[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Okay. Thanks, everybody, for coming tonight.
I'd like to welcome our guest speaker, um, for the Behavioural Sciences and Complex Interventions module for the MSC in Translational Health Sciences.
I'm very I'm the course director for the MSC, which focuses on the social science of innovation.
And we're interested in innovation, technology, humanity more generally, which makes this a perfect talk for this module and the wider MSC.
Um, so I'd like to introduce Scott Clark, who's our guest speaker.
Um, so he is a behavioural economy economist by training.
Anywhere. Yeah. So not a behavioural sciences as such, but closely aligned, I would say.
Former academic Queen Mary University, um,
focusing on largely these days on the relationship between technology and humanity, which is right up our alley.
I'm sure you'll agree. Um, and currently works for Infosys, um, consulting.
And we'll have a lot of interesting things to say. So I will turn it over to.
Thank you so much. Thanks for the kind introduction and for the, um, invitation to talk to you this evening.
And so it's a pleasure to be here.
It occurred to me as I was driving in this evening, the last time I spoke at Oxford was in 1994, um, about, uh, Britain's future in Europe.
We actually did predict the fourth would be out of Europe by 2020.
So it's probably one of the last things I've actually got correct as our future.
Um, but it did take the university 30 years approximately to bring me back again.
So I'm not sure what impression I made the first time round.
Hopefully a better impression this time.
Um, so, listen, guys, uh, our world is at a very unique juncture in its history, characterised by increasingly complex and uncertain trajectories.
Seismic shifts in our sociological, technological, ecological, political and economic landscapes are transforming the way we live,
the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we perceive reality.
So what does this mean for our future,
and what does it mean for the future of humanity as technology continues to proliferate and mature as an unprecedented pace?
So I'm going to take you on a little bit of a journey this evening, a journey into 2013.
Am I qualified to take you on that journey? That's a very good question, and you can answer it for everybody at the end of the end of the lecture.
Um, I'm a behavioural economist, which I think is a behavioural scientist, actually.
Um, behavioural economics is really trying to understand the complexities of human behaviour and decision making at the intersection of economics,
psychology and sociology. I began my career as a behavioural economist.
I have the last 30 years being dazzled by the bright lights of business and technology consulting,
and what I do is I work with companies around the world to help them understand what next, what lies around the corner.
At this this intersection of uncertainty, sociological and technology change,
and then helping those companies design innovative business models and formulate
strategies to help them to thrive and be relevant in that changing paradigm.
It's a great job. My great thing about being a futurist, as you can never be wrong,
because by the time you get to the future, people forgot what you said in the first place.
So it's a wonderful place to be. But I think it's increasingly important to start thinking forward.
We are not going to be able to meet the uncertainty of technological change by focusing on on the now,
we've got to start to think more creatively about what lies ahead as we start
to explore interventions that are enhancing or designed to enhance human life,
or we also are preserving the things that we value at the essence of humanity.
It is that set of trade offs.
Before you get too cocky about about my predictions, my, uh uh uh uh, prophecies for the future, I think it's important to,
to reflect on on the words of the great American economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who clearly wasn't a fan of trying to predict the future.
I'll add another from the great Danish physicist of the last century, Niels Bohr,
who said that prediction is extremely difficult, particularly when it's about the future.
The reason why we struggle in imagining the future.
The inconvenient truth was we're just not very good at it.
And the number of reasons why we're not very good at imagining what lies ahead.
I think at the core is the fact that as companies and I think as individuals as well as organisations, we have a very difficult time admitting.
That the things that got us to where we are today are the same things that would get us to where we want to go.
As Jim Collins said in his book Good to Great a number of years ago, what stops good companies from becoming great is the fact they're already good.
It bleeds complacency. We have a difficult time letting go.
We're also very rooted in the past. We apply a past forward view of the future.
We try to take the things that we understand more past and projecting forward.
It's not going to change. Well, of course it does change. The second.
Is, most companies continue to respond to technological change with surface level adjustments.
At the ninth, if the 2020 pandemic taught us anything, it's that companies can't compete on surface level changes.
We have to rethink how we operate as businesses in the context of that change.
We have to rethink how we create, how we capture and how we distribute value.
Booba doesn't compete on the quality of its cause.
