'm starting this blog. And I hope that people will check it out. When I'm more confident about my, my way in the in the kitchen and beyond. So that's it. Thank you.
No, thank you for opening us up. So we're gonna dive into this important topic, Allison. Great to co moderate this with you. So next week, we have a show on cardiac rhythms, how to sleepy and exercise peak performance. The week after that we have David Rubenstein and Janet Hill. Janet is grant hills, Mom and Calvin hills wife, but she's the general the family there. David is the founder of the Carlyle Group, and co chairman and candidates and board member. So that should be great. And then the week after that, we have three comedians. We have three comedians we have the writer for an executive producer of every everybody loves Raman, and the writer, the head writer for Ellen DeGeneres Show he just left and a writer for Jimmy Kimball and James Corbin on comedy. And then we have a we're working on a show on robots. We're working on a show on China working on a show on carbon sinks and, and climate change. And we have a very famous bollywood actress going to do a show in July. And we also are working on a show with one of the C suite of Airbnb talking about the future of you know, hotels and in travel. But tonight is the power of digital and data. And I'm really excited about who we have. Let me introduce Sandy Pentland, who we're going to start asking questions first. Sandy started his career, his professional career, counting beavers from space, and, you know, just shows how entrepreneurial and innovative you know his life trajectory started. He directs MIT connection science to MIT wide initiative. It's really special program that he leads and has a lot of Talent connected with it. He previously helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab. And he's one of the most cited computational scientists in the world. And Forbes declared him one of the seven most powerful data scientists in the world, and along with the Google founders, and the CTO of the US, and he co led a number of things that have had big impacts on privacy, and transparency. And he's won all sorts of awards. I think when the internet turned 40, they gave him an award. You know, that just gives you the the sense of impact and how much people appreciate him. And Sandy and I co curate the event at Davos. During the World Economic Forum in the second largest venue. There, we do it with Forbes, Randall lane and Mike federally. And it's so great to have you on the on the show. Sandy, why don't you introduce yourself? And maybe maybe tell us a little bit about those beavers, I want people to understand, you know how someone's so great, where they can start their professional career.
Okay, thank you. Just so people know, my real name is Alex. But everybody calls me Sandy. clubhouse insists on real name. So it says Alex there. So I got my career started by doing being a programmer, and then working on remote sensing, so satellites, and the very first job I had was counting beavers in Canada, using satellites, which is completely impossible, until you realize that beavers leave traces, they make lakes, and you can the lakes are big enough that you can count them. So if you count the lakes, you know the beavers. And there's a certain sense, and that's the story of data science. Right? It's, it's, you know, the thing you come off of, of all these digital breadcrumbs is not directly about you. But it really does tell the story of your life. And, you know, so that's where I got into, I was interested in this. And the story, I think that is the most interesting and relevant here is in in 1990s, there was no Wi Fi, there were no cell phones. But it was clear to me that those are going to happen. And so I helped create a race of cyborgs that are people that had PCs strapped to their backs and stuff like that. And it was clear that the most important thing that happened about wearable computing was the data. And that led me to work with people like Bill Hoffman at the World Economic Forum, to run a discussion that eventually produced GDPR. And to do nation experiments to sort of see if you could track poverty and stop disease and things like that, which influence the UN Sustainable Development Goals along with Claire, who's, who's here now.
Great. So Alison, why don't you ask me the next question. And Sandy, thanks for you know, tying beavers into data and wearables. That's awesome.
So Sandy, it's such a pleasure to have you on clubhouse, you'd had a front row seat at MIT at the Media Lab watching the rise of sensors, big data platforms and AI. Can you help us to understand where we are in this important journey? And what are some of the the signposts along the way? I think you've been tracking this for at least two decades, maybe a bit longer.
Yeah. So I mentioned that I created the first rake of race of Cyborg. So it was 2025 students who were online all of the time, you could see where they were and what they were talking about. And we debated about the meaning of this future world. And I think that we decided, and we still believe that this is a really fundamental transformation. It's really like when writing became very common in the 1500s. And suddenly, you'll be able and are able now to communicate with anybody but you can also look up history, you can also see things you can have these sort of things that were science fiction powers only a couple of years ago. And it's interesting to look back to 1500 to see what they were worried about. When printing and writing became very common. And they were worried about things like it's going to destroy culture. People won't have to remember stories or songs anymore. There'll be written down. They were worried about the king being deposed. If If the common people knew what was going on, they were worried about the church if other people could read the Bible. And of course, all of those things happen. Printing destroyed the church, printing destroyed, Kings printing destroyed a lot of the traditional oral culture. But I don't think we would go back, because it ended up empowering people, average people. And we suddenly had these tools that let us be much smarter, and much more knowledgeable than we ever were before. And I think that's really the right frame for thinking about this. But we also are an impatient society. And we think all this will just happen like next year, or if you're a VC as well, I can cash in on this. But of course, printing took centuries to really have impact. And this will take at least decades, and likely good fraction of a of a century to have the sort of impact, where it's really fundamentally transformed our cultures. But we're beginning to see that we're beginning to see sort of the outlines of where things can go. And of course, there's things that are incredibly scary. But there's also things that are incredibly good. And, and that's the balance that we need to have. And we need to then of course, put our thumb on the scale to go towards the Good.
Great, thank you, Sandy, for that. And a fad, I remember was one of those cyborgs. And I remember him coming back and explaining what it was like, during those early days, he went on to build Google Glass, I think Sergey, and Larry kind of hired him to build it. And that was cool technology. I think a little too early like the the new absolute, you know, there's no doubt that the smartphone has become ubiquitous. But the apple Newton, you know, was was a belly flop. And, but, but you know, here we are, and, you know, we're using mobile now. And I think a lot of people see these smartphones is like, an extension of ourselves. It's like a limb. If you lose your smartphone, you're losing, you know, part of your your identity. So my next question is, and just for people are listening to this, this is imagination, action, and an Allison, I have a series of questions for three speakers. And then we're gonna open it up to the audience, to engage and have our speakers kind of have a dialogue amongst themselves and with you all, and thank you for for tuning in tonight. And we're recording this. And we're also going to pull out audio grams of all our speakers, so you can experience it. So the next question is, what do you think the public understands and fails to understand in the latest evolution of the economy?
Well, I think that the core thing is that we're undergoing a transformation. That's very much like when labor became formal, or when money became much more common than barter. So you know, in the 1850s, something like that, there were only a few major banks Mellon, Rothschild. And there was a revolution, principally by farmers to create agricultural co ops. And that was the route of a much more inclusive banking system. And it changed the regulations to be much more fair, around 1900, there were a few big corporations that dominated all of manufacturing and, and they abused laborers. And the laborers came together to form labor unions and push back and eventually change the regulation and improve their conditions dramatically. And today, we have a new means of production that's just as important as money, and labor. And that's called data. With data, you can make things happen. And just like in the previous iterations, this new means of production is dominated by very few. And that's really the problem if I like to quote a little saying by petke, who is the sort of darling of capital and sort of new economy, and that is, there's nothing wrong with capital. It's just in too few hands. And the same is true of data. It's nothing wrong with data. It's just in the wrong hands and too few of them.
That's that's actually a perfect place, Sandy for my next question, which is, who exactly do you see as the big winners and the big losers as we move to more of up platform Big Data economy, I think there's some obvious winners, but love to hear a little bit more across different dimensions in terms of companies, governments, individuals, etc.
Well, just as with these previous revolutions, you know, we're at a crossroads where it could go in a direction that makes George Orwell's 1984 look like it was not, not very imaginative or extensive. Or it could do what happened in these previous revolutions, which is that it went from a situation where there were just a few people that were very, very powerful to something where communities and individuals took that power and used it for themselves. So so people complain about, you know, the power of labor unions at the moment, but but they had enormous transformative influence influence around the world, in the last century, and the same thing for credit unions and agricultural banks, enormous transformation of society. And so the good side of this is that we could see communities becoming data literate, taking control of their data, and being able to make informed decisions about themselves in a way that is almost unimaginable today. And the good news is that the California privacy law, the EU regulations that came after g GDPR, are encouraging this. And in fact, in the EU, I think they're going to demand that there be community organizations, organizations that represent the citizens and represent them in terms of their data, so that you don't have to deal with this complicated thing yourself. There's somebody who's out there fighting for you. And and that's analogous to the way we have, say credit unions, credit unions don't own your data. But they help you invest, they protect you watch for you.
Great, excellent answer, as always. Cindy, can you give us an example of how platforms and big data combined to concentrate power in the platform holders? And do you think that the platform and the Big Data phase of this economy helped to account for why economic divides are growing off the charts?
Absolutely, yeah. So again, just like when banking was new, in the early 1800s, or labor was new monopoly of a means of production, a huge means of production, by a small number of people, gives them disproportionate power. So we have antitrust regulation today, but but it doesn't deal with this new means of production. It talks about market share and market pricing, well, that's fine. But now there's a new power in town. And that's the power of data, the power to reach and control attention, to be able to dominate what people see. And we don't have any trust to be able to deal with that disproportion of power. And if we're going to deal with these sort of big platforms, we need to expand the notion of anti trust, to include unfair control of, of data. And the interesting thing is, is that if you look at the equations, and so forth, and we just had a wonderful paper on this, and the National Academy of Sciences, you see that if you want a creative, innovative society, you have to get rid of these disproportionately powerful things. And what's interesting is the right way to do it is to empower the small guys not to break up the big guys. If you break up Facebook, you're gonna get to things like Facebook, if you empower communities, you will get the sort of society that you want somebody that's able to prevent people like Facebook from becoming unfairly dominant.
So Sandy, what would you say cuz I think you've given us many pieces of this. But what, in particular, most concerns you about the current system? So let's say, we don't get that expanded anti trust, and we just continue the way that we're on at the moment? What are some of the most dangerous second order impacts you can imagine? I mean, paint a world where nothing changes, power gets more concentrated. How could data function, let's say 20 years from now?
Well, I think people have that picture in the back of their mind already, but all these technologies Like AI and, and data and so forth, a blockchain by themselves, people worry about each of them individually, but it's the combination of them that makes this sort of intelligent network. It's able to actually control things very, very broadly. And when you think about the western view of China, for instance, that's what people see is the party in power forever. To westernize, that's very, very scary. Not so much to Eastern eyes. And the trouble with this, of course, is that whenever you have that sort of Central uniform power, any minority becomes marginalized, that the ubiquity and uniformity of governance that can be done through data, through sensors through having everything digitally digitized, means that people who are not in the center aren't the norm, will have very little to little freedom to appeal their differences.
Great. Thank you, Sandy. Sandy, you you talked about the knee, you've talked, can very compellingly about the need for a new deal in this data platform world? What would such a new deal look like? And who could lead such a movement? Do you see this movement as a bottom up or top down? I mean, I think about Occupy Wall Street, I think about how well, one party, you know, countries have done during during COVID. who's leading this?
Well, the phrase new deal on data, something I coined back at the World Economic Forum, when we were talking about privacy with Bill Hoffman. Today, it refers to power
and Bill plans to drop in tonight, by the way.
Yeah, that's why I mentioned his name. And, you know, Sunday, it refers to the power of data, who has control of the power. And I see communities of all sorts gig workers, I work with consumer unions, Stephen has a great startup that I'm helping with to be able to empower poor and underrepresented communities. So Claire, who runs this amazing organization at the UN Foundation, is trying to empower communities around the world. And so so I think that the revolution is going to start by communities seizing the power of data, for their own good and for their own purposes. And if we can promote that enough, then we avoid the centralized The Big Brother panopticon world.
