Last Week on Earth with GARI

Dr Mark Galeotti joins Last Week on Earth for a conversation on Russia. Galeotti, Director of the consultancy firm Mayak Intelligence, Honorary Professor at UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies and Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI, has spent the last 40 years researching Russian history and security issues. In the episode, he gives an introduction his latest book A Short History of Russia while sharing some short anecdotes from Russia's history, specifically about the character that is Peter the Great.

Galeotti tells the history of modernisation in Russia and how different rulers have approached the subject, with occasional bloody despotism. Today in Putin's Russia, modernisation has partly advanced through technical solutions, but they are still lacking in rule of law and corruption. However, Galeotti describes how there might soon be an advancement of rule of law by the kleptocratic elite. These corrupted leaders, who have stolen from the public good, will soon get the incentive to create rule of law to protect their stolen plunder and support the transfer of wealth to the new generation.

There are many misconceptions about Russia, one of them being that the West assumes that Russia always, cunningly, has a plan. Like any other state, Russia is a diverse and opportunistic country, that is not as centrally controlled country as many people may think. They want to be perceived as strong and powerful, and they thus act accordingly, regardless of their actual geopolitical status. When looking at Russia, there is a consistent focus on Putin, who, on one hand is a powerful actor but far from the only one. Russia's administration is complex one with many important characters who often tend to get overlooked.

The discussion continues by addressing the new Biden administration, the recent summits and what the newly elected American president would like to see from Russia. The Russo-American relation is special and for Russia, the single most important actor is the US, thus meaning that the EU is not prioritised - the US have clear leadership and collective approach while the policy vision of the EU is a scattered one.

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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Today’s guest Banning Garrett has over four decades of experience as a strategic thinker, writer and speaker on international relations and global trends. As a consultant to both the World Bank and the United Nations, Garrett writes and speaks on long-term global trends and the impact of exponential technologies. After sixty-one trips to China since 1981 for consultations with Chinese officials and analysts, Garrett has also developed a thorough understanding of Chinese politics and shares his takes on the competition between China and the USA.

Garrett has been a part of taking forward the Global Trends report, a report used to brief former President Barack Obama, and he comments on its conclusions and shares his view on the challenges that humanity will have to face in the following decades. We must learn to navigate among the global challenges of future pandemics and the issue of healthcare, climate change and international agreements, population growth of urban areas in the Global South, and future food production, all of which are carrying the risk of migration and conflict. Furthermore, the question of climate change holds another dimension of complexity as us humans have brought it on ourselves. What happens with the responsibility and accountability when blame cannot be placed? 

Garrett continues with discussing China that, especially under Xi Jinping, has moved in a hyper-nationalist direction. He concludes that the Chinese government tries to create an almost totalitarian regime on technological steroids for internal control and suppression of descent like what has happened to the Uighurs,  and in Hong-Kong and Taiwan. He comments on the bipolar tech competition between China and the US and asserts that confrontation is possible, but not probable to a higher extent since the mutually assured nuclear destruction is too strong. The cooperation between the two states should focus on climate as, without Chinese-American collaboration, international dialogue is not going to be constructive.

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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In this episode the European legend Joachim Bitterlich,  former advisor to German Chancellor Kohl and member of JEDI (Joint European Disruptive Initiative), joins us for a discussion on contemporary European affairs. Tune in for a conversation on the current, most pressing issues like strategic autonomy, Franco-German relations, the upcoming German elections and lastly Turkey and the EU. Bitterlich also shares a historical look back at the history of the EU and what could have been done differently.

Joachim Bitterlich, a senior expert on the European arena, entered the Federal Foreign Office already in 1976 and continued his career as an advisor in the private office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hans-Dietrich Genscher (1985-87), head of the European Policy Department at the Federal Chancellor’s Office (1987-93) and Foreign and Security Policy Advisor to Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1993-98). 

• Differences between Europe and the US.

