Futurist Gerd Leonhard at ConX Mallorca - The good future of travel

So it's great to be here. I'm a great fan of Spain, coming to Spain and to Mallorca for quite some time. But of course, you guys from all over the place. So I'm going to speak to you about the future. It's interesting to see that the future is closer than we ever thought. The future is no longer about tomorrow. Future is here. I mean, it's crazy. The other day I went to a place where I can travel virtually to give a speech in a hologram. So a company called Proto and I step into my studio with a bunch of cameras and I pop up in a booth in Beijing and it looks totally real. And this used to be over a million dollars to make that happen. And now the boxes are under $10,000. And in 10 years it'll be $10,000 so I can travel virtually. It was interesting to see at the same time that I was there, they were doing a fashion show with Naomi Campbell and a bunch of other models. And they're all sitting in the booth, one next to the other, and you couldn't tell the difference. Of course, you can only move in the booth. But it looks very, very real. For conferences it's great. But for travel, people want to smell and feel and touch each other, maybe have a drink. You know, this is completely different. So I think we're going to continue. And I always say at the beginning of my speeches that I think the future is better than we think today. The future has a bad name. If you ask people between, say 20 to 40 millennials, Gen Y, 71% in Europe, 50, think that the future is going to be worse than the present, that their life is worse than their parents life, Covid, the war, all the bad stories about the future. If you watch television, any television, whether it's Hulu, Netflix, Bollywood, Nollywood, whatever, the future has a bad reputation. Every movie we watch, from Black Mirror to anything else, ends with a story that says, the robots will take your work and then they will harvest our bodies for energy. That's the future. But I'm here to tell you different. So I'm going to start with this saying. Basically what's happening is that we're going warp drive into the future. Remember Star Trek? Well, that was a long time ago. Right, But Star Trek was a great movie. The only film actually that was positive about the future has been Star Trek. Really? Maybe her and those kind of movies. But I always say science fiction is becoming science fact. And that's true in so many places. We have kind of self Driving cars. We don't have flying cars. We can speak to machines, they can speak back to us. Interesting story. I'll talk. This is the topic, of course, my conversation today. But basically what's happening is we have in this world of travel and generally speaking, in the world, because two big waves that are changing everything. One is climate change, global warming, and the other one is intelligent machines in particular. Generally intelligent. Right now machines aren't intelligent, they're smart. No longer stupid, they can do all kinds of interesting things. But intelligence, you know what that means for a human? I can meet you later, in 0.4 seconds. I can get a feel about who you are without saying a single word. How do we do that? Well, humans have emotional, kinesthetic, musical, emotional, social intelligence. Machines have one logic, data. And if you're not data, you don't exist for the machine. That's because humans are multinary. We can see the world in many different ways. We're like an all sensing organization, we sense everything. So in this succession there will be many great opportunities. Climate change, in fact, in my view, is something that we are on the way to solving. It's difficult, it's going to cost money, but we have all the tech, we can solve this. The other part, general, intelligent machines. We're not solving that. I'll explain in a minute what that means and which way we can possibly go with this. But clearly a machine that can think, understand the world. Look at the world that we have created online. That's basically what's happening with ChatGPT. We're using our data to see the world, right? So that machine can start to explain the world. But of course we know this large learning models understand only 3 to 5% of the total world there is. It doesn't understand the real world. I mean, it's a machine, right? How can a machine understand the real world? We know, of course, in the real world, our emotions, experiences, being human matters a lot more than the data. In fact, we buy and consume everything because of our beliefs, our emotions. We don't sit down and calculate whether that car is going to be environmentally responsible. And that's the number one decision we make. Lots and lots of other decisions. You see in the movie don't look up Leonardo DiCaprio about climate change. Really. So that's something we have to be careful when we think about machines that can think. It's a bit like this. We don't want to look up and say, ok, these machines could eventually become too powerful, like the asteroid. So I think