Super. So one last question, Sandy, and then we'll open it up to Stephen and Claire and some of the other amazing speakers on the panel. But you talked in the last question about China. And I'd love to understand a little bit more because they play by different rules, as you said, than in the West. And I think you once mentioned that they have a lot of power around the data, and platforms that could make the next century, a china century. So I'd love to understand a little bit more, what are the rails that you think China may control in the future? And what are the things that you track? So as we move to digital currency, or COVID hits? Do you see those as further concentrating the power that China has? Well, you have
to remember that 30 years ago, China had no laws they had, it was really a dirt poor place. Nobody was educated, essentially. They had no reputation mechanism. So you could be a criminal and nobody would know. And they had no mechanism of doing commerce or organizing themselves. And the heads of the party were engineers. And what they did is they saw that digital was a way to leapfrog. And they've designed a system with a strong reputation mechanism to westernize much too strong. The design something that is a ubiquitous transaction medium. So instead of just being a communication medium, like the internet is a transaction medium where you can do irrefutable business with anybody anywhere. But of course, the state gets to see that at least in their design. Have it. And, you know, they've been incredibly successful at doing this. And so, with Belton road and other sorts of initiatives like that, that are export and investment LED, they want to export their way of managing things, to a very good part of the rest of the world. And I see the same thing being done in response by Singapore, which is a little bit more to the Western way of thinking of things. And we just helped Switzerland set up early days, of course, but set up a similar system that has a much more sort of Western characteristic. But this is where the battle is occurring, is as all of these technologies, blockchain, Ai, data, IoT, everything comes together, you're going to transaction, the way you do anything is on this one transaction platform. And what that does is that gives the the organization of the platform, huge power. So you want to watch the governance of this, this is the most critical issue out there. I ran a discussion group in the fall with this amusing club. It's all the former presidents and prime ministers in the world. They have a club, it's called the club of Madrid. And this was the most urgent problem in their view, is as these transaction platforms emerge as everything is digitized, everything is controllable. What is the governance of that? Is it distributed in communities? Or is it centralized?
Great. Thank you, Sandy. In a moment, I'm going to introduce Stefan. But before we do I want to call on Claire, what did you hear in what Sandy said, that you found new or an aha? And what insight or how would you editorialize, what he's trying to convey? And then after that, Bill Hoffman will William Hoffman, you were referenced by Sandy, I see you're in the room. You know, your name was mentioned, you know, curious for you to just share what you're up to and what you think of how Sandy used your name. But before I go to introducing Stephen, Claire, what did you hear? What What are you thinking? From London?
Thank you, john. And thanks, Sandy. And Hi, Bill. Nice to see you again. And, yeah, I mean, this has been absolutely fascinating, I think. And I, you know, I really share with Sandy, this idea that there is this kind of huge suite of questions, that the questions around sort of governance of digital and data is not just one question. There's a whole series of the same questions, which, as Sandy said, have been the same questions that government we've been grappling with in governments and economies ever since there were governments and economies, you know, you can trace this back to the 15th century, probably, even probably even earlier, you know, how do we distribute the kind of risks and rewards in society who gets what? And how do we protect each other from the risks that we create with all of the various different activities that we do? How do we share power? What do we do about the fact that that, you know, some people have more than others? Do we care about that? If we do care about that? What are the limits of that caring, as you know, that these are all the same questions that governments and societies have always asked each other, just expressed in this new era, and through this through this new medium, I think what I would add to that, though, is just the recognition that there are a large number of people, probably about half of the world's population still, who, in one way or another, sort of outside of this conversation, who are not yet connected, who are not yet online, who don't have access to these platforms, who are not counted in the data that we're that we are collecting from mobile phones, and so on. Now, they are connecting very rapidly. And that percent, the proportion of the world's population, which is online is going up all the time. So it's a problem that will get less but I think, as we're thinking about these digital platforms, and worrying about the inequalities in power and opportunity that we're seeing developing in this new world, the inequality is a much looser inequality globally, and much greater than, than the inequalities in any one country. And particularly when you work with some of communities that we work with in Africa, for example, this feels very, very far away from them. And I think trying to design future proof and economy which is right for now. Which is also going to help those very, very excluded people to first get in and to get in on terms that and not exploitative. Don't just reproduce some of the inequalities that we've seen in the past is a different order of problem.
Great, no, thank you for that commentary. And then I'm gonna call on bill. And before I introduce Stefan, Caroline, if you could do like a 92nd, musical interlude to signify we're going from Sandy to Stefan. So Bill, your name was mentioned? What do you do? Who are you? And what did you think of how Sandy referenced you? Hi,
thanks. Yeah, it's an honor when Sandy mentioned to you and thank you. I work at the World Economic Forum where I've been engaged in the issue of data and emerging technologies for the common good for Oh, well, over a dozen years now. The current area of focus is on corporate governance and the adoption of environmental, social and governance, indicators and data. So it's, I guess, from the narrative perspective, something that's gaining momentum, something that's increasingly important at boardroom levels across, you know, 1000s of companies right now, it really has a lot of momentum. And at the core of that conversation, obviously, is the appropriate and responsible use of data, which address a variety of different issues that Claire's framed very eloquently as well as Sandy. I think one of the things that I can say over the last 10 years is, you know, from the whole community, right, Sandy being the leader, but Claire's leadership and others is that the the, the awareness is growing, particularly I think, from the dislocations that have come from, you know, the past year and a half with COVID is that, you know, the the issues around the inequalities, the issues around the the ways that data can be used appropriately to save lives. And in the urgency, I think are things that are now in the broader domain. And I think that creates a great opportunity for some real meaningful action to occur. And, yeah, with that, I'll stop. But thanks so much for the opportunity to join in great conversation, john, thanks. Great. Well,
we're just getting started. So Bill, I expect you to be part of it. everyone. Welcome to imagination action tonight of creativity, connectivity, compelling conversations with a dynamic mix of innovators, Sandy, Stefan and Claire, people are re envisioning the nature of their industries, their work and driving the action that will power our futures is it Nike was just do it in the 80s and 70s. And Ted was ideas were spreading. I think today we need imagination and action. And that's what this show is about. So Carolyn, can you play as a way to signify the changing of the guards?
Sure, you this is an improvisation.
Great, thank you. That was beautiful. Steven grew up in England and the Middle East before immigrating to the US, where he found work as a waiter in the West Village, a chance encounter with a customer from Goldman Sachs led to him being hired as the only non MBA. In that cohort. He worked at Goldman Sachs, where his skills in art history and French literature led him to an assignment selling derivatives. Stephen left wall street after a few years to fund death penalty appeals. Then he advised intel on its mobile strategy, and he also helped with Microsoft's transition to the cloud for following Bill Gates to the Gates Foundation. thing where he helped launch a well intentioned, but ultimately doomed attempt at stimulating the market for personalized learning. He then took a break to work as a music journalist, you can see why that interpretation, the music that was just played, kind of reflects all this excitement. And he launched three startups. Stephen then went on to join Deloitte, where he helped create the industry's first digital transfer practice and became its CSO. I assume that's Chief Strategy Officer, unable to sit comfortably in a suit and tie. In dispirited with the constant focus on profit and wealth, Steven left to devote his efforts to building a system capable of redistributing all of it. Steven is now the co founder of interesting venture, we're going to learn more about a data cooperative dedicated to the well being and prosperity of every American. Alison, why don't you lead us with our first question to our renaissance man, Stefan?
Great, Stefan, thanks so much. So as john helpfully laid out, you've had a front row seat from many different rows on the evolution of the platform and the Big Data economy, working for top foundations, top companies Wall Street, what did you learn in these roles about the importance of platforms and big data and how advantage is being built in this economy?
Thanks, Alison. And thank you for your kind introduction, john. So I'll give you a couple of examples, one from the very start of my career and another from from much later on. So you know, when I immigrated to the United States, I was working, as john said, as a waiter in the in the West Village. And you know, what, after, after getting to know one of the customers, I ended up being hired at Goldman Sachs. So you know, 22 years old, I come from waiting table and getting my news from, you know, from, you know, from magazines, and PBS to, to getting it firsthand. And immediately, from several computers, a number of phones that connected me to various locations all around the world, within the government organization. And what I saw very early on was the power that accrues from the process of data aggregation. Goldman, had unbelievable systems and networks that invested in that gave it an edge over not only over its competitors, but over its customers and the regulators. And so, you know, I was I was part of the, in fact, Soros was one of my clients. And so I was able to see firsthand how very sophisticated actors could take advantage of this data and the information that afforded to you know, gain an advantage over even over an entire government. So you know, I had a front row seat you mentioned, Alison, ADA, front row seats, when, you know, Sora, single handedly shorted Sterling out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. So very tangible evidence at a very early stage, and, you know, late 80s, early 90s, of where systems were heading, what was possible when you aggregate the data together and applied sophisticated models to it, and the extraordinary advantage that could accrue to a limited number of people. So the second example was from the gate, my Gates Foundation days. And again, I think it serves to illustrate the gathering power of data. You know, we were looking at a situation where, really the focus of education, and I think this is still a problem in the system, focuses on the institution or the process itself, right education is a method of instruction. It says nothing about how we learn. And I think that more fundamentally, that's a problem. You know, the problem isn't education, problems learning and until we crack that we're sort of stuck. But we were looking at this problem. And there's a ton of data that helps us to understand where a child is in their learning journey, you know which concepts they're struggling with. And that affords insights into interventions that could be offered by the teacher, by parents, by application developers to help the child progress. And so we built a piece of middleware that would aggregate that learning data on behalf of school systems that subscribe to the platform to deliver those insights and distribute them more broadly. now in the process of working, having designed the system with folks like Danny Hillis identical on the job of sort of evangelizing it with startups and incumbents, so this would include the big publishers like Pearson And McGraw Hill, who continue to dominate the edtech landscape today. And we met, we thought, naively, that everyone would sort of jump up and salute this new ability to tap into the power of data in In an easier way, in order to get to better outcomes for the kids, naturally, what we ran into was enormous resistance from the incumbents, because the first comment out of their mouth was, well, this undermines our business model in new, we spent years aggregating all of this data in order to, you know, to accrue better information on which we can act, and that drives our profitability, and you're proposing to distribute it. So then what happens to our profitability? And, you know, the, the answer is that, you know, well, it, it also gets a little more distributed. But in meeting that resistance, it again illustrated to me at least, but number one, as Sandy said, the journey is just beginning. And number two, you know, currently data is treated as a property. And I think it's going to get time to overcome that that proprietary in mindset.
Great, well, thank you, Steven, I know Bill Gates has been in the news a little bit and you worked. You worked with him? Before I asked you the next question, do you want to make some commentary of what it was like working with Bill and how it relates to what's in the news or do pass?
I would, I would say this, like any human being, Bill has his pros and his cons. And I, I hope that history will judge him in the balance. You know, we must remember that the divorce rate in the United States is a little over 50%. So he and his wife are by no means in the minority, you know, he, he always struck me as an exceptionally intelligent man, he reads more than anyone I've ever met. And I think the thing that people mistake about Bill is that while he was certainly a very gifted programmer, and developer, his real gift was as a business person. And, you know, I think, for you know, for for many bills still represents sort of a plus and a minus in the, on the one hand, he gave birth to the modern software industry by by being the one person who created a way to price and license it. On the other hand, he also created a massive disequilibrium between those who could amass the resources and the data to build better software, and those who lacked access to it. And it wasn't until open source came along that we saw a shift in that power dynamic. So I think at the end of the day, I hope history will judge him in the balance, rather than in light of more recent events.