Vaccine development on the two continents and the evident split - private or public funding, perseverance, failure of established forces and the European bureaucratic methods.

• Where is German politics heading and what will happen in the upcoming elections?

Joachim Bitterlich shares his predictions and thoughts on how the German party system is evolving.

• The issue of strategic autonomy - The future of the transatlantic relation and dependence on China and the US.
• The expansion of the EU in Eastern Europe och the continuous rift between East and West.
• The political integration and support of East Europe. 
• Sovereignty and European solidarity - a promising concept?
• Franco-German relations today.

Policy differences and the cultural translation of French and German rhetoric.

• Turkey in a vulnerable position.

The Turkish drift away from the West and the turn towards the East and South East.

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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• Examples of AI technologies in the field of human rights
• How is AI practically used for the environment?
• 1.5/2 degree goal and tipping points for the climate, AI as a possibility?
• Successes and failures for AI in the fight against climate change
• How well is AI data received by governments?
• Which technologies are already being used for the climate?
• May new technologies be the solution to climate change?
• Carbon emissions in construction, can AI help?
• Impact of international AI panels?
• Future challenges and opportunities

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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Our guests is Holger Hoos, co-founder of CLAIRE, the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in​ Europe, and professor of Machine Learning at Leiden University. I had the pleasure of joining Holger at last week's event  Vision for AI 2021 in response to the European Commission’s publishing their “European Approach to Artificial Intelligence”.  We’re chatting about the real back end of AI, its beginnings, why it’s so cool, where do we already encounter it in our everyday lives and what should Europe’s AI look like?

Why should I care about AI? What are the right reasons?

What would you have said to people 200 years ago on why should I care about electricity? Because it will change your life, work, everything, it will make things possible, it will make the world a better place, you can say the same about AI

It is a transformative technology. We have manoeuvred ourselves as humanity into a position where human intelligence is too limited for the mess we’ve made. We need more powerful tools than we’ve had in the past. Climate change and responsible and sustainable use of resources.

 A lot of people’s views of AI has been formed by science fiction movies, in some cases, this is rather dystopian and in other cases, it’s an overly optimistic view. Destroy us or make paradise? What we’re really looking at is a foundational technology, computers taken to the next level. 

Automative AI - bringing down the level of expertise needed to use AI. People become more productive and what they do becomes better than what they can do alone. 

Why is it the most underappreciated area of AI?  Examples of aeroplanes flying, computers enabling us to talk to each other via zoom, what is enabling us to do all this? Automative reasoning - the hardware on which all of this is running, (banks, medical equipment), all computer-controlled, and we trust the hardware.

Where should this not be used? If we were to date Mr Spock, we’d find that pure logic has limits. The same is for AI. Particularly when it comes to dealing with people, and all their limitations and bias.

Human-centred AI  - AI build by people, for people, for the benefit of people. We have to compensate for some of our limitations, and automotive reasoning and deep learning does this well. It should do all of this in order to help us reach our goals, and this isn't something you can do as a second thought, it needs to be designed with this purpose.

European AI - do we go it alone? Does it make sense to do anything of global consequence alone? No, it doesn’t!

CLAIRE - why does it exist? Because AI is important for our future, and all the citizens of Europe and the world. The two superpowers, China and the US are making massive investments, and there is a real risk of losing talent to them and the edge that we could and should have in AI technology that is so transformative.

Is there such a thing as US AI or China AI or European AI? What are the differences? At a simplistic level, AI in China is government-driven, which is a great thing

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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With guest is Manuella Cunha Brito, co-founder of Good Tech Lab and now Climatescape, joining us from France to chat about using technology to fight climate change, how to incentivize businesses and startups to be sustainable as well as challenges in turning research into real impact. 