Nor does Amazon compete on the quality of its website.
It's the things that lie under the surface that help those companies disrupt an industry.
But there's another consideration of play, which is we have a tendency as as humans.
To overestimate the amount of change that is likely in the next two years in the short term,
and underestimate the amount of exponential growth or change that's going to happen in the long term,
and the number of explanations, I think, for the for the former. Why do we overstate the short term?
You can blame it on optimism bias. All right.
It's the same complex that we have at the start of the new year.
When we start working out of the gym, we're going to continue to do those things continuously throughout the year.
And of course, we don't. Um, again, back to this past forward mentality.
We tend to overstate the amount of change that happens to our lives in the last year or two years,
and we think the next couple of years is going to be very much the same.
But it's very difficult for human beings to think forward, to think beyond that 2 or 3 year periods.
If I said to you that your laptop is going to double in its processing power in the next two years, you need to head around that.
But if I said it's going to continue to double at that rate for the next ten years, you'd really struggle to understand what that means.
And one of the shortcomings. Of humans is that we struggle with the exponential function.
We have a really difficult time understanding this concept of doubling.
That's exactly what we have to do. As we start thinking forward in time and start to imagine the futures.
So how should we be thinking about the future?
First of all, as individuals, as society, and as businesses, we should be saying to ourselves, the future is not predetermined.
We have the opportunity to build it and God is past whatever the pundits are telling us, whatever the experts are telling us about what lies ahead,
we have the opportunity to design the future that we want, not the future that somebody else is telling us will be.
Second of all, as we're designing that future and identifying the interventions that we want to prioritise in
changing human behaviour and changing organisational behaviour in the context of that future,
we must be doing things differently, not because they're different, but because they're better.
We can't keep chasing the shiny object. Right.
We've seen instances of that so many times over the last few years.
And think of it from a technological perspective. Every organisation I work with, they have to get going on blockchain.
They have to start to invest in the metaverse. Now is Gen Z.
There's always some new technology, and if they're not grasping, if they're not understanding and leveraging effectively, they risk falling behind.
And the message that we deliver to those companies is, is, is don't chase the shiny object.
Understand what problems you need to solve for and why.
And walk back from that to figure out the technologies that will help get you there smarter.
Faster and more profitably. And third of all, in defining the future.
Ask not what do I think it will be? Ask what do I want it to be?
That's how we, as organisations and as individuals should be thinking about the future.
When we think about, um. Forecasting and we think about futurism.
What we are in the need of is a much more structured and systematic and systematic and organised way of looking at the future.
Strategic foresight is the embodiment or convergence of multiple approaches that help us understand what's changing around us,
what's that's going to mean for society and for the organisations that we are part of?
What futures are likely to evolve and how we can effect change.
It's about future thinking, but it's also about systems thinking.
It's thinking holistically about all the different macro and micro trends that can either accelerate or disrupt the future that we want.
And this about exponential thinking.
It's thinking about the convergence of technologies and convergence of of trends and how that will transform things beyond our expectations.
So when we talk about prediction, it is less about identifying where we're going to land and more about designing the future we want.
And I think that's the critical distinction. So when we talk about how we look forward in time, how we start to design or think about the future.
It's really the coming together of two approaches. Forecasting and designing.
Forecasting is a data driven,
rigid set of of calculations based on the things that are happening around us and what we think is going to sue as a result of that.
And that is important. We need to understand those trends and how they're going to play out over time.
But equally important is the concept of designing the future, right?
It's our ability to imagine the future we want. Not relying on data to tell us the future that is most likely to ensue.
So we help clients think about that future.
We do it in the context of these four different modes,
which is really the coming together of two dimensions projection, which is data driven versus imagination.
And value neutral versus value led. As behavioural scientists were told to adopt a value neutral approach,
don't allow our biases to interfere with our assessments, with our calculations.
Certainly, as behavioural economists, that's what we're taught to, to to believe that the reality is this is our future.
We have a responsibility, a moral responsibility to allow those values to start to define what future we want and why,
and then to walk back from that future to figure out the things we need to invest in to get there intelligently.
So I'm actually proposing a method or a set of methods that brings together data driven approaches with imagination or data neutral approaches,
right, to make sure that we are addressing alternative futures, multiple futures.