Okay, so that was a little side side detour. But back to the topic, and it's actually kind of related. Can you give us an example of how these sources of advantage work and how they are used to amass great power and wealth? And you agree that data is the new oil?
Yeah, thanks. So they're actually the example I think, you know, the clearest example, you know, is Facebook. So we have an organization and an individual who could just as easily have developed a platform that encouraged people to co create and collaborate. But instead, you know, he chose a proprietary in path that kept the information and the insights to himself, and allowed him to sort of feed it out to the highest bidder, literally. And so we now live with the consequences of that decision at scale. I think it's telling that, you know, When, when, you know, when Zuckerberg proposed launching Libra, you know, the cryptocurrency that he wanted to roll out for the Facebook, Facebook users, he was met with a lot of pushback. And it's, it's understand, it's both an illustration of the power of data, and also the competition for its ownership, because national governments pushed back in a significant way. And you can understand why I mean, the idea that a platform serving 2.5 billion people, you know, almost a little over under a third of the planet could acquire it to literally build its own economy by acquiring its own currency, and then be subject to the control of one individual. I mean, we've we haven't seen anything on that scale in all of our history. And I think it's a it's a great example, also, of the I think the false analogy between data and oil, I think I think it falls down on a couple of fronts. So one is that, you know, data, unlike oil is essential. We, I would argue, we don't necessarily, especially today, we don't necessarily need oil for life. But we do need data. We've seen that. I think that divergence, especially during the COVID period, where we've seen the price of oil drop, but I would argue the value of data rise. And the other the other point I would make is I think it's a more helpful analogy to compare data to a currency or data to hydrogen. Because both are more essential to the economic process and both improve through use and recirculation, whereas the value of oil is kept as a tradable commodity. And, you know, with that in mind, I think for organizations like where for for people who are looking at data reform, it's important to examine the underlying ideology. behind an analogy, like data is new oil, because like any analogy, I think it's more useful in the prejudices that it reveals. And in this case, I think, you know, comparing data to oil implies that it's a finite asset subject to control, and, again, reveals a proprietary and mindset. And Claire, I think alluded to this, in her remarks about inequality, that more fundamentally needs to be needs to be addressed. I think we will, like Sandy said, I think we'll see progress in data distribution. But first, I think we need to address the issue of who owns it, and and who has a say over its distribution.
You know, one of the most fascinating things as, as john read your background, is that you've worked for all the leading organizations on Wall Street, in computing, in consulting, but then you periodically get these crises of conscience as I think you describe them. And I'm sort of fascinated what it is in your background that leads to these sort of when this crisis of conscience has showed up in your life, and how that's shaped the direction that you've taken to the power of data.
Thanks, Alison, I appreciate the question. So you know, growing up, so, you know, similar to Sandy, you know, I didn't grow up. wealthy, you know, I was disadvantaged, I was the first in my family to go to college. And as john mentioned, earlier, I grew up, I spent part of my childhood, you know, a good part of my childhood in the Middle East, first in Beirut, and then in Iran. And unfortunately, in both locations, I, you know, my family witnessed the outbreak of civil war, in Beirut, and then of the revolution in Iran. So, you know, we were confronted, you know, at a very early age, with the consequences of, you know, of bad choices and ideologies, and that, that sort of left me I think, you know, Sandy use that word revolution, which I, I really appreciated. Because I think it left me with a an appreciation for, you know, the consequences of our actions and the importance of acting. You know, the, the, the crisis of conscience that you you alluded to, you know, I think for me came after several years on Wall Street, you know, I saw firsthand I learned firsthand, you know, that money certainly isn't the principle motivation. For me, I also saw that money could have a tremendously negative effect on people's mindset and behavior. It's sort of like grad grind know, the character in hard times, is both a businessman, an educational reformer, and simply relies on on data and statistics to make his decisions, you know, he removes himself, he operated a comfortable removed from the impact of his decisions on the on the children that he, you know, on the system, he tries to improve. And I think the same thing could be said of my colleagues in Wall Street. It's a very comforting existence to to operate in a world that is limited to data and statistics. It keeps you further removed from the consequences, the real consequences, the social consequences of your actions. And in my particular case, you know, I was walking to my desk to my office one day, and I passed the New York Times newsstand. And there was on the front page of the New York Times above the fold a photo of a 14 year old girl and the headline saying that this girl was serving, you know, a serving time and a maximum security prison in Indiana for second degree manslaughter. And something about the story and her picture really just struck a nerve for me, I got to my desk, cleared my calendar and called the journalist at the New York Times who put me in touch with her defense team. I read the court transcripts. It was evident again, going back to data that the defense had no chance against the prosecution who were much better equipped and resources then Donna and name is Donna Radcliffe's team. And so I started I reached out to the team I we put in place a process to To start an appeal, which I funded, and one thing led to another, and I ended up quitting quitting Wall Street and spending the balance of the money I'd made, as Jonathan mentioned earlier on death penalty work. But that that sort of seesaw has has continued in my life between, you know, between being a part of building a system that has exacerbated inequality is, and trying to be trying to help those who who need access to those same resources. And I think I've reached the place in my life where, you know, I've decided to really come full circle and devote myself to achieve helping achieve a redistribution, having they played a part in, in contributing to it.
Great. So Stephen, what do you think are the key elements in terms of governance and tracking that will be necessary if we're ever to create a more level playing field in this world? You told us earlier that platforms serve the 1% extraordinary well, and accelerate externalities? You know, what, what are your thoughts here?
Yeah, thanks, john. So when it comes to governance and tracking, you know, I think we need to flip the entire equation, and shift the ownership of control of data from corporations, to individual citizens. Sandy has written extensively on this topic most recently, and in the new his new book, which is available on online. But I think we really need to rethink data ownership and control. You know, it's, it's an, it's not a difficult thought experiment for you to earn. If you were to imagine Facebook, reincarnated, in a manner where each of its users had control over their own data. And Facebook's job was to maximize benefits to those users. And I think we'd have a very different, very different and in some ways, much more powerful platform than we do currently. The second is one of governance. I think there are organizations that are much better equipped to serve the social good than a for profit corporation. And I you know, so Sandy mentioned earlier, the opportunity we have with credit unions. Now, credit unions are, are fascinating organizations, they're essentially cooperative, which means they're fundamentally aligned with I think, one of our oldest algorithms as a species, which is one of cooperation. And they, they manifestly exist to serve the benefits of their members before that of profit. And it I think it places them in a natural place, as Sandy mentioned earlier, to serve as a steward and a fiduciary, for the kind of information and insights we can glean from that data and how they can find their way back to benefiting the members that belong to those organizations. And so I, I, you know, the lead, there's legislation in the EU that Sandy has been instrumental in pushing forward as well as in the United States, to reconsider who ought to be operating as a steward of this data and have fiduciary responsibility over it tonight. I think this is one of the one of the early steps we will see to changing the governance and control the ownership question that will, I think, will have significant knock on effects in the decades to come.
Super, that actually I think, would be a great place to go just a bit deeper. So can you tell us a little bit more about the company you helped to found, which, as you mentioned earlier, is in the process of building a nationwide platform to put data aggregation and network effect to the benefit of local communities? We think we understand that your partners are the Community Reinvestment Fund and Kunal for us credit unions, and that you plan to launch your pilot in Chicago next month, but I'm sure our our listeners would love to learn more.
Yeah, thanks, Allison. Yes, certainly. So for those who are unaware, the Community Reinvestment Fund is a fascinating organization that's been in business for about 30 years now. It's a nonprofit. And it is a community development financial institution, which means that its mission in life is to channel resources from private and government sources to low income minority communities around the United States. And it funnels that money both directly through its own technologies, and indirectly through the local community banks that are part of its network. kuna is an organization that represents all the credit unions in the United States. Both community banks and credit unions are for us, locusts is of trust. And I think, you know, when we look at the opportunity for data, fundamentally, you know, data is only as good as the trust that surrounds it. It's, you know, it's its creation, and refinement. And, you know, I think FinTech and banks in general, you know, act as in really any for profit corporation acts on the basis of extraction, extraction of resources that are then converted into capital goods that increase capital for the benefit of a minority. In the case of shareholders, credit unions and community banks operate the other way around. And so from, from our perspective, we're building a platform that gives each of its users a personal data store, which allows them to share, you know, store a copy of the data from their various applications, in a location that's under their control. It's not shared, it's aggregated, it's pooled with other members. And then those anonymized aggregates are analyzed for insights that can better help both individual members and the broader community at large. The thing that's exciting from our perspective, in partnering with a group like Kunar, or CRF, is that they have two assets that I don't think, say, a national bank will ever be able to acquire. One is trust. And, and trust is built, you know, one interaction at a time, it's very human property. And unlike blockchain, which exists because of the absence of trust, you know, I think a trust based economy is a very exciting thing with much greater return. The second thing they have is a notion of membership. And you know, Sandy's work on social physics sort of makes a very strong point about this. But the the the difference in a network between trusted actors, and those who are just engaged contractually with each other is night and day. And so the the opportunity is to formalize these the networks that credit unions are actually in charge of so the the challenge for them right now is they're they have what's called a hub and spoke model, meaning that every members relationship is only with the credit union itself. Well, you know, we know from social science and network science that, you know, there's something called a network effect, which means that if you can actually connect those members to each other, and allow them to transact with each other, the benefits grow exponentially compared with a hub and spoke model. And so given that 48% of American adults bank with a credit union, we see huge intrinsic networks value in formalizing those memberships into something more akin to a social network for for for good. And so that's why we're we're partnering with these groups. And our you mentioned, our pilot in Chicago, is intended to begin that journey with low income minority communities that, as Claire mentioned, you know, there are folks who are completely shut out from the new economy that's emerging. And so one of the things we're excited about is, by working with existing institutions that have been operating in these low income minority communities for the longest time, they've been able to earn something that these communities don't give out willy nilly, which is trust. And we believe that if we can operate on the basis of trust with these communities, and put more resources into their hands based on the insights we gather from the, you know, these data aggregates, we're on to a much more exciting formula than the one we have right now, which just shuts these communities out from their own data and the insights that data contains.
Great, thanks, Steven. Everyone, you're listening to imagination and action. And tonight, we have it's a night of creativity, connectivity, and compelling conversation with a dynamic mix of imaginators. Sandy, Steven and Claire. I also want to point out that that we have a proud parent in the room, you know, that the dad who whose daughter's just born, but this is a little different. I want to point out Jim young, he's, I think 84 young. He, he acts like he's a 20 year old. He's awesome. And he's so proud that his daughter is now one of the leaders of clubhouse. And I don't know if she sent him here to kind of check us out, or if he came because he has a great imagination and loves action. I know he's from Texas, and in Texas there. There's a lot of action down there. So I have one last question for you, Steven. And then I'm going to ask Sandy to maybe comment on on what he heard. You say, you know what, you know, is there? Is there something behind what you said that Sandy may may may connect some dots? Or? Or does he, you know, see things slightly differently? Or does he want to build on what you just said, and then we'll have a musical interlude, and then we'll we'll go to Claire, and then we're gonna open it up. So last question to you, Stephen. Why did you decide to launch your first pilot with community banks? And what would success look like? And what does what does? What makes you think that community banks are a pause in a position to flip the ownership and control of data? If our viewers want to track and support your progress? How can they do that? Is this just in theory, and it's in papers? Or is it actually happening?