we have to look up a little bit more there. I'll talk more about that in a minute. But basically what's happening is technology is entering warp drive. So that means there is really no end to the power of technology. Quantum computing, nuclear fusion, artificial intelligence, 10G networks. Sooner or later, by 2030, there'll be 9 billion people connected to the Internet at high speed, low cost devices everywhere in the world. There was a funny saying from Noah Smith the other day who said that it used to be that we can escape the real world on the Internet and now we escape the Internet in the real world. It's an interesting thing. Obviously in Switzerland, when I have some hotel groups that I work with there and, and I always say offline is the new luxury. You charge extra so you cannot connect to the Internet. There's hotels that do that. I mean, Swiss hotels are very cheap, as I'm sure you know. So they charge extra if your 3G network is blocked to keep you mentally sane, I suppose. But look at the graphics here. This one shows you the amount of computing power basically in 2030, unlimited computing power, any amount of data we can calculate. This is the amount of data that ChatGPT started with. 175 billion measly amount, 101 trillion. Now that's the amount of data that ChatGPT 4 is running. Human data, our connections in the brain and the neurons. 100 trillion. So we're 100 times ahead for the time being. And of course our energy that we use to compute 100 trillion is minimal. It's like 0.4 gigawatts or something. While the Internet is a giant machine that has to be run by service. So last year, two years ago, I made a movie in Lanzarote called the Good Future. It was an interesting time to make this film because it was in the COVID years, 2021, really. And I talked a lot about what that means, a good future. And I think the main topic that I'm talking about today is a good match for this, because it's really about this is this kind of combination of humans and machines. That's what it's all about. We must figure out a way to use the power of machines and technology to our collective benefit. The benefit of most people, of course. Every technology can be abused. You can use a hammer and kill your neighbor, or you can build a house, but the hammer isn't going to be a religion. You don't want to sit down and pray to the hammer like we pray to technology. So that's something we have to Keep in mind, we have to find this balance, proaction and precaution in the travel business. This is the number one rule in my view. You have to be proactive to do what you can safely and that's good for the customer, good for the ecosystem. But also have some caution because in the end you remember that business and everything we do is all about relationships and trust. No matter how digital you're going to become. That is the question do I trust to go to this place? And how deeply disappointed would I be if it doesn't work out? And this is the typical story, of course, of travel that we have to think about and that's all egged on by these revolutions and exponential leaps. So I'll start with the revolutions all of you are aware, of course, the first one, the digital revolution, that's basically everywhere now. The second one, the sustainability revolution, Green everything, circular, everything sustainable, everything that is a huge challenge for travel. Just think about flying. Before COVID 19 I used to do 100 speaking events per year. That's 350 flights per year in average because I had to switch planes a lot. I mean, we're talking about more than a pilot, right? So I'm very guilty of this CO2. But think about how we're going to change all of that and make travel sustainable. That's a huge mission. But. But on the other hand, amazing opportunity. I guarantee you if your company is not sustainable and circular by 2030, people will hate you. You are already seeing a criminalization of oil and gas companies. A lot of people who are going to school today to be a lawyer or a business person, they will not work for any company that has anything to do with oil, gas or mining because they're asking questions that makes the last revolution the purpose revolution, which is saying that purpose of life isn't to make more money. Hard to believe there's a larger purpose to what we're trying to do. And this is a story, of course, that's not my generation. Our purpose was to make money and spend it nicely and have a good time. But today the Gen Y people between say 20 to 40, and of course the zillennials before that, they're asking for purpose, for benefit, for planet, much larger story that's going to change everything in travel. So on top of that we have all this realization that all of a sudden business as usual is dead or dying. Things that used to work just fine have changed. It's like we have a different outlook of life. And that's actually good news because Business as usual would have killed us or is killing us. In fact, if you see the graphs, we're basically in western societies. We're all generating more