DUBAI: The future success of world governance will depend largely on how well government and commercial organizations embrace technology, not least artificial intelligence, delegates were told at the opening session of the 10th World Government Summit in the UAE.
In his opening remarks, UAE Minister of Cabinet Affairs and WGS Chairman Mohammed Abdullah Al-Gergawi said: “When we launched (WGS) in 2013 we faced a number of challenges that all had implications due to a failure by certain governments.”
Addressing the session at the Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai on Monday, he noted that in recent years there had been several events that had led to unexpected costs, particularly the war in Ukraine, which as well as accounting for a huge wave of refugees, had already run up a bill of $2.8 trillion.
He pointed out that the world was facing the highest food costs in 60 years and that the price of climate change was continuing to soar.
However, Al-Gergawi warned that while conflict was currently the main cause of migration of refugees, it was fast shifting to a situation where the vast majority of refugees would be due to climate change.
While geopolitical issues would continue to hinder progress, a lack of influence in the virtual world would lead to an even greater shift in power, he added. “Ownership of data is power.”
He said it would take 300 billion pages to print all the information on the internet and that the number continued to grow, adding that the world needed to fully understand AI and have a hold of its capabilities.
To give an idea of its power, he said that in the future 90 percent of media would be produced by AI across all aspects, including press releases, opinion columns, and even news stories.
“Geopolitical issues will be a thing of the past. Technical-political will be the new war,” Al-Gergawi added.
He said countries and organizations that failed to adapt to the new technological era would fall behind and look like something from “prehistoric times.”
Founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, said that while there had been talk of a deglobalization of the world, the way for the progression of humanity and the planet to continue was for a deglobalization.
“We are moving from a world with one dominant superpower to a situation where there is a number of countries and organizations all competing for power,” he added.
Schwab noted that it was important the world worked and developed with the technological transformations rather than try to repair the impact of crisis. “You cannot catch up with new technology, you have to be at the forefront.”
He said the key was to master leadership within the technological world.
“We need to understand how these technologies work and overcome the fears. Governments need to show that technology can serve for good,” he added.