Thanks, john. So last question first. So if people want to follow us they can, they can certainly sign up for email updates on our canopy kayo nPy dot o RG. And we certainly welcome them following you're coming along on the journey. You know, as I, as I, as I mentioned, in my response to the last question, you know, for us, you know, there are a couple of important things. Number one, if you really want to build a data driven economy, I think you need to build it on a better premise, which is trust, rather than capital maximization. And there are very few paces, you know, in a Western economy where you can look to find trust, right? Most most, for profit corporations operate on the basis of contract, whether it's with a user or with a business partner. And contract is not the same as earning somebody somebody is trust. in a broader sense, in order to find that kind of trust, you need to look elsewhere. And that's what, you know, from our perspective took us to the credit unions and the community banks. That's number one. I think the second part is that too often, and I've certainly been party to this, you know, a lot, a largely white male developer audience that have been very well educated tend to develop technologies that then may or may not trickle down to for the broader benefit of our society. I think if we really want to see change, and if we really want to see a different mechanism, where people can acquire agency based on insights on their own data, then I think you have to begin with low income minority communities and the bottom the broader phrase, you know, the bottom of the pyramid, because that's where I think the greatest desire for change exists. It's not with folks like me, and maybe other people on this call, who will already leading relatively comfortable lives. It's with the disenfranchised. And certainly in this country, our most burning need for change is in how we lift up low income minority communities. I think the government, the current administration, is taking some encouraging steps. But I you know, I think for us, it's it's it's an ideology, we it's a deliberate choice. If we don't start with our list and franchise members, then it's going to be very difficult to create the kind of wholesale society change that we need.
Great. So I turned Sandy, you've been listening to what Stephen had to say. What what are you hearing? Anything that build on it? Or? Or what what do you think the audience should know about? The dots that he's sort of connected?
Well, there's maybe three things the first of all is, is that Steven and I are sort of soulmates, which is why I'm helping them put together canopy. And if you want to know some of the more scientific background, and some of the details, I have this book, building a new economy, it's free online, MIT Press. That that goes into too many of the elements of this. Some of the things I think are people will have misunderstanding. So one is equating data and Facebook. So if you remember, I got my first job, counting beavers from outer space. The beavers didn't say anything. It wasn't something like Facebook, it was their behavior that was tracked. And time and time again, what people say is not nearly as revealing as what they do. So the data about location about purchases, things like that is far more powerful than Facebook. It's very hard to appreciate but it's it's huge. And, and it's an opportunity both for evil, but also for Are people to really understand the texture of life, the science of it. And as Bill Huffman was saying, a lot of people are realizing that you have to use this data to communities have to use this data to understand environmental impact social energy, organization, social capital, which is this notion of trust, turns out to be one of the most important things in a society and in a community, you're talking about underserved communities or poor communities, it's usually the social capital, which is missing that allows prevents them from bootstrapping. So having a bigger picture of your life is is critical, and working together on that big picture, to figure out what to do is how you build social capital. And, and I think that's the part that's really exciting is that people can begin to know what's happening to them what's being done, they can organize themselves, that's what really needs to happen. So for instance, people, and even in this conversation is much too much about money. Money is is a secondary thing to, for instance, health. And almost nobody knows versus how much diabetes there is in their community. Almost nobody knows about any of the sort of health conditions that really matter. Which means there's no way to know if the government is doing correctly by you, there's no way to know if the hospitals are serving you correctly. And is he able to access to data about themselves, to be able to, to prosper. So So those are two elements that sort of focus on building this sort of new economy. And you can read more about it. The broader type of understanding much more than just Facebook is, is knowing about behavior. And the third thing is, is there is hope for all of this. So I mean, for instance, it is the case that something like 80% of the human race has a digital instrument, a phone, that's two way and 20 years ago, that would have been ludicrous. People laughed at me when I said that was going to happen. But here we are. And and now what we need to do is do the next thing, which is use that to be able to empower people. And this is what Clara was, of course talking about is is that, you know, there's huge disparities in terms of access, equally huge in terms of people being educated about data about data literacy, about being able to use data, their data, to be able to forge a better life. And I tell people understand that, understand how to use data, merely being in possession of it will help them
relatively little. So along with this notion of data for the people being able to know what's happening, and how all these organizations are affecting your community, you also need to improve data literacy, we need to be able to not just change the schools, but the conversations around being able to create the future yourself by using these new data resources.
Great, well, I want to create a little spontaneity. We're about to hear from Claire. Before that, we're gonna hear a musical interlude. But before that, I want to call on Esther. You know, Esther is one of the great thinkers of our time, if we did find alien races around the galaxy or another dimensions, I think she'd be a good person to represent humanity. Everyone on this call should write in their diary that they were in a room with Esther, and Sandy, for that matter. Actually, I would feel very comfortable having Sandy represent the human species. But Esther, what are you hearing? What do you like? What questions do you have? Before we ask a few questions to Claire?
Okay, I just want to thank you for the most fulsome description I've ever had. I want to save that and use it and represent the human species. I love what Sandy just said the first part, you know, it's like data, data data. It's kind of like blaming sugar for how our metabolism uses it and how evolution has made us overly dependent on it. The thing that's missing is exactly what he said. It's not having The date it's kind of like when, when people started having books, saying people need more books, no, no, they need to learn how to read. And in the same way, in these communities, the thing that's in shortest supply is not people's access to data. It is perhaps trust, but it's education and understanding how the world works around them and the ability to manipulate themselves instead of being manipulated. And that comes with a happy childhood, good maternal care, health care, education, all these things that enable and empower people to make use of things, whether it's data or money, or books, or all these other resources. And that's why I'm excited about what Biden is doing. He's investing in human infrastructure, rather than spending on other stuff. And you know, that's a very brief analysis of the issue. But data, data is, you know, it's useful, you can sell it, but the reality is, the data of poor people on the market is not worth as much as the data of rich people. So I'd rather help people not get rich, necessarily, but get well enough off, that they can use their own data, to control their own lives and feel that sense of agency. That's so important.
Great, so if this was an iPhone, and someone texted you, you'd give a thumbs up to what Sandy said, in commenting on what Stephen said, is that right?
I would say he should represent humanity talking.
Alright, well, do you have a question for our panels? Before we interview, Claire?
Yeah, I'd love to hear both of you talk a little more about how we do deal with this issue of, you know, literacy, as a problem has not gone away, but numeracy the ability to understand. So I work in communities like this, too. And one of them wanted to reduce the rate of obesity by 3%. And I said, you mean 3%, or three percentage points? And they asked, What's the difference. And if you, you know, you got to in order to have agency, you need to have an ability to understand the world around you to understand how people make a profit to understand what's being done with your data. The problem with Facebook is not that it wouldn't let you have access to your data, it's that it was so confusing. People couldn't understand what was going on. And I mean, I, I was writing a book 2030 years ago, hoping that people would become conscious of the value of their data and manage it more effectively. And I was very disappointed. So the question is, how can we help make that happen? And that's the question Can, how can we not give people their data, but have them understand why they should want it?
and Claire, if you also want to comment on this, feel free to so Sandy, Claire, Steven, any any thoughts on what Esther asked?
Sure. I agree with what Esther is saying. I mean, you know, this is, in some ways, the core business problem if you having data does no good if you don't know what to do with it. And you're not able to have sort of coherent action as a function of it. But there is hope. People everywhere are very good at bargaining, at certain sorts of gambling at at all sorts of things that are in fact, numeracy. And so they're capable of doing this. It's not like it's something that's impossible. But you want to start with things that first of all, really matter personally and visibly. And a good example of that has to do with transportation, you know, did the buses serve you? Or do they serve the rich people? Simple things like that. There's many things that are simple relationships, that if people could see them in a map, and people are actually surprisingly good with maps, then they could be making begin making decisions based on that, and that is using data. And we've done this, and this is part of, I think, Claire's remit. We've done this where we've run literate data literacy programs in Africa. Latin America, the US, we ran a big program for this country of Canada, training plumbers and carpenters to use data and AI, it was very successful. These people are not stupid. Not at all. But But you have to present it in a way that is common sense. And it is common sense. It's actually not that difficult the way people make out. And, and that should be something that is just as important as making the data available to people in the first place. So let me just stop there.
Stephen, or Claire, any any thoughts on Esther's question
I've just cleared before, I would just add that, you know, one of the one of the advantages of working with a group like CRF, is that they are already in touch with their core technical assistance. So networks have, effectively micro lenders that work as business advisors, to entrepreneurs and small business owners in low income minority neighborhoods. So, to Esther's point, your point about making sense of the data, I think, initially, it needs to come with some scaffolding. And so at least in in, in our case, we see the existing technical adviser networks as a source of that scaffolding and support to help at least a group of people within the communities start to get more fluent with the, with the information and making use of the information that their data can reveal. So that's, that's what I would add. Sorry, Claire.
Thank you No, really interesting. No, I mean, I was also going to just stress this point that that Sandy ended on about data use. So my organization, the Global Partnership for sustainable development data were five years old. And when we started, there was a kind of sense that the problem with data was about access to data and making sure that everyone had the data. But over the last five years, we've pivoted, you know, very considerably to actually focus in much, much more on data use, and making sure not that people have access to data, that that is an issue. But the bigger challenge is, there is a lot of data, there's a lot of open data, there is a lot of data that is accessible to people. And they're not even you know, a lot of cases that is not even being used well, because people are lacking the skills, the confidence. And as Esther said, the capacity to use it. So I think this, we tend to be quite kind of supplier driven, I think in this world and focus very much on producing things and putting things out there, which of course, is important without that you can't have a community at all. But we need to think just as hard if not harder, about you know, about the demand side and about use and making sure that all of this wonderful stuff that we're so excited about is actually getting in the hands of people who have the ability to use it, which is just as big an issue if not more so.
Great to everyone you're listening to imagination action is a night of creativity, connectivity and compelling conversation with a dynamic group of imaginators, Sandy, Stefan, Stephen and Claire. Next week, we have folks from the Salk Institute talking about circadian rhythm. The week after that, we have David Rubenstein and grant and Janet Hill. And we're still figuring out what that topic is going to be, but it's gonna be great. And then the week after that we were supposed to have Naomi and Sarah they are both Hollywood actresses and producers and directors, but they both got scripted in a movie and have to shoot so we move that and instead we put in three comedy writers, the head writer for Ellen degenerates is show seven who is currently writing for James Corbin and the executive producer and writer for all seven years and like one of his best friends of Ramin from Everyone Loves Raymond, and we're working on getting a fourth from the Jimmy Kimmel show. So we swapped Hollywood for Hollywood. So Carolyn, can you play something in honor of, of Claire and think of Sandy and, and Steven is like the warm up acts and here's the here's like queen or or Led Zeppelin and Claire. Cory, did you want to play? Oops, yeah, I could, I could do something. Yeah, so Cory is the world record holder in playing the accordion for the longest amount of time. 33 hours and 14 minutes, and he's a world champion. Three times. He's the Tom Brady, Simone Biles of the accordion.