So we are prepared for what lies ahead. And I think there's a real opportunity to find an effective integration of
strategic foresight and behavioural science as we start to map out our futures.
Neither one of these disciplines is effective alone as it is together.
The challenge with strategic foresight is it often overlooks or downplays the human dimension.
It relies too much on on economic and technological and sociological trends, but doesn't really get at the the human element of change.
And I think the challenge of behavioural science is it's far too rooted in the present.
It doesn't look forward enough in terms of what might be what's around the corner.
And I think that that's, um, it lacks the, the breadth of, of understanding of the different dimensions likely to impact what lies ahead.
So by bringing these two disciplines together, we're able to achieve a number of scenarios that we can't when we separate them.
The first is the ability to calculate the human risks resulting from possible change.
They built to ensure that the future scenarios incorporate human needs, desires, and aspirations.
And third of all, to create interventions that are more likely to be adopted and sustained.
So. So it's not about choosing one to approach the other.
It's finding opportunities to converge these very powerful approaches in order to create futures that are realisable,
but also futures that map to our desires. So with that said, welcome to 2013.
And to give you some context. It's been proximately 12 months since Donald Trump left office.
The countries of Portugal, Spain and Morocco are gathering to to host the 24th World Cup.
Between those three nations. It's the 50th anniversary.
Of Michael Jackson's Thriller album the 20,000.
Michael Jackson fanatics dressed as goblins and zombies, we imagine, will be gathering in in Times Square to do a flashmob dance.
And it's also the 100th anniversary of Clyde Tombaugh discovery of the planet Pluto.
All right, though, though, that's where we're going to be in 2013.
And when we talk about what we can expect in 2013, it's a combination of relative certainties, probabilities and possibilities.
So let's start with the relative certainties. First of all, the planet is going to get a little more crowded.
The population in 2030 is going to reach 8.6 billion.
Now the overall average annual population growth rate.
Is dropping from 1.1% per year.
From the last decade to just under 0.8%.
However. Here's some interesting elements.
India became the largest single population on the planet last year.
It will continue to widen that gap by 2030, reaching 1.5 billion people.
And what's particularly interesting is where we're going to start to see the largest population increases.
Subsaharan Africa is going to experience population increases between now and 2030, ranging from 2.6% a year to 4.7% a year.
That's significant by 2030.
1 in 5 people on the planet who reside in subsaharan Africa.
And by 2050. sub-Saharan Africa's population will be 90% greater than it is today.
Why that's important is most of sub-Saharan Africa is not food self-sufficient.
It is going to put a tremendous amount of burden on an already flawed healthcare system, economic system, housing system within those countries.
So how do we start to to prepare those countries for this enormous population bust?
The second is on. Habitants are going to get quite a bit older than what they are today by 2030.
16.5% of the global population will be over the age of 60 by 2050.
21.5%. That's significant.
Right. It's significant because we imagine the implications that has for existing health system and social systems.
And being able to introduce interventions for early disease diagnosis and better care of the elderly is not just a moral question.
It will become an economic question as well. Vertical or global inequities will continue to widen.
The richest 10% by 2030.
We'll own 80% of global wealth. And take in 65% of global income.
Or if you prefer, 1%. Of the global population will take in 64% of global wealth and 39% of total income.
The richest 1% is experiencing a wealth increase of approximately 6% on average year on year, which is double the other 99% of the population.
We are seeing this widening gap. Between the super rich and everybody else.
That's going to create enormous amount of social and political tension within these
companies and within these countries and across the borders of these countries.
And climate change will feel even more real.
Despite the drop in temperature in the UK in the last couple of days.
The reality is that by 2030, yes, the planet is going to be warmer and the air and water is going to be more polluted.
And not only will this have direct implications on human life.
But because of the lack of of food self-sufficiency that I commented on earlier,
indirectly, it's going to affect our ability to increase the food production to meet this.
Um, uh, population growth, particularly in, in subsaharan Africa and the developing world.
Now I have some people say to me, oh, don't worry about it. I is going to sort this out.
All right. I will sort this out. Well, first of all, I don't think I will sort this out.
It does require as much human intervention as technological intervention.
But the interesting thing about AI, there's a paradox when it comes to the environment.