Topics: Technology, Climate change, Impact investment, Sustainable startups, Decarbonisation, Carbon removal, Biochar - pyrolysis of biomass, Climate adaptation

• What are the technologies that are actually relevant for a low carbon future?
• Probability of climate action failure versus what the impact of that failure would be
• How to incentivise startups to be sustainable?: Actually, you have more chances at succeeding because they have a better chance at being relevant, it’s not so compromising and actually not more costly. You don’t need to compromise on financial returns to get a positive impact.
• Where is the balance between negative challenges around using technology and promoting that use and the positive opportunities of using and promoting technology? - in light of the deepening and many times misleading or misinformed narrative and conversation around technology 
• Who is usually the most uncooperative actor in tech global governance? 

Insight:

Limit of 2 degrees celsius in temperature is still very warm - it already means a lot of suffering for many people, extreme weather and other changes. We emit today about 51 giga tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year and we need to get to 0 by 2050. At the same time, improving the standard of living for millions of people around the globe will not be a small challenge. 

Helping investors to better understand how to use their economic resources to support innovation that matters and has a positive impact on the planet.  

Climatescape - creating a data powered market intelligence platform that will support people in making better decision in how they support startups in the climate tech space  

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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This episode’s guest is Bill Shipsey, founder of Art for Amnesty, human rights activist and the bringer of culture to all things. We’ll be talking about his adventurous life of attaching U2, Sting and Joan Baez to Amnesty International, founding and then bestowing the Ambassador of Conscience award on Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Ai Weiwei, Alicia Keys and other inspiring advocates of human rights.

Shipsey was Co-Executive Producer of “Instant Karma” – Amnesty’s multi-star benefit album of John Lennon compositions. He devised and produced the Small Places Tour, a 2008 music concert project which partnered with over 800 concerts in some 40 countries worldwide. Shipsey first joined Amnesty in the late 1970’s – inspired in part by the activism of entertainers who performed at the Monty Python inspired “Secret Policeman’s Ball” benefit show.

He is a former Chair of the Irish Section of Amnesty International and a former member of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International. By profession Shipsey is a Barrister and has appeared for Amnesty International before the Court of Justice of the European Union.  He has consulted widely with other human rights organisations around the world seeking to partner with artists in the promotion of human rights campaigns.

We talk about his recent article for the Irish Times about Aleksey Navalny and Amnesty International awarding him the title of Prisoner of Conscience despite his previous history of ultra-nationalist sentiment. We discuss culture and some of his many projects including his exhibitions with Peter Sis, how the journey began and unfolded with his friends from the world of music and art, including Bono and Peter Gabriel, and even the Human Rights Now world tour in 1988, headlined by Bruce Springstein and Tracey Chapman amongst others. 

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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@GARInstitute) / Twitter

Our guests is Bennie Mols, renowned science & technology journalist with a background in physics & philosophy on his fascination with AI & robotics and his dream that one day the co-author of a paper will be an AI.

1. The history of artificial intelligence, from it being just science to being applicable
2. What is fascinating about AI?
3. What can AI NOT do?
4. How would you explain the pace, the rapidity of how the narrative around AI changed from curiosity to fear?
5. How to achieve a balance in journalism about AI?
6. Difficulties we must overcome in self-driving cars
7. Research & investment in AI in the US, China and Europe - how do we differ?
8. CERN for AI
9. Google, Twitter and Facebook - too much power?
10. How to combine the best of humans with the best of machines 

What is fascinating about AI?
Bennie: it combines three passions: science technology & philosophy - is it possible to build an intelligent machine? scientifically you answer this question as yes, but then technologically is how are we going to build this kind of machine? and from the philosophical point of view, what does it mean to be intelligent? If a machine is intelligent is it also automatically conscious? How are we able to measure whether a machine has consciousness or not?

In 2010 there was a positive narrative around AI, fast forward 5-10 years we see ethical issues pop up. Now the narrative is completely negative, the bias in data sets, jobs loss, black box decision-making... Designing AI systems requires you to think about values that are important to humans.

We don't have to be afraid of data, we have to think before we design a system. What are the values we want the system to stick to?