You, you you have my Guinness world record time, memorize more I do. All right. Well, alright, I can do more of a happy tonight. Yes, I tried to mix up every shot I play every time we're doing this. So we'll do something here. All right, let's see.
I love Corey, he went to the Juilliard of Boston, any fee. And they didn't have accordion on the menu. But he said, keeps me music cuz I want to be great. And he is certainly great. Hey, Bill Hoffman, before I introduce Claire. How is the World Economic Forum these days, you know, you guys must have had to evolve a little bit or pivot, given the pandemic. You know, it's played such an important role in the last 50 years in bringing thought leaders together, Claire, I see the picture that she chose for her for her profile here is when she was speaking in Davos on the opening day of the World Economic Forum and the event that Sandy and I curate with Forbes. In that dome, that TC TCS is also a partner. Yeah, Big Bill, how are How are things at the forum? And and what's the forum planning? For these? You know, is there a new normal the forum is planning for
sure, there's definitely a new normal, I think, you know, like any or every almost enterprise is that we've gone virtual in the last 18 months or so. And short, delivering some of our large in person events has been a change for us. Most recently, we were all lined up to have a big in person event in Singapore. And just because this is an evolving situation that had to be cancelled. So I think like a lot of firms, what we're doing is finding that right balance, leveraging platforms such as this one, to keep the conversation going and to keep meaningful action in place. Concretely, some of the themes that we've been working on as the virus outbreak, we leveraged work that the forum had been engaged in for a number of years on epidemic readiness, there's been a lot of work on digital inclusion, happy to, you know, point people in that direction if there's any interest there. And as I mentioned before, the work on what we call stakeholder capitalist metrics, or more or less ESG, is a theme line that has gained a lot of support a lot of momentum in an area that we're continuing to focus on. Lastly, we do intend to, you know, keep, you know, the spirit of Davos alive to get people back in place together. But obviously, that has to be done, when it's safe for everyone. And hopefully, that time won't be too far away. But by all means, we do intend to keep the community together and to keep pushing forward.
Oh, thank you for your leadership. And how does it look for January 2022? Is it too early to predict if there'll be an in person event? Or if it is going to be an in person? You know, do you have a sense of how different it might be?
It is still early, I know that we've had a number of intentions. You know, there was one in May, there was one in August, and things are just evolving rapidly. And I think the core thing is that the safety of everyone is insured, and that it's a global event. And just to make sure that just on logistic challenges that that brings in can be administered equitably. Because right now, not every country can travel, you know, everywhere. And so that's one of the larger systemic things that we're looking for is when will it be safe for you know, almost anybody from anywhere to travel to one spot, and that's someone of unique challenge, but yeah, the hopes there, the intention is there and fingers crossed for January. But nothing definitive at this time.
Well, and I also feel like these interesting times call for more collaboration, more deliberation, and that the forum's role, you know, is even more important than ever to help with that, even if it takes a different form than it traditionally had. And, you know, best of luck for the next 50 years. So my, I'm so proud to introduce our next guest. And Cory, thank you for that. That accordion play, Claire is, is a remarkable individual CEO of the Global Partnership for sustainable development data, a growing network that brings together several 100 members, governments, private sector and civil society to harness and leverage data and data technology towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, the 17 goals, the UN is rallying around, she also headed up, she heads up a global team on six continents. And she also used to work in the office of the UN Secretary General, where she wrote a report on the data revolution, a world that counts. So this is a data experts. Allison, why don't you kick us off? I'm really proud to have Claire amongst our speakers.
Thank you so much. Claire, we're so honored that you can join us. And you're doing a lot of work around what I think you call data for good. Can you explain a bit more? And I think you've started to refer to this in your earlier comments. But what what is data for good, and what do we have to do to get there?
Thank you. Thank you, Alison. I have to confess Actually, I'm not a huge fan of the phrase data for good. I mean, I I very firmly believe that data can do good. Of course it can. That's why we're all here. And we've heard some of the some of the ideas from speak, you know, the practical things that Stephen is doing, and you know, some of the many examples of, of how data can do that kind of thing. It's a bit analogous to maybe how we thought about sort of corporate social responsibility, maybe 1015 years ago, you know, we were old, we were all sort of talking about, you know, the power of the corporate social responsibility and how, and everybody must do good. But really what that came to mean was sort of lots of quite small projects, but nothing that really got to the heart of business models and how economies work. And I think there's a bit of a, I think there's a number of different ways of thinking about how data can do good. One is a sort of project type model, you know, how can we give away little bits of data, make sort of open up a little bit of data here and little bit of beta there and build a little product and see what we can do and experiment and pilot and a lot of that is going on, there's some great insights coming out. But I kind of hope that we're ready to make the jump from a sort of small scale project II approach to something which is much more systemic, and really is much more at the heart of how businesses see themselves and how the world of data is organized and regulated, which is just to say, data is not that there's some there's most of our data is over here. And over in this corner, there's a little bit of data, which is data for good. But we should think that, you know, we should insist that all data is doing some good to somebody somewhere. And then really, the question becomes how do we make sure that it is doing good, you know, to those people who need it most? So I think, you know, what we're about is really working very closely with governments and companies and others, and trying to think about how can we build the systems where data does good? As a matter? Of course, you know, we all know I think, you know, being it would be insane, if you were the CEO of a company, today to try to argue that you could operate without fullest possible knowledge of your company, if your supply chain of all of the things that were going on that were relevant to your business every minute of every day, we expect that but a lot of governments who are also trying to do good in all kinds of very complicated ways provide health services, provide education for their people don't have anything like that. They don't even though how many people that trying to serve in their countries, let alone what's the best way to do that? What's the best way to allocate resources and what's working? So I think, you know, we really just want to embed this idea that data is an integral part of the infrastructure for doing good everywhere. Not that there's some separate thing over some separate part of the data world, which we're going to call data for good. So although I very firmly believe that data can do good. I'd rather think about data doing Good everywhere than having a separate little, little track over here called data for good, which is somehow separate to the mainstream. Because what are we saying about the mainstream of what data is doing, if it's not doing good,
Claire, that was well put after the show, there'll be a transcript that everyone can read AI is, you know, does it instantaneously. And this, that'll be an interesting section, what you just said, I also could see us making that into an audiogram that people share so you can educate the world. My next question is, is using Ghana as a case study? You describe how a country like Ghana, that is wholeheartedly embracing data has a number of choices to make about whether it follows the US, or EU or China, or India model for data and regulation. Can you explain a bit more about these format, what these four models look like? And where do you see Ghana heading? Yeah,
I think Garner is a is a really interesting country, they're doing some great things. And with data, they have a really ambitious agenda. But they're also very careful agenda of sort of really thinking hard about some of the politics and the sort of social issues around data. And the Vice President of Ghana, along with with this is one of our board members, along with Sandy, and the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, and so on, you know, they're really committed to this agenda, and really believe in it enough to, you know, spent for the vice president of the country to spend his time and doing things like that. But I think for a country, like if you're in the position of trying to organize data, run data, use data effectively, in a country, all of its variety and all of its different dimensions. It was kind of easy, and but always, but nonetheless, always true to say that everything is more complicated than it seems. And it's sort of not always the most inspiring message. But nonetheless, it's true. And I think some of the things that we've been talking about this evening, you know, the need for communities to have access to their data, and so on, kind of single things, which are all very important in their own right, if you're trying to run a country. And if you're trying to run the data system in a country, you're trying to do lots of lots of different and somewhat conflicting things at the same time and navigate a really complicated series of political, social and economic trade offs. And that's certainly really, certainly coming through to me very strongly, as we work with Garner and other governments around the world. And they're trying to navigate in some of the things that we've talked about tonight, already, they're trying to navigate in real time, and some of them are very contradictory. A government like Ghana, you know, wants to protect the privacy of its people, because it cares about that. And also, because it has an active civil society movement that it knows will, you know, will start to jump up and down if they get it wrong, which is also a really important part of democratic accountability, they need to think about privacy. But they also are very aware of the economic value of data, they want their companies to benefit. They want small enterprises and Garner, to be able to use data to build apps to do all the kind of things that we know that data can do. So they're trying to navigate different demands there internationally as well. There's a big, we don't talk about it very much in this debate. There's a big international diplomacy agenda around data, you know, they want increasingly data is part of trade deals. And countries are expected to open to allow data to flow across borders, just in the same way as they negotiate the flow of goods across borders in a trade deal. But also countries are concerned about data sovereignty, they don't want their citizens to be producing all of this data for Facebook offer Google in it to just leave the country and that, you know, their own companies, their own enterprises have not been able to benefit. So they want to put up walls, but they also want to benefit from international trade. So a government has huge sort of dilemmas and trade offs all the time as it's trying to navigate. And just sort of reflecting this to some extent, we're also globally at the moment in a bit of a moment of sort of global competition around models for regulation. So we have, of course, the European Union, the the GDPR, apparently, which is focused very much on privacy and the need to protect privacy. But in the context of also recognizing the economic benefits of data. We have the US model, one that's perhaps more focused on the need for on data as an economic asset, and the need for and the kind of primacy of business models, although of course, also a strong movement and growing movement there around privacy. We have China which you know, very focused partly on the kind of international agenda and projecting itself outwards, but also really on the data sovereignty, partly from economics, partly for reasons of politics and, and their own sort of perceptions of their need to protect their insecurity and so on. And so this is sort of a lot of the genuine trade offs and economic complexities. And there's a whole international diplomacy agenda around trade. And that makes navigating this agenda politically, and trying to do their best and making the day to day decisions about what are they going to do about their about in the interactions that they have with companies about the way they handle their own data within government, incredibly complicated. It's been a privilege to sort of see a tiny bit of that from the outside and understand really what this looks like, from a political point of view, from an economics and innovation point of view.
It's so fascinating, as you're talking, Claire, and I'm also thinking back to what Sandy and Stephen shared. I mean, I love the perspective from a country like Ghana, because I think what's a little bit hard to understand as an outsider who's not an expert in this is if you are the Canadian government, I mean, what is your source of power here? In other words, your citizens want access to these social media platforms, you want access, I would think to some of the Google services. I mean, can you give us an example of what the Ghanaian government's power and then negotiation is and of a small country that you feel has actually negotiated? Well, for itself?
Okay, well, I'm certainly not I'm certainly not going to speak on behalf of the of the Ghanaian government, I'm not privy to their internal conversations. And I don't know what's driving them all I know, is what I see. And that the informal conversations that that we've had through the years, and but from the outside, you know, they do seem to be navigating it extremely well. I mean, I think that the, I think what power do they have? I mean, first of all, they, they have power domestically, they have domestic, you know, the mobile phone companies have gone and subsidiaries who need the same things that mobile phone companies need everywhere, everywhere, they need licensing, they need, you know, license to operate, they need all of the all of the things that that companies need from governments. So start with, they have that. And for example, you know, one of the things that we've been working on over the last year, of course, like everybody, through COVID, is trying to really make sure that we mobilize very quickly to so that we can absolutely harness the best of the technology that we have to deal with a pandemic. One of the things that we did there was work with the government of Ghana, with local company, and with some of the sort of big subsidiaries of mobile phone companies in Ghana, to, to navigate to the data sharing agreement that allowed the Ghanaian government to use anonymized telco data to track in real time how effective their lockdown policies would be. So that they could, you know, as they tried to all governments were trying to do to navigate all of the different sort of economic demands of public health and of the plant and of the economy and so on, they could track through looking at movement patterns that were provided by telco data, how, how effective their policies, their lockdown policies work in, in different in different contexts. And in that case, I mean, I think clearly, you know, the government has a huge amount of sort of moral power when it's trying to mobilize for something which is so clearly a shared public, a public good. And they have, you know, gone gone, there might not be a huge market in global terms, but it's a very large number of people and growing, and that is where the growth is going to be in these technologies. So I think countries which are now poor, and small and not so huge, in terms of the global economy, clearly aware the growth is going to be. And so that is power. There's not a huge amount of power countries have more power when they're bound together, of course, and there are lots of, you know, ways in which, you know, African countries are talking about agreements among themselves to create a bigger market and a more kind of consolidated regulatory environment, which probably would increase their power.