By. I is not a clean technology. Right.
In order to train a single AI algorithm not to deploy it, but just train it with data.
It produces the same amount of carbon emissions. As 120 vehicles over a 12 month period.
Petrol vehicles. And to run a single data centre, which is required to power the AI algorithms,
you'll need more and more more of these data centres around the globe in order to be able to achieve some of the expectations around AI.
But to run one data centre. It produces 300,000 gallons of water, which is the equivalent of 100,000 homes in a single day.
So there are some environmental consequences tied to our technological, uh, evolution.
But it's not a saving grace. And technology will increasingly disrupt our lives.
That is an inevitability. Now what's interesting, many of you may have heard about Moore's Law,
and Gordon Moore was was the chairman of Intel in 1965 and came out and predicted that
computer processing power would essentially double every 18 months to two years.
And from 1975 to about 2012. He was right.
That was an accurate prediction. However. Since 2012, AI computer systems have essentially been doubling every 3.4 months.
We have seen an enormous eruption of technology resulting from that.
And if we start to look at this, this mapping of technology innovation over the last ten years, a number of things stand out.
One is the sheer volume of new technology that's starting to come away, that we're starting to get our heads around.
Second is the rate of adoption is increasing significantly.
Technology that enters is as a as a as a pilot or as a concept.
So going mainstream, moving much more quickly.
Third of all, the amount of technology that is, is entering our, um, a landscape, entering a world that is transformative in nature.
When I say transformative, not just transforming businesses, but transforming human lives.
And the other piece, I think it's really, really important that we often forget about technology.
It's not these single technologies and the impact that they have, right?
It's how they converge to create new realities and new outcomes.
By the adjacent possibilities that result from technologies coming together.
What happens when AI and augmented reality converge? Well, I am blockchain.
Converge. What are the possibilities? You think of it like the wheel or even fire, right?
As a as a single innovation versus what becomes you start to add all those adjacencies to it.
So I think when it comes to technology, it's fair to say we ain't seen nothing yet.
We're at the very beginning of this transformation,
and we have to understand how technology can be leveraged in order to drive positive impact to human lives.
And this technology is essentially driving four primary industry shifts.
Which is going to be extremely important as we start to understand the world will be living in in 2030 and beyond.
The first is rapid digitalisation. Powered by transformation and LED on data.
I and the cloud. Data is the foundation of every modern business.
To give you an idea of how important data is. And some of you may know this two in this room has an iPhone and Apple iPhone show of hands.
So most of you. So you might know that that iPhone came with a Google search default search engine.
Are you aware of that? Google pays Apple.
Just over $20 billion a year to run that search engine as its default search engine.
And that last year with 17.5% of Apple's total profits.
So why is Google paying Apple for the privilege of running that search engine?
On Apple's operating system. It's because Google understands the power of data.
Google understands how important is it as a business to understand how we as humans make decisions, interact, communicate and live our lives?
That's the importance of data. A data is the fuel.
Data is the foundation of every business. AI is the additive to that fuel to help organisations react quicker.
One more efficiently. Now AI is is not just a fact.
I is is not going to enter this trough of disillusionment and go away for 2 or 3 years.
They are already transforming every industry that we interact with.
It's in impacting your lives and has been impacting your lives for many years already.
And we're seeing it in banking with with loan approvals. We're seeing it in in utilities with smart grids.
We're seeing it in healthcare with, um, AI enabled remote diagnostics.
Um, we're seeing it in the oil industry with, with um, uh, with oil drilling and optimisation of oil drilling.
To give incredible idea of where we all live, I continued.
It's a great book by most adults called Scary Smart if you know that it spoke adult was the chief commercial officer of Google X.
He said, listen, there are three inevitabilities when it comes to AI.
Number one, it ain't going anywhere. It's here to stay.
Get used to it. Find a way to coexist with it. Number two.
AR is going to be smarter than human beings. In fact, it's going to reach the level of human intellect by 2029.
And by 2049 to 25 years from now, it'll be a billion times smarter to the average human.
Which means, metaphorically, the relationship,
the intellectual relationship between AI and humanity in 25 years time will be that of of a human, an average human, and a housefly.
In today's society, that's scary, right?
And the third. Get ready for this. It's going to make mistakes.