If you were talking to a low to mid-level employee - what would you tell them int he sense of “what's in it for you”? 

We need to think about how to combine the best of humans with the best of machines - hybrid intelligence. We need some reeducation of people.  

New enlightenment: Digital humanism - with three components:

1. humans should become more empowered and more digitally literate - giving people equal opportunity to use technologies
2. need to make technology more human
3. hybrid intelligence - the future belongs to people who best work together with AI

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the s

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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@GARInstitute) / Twitter

This episode’s guests is Tony Curzon Price, strategic advisor at the UK’s Cabinet Office, and an advisory board member of ours, with a polemic of tech-positive and tech-negative perspectives discussing the future of work, can we highlight more tangible explanations for geopolitical as well as social activity other than values and identity, Using technology as a tool, not a machine and what are the limits to social understanding and society’s self-understanding?

• What is the relationship between the technological disruption that we're going through and the strange politics that we’ve been through in the past 10 years - is there a link? How big a fix does the system need to have all the benefits of machines?
• What is the evidence that we’re heading to big technological unemployment?
• Technology as a tool or machine? Empowering or replacing?
• Amazon’s first  non-US store without checkout, linking your face and behaviour to your amazon account
• Bullshit jobs - at least in the checkout jobs you know your purpose, in the bullshit jobs, you’re pushing paper around and you have absolutely no idea how this is adding to anyone's welfare 
• How to improve the adaptability of society in the rise of technology?
• The history of monopolies
• Simplifying the spirit of the age - what do we share globally and what do geopolitical events mean?
• Rodrik said that the rise and current power of right-wing populism has economic roots and that the conflict over identity and values is more of an alignment than the foundation - do you think a problem across the board of discussion is overly focusing on identity and values and not going deep enough into more tangible reasons (like economics), despite the latter being more discernible?
• Is identity a luxury good and are we enjoying more and more of it?
• Using technology as a tool, not a machine
• What are the limits to social understanding and society’s self-understanding?
• “Laissez-faire economists-types think they won the argument intellectually in the 1930s with Hayek and Lange and they won it actually with the fall of the soviet system and they think that that’s just done. I think that the data and technology revolution brings the calculation debate into question, that it was a contingent win, you couldn’t plan and organise things that were very complicated with the means at your disposal then. Now we have enormous means.

This podcast is hosted by the Global Arena Research Institute (GARI). GARI is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevatin

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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Bogolo Kenewendo is the founding president of Kenewendo Advisory, former Minister for Trade, Investment and Industry of Botswana. Bogolo led the Brexit trade negotiations on behalf of southern African nations and was a member of the UN high-level panel on digital cooperation. 

We discuss the African Continent Free Trade Area that was signed the 1st of January, the kind of questions her advisory company is being asked to work on, what benefits and challenges has COVID brought to the continent of Africa, and what was discussed at the high-level UN panel o digital cooperation, such as regulating and legislating digital firms, and how they had to add a statement in the report saying that “views on privacy and security differed sharply”.

Enjoy the podcast, and please subscribe and share!

• UN panel - talking about online technology while we need to talk about infrastructure on the continent of Africa. We need to start the conversation with ICT infrastructure as well as policy infrastructure  and be accommodative to technology that already exists on the continent
• African infrastructure: we can have laptops, but how will we charge them? Multilateral institutions need to invest in infrastructure.
• What are the enabling technologies emerging in Botswana and the south African region and what are the technologies that are more damaging?
• Mobile penetration continues to increase, and internet connection - and this means access to information.
• UN panel & regional differences:  it was mainly a lack of understanding and having the information of how things really are. Why is there hesitation towards a laissez-faire
   approach on regulating digital phones on the continent and what can be some of those challenges in regulating them?
• A bigger disagreement was around what is the right approach around regulating and legislating digital firms - do we just let them be and the free market will have that invisible hand or we ensure ourselves that there's the right regulation, that taxes are put in place.
• People do not see the fourth industrial revolution as a natural evolution of efficiency ( as was done with the second and third) there will always be a challenge in change and how things are done. Just toning down the language around technology can be a start, we are not communicating what will be the differences and changes and how they impact people’s lives.