Great, thank you, Claire. You know, we have a great audience. I want to see if anyone has a question on stage to any of our speakers. We have other questions prepared. But, you know, part of the beauty of clubhouse is we can create this kind of back and forth. You know, I see. Yeah, Evan has 800,000 followers. On Twitter, I'm sure he's tweeting about tonight. Love, love to hear what you got in heaven. I also know you've got engaged recently to someone I adore. Congratulations and really happy for. for you guys.
Thanks so much. Still on cloud nine, a question for the panel, we've seen big tech move into healthcare in a major way, from Amazon's initiatives to Google, Microsoft, you know, name your big tech player. Obviously, there's a need to radically transform healthcare. But I'm wondering, the panel's opinion on, you know, the potential downside risk of that health data going to the big tech giants. And what we need to do, as a, you know, as a society as a as a government to mitigate the risk of misuse of our healthcare data, as it gets sucked into the, the tech giants, within we seem to have a love hate relationship with any any thoughts would be welcome.
One of the areas that I've worked most in is health. And I think what people talk about is basically, the existing healthcare system, which is screwed up, almost beyond belief. And what's happening is big tech is going in there and optimizing parts of it. But you're still screwed up. It's just, it's really pretty crazy. I would aim you at a very different way of thinking about the healthcare system, because it's really a sick care system. Right? in developing countries, there are nurse practitioners that go house to house to house. And we founded a company out of my my group, almost 20 years ago, it's called demography.com. And it currently serves 10% of the human population. By going through these nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, and and helping each family, they go, they visit the family, and they say what's going on? And they take data about it. And they said, Well, this is last year. And there's a little AI on there. It's very simple, simple rule based system that says, Well, you know, if that's wrong, you should try this is delivering health, not medicine. But of course, they can refer to medicine. And it's had enormous effect in Africa and India and others sorts of places, as you have to ask, why don't we have in the US health care as opposed to sick care. And I think that the some of the words that Stephen was saying earlier about, you know, flipping the model needs to happen in healthcare before you're going to get something that's really dramatically better than what you have today. So optimizing the current system isn't going to get you very far, what you really need to do is you need to focus on essentially making public health much more effective and available. And a core part of that is of course, having people know about their health and know about their community so and know about the the elements in their health, their community that are contributing, positive or negative. If you look at the sort of things that are known about public health and disease, you can see that an enormous amount of effect could be done by improving public health. And of course, the truth is, is that clean water and soap is probably the major factor in the human life expectancy going from around 35 to the 70 to 80. area it is now medicine help certainly, but even better is not getting sick. So yester is going to say something because this is her bailiwick.
Yeah, actually, I just wanted to add in one little thing, which is my kind of crazy pet project, which is to get every teenager, a continuous glucose monitor, along with a little bit of a curriculum and a good teacher who can help them explore it just so they understand how it works, and how their own body works. That's that's kind of what we need for people to generate their own health rather than sort of wait for it to deteriorate and have a doctor come try and fix it.
So this is health literacy, like we were talking about data literacy.
Exactly. And not just health. literacy, but you know, how does the thing work? That's right. Yeah. People understand their bikes better than they understand their bodies. Often. People can do this.
It's not. It's not impossible. You don't need a PhD or MD you know it. A lot of it's really pretty straightforward. Yep.
So this is Alison, let me disinvite. Anyone else in our audience who wants to ask a question to the speaker, just raise your hand. That's the I see one of you just did it. But that's the little sign at the bottom of your screen for people who are new. And I now have questions I believe from from Todd. From deza. from Dave and from Michael. If other people have questions, just let me know as well. But Todd, the floor is yours.
Thanks, Alison, I'd actually like to stay on the issue of health literacy. And as we think about optimizing health, what do you think are the keys with regard to digitalization and data? Is it just more of the same? Or are there things that we can be doing to combine the digitalization of healthcare along with education throughout the world and in in every economy rather than just for the US lens? Which is my lens, typically, to optimize health in developing countries as well? What are your thoughts there?
Well, let me sort of echo what Esther said is, is that a lot of it is getting to know your own body. And having these actually what are very common sense sorts of things. So that's the role of these nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, that visit families once or twice a year, in large parts of the developing world. They go by, and they, they weigh the babies and see how tall the kids are, and look in the eyes and stuff like that. And that's amazingly effective, these very simple things, combined with education, with telling people what it means. And I remember I was involved with the Costa Rican health system, which is a similar type of thing. And they had the habit of the nurse practitioner was typically the daughter of the mayor of the village. And when the daughter of the mayor of the village comes and tells you, you should do this, you listen to it, not just because it's you, but because this is the mayor's daughter, and their health care system, really rocks works. And so moving forward, you look at the fact that some 80% of the human population has a smartphone, you can do early detection of diabetes through retinal scans, just with a camera there, you can do blood and heart problems, again, just with a camera there some years ago, of various manufacturers built in things to look at pulse x emitters and sort of oxygen levels and things which is Incidentally, what you need to know if you're getting sick with COVID. And and they all these things already have enormous amounts of sensing in them. They could be tooled as feedback to people to educate them. And I think that would be an enormous thing, given that it's in the hands of so many people, and particularly if it's coupled with things like nurse practitioners visiting the household and saying, well, let's look at your data. Oh, look, you know, we don't do this or you do do that. That's a problem, or because whatever, that sort of educational outreach, continuous educational outreach, based on data, people's personal data that they can collect, given the devices they already have. I think that would be transformative. And, frankly, that sort of success, that a company like amagi, which is a B Corp is a sort of dual bottom line not for profit company has had in Africa. And India just shows that this is the case, this works.
One of the questions this is Alison, that I'd love to ask this amazing panel because it's something I have a hard time tracking is you've done such a great job laying out what's at stake with control of platforms and data. But I'm curious how entering into a cash free economy and Bitcoin and digital currency overlays with this issue. I mean, does that take Sandy and you terms money labour sort of put data on the same level? Do you feel that China's power over data and platform goes to a different level? If it creates its own digital currency? Or is Bitcoin potentially one of your democratizing tools?
Well, um, I'm not a fan of Bitcoin, because if it's dirty, like, there was a coal mine in China, that got flooded, and something like a third of the Bitcoin capacity disappeared. So it, it's killing the planet. Plus, it probably is one of the primary reasons that things like ransomware, and stuff work. But there are separately systems that are far better to engineer that are still digital currency. And in fact, the EU is getting ready to do one. China, of course, has one that sort of out and running it by itself isn't necessarily a huge change. But who controls it? So in China, it's much more something that the state wants to be able to investigate things easier. In Switzerland, you know, it's much harder. There's all these regulations and law and courts and stuff about it. And there's a different perspective, but that doesn't get you to moving away from money. That's really the key problem. And, and Bill was talking about ESG, environmental, social governance, you can imagine her I imagine at least a world where everything you do has both a profit and a cost. The profit can be things like, Oh, you help the environment, three points, you help the social capital of your community by two points. You made $2. And you contributed to public governance a little bit, so that it's not just one dimension. By some points of view, the major problem we have in our society, is that we invented this thing called GDP. And everything is measured in terms of profit and loss and GDP. Governments operate in terms of it. They ignore what they call externalities, which are, you know, kids dying? That's an externality to an economist. You know, that's crazy. You need to be able to recognize that human life is multi dimensional, and, and build that into the system. How might you do that? Well, if taxes were levied, both on your environmental impact, and your social impact, how much do you hurt social cohesion? And your governance? How much do you contribute to collective positive collective action? as well as money, then you would see corporations really beginning to do stakeholder capitalism? Because by any measure, they have to behave themselves. You might also see that people who are community workers, mothers at home raising kids are making no. Right? Because they're adding to the community. And don't just measure everything in terms of money.
Wow, Sandy, you're so clever. And we're recording this, and this will be transcribed tonight, and we're gonna amplify this in our on our podcast. But those of you in the room, you're you heard it live. Alison, did you have a queue of some other people?
Well, people are from India. I have an excellent business. I did discuss with you. So shall I proceed?
No, Melvin, I think we have you. So if you don't mind, there's quite a few people have been waiting ahead of you. So does I think you're next. Did you have a question for our panelists?
Oh, everyone being careful does is really smart.
But you have to be very careful. Yeah, I totally have a question. Thank you so much, Alison. I was I was curious, what do you see? What do you envision would be the types of organizations and the business models and how would these firms be structured of the type that that would be needed to to conduct the power of digital and data to reshape the world and I'm wondering like, some of them I have to assume are existing businesses that would be well suited. And I'm wondering which ones and how and maybe more interestingly, there, it sounds like there's a Greenfield for new types of business models and, and structures of organizations that would be, you know, native and would thrive in bringing this about and, and sustaining and growing and evolving. The system that reshapes our world. What are your thoughts on that? You know, the organization of the firm for this? Thank you.
John, can I aim the question to other people here?
Yeah, yeah, sure. You you are, you're the orchestrator,
I look, I work closely with Dasa. And he is he is dangerous in a positive way. So so one vision is that you have organizations based on small groups that know each other and trust each other. So so the classic argument for a big organization is low internal costs, so they're replacing the the lack of trust, with inflexible rules. That's what's going on. But these new systems, that these platforms are cheap, you can use things like blockchain or Bitcoin but blockchain Ledger's AI etc. allow you to have very low transaction costs. That means that the motivation for having big corporations or in fact, large governments, begins to go away. And what you get is you get dynamic organizations of communities. And and it's more of an ecology in the end, than an industrial age uniform thing with an org chart. And so the division that I think that we're headed to, and it will take all of sizable amount of time, is one where organizations and governments are based on alliances or communities that change and and are constantly re negotiated via these transaction platforms. But I know that sounds crazy, but there are examples of corporations like that, on industries that are that sort of liquid organization, logistics chains are an example of something like that. And incidentally, logistics chains, to all that shipping and manufacturing, and so forth, are one of the very first things that's gone over to the new transaction platforms. So there are now blockchain systems that manage the majority of shipping in the world. And similar sorts of systems are managing large fractions of logistics chains in the world. Why? Because you don't need a big central organization that's so inefficient, and rigid. You can do it dynamically and make it the way you want to be, and change it all the time. So I know Stephen has things to say about this. And I'll bet Claire does too. And, and Bill and other people.