money in revenues, but the planet is declining like this. So in other words, in 20 years, continue on this path, we'll probably have a bit more money, but no way to spend it because there's no place to be. Not a very interesting logic if you look at the future. So when we go in this direction, we're basically seeing examples from climate change technologies. The next 1,000 unicorns, your billion dollar companies will not be in technology only, they will be in climate technology. Batteries, CO2 sequestration, water, climate change mitigation battery, the intergrid. I mean, this is all happening right now, at this very moment. Many islands around the world, especially in Europe, for example in Greece, are going 100% solar. And we're inventing the next generation nuclear energy, Nuclear fusion, that's 10, 15, maybe 20 years away. Mind boggling. So basically what we see here is that green is the new digital. Write that on your wall. It's not just about digital transformation or using technologies about green transformation. It has a lot to do with AI. I'll explain in a second why that is. Because that's a very powerful tool that we're going to use there. So in these technologies we have four waves. Information technology, kind of an old hat, but absolutely everywhere. Energy, climate tech, technology, for example, sustainable airline fuel and hydrogen and so on. Biotechnology, changing our biology, changing what we are. 3D printing, for example. And finally AI technology. AI has gotten a huge push, of course, in the last six months. Really it's sort of like a rebirth of the Internet, you could say AI is not new. We've worked on that for a long time, but all of a sudden has moved into the center stage by an unexpected release from OpenAI. So it's a long story, but basically what we see here is these four coming together, creating a huge push forward that will change our lives in the most fundamental way. For example, we're going to live in the virtual web, the three dimensional spatial web in the near future. The metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg's concept of saving themselves, that's not quite here. It sounded interesting for a while, but not even people at Facebook or Meta are using it much at this point. But it's coming in the future. We'll be able to have a virtual environment to travel in. It will not replace real travel. It's obviously still virtual. But an interesting angle that we see here erupting Anyway, with AI, we have the Sputnik moment. Remember the Russians launching the satellite? When they did it was in 1962, I think the Americans freaked out. The Russians are going to own space. So they rushed into this and allegedly went to the moon. There's lots of theories about that one. In fact, there was an AI the other day who generated a bunch of pictures about how the moon landing was staged in a Hollywood studio using an AI for that. But this is where we are at right now. It's like everybody wants to go the moon now. Microsoft and Google, Baidu and so on. It's a really, really important moment. But Let me explain ChatGPT with the help of this guy, Marci Brownlee who says what really is a ChatGPT? You ask a question and then the app puts together the most obvious answers. It's about patterns. It's essentially an auto complete using the data that it has. It has no idea what a fox is, what jumping is, what goes on behind. It just puts together the most obvious fit. So here you could say basically what we're seeing here is a very, very interesting way of putting together a synthetic product. Synthetic means put together artificial, you could say. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, says this coming change will center around the most impressive of human capabilities. The phenomenal ability to think, create, understand and reason. Think about that for a second. Do you want a machine to think, create, understand and reason? You would say, well, a machine that can think and not be stupid, that would be a benefit, like a really good Google Map or an app that can all do all these things like writing a non disclosure agreement. But this, that is the quest for building essentially human like machines. And he says we will add a fourth dimension, the AI revolution, to the existing ones. As you can see, I really like the idea of intelligent machines and they can make me look a lot younger. And that's an app called Lensa and that's to me a great application of what it does. Not the younger part, but the redoing of simple information. And it allows me, for example, to have ideas about what I can do with this. But if I stand here and I would give you a speech based on ChatGPT, you wouldn't think that it's completely off, but it would be devoid of meaning. It would still be kind of interesting. But you know, bottom line, I'm sorry, I need to play this video to show you. This is from yesterday. A guy used to be at Apple was, was released yesterday at TED Talk when he talks about the next interface that's happening with AI, not on screens, but on the body.