Next week we’ll hear from Tony Curzon Price, Senior Advisor to the UK Cabinet Office, working for the Prime Minister. Our topic is: "Tools, Machines and Populism"

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as wel

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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@GARInstitute) / Twitter

Discussion with MEP Marina Kaljurand, former Estonian Foreign Minister with interests in cybersecurity, transatlantic cooperation and digitalisation on all levels.

What you’ll hear:

• Estonia as an e-nation:  “nobody has so far proved that online voting services are less secure than offline.” Estonia is the only country in the world that gives its citizens rights to vote online.
• The digital revolution has come to stay, smart ones are taking advantage and facing challenges. The majority of international law was written before the IT revolution but still, there are principles that should apply also to the digital cyber and online world.
• For centuries the state was the only one dealing with security (nuclear, chemical and conventional weapons) but cyber is different. The private sector owns critical infrastructure, is providing online services, and has the brightest IT geeks. We are at a stage where the government has to work with others.
• The topic of cybersecurity has come out of the basement. And there are more and more politicians who have overcome the stereotypes and are ready to accept that that's our new reality. We can't escape it. We don't write “internet” with a capital “I” anymore, that's a sign!
• Europe’s investment into R&D: “No regulation is better than bad regulation, and less regulation is better than more regulation”  
• How will transatlantic cooperation change with Biden? “We are natural partners. it's in the European DNA and in the US DNA to cooperate. Yes, we are competitors, like all good neighbours, but it's a positive competition, so I think that together we can be much stronger facing the new challenges, for example coming from China.”
• UN Digital Roadmap: I hope the roadmap will be a push and I hope that at some point we will come to a better organisation for digital cooperation globally. And it has to be on all levels, global, regional, state-to-state. Last year we celebrated 75 years of the UN and for the first time, the declaration included digital cooperation and cybersecurity. The UN security council is still stuck in 1945, it does not reflect today’s international affairs, but that's the only thing we have today
• Will COVID help build trust between sectors?: I would argue that the government has all the tools, all the opportunities to provide that they do care about people and they do bring digital into people's lives with best intentions doing it responsibly and respecting all their fundamental and human rights. The chance is there, whether governments will take advantage or not.

Marina Kaljurand is a member of the European Parliament, served as Estonian Foreign Minister, and Ambassador to several countries, including Russia during the cyber attack on Estonia in 2007 and to the United States, during the 2013 Snowden leak of highly-classified information from the NSA. She has played an important role as expert and negotiator in the accession negotiations of Estonia to the European Union and to the OECD.

Marina is a member of the

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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@GARInstitute) / Twitter

What you’ll hear in this episode with Prof. Jovan Kurbalija, Founding President of Diplo Foundation, ambassador of the internet, pioneer in cyber diplomacy and Head of the Geneva Internet Platform, secretariat member of the UN high-level panel on digital cooperation:

• As a person promoting technology for the past three decades, my question is what are we going to pass on?
• My concern is that generations (including mine) focus too much on project management logic of human society (outcomes, outputs, impact). And it's very popular in the European Union. I’m afraid that a lot of framing of current thinking is rather cognitive procrastination, trying to fit very complex reality into this project management framework.
• We have to regain artistic thinking (Havel, Hasek, Confucius…). The Enlightenment era was misused by people who were supposed to promote it and develop it further, especially through technology.  The pandemic has accelerated the need for these kinds of reflections.
• On Obama’s two visits to silicon valley, the first enthusiastic, the second sceptical and cautionary of the growing power of silicon valley. Then Trump’s leaking of the defence budget and immunity of tech companies that host social media.
• What are you working on at Diplo?: speech generator for diplomats, the future of meetings on open-source platforms
• What are the limits of AI? Where is philosophy? The Hobbs, Roussos, Kants of today? We’re becoming a bit chrono-narcissistic - we think everything is happening now.
• UN should understand technology but the UN shouldn’t be high tech. Big tech companies shouldn’t be governmental judicial organisation as google is becoming with the right to be forgotten or Facebook with this new court. 
• UN as a digital home for humanity?