Yeah, I would just thanks, Sandy. I would just add, and it goes back to perhaps Evans question. And the point that Claire made as well, that, you know, I just wanted to reinforce, which is that if something's are cozy, Nicolas Sarkozy said, at the end of the last century, which is a 20th century institutions can't solve 21st century problems. And, you know, to Claire's point about, we need to sort of fundamentally revisit the structure of our business models, I think we've seen a shift from an institution centric approach to the world, which relied on centralization and these rules that are difficult to scale that Sandy mentioned, to one based on not on stocks, but on flows. And so the world is becoming more network centric. And in many ways, Sandy's example of a supply chain illustrates, you know, corporate sphere has caught on to this much faster than than governments. In fact, if you look at the EU, you've got a you've got a group of countries that embraced the notion that the free circulation of goods, capital and people within its borders, but fails to institute a mechanism to agree on common social and fiscal policy. So you have an economic mechanism that's divorced from the institutions we rely on to create, you know, social policy. So when it when it comes to an organization, the future and does I think you're absolutely right. You know, there's huge Greenfield opportunity here. I think, number one, you've got to lead with impact over profit. And this is where I think technology in some ways has caught up with the cooperative or mutual model. I think the other is going back to this free circulation. have, you know goods and capital and people versus institutions that are stuck at a nation state level? We, you know, the future is transnational. And we I think that the groups that can arrive at you know, agreements that embody Federation, are going to enjoy early benefits. And I think one of the things that is interesting about, say a credit union is if you read the principles, they have seven principles, they operate by Principle number six is that a credit union is duty bound to help another credit union. And what that creates is a is a innate desire and ability organizationally to federate. And I am personally very interested in what we might see arise there, both in terms of organizations that are putting impact before profit, and equally, governments are groups that embrace Federation over more limited models.
Great, thanks. Claire, did you want to add it otherwise, I was gonna go to Dave, Michael. And David.
Let me just quickly, I mean, I think this has been really interesting. One thing that struck me listening was that in particular, listen to Steven just now is that although I completely agree that, you know, we're shifting perhaps to this more sort of network fluid model of economic organization, in a lot of ways that business models are still quite sort of stock focused and trying to look at ways of putting up walls around different assets. So you know, we've already talked quite a lot this evening about the ownership of data and control of data. And, you know, the sort of dangers that come when we try to when single entities, we talked a lot about Facebook, but they're not the only ones, put up walls and try to hold on to the data that they have and control it, you know, that's a way of trying to make what's essentially a sort of network building model, make money out of an asset that they treat, like a stock. And I think we're seeing the same thing. One word that we haven't used yet tonight, but I think is really important is interoperability. And, you know, sort of trying to find ways that business models that don't involve putting up walls around products, and preventing them from interacting with other products. So I think that there are absolutely this idea of sort of shifting towards a networked model. But I think that still got further to go. And in particular, in relation to business models, and some of the ways that people are trying to capture profits in this new economy actually look a bit more like the old model. And perhaps that's part of the unfinished business of what we have this transition, that we are, that we are currently in the middle of.
Great. So it's, it's 803. This is imagination, action, we have another like 25 minutes to go, we're gonna have a music closing. And as always, Allison, will give a summation of some of the themes. I want to get a few other questions. And what I think I'm going to do is to our speakers, and I'm going to add bill Hoffman and Esther, you're going to be speakers too. If you could get a you know, a pad and pencil, as I'm going to take a few questions at once. And then have you guys choose which ones you want to respond to. So Dave, Michael, and David, what questions you have Dave go first?
Yeah. Hey, thanks, Shawn. It's really interesting discussion. So I mean, at the theme level, I think there's the stated stuff and the real stuff. You know, Sandy, it's interesting to hear you on like the central bank, digital currency. Stated theme I like, you know, digital Yuan. currencies are countries wanting to do their own currencies, I do see it like, you know, just just cynically more control rather than any kind of move towards real decentralization. I mean, in reality in that frame, they've just seen the rise of Bitcoin and the strength of Bitcoin. And, you know, Andrew Bailey in the UK, naughty crypto, people must get control of it. Gonna put out a task force. You know, I just, I'm massively cynical at the, you know, the real intent there. So that's
Dave, is there a question that you want to pose? Because I want to get a few questions out there. On this, and I just come up to chat if it's gonna be just. Yeah, no points back. No worries. Yeah, no worries. Thank you for your comment. Michael, do you have a question?
Yeah. Hi. Thanks. Thanks for having me. So great to see you again. Really the question I have is really, this is a great discussion around data and the importance and I Evan kind of brought this up. As I see the come up as a clinician and a consultant. There's a space race of commoditization of data and patients as consumers, etc. So how do we build in trust in these experiences, how to, you know, you're seeing some bad lash and some of the how data is being collated looked at and it's some of it gets surfaced to the general public. Most people are from a health literacy and a data literacy perspective, and even a digital literacy don't realize, sort of the console that just the enormous power of all this data. So it to this panel, how do you build trust for these end users so that they don't feel like they're in a health perspective? Whether it's lemon health or all over somebody, that they're the next Facebook or bash on Facebook? For someone who isn't? Who's doing some nefarious things with their data, they think, how do you? How do you solve for that? Great, thank you. Can you pose your question?
And we love data day, Dave, helps. David helps produce the show, and has been an early founder of this effort. So David, thanks for asking a question. Dave. David, we can't hear you.
Yeah, try again. Yeah. I'll come back to you. I think you're it's a mic thing. Maybe because you're I know, you're recording the show, also. Kesha, Linda, do you have a question?
I have somewhere between a question and a comment. And it's interesting that Michael just brought up peripherally part of part of what I want to to discuss. And I've been in it for many decades, and I found a common pattern that is still occurring. And so we have so technology, like economics is a artificial construct that we developed as tools. And we have had a tendency to do economics for economic sake, as opposed to for society sake. And the same, there's also a tendency to do the same thing with technology, and you know it. So in many ways, for decades, I've seen too many instances where we've lost the bubble. And I've been observer and the person affected by that. And also participant in that because I had to pay the rent. So I had to have a job. So I did do what had to be done, even if I didn't even though I disagreed with it. But for, for one, one example, and that's in medicine, so lots of technology. And, you know, data, automated systems, automated business processes and procedures, all that works fine. However, I know for a fact that you even though healthcare technology and science has exploded and increased monumentally over the past 70 years, health care part of healthcare has tanked into the toilet. And I know that for a fact. So we've lost healthcare. So it's like we've lost the bubble. What are we really trying to do here? And so one, one thing perhaps, and I don't know how this will go over, because this is a you know, basically technology room? But I think is there part of the contextualization needs to be for example, philosophy, social science, etc. In order to make an effort to not view the world as opportunity opportunities to develop in and use technology, but rather to as problem spaces that need technology to be bettered. And so in other words, there needs to be a balance. So there's no there's going to be technology push and that's fine. But there also needs to be Purpose and Need pull. And that's the gist of my comment. So I'm done. Thank you.
Thank you for that. We get intelligent people on the show. Thank you for your thoughtful comments. David, let's David Chang. Let's try again. Yeah, you're you're really low. I think maybe because you're using an iPad to record. Okay, if you want to text me the question I can, I can ask it. Or if you come back in, yeah, now try. You're unmuted. Alright, well, speakers. There were a few comments. I think there was a question in there. And he, let's just just go around, Claire. Any thoughts? Stephen? Sandy.
Thank you. Yes. Really interesting set of questions. So kind of two things jumped out. I mean, I absolutely absolutely could not agree more with with you, Linda, about this need to not just think about the technology. But think about the philosophy that the you know, the under the sort of social underpinning of that technology. And as you said, I really like that idea about the sort of technology push and the needs pull. I don't know if you saw, but Gillian tett who is the managing editor at the Financial Times, who is an anthropologist by training, working among economists at the Financial Times wrote a really interesting piece this weekend about the need for an anthropological perspective, when we think about data that I think encapsulated a lot of this. So if you haven't, if any, you know, people haven't read that, really urge that but I think, at this point about how health has come up a few times, already today, and I find it so interesting that you know, so many of our sort of hopes, so many of the best successes, but also the worst fears about data are focused on health and the health sector, I guess it's not surprising, it's so fundamental to our lives. But in some of the most incredible success stories of data, you know, use for social good occur and health and is being the most innovative. And an area where there's been sort of the some of the most the best investment in data. In some of that, particularly in some of those countries, you know, that we focus on where data is so lacking. So the examples of data, people's data being used, in it, we're seeing every day now data being used to track the pandemic, to understand new variants, and so on. So we have sort of example, after example, thrown at us all the time about the power of using individual people's data, for the greater, you know, for the public good to do health research, and so on. You know, we're relying on it at the moment. And yet, it's also a source of such great fear, we're having this debate on I live in, in the UK, we're having is in a very different health system. We're having exactly this debate. Right now, in the media, there's a new proposal to share data, to the pool data that comes from the there's there's created on individuals within the system. And there's a big public anxiety, this will be an open a door for selling that data for profit, and so on, the government is saying, absolutely, they won't do it, but people aren't trusting it. And this is in the context of a health system, which by and large is trusted, and which is not run for profit. So there is something particular about health data, which I think brings out both the best and the worst in data. And it goes very, I think it's not about data. It's about health and the importance of health to, to human life in our sense of what we want institutions to do for us. But I think it's a fascinating study. And I do think it comes down to you know, what Michael said about trust, I don't know, if there's a magic recipe to create trust, if there was a thing, we wouldn't be having this conversation, we just will be going out and doing it. And the world would look very different. But but I do think that's, you know, that's what it comes down to, there's no single thing that will build that it's just a slow, kind of torturous process of building it absurd shown that you can be trusted. And I think what the debate in the UK is showing now is how easily that can be lost. You know, we're having a debate where people aren't trusting the use of data in a system, which otherwise people really do trust. So it's a complicated thing. Thanks.
guy just wanted to add to what Claire said in the thank you for the questions and comments. One, I think, you know, you have to lead with a different set of values, right? So it's ideology and politics creates inequality, not technological or economic constraints. And I think you know, profit first models are all well and good. But I think there's an opportunity for a different values based approach. Related to that, I we've got it you know, the the advantage of more network centric models is it allows you as Sandy mentioned, with the, the health worker example to push power to the edge. So push insights out to people who are in embedded in the local communities and can work with each other, work with their customers to help them better understand their their own context and situation that that both beats, reach trust, and it breeds agency. And I think from a business model perspective, my last point, you know, we've we've seen a lot of talk about last mile services, and the last mile, at least in the United States, and I think this is an opportunity, Sandy, and I'd like to compare notes on Tammany Hall, which is, you know, a somewhat unfortunate but network based organization that emerged to take care of Irish immigrants at the turn of the century arriving in New York, which consisted of a network of folks that embedded themselves within the community and acted as arbitrators For more resources and more information to help immigrants find a foothold. And so I think distributed networks and last mile services is an area for innovation. But I think it all comes back to what is your fundamental ideology? And how do you intend to hold yourself and have the populations you serve hold you to account for the impact that you're having on their lives. And now with now with data, perhaps we can measure that?
Yes, I'd like to add one thing, which is that people always confuse reliability with trust. So when they try to centralize like these big things, where there's no person to person can, you know, trust and interaction, they use the word trust, but really, it means something like rule based or reliable. Trust is a human thing. It requires people knowing each other people having each other's back, being in the same boat with the same sort of outcomes. And, and that restricts it to being relatively small communities. The second thing that is wrong, I think, in this discussion, is this idea that all of the data has to go to one place, that's simply false. You could have communities that talk about it, know each other, trust each other, hold the data. And the medical authorities could ask the communities questions of their data. And, and if you think that's crazy, you should just notice that Google moved all of their mobile phone stuff, to exactly that sort of thing. They're no longer taking data off of raw data off of your phone, they ask questions, and they get features that are not personally identifiable. Because they can do that with a couple of billion phones. Certainly the NHS and other people can keep data confined to people who know each other and want to be able to work together to make their community more healthy. So you can have health services that are completely distributed, is not even expensive or difficult. It's just the doctors don't like it typically, because they they have to know ask questions, rather than mess with the data. And the trust now comes from the communities and communities will have somewhat different attitudes about what data they want to share, which is frustrating to someone who's trying to do the science. But like I do, but you know, deal with, it's not your data.