How big those mistakes all is up to us.
Because think if I today has just kind of entering this adolescent period so low in infant
so child some of the lessons to think back to when you entered your adolescent years,
how comfortable with you and your own skin. Think about the decisions you made, where they good decisions or bad decisions.
Probably a lot more bad decisions. You parents would say, right. And that's where we are.
We have a responsibility to parent to technology. That's gonna be difficult.
Because we don't agree on what the basic ethical guardrails should be.
Not within societies and not across societies. But that's where we are.
As far as I was concerned. And if AI is the additive cloud will make all this possible.
Data clouds allow us to connect products and deliver innovation at scale and with speed.
And it's interesting. I work with automotive clients, um, who have said, you know,
for years they're in the internal combustion engine industry who are now saying we're no longer in internal combustion engine industry.
We're in the, um, cloud and connected products industry.
Like they're recognising the importance the cloud will have as a differentiator.
The second is every business will become a software business.
In the past. Software is very clunky. And had a very, um, complex and, and somewhat, um, limiting distribution model.
But today. Software. Simple.
It's configurable. It's assembly led. It's no code, and its distribution is infinite.
The software is becoming ubiquitous in every business, and every business is competing on its ability to create impactful software.
Since 2021. The non-tech sector has hired more software professionals than the tech sector.
Every company, every industry is recognising the importance that software will have the future of its business, the relevancy of its business.
Volkswagen announced a couple of years ago that they missed the next generation of automobiles because they couldn't have enough software engineers.
There's a massive talent gap that we have to be able to address.
The third is the physical and digital convergence.
For years we talked about the need to to find ways to to move experiences and
data from physical to digital and back again in the seamless way possible.
And most companies operate it all lives operated in a physical and digital capacity by 2030.
I think that will exist. They'll just be our lives and our physical lives will be connected.
And they'll be driven and defined by, by, um, by all connected experiences and by technology.
I know the wheels will need to become more human, right?
So basically, technology will become ambient. It will weave its way to the fabric of our lives.
It'll be very difficult to distinguish between what's physical or virtual and what is real.
And the last is industry, migration and diversification.
Every company is looking to achieve greater relevance and distinction based on a trusted brand and an existing customer base,
installed customer base, and a digital platform.
It's very difficult to determine what industry any business is in today as they start to find these new forms of relevance in the US.
Amazon, you all know, is as a big box retailer, is moving into banking and health care.
Amazon is already in banking and health care and now looking to get into smart homes.
They see that as their constant. Philip Morris up until about eight months ago.
You all know Philip Morris is the tobacco manufacturer committed to a small, smoke free future by 2030.
Acquired the chewing fat, um, Fatten Pharma, um, a pharmaceutical company, because they wanted to move tobacco into health care.
Why? Because they looked at the the the ICOs that heated tobacco device as being a perfect opportunity for inhaled therapeutics.
You were able to convince the shareholders to pull out of that now. But they're still committed to finding a new opportunity to get into healthcare.
Utilities companies are starting to move into retail because they recognise, with the, um, introduction of,
of the, uh, expansion of small cars, that people aren't going to be spending three minutes at the pump anymore.
They can be spending 45 minutes at the, at the, the charging station.
They want to get into the charging business, need to develop retail stores that go along with that.
What we're seeing consumer health companies or seeing pharmaceutical companies spinning off their consumer health businesses as well.
So every company is trying to find new forms of relevance and new ways to make an impact by diversifying.
So what does this mean for human lives? This is Charlotte. Charlotte graduated from UCL with a BA psychology in 2027.
Now 23, just got a job as a brand manager for a sports retailer and just started renting her first flat in Clapham Junction.
She is a very typical Gen Z. Was zooming, if you prefer, in 2030.
That was Charlotte living her life. Is it much different from today?
Well, first of all, Charlotte wakes up a very relaxed way because she's had an AI enabled sleep,
um, where, um, connected, uh, devices and sensors within her,
her bedroom have managed to adjust the lighting and the sound and the air quality, um,
and the lighting all based on, on on delivering the highest quality of of sleep experience.
While she's asleep. Her AI agent plans out her day.
Right. It creates a daily schedule, exercise routine, wardrobe and diet as she gets up.