We like to say that the experience is screamless, seamless and sensing, allowing you to access the power of compute while remaining present in your surroundings, fixing a balance that's felt out of place for some time.

Now.

Imagine this. You've been in meetings all day and you just want a summary of what you've missed.

Catch me up after things come into tomorrow's design meeting. Bevis wants to move next week's dinner. Then Oliver is asking about supper this weekend.

These are emails, calendar, invites and messages all surfaced up to the top. Can I eat this?

So I can't eat these anymore.

Well, you could watch this on YouTube Imran Chaudhary at TEDx showing how this could actually evolve. So in the future it's not just going to be that we can have this app on our phone, we speak to it on our wristwatch and our buttons that we're wearing. Any of those things that could be heaven or it could be hell. Like this. Obviously Ex Machina was an interesting movie, but this is not what we're talking about here. This would certainly be hell for us. I mean a super intelligent machine that has a billion, an IQ of a billion would not be something controllable. It's like when you go to the forest to go hiking, you step on a thousand ants, you kill all the ants, you wouldn't even know. It's because we're more intelligent than the ants. We're basically doing what we want. So a system like this would not work, but these kind of systems, self driving cars, medicine, telemedicine, that's the kind of apps that we want. And the definition of demis hassabis about AI, it's really interesting. He says basically it's computer systems that turn information and data into knowledge. That's the inventor of DeepMind, the Google Go machine and everything around that. So basically what's happening here is that this is a definition that knowledge is being generated. And also the realization is that we have to move beyond the machine knowledge and we also have to question the machine knowledge. I mean machine knowledge is a computational logic 0s and 1s, binary yes or no, basically can be very useful, but it's not real life. So the real question that I have about this, that Stuart Russell has set forth as well. Stuart Russell is the number one guy who writes all the books about AI. He's at UC Berkeley. He says basically intelligence means having the power to shape the world in your interest. And so far we're the most intelligent. We haven't shaped the world that well, but, you know, we're still in charge. Do we want another mechanism to be in charge of the world? He also says the biggest problem is misalignment. The problem is not that artificial intelligence would choose to do bad things, it would just not get the real mission. That's called misalignment. So you would say, for example, we need to cut down on CO2. And the machine would say, you know, the best way to do that is let's stop all airplane traffic, shut down the system. That's the most logical answer. 100,000 planes crash because of misalignment. These are the kind of things that become thinkable. And the question really is, as we're moving into the world of machine learning and deep learning, all the stuff that happens around us, what do we do about this? I think the first step is intelligent assistance. This is what I'm here to tell you today. This is the low hanging fruit. It's not AI, it's ia. It's machines that do a better job than the previous software. That goes for search, it goes for answering, it goes for booking, it goes for making calls, it goes for changes, all of those kind of routine things, commodity jobs. It's really good for that. And that's where the low hanging fruit is. Also, of course, the risk here is much lower. So you can do a routine job. If it doesn't work, you can still bump up and actually do it yourself. The next part, the AI job, this one, it's a bit more risky because we're giving more control to the machine to make decisions, to take the human out of the loop, to create a black box. The last one, general intelligence. A machine that is as capable as we are connected to other machines that are also as capable, that could instantly learn from each other. Like, you may be a brilliant businessman, but you can't just talk to your son or your daughter and download the information to them. It's not that simple. Machines do that. One machine learns something, all the machines have learned it. There's a vast difference in that, in terms of speed and development. So when we're looking at this, this is the question, will this machine have our good future in mind, as I call it? People, planet, purpose, prosperity. Even for us, that's difficult. Contradictions, priorities, confusions, ethics, morals, very hard to decide sometimes. So the only way to solve this is through collaboration. So many people have said we need an international agreement, a global agreement on this, on generally intelligent machines. Of course, that's not the topic for you today because basically the topic for us, how we can use this to create better value for our customers, for ourselves, for the ecosystem. So I encourage you today to think about this primarily and not get too scared about this. We're not here yet, but we have to think about it. Very, very important distinction. So I give you some upsides. The upside is that pretty much anything, I call that an upside, pretty much anything. That's a routine. Machines will learn anything. But you'd be surprised how many things aren't really totally a routine. Like I do a lot of routine work, you know, building, accounting, checking file checking, checking the investments, whatever. That's routine work that we outsource to machines. Like driving a car, for example, looks like a routine, but it turns out it's not quite. It's only partially a routine. You see any self driving cars here? How long is it going to be until we see really self driving cars? You can go to Palo Alto and drive in a self driving car with Waymo, but then in