GARI is a research institute that uses advanced technology, such as AI with Big Data, to visualise, understand and create the ability to manage globalisation.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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With guest Cathy Mulligan on how cryptocurrency enters the debate about digital cooperation at a UN panel? Sustainability in 2030 when 30% of the world's energy will be taken up by cloud computing, thought experiments like “do you actually need a central bank?”, what does universal connectivity mean?

If you’re being forced to use particular technologies because you're a developing country, are you being colonised by digital means? “If you want people to think about ethics, you have to talk to them before they start coding”

Dr Catherine Mulligan is a Visiting Researcher in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship group with a joint appointment to the Department of Computing where she is Co-Director of the Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research.  Cathy delivers research in technical, economic and policy applications of digital technologies and digital transformation.  In addition to her theoretical research, she also has extensive experience of translating her research into real-world solutions for multi-national corporations and start-ups alike.

Cathay is VP and Region CTO of North and West Europe at Fujitsu. She is a Fellow and an Expert of the World Economic Forum Blockchain Council through the GULF and a member of the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Co-Operation.  

Until December 2017, Cathy served as standardisation lead for the Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) Task Force and Vice Chairman of the ETSI ISG on Context Information Management.  She was also a Visiting Fellow at the Glasgow School of Art Institute for Design Innovation (INDI)

“My aim in life is to deliver on the promise of digital technologies in a fair and equitable manner for everyone in society. I do this by providing a unique combination of research skills and real-world industrial experience in both technology and digital economics. I started programming when I was 10 years old and never looked back - I've had the privilege of helping various technologies take off - including mobile networks, IoT and blockchain.”

GARI is a research institute that uses advanced technology, such as AI with Big Data, to visualise, understand and create the ability to manage globalisation.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
@LinkedIn
@GARInstitute) / Twitter

What makes the Volkswagen Machine Learning Research Lab different from other research institutions? Creating technologies that really work - not just creating methodologies that show it could work and publishing. Robotics literature has solutions but it always has some problems - solving them so that it can be applied is what is sustainable. 

“Our general technologies evolve around predicting the future and using those predictions to make optimal decisions. At the moment I know what's going to happen in the next 10 steps, or 100 steps, and I can not only predict the state of my system but actually predict what my sensors are going to see. I can use that to react to unforeseen changes in my environment.”

Patrick’s project 10toGo: “We have 10 more years to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It’s not much time, so we must act now. In fact the UN has named the next 10 years the #decadeofaction. 10toGO, brought to you by Volkswagen Group and Microsoft, is our first joint step of action: a kick-starting platform for sustainable, data-driven innovation.”

Patrick van der Smagt is director of the open-source Volkswagen Group Machine Learning Research Lab in Munich, focussing on probabilistic deep learning for time series modelling, optimal control, reinforcement learning robotics, and quantum machine learning. Besides publishing numerous papers and patents on machine learning, robotics, and motor control, he has won a number of awards, including the 2013 Helmholtz-Association Erwin Schrödinger Award, the 2014 King-Sun Fu Memorial Award, the 2013 Harvard Medical School/MGH Martin Research Prize, the 2018 Webit Best Implementation of AI Award, and best-paper awards at machine learning and robotics conferences and journals. In 2018, he started a for-good initiative "10toGO" by supporting teams using machine learning for the UN SDGs. Also then, he initiated etami, an initiative on Ethical and Trustworthy Artificial and Machine Intelligence, creating an organisation with almost 20 multinationals and universities.