Her smart bathroom mirror evaluates her biometric data with biometric vitals in
order to be able to recommend health and skin products for that particular day.
While she's having a shower, her small shower head notifies the coffee dispenser.
Downstairs units awake and coming downstairs, and the coffee starts to brew.
3D printing is going to be mainstream by around 2028 2029.
We believe that Charlotte will have a 3D food printer in her kitchen,
and that 3D food printer is preparing for breakfast based on her real time personalised nutrition plan.
Now problem with Charlotte is is she, um, received some notification from a doctor recently this just to cut out salt in her diet.
She loves the taste of salt to heat food without salt. This is just invented in spoon tech.
Spoon tech is a device that was actually piloted the Consumer Electronics Show last
year that uses ion sensory technology to create artificial flavours from real food,
so she's able to get the sensation. Of the food she can't eat.
Using this technology. After she has a breakfast, she's to do some shopping,
and she relies on a USB agent and augmented reality digital shopping assistant to
provide a very highly personalised shopping experience for her at the supermarket.
Now, I think this is a very conservative estimate. Of what life is going to be like in 2030 from a shopping perspective.
I'll tell you what. Most of you, I assume.
Certainly since the pandemic. Um, purchased from Amazon.
Correct? Most of you. And when you're shopping on on Amazon, you experience their real time office, right?
They have a personal recommendation engine. That personal recommendation engine last year had a 9.6% efficacy across all products,
which means that one inch ten products that Amazon recommended to you last year, you actually clicked on and purchased.
Just not that it's a pretty good success rate. Most companies operate around 3.3 to 3.6%.
It was particularly important. Is through the maturity of its AI platform.
Amazon believes that by 2027, the efficacy of its recommendation engine will have gone from 9.6% to around 34,
or 35%, which means 1 in 3 products it recommends you click on and purchase.
Why is that important? Because once Amazon crosses that 30 to 33% threshold,
it will be economically viable for Amazon to shift from a click and deliver model to delivering click model.
It will send you your products before you request that you get home from work or from school.
And you've got your toilet paper, you've got your skin cream,
you've got your your mustard or whatever else you need for dinner that evening, waiting for you on your doorstep.
And you'll have an easy return policy.
But every time you keep those products or return them Amazon learn something new about you and that efficacy will continue to increase.
So that's the shopping experience that we'll expect Charlotte to be experiencing by 2030.
She orders a, uh, jacket for evening events.
Um, also relying on her virtual agent to find the perfect jacket because it knows her personal taste and size and fit.
And that point is delivered within two hours by a flying drone.
AI research shows that by 2030, the average British citizen will be receiving between 4 and 5 packages a week by flying them in 2030.
All right. Chosen has dinner again planned by her virtual assistant.
And this is a a out of home, uh, mixed reality technology dining experience,
which is something that we are seeing already in the market as she relaxes at home that evening with content that is personally curated for her,
by her art assistant,
by this is how Charlotte will live her life in 2035 and in a way that is interacting with with technology in a much more meaningful way.
So what does this mean for other aspects of life?
Let's talk about work. This is the big elephant in the room. We've all heard the narrative that AI is going to eat away at white collar jobs.
It's going to kill the middle class. Destroy the middle class.
We're going to have this barbell society with the hyper rich, the unemployed, and most of us are going to be sitting around all day at home,
drinking dandelion and burdock, eating Doritos, watching countdown, and waiting for our universal basic, uh, income check to arrive.
Quite candidly, that is absolute nonsense. It's not going to happen.
I is not going to steal our jobs.
In fact, there is a counter intuitive trend in place, and there is a job gap that is emerging because of the maturity of AI.
In this year, the UK employment has showed there is a deficit of around 550,000 um uh qualified um technicians and engineers to be able to,
to advance um, our, um, our work in the AI space.
By 2030, that number will have ballooned to more than 4.5 or 5 million.
So new jobs are being created all the time by AI.
Yes, I will require us to rethink the skills we need in employment, and jobs are going to go through a process of reskilling.
In fact, more than 69% of jobs are going to have to be reimagined or re skilled in order to coexist with AI,
but is not taking away jobs as much as creating new jobs.
In fact, by 2030, globally, we expect there to be a deficit of around 85 million people on the planet.