Palo Alto, a five year old can drive, right, because the streets are white and not much is happening. So the machine is safe there. So here the World Economic Forum says our jobs are changing. The growing job, of course, all the jobs about tech, clearly all of those that you guys are familiar with and the jobs that are going away or being diminished. Bank tellers, service clerks, cashiers, entry clerks, administration, commodity jobs. Now we can safely say that we are not most of us in this part of the pyramid. But what about those that are, we're talking about 21 million people working in call centers. What, 19 million of those will be replaced by intelligent machines. What consequences will we have from this? We have things like this, I mean, this is ia great example entry. It's an app that allows you to figure out what the entry regulations are in a country which is a common confusion when you're traveling. You connect it to your plan and boom, you've got this all figured out and you can figure out what the next step would be in making that happen. So when we talk about routine, really, really important. When we talk about technology. Now technology can print houses. That's a routine. Generally building houses is not routine. But these houses are printed in Austin, Texas, in China. It's a giant machine that prints a 3D house. Here is a machine that unloads a truck. Even though you would wonder why you would want to do that because this machine will cost, I don't know, €500,000. And it's not safe to operate. So for the time being, the workers are still doing this. And then of course you do self driving cars like the Zoox here in San Francisco to film this video, they had to block off the entire street on the block to safely record this. So I mean that's coming, but we're not quite there yet. Step by step we're going into the world of routines, of changing. So for example, having a bot that does our routine can safely be done when it's about relatively straightforward things. Here's Expedia. This app is really quite interesting. I'm a heavy Expedia user and here you can just ask a question and it will give you an answer and make a list for you. It's not revolutionary in that sense, but it's nicely organized and it puts it in the folder on my Expedia site and then I can look it up and stuff. Right. It's not rocket science. It's a typical example of intelligent assistance. This app for Vancouver, there's an app that's called iplan. I think you can pick what you want, what your budget is and what you want to see and it generates a plan for you. Same idea. So let's focus on these things that are just competent, not conscious. I don't want machines to have consciousness. Why? That's my job. Let the machine be competent. That is I think the business focus that we need to look at. When we look at the graphs here, it's quite easy to see a machine that works with a human increases efficiency and speed over time, the green line, much more than the machine that doesn't use an AI. I mean a human. So the rule is really quite simple. A human with a great tool, AI is going to beat the human without the great tool. That's not new. But now it's with AI. So that's kind of the answer we're seeing. The problem I see here really quite simple. Look at this graph. It shows you how much money more efficient we can be using artificial intelligence for paralegals, for example, lawyers, doctors and so on. The key question is, are companies going to say we're going to use AI to make things faster and more efficient and, and because of that we can fire the other guys or will they generate new jobs? IBM said they're going to outsource 7,000 jobs in the next five years to artificial intelligence? That is not going to work. We said the exact same thing about social media. We can use social media to reduce marketing expenses. Is that true? No, it will be more costly. Different jobs, different things to do better business. No cost saving, maybe a little bit here, but we have to think about that. So as we move into that future, it's really quite clear it's going to be about speaking. I mean, very soon. We're not going to type those queries right now. If you speak English with a slight Spanish accent, or German for that matter, you will not get very far with these apps like customer service that you speak to, it's possible, but you have to speak like this. But it's coming. So here, Wendy's already starting to experiment using chatbots for delivery orders. Imagine the surprise if you order two Wendy burgers and you get a tofu fry or something. You know, Just kidding. The machine doesn't quite understand or thinks that your order is not good. Change your order. All that could happen. So some concerns and challenges. Point number one really is that as we go into that future, we have a common confusion. We think of ChatGPT and the technology in general as being kind of like a human, a robot human. But this is what it is. It's a parrot. Well, not just a parrot. That would be unjust, that would be unfair towards the beautiful thing that we have here. But it's not human. So we need to keep the human in the loop. We need to keep asking questions, we need to keep critical, we need to keep trying it, we need to keep checking it. That's our job. Because the reality is that in the end, where is it? Machines don't think, machines don't understand, machines don't care. And why would we want them to do that? The machine is doing the job of the heavy lifting of a trillion data feeds that I could never do, and gives that to me as a tool, like a hammer, fancy hammer. That's what I want them to do. I then want them to understand me or to act like they could be me. I think that's a stupid approach because quite clearly, once a machine can figure out who we are, all 8 billion of us, there'd be no chance for us to control it. And this is of course, the main argument behind the whole discussion about this. So here's a short video. Bill Gates meeting Socrates.