Great to answer to.
Yeah, yeah. So and then. And then in closing, I'd love to just go around to the speakers and have you share something where you're using your imagination to make, you know, to help the next few years to come, you know, show how you're you're being a visionary. And then Allison will sum us up, and then we'll get Cory. So yeah, Esther, what are your thoughts?
So, interestingly, my aunt actually worked for the National Health Service in the UK. As a medical social worker, she handled unmarried mums in the 50s and 60s. And the notion of doing all this as a community thing is really nice. But I'd like to, you know, there's a reality a lot of people live in large cities, a lot of people move around. You know, trust in a community is great. But I would argue that In addition, ultimately, you need a business model that fosters trust. And the problem with healthcare right now is the business model is the sicker you are, the more you're worth. If you talk to somebody who gets Medicaid payments, somebody who's pre diabetic isn't worth very much the moment they actually become diabetic. You can charge more for them. And because I'm in the health care A world I got a letter recently from some guy in Florida, who offered to go through my health care records, not mine personally, but he assumed I had a health care business. And he helped me up code them by claiming these people were sicker than they were. And that's our system, we need a system of single payer, not single delivery, but single payer, so that health is considered a community asset. But it's not considered an asset of a specific community in the financial sense, because then the poor communities just ended up with crappy health care, because they're poor. So, you know, I'm for single payer, multiple delivery systems, ideally, local, but not necessarily. And the incentives need to be towards keeping people healthy. That's what will both provide better health, and better care for people to keep them healthy, it will also induce trust, because people know that the people who are being paid to keep them healthy are in fact being paid to keep them healthy, rather than being paid to refer them for more expensive tests or additional procedures. And, you know, like it or not, one of the greatest uses of big data is counterfactuals. So I took care of you and you didn't get diabetes, and you lived 10 years longer than was predicted. And I want to be paid for that, because I kept you healthy. And because I've big enough data to know that you should have died 10 years earlier, I'm going to get paid. And it's this is one of the most exciting and positive use of big data, which is to understand how much good we're doing by keeping people healthy.
Great, so just going around. Thank you for that. Esther. Claire, show us how you're using your imagination, say something provocative about this topic. Okay, um, and I know it's one in the morning there.
Yeah, it is. There's actually my night, I hope, I hope you've been appreciating the soundtrack. It's a warm evening here in London, and my neighbor is having a little party down the street, so probably would have been awake anyway, to be honest. And I mean, I think, I guess I would like to bring us back to some of the basics. There's a huge potential that technology, there's a huge potential in digital. But we also have to get some of the foundations right, you know, we have to, and this is a very old school thing to say in this community, we have to help countries to conduct a regular census. So they know how many people they are, for example, providing health care for, we have to have the basics of registering births, registering deaths, you know, we're all obsessed with counting deaths from COVID. This year, in most countries, we have no idea how many people have died from COVID. Absolutely not, because they don't have good systems. So all of this technology, and these, you know, wonderful imaginative ideas will come crashing down if we're not building them on strong foundations. So I'm not sure john that this is going to qualify as a imaginative idea. It's bringing us right back to what we were talking about, you know, 100 years ago, still the Babylonians conducted the first census 1000s of years ago. But there are some basic foundations upon which all of this needs to be built. And while we are letting our imaginations fly, let's also keep our feet on the ground.
Great. Thank you, Claire. Stephen, I think it's like five o'clock in Seattle. What you got?
Thanks, I would suggest that we put social capital ahead of capital because trust based economy will yield higher returns than a capital based one. And I think if you do that, you actually lower the scale at which these effect these tremendous platform effects can can operate and benefit a population. And you also end up with a data set that can benefit both the community, but equally large and growing class of investors. I think it's now $53 trillion, who are at least professedly, looking for impact? double bottom line or triple bottom line. So there is a way that we can get a trust based economy working in a way that serves both our needs as a community and also our need for financial return.
Great, Sandy, you, you know opened up the show. Why don't you have the last Word of our speakers and then we'll go to Allison and then music.
Well, I think that the vision that we should have for the future is one that is not about megalithic government or systems, but about fluid organization among communities of people that actually know each other and have each other's back communities that know enough about their data, to be able to understand it, and and use it. And I'll end with one sort of recent thing that happened to me. I was part of a US National experiment to predict which kids would do well, and which kids would not do well, it was a big data experiment, 22,000 data points per five that each of 5000 kids and, and the data were everything you could imagine all the psychological theories about, you know, resilience, and this and that. And the other thing, and the bottom line on all this big experiment was, none of our theories today predict how kids are going to grow up none 750 different experiments by different academic groups, none of it worked. You know, what does work. And this is data, but cleaned from IRS data by Raj Chetty up the street from me here, role models, kids that are exposed to successful role models have high probabilities, much higher probabilities of succeeding in life. That's the end of it. That's the face to face. Personal exposure is the thing that humans are built on. Don't try to take it away.
Wow. Thank you, Sandy. And for those of you who don't know, Sandy, you know, definitely follow Him and, and read his work. He He's very prolific and doing important work. And we're proud to build this room around him and brought these other collaborator collaborators from different parts of the world. And Esther always great to have you. So Alison, what just happened there, this has been two and a half hours, do a recap.
Oh, my gosh, well, this was such an important session. And I really think our speakers are musicians and our audience. I don't think in all the sessions we've had, we've had another panel where I feel more is at stake. So john reminded us at the very opening of the show that what is at stake is the power of digital data and platforms to reshape our world. Sandy started us out pointing out that we're undergoing a fundamental transformation as powerful today, as any seen in our history, data has become a new means of production as important as money or labor. But we all also recognized that data today, the power is dominated by a very few people and companies who have an ability to control access and attention. And Sandy pointed out in his opening that we're at a crossroads. And if he put it we could go in a direction that makes the 1984 seem team. But there's also a potential for communities to become data literate, which I found incredibly exciting from all the speakers. Sandy also reminded us that AI, Internet of Things blockchain big data, they don't operate independently, they combine to create one incredibly powerful transactional platform. And that's part of what gives the owners or the organizers of the platform so much power, and therefore he mentioned the need for a new deal on data, which is something I think we almost need a whole nother session on. Also, I think Sandy made the critical point that China with a billion citizens is leveraging the power of data, digital currency, their Belt and Road initiative to create a platform that may be so powerful that it leads us into a Chinese century. Then Steven talked about his front row seat when he was at Goldman Sachs. Seeing the power that big data gave Goldman over customers and even regulators from aggregation of data, and allowing players like George Soros, shorting the sterling. He talked about the need to flip the equation on data ownership and control, moving control from a few companies to individuals. And Steven also described the opportunity with credit unions where each individual could own their data. But they would also get an anonymized and shared, leveraging a new economy of trust. And this very exciting pilot that he's launching with Sandy support next month in Chicago. Sandy reminded us of the urgent need to improve data literacy so that people know how to use their data to forge a better life. And then Claire joined us and talked about the importance of the suite of questions around the governance of big data, including how we distribute risks and rewards. And what we do about the fact that many countries aren't even part of the conversation. Claire also talked about increasingly data is part of trade deals, countries want data sovereignty, and the huge dilemma and trade offs with competition around different models. The US model favoring commerce, China, focusing on protecting their data and security, Singapore having models and the EU having a model. And then in the q&a, we talked about big tech moving into healthcare. Esther talked about the need for health literacy mentioning that most people understand their bikes better than their bodies. And Sandy painted us a vision of an ecology with alliances of communities that change based on transactions, which he called liquid organizations. And finally, as we wrapped up, Steven reminded us the quote, that 20th century institutions can't solve 21st century problems. And there's a real need to put social capital ahead of purely financial and profit motive motivated capital. And I love the the way that Sandy wrapped up pointing out that at the end of the day, even in a big data world, the power of personal touch, and trust never goes away, talking about the study with 5000 Kids 22,000 data points, and a lack of ability to predict who would do better based on data science or theories. But what really seems to work at the end of the day is role models, who really each of you are now for me, and I think we are all for each other. And thank you for just bringing so much light to this. Both absolutely critical topic. I also think the need to understand data, infrastructure, as well as the power of our own data is really worthy of a whole nother show. And john, thank you for bringing us all together.
Great. So that was imagination, action. And you know, Allison, I think you did justice to our great speakers tonight. Thank you for that summary. So in closing, I see we have Corey, can you play us out? And I don't know fooder if Carolyn is still here, if Yeah, well, Cory Why don't you just play us out? Alright, sounds good job. Thank you. Probably won't hear much accordion in this. But everything you hear is coming from one accordion. Don't actually, Bill Hoffman. Given that you run the World Economic Forum, you have the last word. I know. I know. It's a committee but you're You're like a Grand Poobah there.
Thank you. Not sure what else to say? Here's one. Go back and find some more work from the long now foundation you're going to find work from Esther from Brian ino from Kevin Kelly from Sandy Pentland, the folks that were writing decades ago. That really got it for where we're going to go. And I would just invite people to go do a little bit of homework on what some of those things were because I think they're really applicable. I think the time is now we're at a really unique tipping point. And when the Martians do come, you know, that can be 10,000 years from now, but at least our kids will know what we were thinking about today. Thanks, john.
Great, everyone in on that note, this ends imagination, action. and tune in next week, we're gonna have circadian rhythm, how to, you know, achieve peak performance and sleep eating and exercise from a bunch of experts from the Salk Institute. The week after that we have David Rubenstein, co founder and co chairman of the Carlyle Group with Janet Hill, who is a board member, and was a math teacher for years, I think was a key person in the US Army. Her husband is Calvin Hill, we set records at Dallas, a Yale grad, set with the Dallas Cowboys. And our son is grant Taylor, who played all four years at Duke and was in the NBA, here their conversation. And then the week after that, we have three comedians writing talking about how they write comedy. From the nine year writer for everyone loves Raman, to the writer from James Corbin show. And in the senior writer who just retired after 12 years of writing for Ellen DeGeneres. And we have a robot show in the works. We have a show in China. Alison, do you want to share a few of the other shows that we have in the works?
Well, so we have a bunch of great shows. We have over 200 speakers, so we got to put them to work, you know, there's an employment programming in the last few days. We also signed up to number two person and Fidelity Investments to do a talk. We also signed up Goku, who is one of the most connected people in Silicon Valley. We also signed up the president of cyber security and MasterCard. So we're getting some interesting things. And Sandy and I are curating for the Davos World Economic Forum week, we do an event under a big dome, second largest venue over there. TCS, Tata builds the dome, and we curate some programming with Forbes. And we're really proud to do imagination action there, and we really proud to do it on this weekly show. So thank you, everyone. In another update. A lot of leaders at clubhouse have been tracking our show and we recorded and they've been listening to it and we're in talks with ways to get some of these ideas out there. So they have real impact and escape velocity to help make the world a better place. So by that I'm going to close the room but thank you everyone for a great two and a half hours.