GARI is a research institute that uses advanced technology, such as AI with Big Data, to visualise, understand and create the ability to manage globalisation.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
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Should vaccine producing countries supply lower-income countries with the vaccine? Why? How much will COVID19 cost the world if we provide an equitable distribution of the vaccine across countries and how much if just the ones that can afford them vaccinate? Freshly published fascinating report on the impact of COVID19 “vaccine nationalism” on the global economy.

RAND study (summary as well as entire study free): https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/cost-of-covid19-vaccine-nationalism.html

Key take-aways:

• The global cost associated with COVID-19 and its economic impact could be $3.4 trillion a year
• Even if the countries currently developing a vaccine are successful in inoculating a large portion of their populations the lack of access to vaccines for the rest of the world would still result in a GDP loss of about $1,232bn per year
• Based on previous estimates, it would cost $25 billion to supply lower-income countries with vaccines
• If high-income countries paid for the supply of vaccines, there could be a benefit-to-cost ratio of 4.8 to 1. So for every $1 spent, high-income countries would get back about $4.8
• The US, the UK, the EU and other high-income countries combined could lose about $119 billion a year if the poorest countries are denied a supply.
• COVAX - initiative to ensure equitable vaccine supplies across the globe. Over US$ 2 billion raised to support equitable access to COVID vaccines with a total of US$ 25 billion needed to support low to medium income countries

With this information - how is it possible that vaccine producing countries are still looking to act internally rather than pitch into globally equitable vaccinations?

RAND study recommendations:

1. Investing in vaccine development and equitable access would be economically beneficial in the long run.
2. To encourage international sharing of vaccines, we need enforceable frameworks for vaccine development and distribution, managed by established international forums.
3. The international effort to support vaccination distribution needs to be sustained over time.

RAND used a multi-country, multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to quantify the potential global economic situation in a post-lockdown pre-vaccine COVID-19 world and then to assess the economic implications of inequitable access to COVID-19 vaccines between countries or global regions.

Writers of the study: Marco Hafner, Erez Yerushalmi, Clement Fays, Eliane Dufresne, Christian Van Stolk

RAND Corporation’s mission is to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. It is one of the most, if not the

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
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• Facebook & US elections update
• EU (& US!) vs Amazon on antitrust violations & anti-competitive behaviour
• Beijing drafts unprecedented antitrust rules for it’s Big Tech in a first attempt to curb the power of monopolies
• EU’s new budget & what does it mean for SMEs & generally research, technology, innovation, AI & more? A European shared data cloud? European technological sovereignty? 

How has Facebook fared during and after the US elections? What does a 45% rise in aggressive content on the platform mean and will it change? Amazon has been officially charged with anti competitive behaviour and antitrust violations due to using data on its third party merchants, it has conceded to this being possible however denies wrongdoing. In a completely unprecedented event, Beijing is drafting measures that would curb the power of its Big Tech giants and allow more control by the government. What does this mean for its monopolies and how they work? Last but not least, we looked at EU's new budget and especially on the Digital Europe Programme that has highlighted the need to develop Europe's technological sovereignty and boost digitalisation in our sectors - what do we think and what we need to keep an eye on?

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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@GARInstitute) / Twitter

The National Research Cloud aims to bring together government, industry & research academia to create a cloud that enables better access to advanced AI technology to universities, research institutions & industry researchers. What would that mean for SMEs & research institutes to afford high-end AI tech? Is the USA losing it's AI edge over China? What about Europe?

Are Facebook's "policy changes" enough? What kind of influence do corporations have on Facebook & what do their ad withdrawals mean?

A bit of an update on GARI activities including our collaboration with Balsillie School of International Affairs of Waterloo University in Canada as well as our report on the energy transition in Europe and our work for the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Thank you to the International Visegrad Fund for supporting this podcast!

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
@LinkedIn
@GARInstitute) / Twitter