Ah, my dear friend Paul. I see you have brought a device with you today. What purpose does it serve?

Greetings, Socrates. This is a laptop, a marvel of modern technology. It harbors an artificial intelligence that can revolutionize heuristic education.

Interesting.

Imagine a world where students learn at their own pace, guided by a tireless tutor that never errs.

Is this the MacBook you often refer.

To no, no, no.

This is a search.

We just need to remember that circuit.

Fascinating. But tell me, what is the essence of this artificial intelligence you speak of?

It is a machine that can learn and reason. Built upon vast amounts of data and complex algorithms, it imitates human thought processes to provide tailored learning experiences.

I sense a shadow over this marvel, a hidden danger lurking within.

What would you expect from Socrates? Watch the rest on YouTube. It's a TEDx talk, actually. You can just Google Bill Gates and Socrates when you'll find it. This is the real challenge. Artificial intelligence may be taking a good aim with a digital gun at trust and reality and democracy, because how do we know it's true when it's so good? How do you know it's actually me? Now, I could be a projection. Well, that would be hard today, but projection would probably be more perfect, I guess. But in many ways, you could say that is a big topic when you're talking about travel and ratings and the truth and the actual rather than the fake. You know that 75% of Instagram stories about destinations are faked in some way or the other. They're still interesting. We can still learn something. But, yeah, that's an important question. So, of course, you know Mick Jagger. Unfortunately, I can't play the music because, you know, it's a very famous song, and if I play it here, then I couldn't use it anywhere else. You know, copyright and so on. Anybody want to take a guess? Yeah, start me up. So Mick Jagger was hired by Boston Dynamics to demo the robot that could mimic Mick Jagger. And here's the amazing thing. This is really a great accomplishment for a robot. Boston Dynamics, also on YouTube, of course. But the amazing thing about this video is not the robot. It's Mick Jagger. He's 79 years old. The robot is just. Okay. Takes a long time to train the robot to do that. But it would be nothing without this. It gives us a good lesson, in the end about AI. Intelligence is not just about data processing. If that was the case, it would be so easy. It's not just about logic. The performance of, say, empathy is not empathy. A robot can perform empathy by copying what you do when you have empathy. But that's not the same thing. A copy of Dali is not the same than a Dali, even though it may be perfect. Humans don't think with the brain. Every psychologist can tell you that. We think with the body. This is why travel is so needed. If it was just the brain, we can just simulate the brain and travel like that. We save A lot of money and CO2. Humans aren't binary. Real life transcends data. The last one is the most important. Logic alone is not enough. So when you're building solutions for travel, focus on the stuff that can be done with logic and intelligent assistance. But that alone isn't going to save the day. That's not the magic wand that we can use to save costs or bring up the margin. It is just a powerful tool. So when we think of this direction, the performance of emotions, consciousness is not the same as emotions and consciousness. It is a copy, a simulation. So very interesting to see that the real skills that we want in the future are these. The human only skills, the skills that machines can't do. Great saying by Arianna Huffington. She says algorithms know the logic of everything, but the feeling of nothing. Which means we use algorithms for things that don't require feelings, values, ethics. Powerful stuff. But with look in this direction, lots of people are arguing about this. Now when we think about ChatGPT, for example, this open letter to pause AI that I signed as well, makes us think about how far we should go with this. All the discussions that we have. Geoffrey Hinton, the AI researcher, saying that we're heading into a world that's dominated by AI and of course IBM here deciding to outsource jobs there, and this whole idea about relevance of machines. So that brings us to an interesting point. Technology has no ethics. It's a machine. It doesn't care, it doesn't know, it doesn't understand. Technology companies, however, should have ethics because they are run by people for people. Microsoft, for example, in my view, is doing a pretty good job of trying to figure this out. This is a hard job. It's a hard mission, maybe even mission impossible, I don't know. But it's a hard job that we have to figure out. Because in the end, to build the good future requires a lot more than just having great technology. So really, really important point that you can take home about this. So I want to wrap up and saying, what do we do now? As I said earlier, the most important part, let's use intelligent assistance to solve the real, the jobs that can be solved by machines matching data, checking out facts, preventing fraud, you know, all of the nuts and bolts, commodity stuff. And that will already increase our turnover and our possibilities a lot. Let's not give the jobs to machines that should be human because that is extremely dangerous, both for the customer as well as for our business. Because here's the key question. It's no longer about if we can do something. The answer is yes, we can. You can upload your brain to the Internet. Today, in 10 years, 20, 30, everybody will be able to kind of upload their thinking to the Internet. But why? That is the question. The question of humanity isn't if and how, because we're always inventing new stuff. It's about why and who. That's the question we have to ask. So strive for balance between those two things. Precaution, proaction, always ask the right questions, always focus on achieving this. We have to go beyond this idea of saying, well, now we have this magic tool. We can make more money with less investment and less people. And the next company of the Future will have 10 employees and 10 billion turnover. This is utter fantasy and utopia. So we have to think about what that actually means and which way we're going with this. I would like all technology companies to take a technocratic oath. It says, I hereby pledge to place humanity over technology every time. That would already be a good step. And in your business, you have the pledge to put the customer and the customer's well being over your bottom line of monetization. That is of course the key to actually monetizing, in my view, through a direct connection there. And how do we create the good future? How do we actually get to that point? How do we find the next step? In my book six years ago, technology versus humanity. This is the bottom line of my book. We should embrace technology but not become technology. Think about that when you're using AI in your business and which way you're heading. Thank you very much. Much.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Gareth, great presentation. Do you mind if we take two questions that we have? We will have to keep it a bit short because we're a little bit over time, but look, someone asked, when you combine human nature and the exponential speed of technological development, is it inevitable that we will lose control at some point, despite our best intentions? What steps can technology leaders take to ensure a better outcome?

Nothing is inevitable. I mean, we invented the nuclear bomb. The film Oppenheimer is coming out, I think in two weeks or so. It was inevitable that we would use it. And we did. And then we decided, if everybody has a bomb, that's going to not play out well. So we came to an agreement. Artificial intelligence is a lot easier than a nuclear bomb because you don't need plutonium to build AI. So it is possible that we can come to a conclusion. We have to do it before we actually get to the point of control loss. I think this is the current debate that we have. So today, the key question is, how do we lose it without dehumanizing, and how do we use technology for our benefit without falling into the trap of just building a better mousetrap with technology? That's the key question. In five or 10 years, the question is, how do we control a really smart agent that does things that we don't understand? So that's really a question of collaboration. I think we still can, but it's high time for the debate. Good.

Thanks. One more question. I would just take the next one. As it was talked, we need certain balance. How can we agree, work on the interests of all the industry so we still keep the personal and human essence and sense without giving up the tech advantages?

Yeah, well, this is not an easy question. It's kind of like, you know, when you come to the point where you realize you could be doing this and you build the perfect mousetrap for your customer. What's called the flywheel, you know, the Amazon Flywheel, for example. Right. It's very tempting to do so, but in the end, you get a lot of negative feedback and then you become marginalized and people don't want to work with you and they get a bad reputation and so on and so on. This is kind of what happened to Facebook. Now, in the end, you end up at this place where you don't have a lot of options. So it requires a little bit of wisdom to understand what the next move is. I think what we need to do sometimes is just to take a step back and say, what are we actually trying to do with this? Is this good for the customer? Is it good for the world? Is it good for what we're trying to do here? Or is it just a sort of an instant, like a trap for us? And sometimes that takes a little bit of understanding that you would say, I'm not doing this just because it could make more money. As we've seen in climate change, we do not want to be in a situation where we do things just because the instant satisfaction, like allowing us to drive a car, you know, 40 years later, here we are with a huge issue. So we have to be more foreseeing here and really do think about what the best possible way is.

Fantastic. Sorry, guys, I can't take more. Answer more questions because we're running a little bit late. But, Gert, thank you so much for the engaging presentation.

It was awesome to have you here. Thank you.