In order to be able to capitalise on the tech revolution,
and there will be more than $8.5 trillion of lost revenue if we can't address those stem, um, uh, capabilities in in the workforce.
So it's not taking jobs, it's just redefining jobs.
If you need some convincing of that, let's go back in history and let's look at the from an economic standpoint,
the the first three industrial revolutions,
the first being the, uh, steam engine in the late, uh, 18th century, followed by assembly line in the early 20th century.
The digitalisation revolution of the 1980s and now AI platforms, these are creating jobs,
have always created jobs because they create economic expansion. We have to rethink the relationship that we as humans have with this technology.
As we look forward and it's really, really interesting. I've often said that the printing press.
For large extent democratised information. The internet.
On the other hand, democratise knowledge. AI is democratising expertise and competency.
I think that's something we need to remember as we start to look at the nature of work in 20, 30 and beyond.
From the technology perspective, we're going to see AI and and humanoid robots coexisting with humans,
taking away the routine, mundane tasks to allow humans to focus on the creative skills, the social skills.
But I does not possess that technology does not possess. We're going to see digital twins allowing people to be more productive in the workforce.
We're going to see AI production, uh,
productivity coaches and digital wellness coaches allowing people to be at the best of the happiest in the workplace.
If we look at it from a human perspective, we're going to start to see more remote working.
I think that's expected. We're going to see more automated working.
But I think what's going to be really interesting going forward is this concept of designer careers.
All right. We've all signed up for this this template, right. That we we have one career.
And I'll say sometimes we're lucky to have maybe a second and some may have a third.
And it's a rarity. But what's stopping somebody from beginning their career as a engineer and then deciding 6 or 7 years later,
they want to pivot and become a designer and then become a lawyer.
And I think with with the the maturation, the continue expansion of, of AI capability,
it will be increasingly possible for people to make those adjustments in their career.
It's going to be much easier to become an expert in something through AI.
And we expect this to be a massive shift. I talk to clients about the impact that technology is going to have on the businesses in the coming years.
The question they always come back to is not which technology I should be investing in.
It's what humans we should be investing in. And more importantly, the question that gets asked is how do we ensure that in 20 and 30 and beyond,
our company and our industry is equipped to attract and retain and motivate the highest talent that's available?
At a client at a leading FMcG company. Leading packaged goods company.
Who? You know, it says, listen, I'm worried by our business was formed on the ability of of of smart humans.
If I look forward in 20 and 30 and beyond,
I'm not thinking about do I invest in AI or blockchain or quantum computing or the next big technology innovation?
My question is, how do I create a working environment that's going to attract and inspire and retain the top talent?
So we have to think of it in those terms. And any skill that that can't be automated is going to be particularly valuable in this new paradigm.
I think that's important to continue to emphasise. Right.
Economy for years was was based on our physical abilities and then it moved to our intellectual capabilities.
I think as we start thinking about the role that I will play in our future economy and the future of our industries,
it's going to be social abilities that prevail.
And yeah, not surprising what this chart shows is where there's going to be the biggest shift in skill requirements in 2030 compared to 2022,
in both the US and in Western Europe.
And not surprising, we're seeing a drop in physical manual skills, um,
and basic cognitive skills that we're seeing a significant increase in higher cognitive skills like creativity and critical thinking,
complex information processing. We're seeing a significant increase in entrepreneurial skills, leadership skills,
individuals with resilience and flexibility who can work effectively with that technology.
Right. This is what's going to be important. What about the future of London?
Learning. Education is going to go through enormous shifts in the next 5 to 6 years.
It's interesting I mentioned earlier about every business becoming a software business was particularly important.
Is the industries that have fallen behind, that have been not quick enough in adopting software as a core asset are the ones that that's,
um, that are or continue to deliver their services with the highest price point relative to inflation.
And that includes health care and education. They have not moved quick enough in terms of software.
But I think when we look at education, it is historically been very episodic.
It will now become very continuous and very personalised.
I believe we move away from what I've been calling just in case.
Education. The just in time education.
Why most of us spend the first 25 years of our lives learning skills that we hope will apply to the professions that we then choose to take on.
The reality is, the skills we're learning today become obsolete within 2 or 3 years.
It's impossible to teach somebody the skills they'll need that will continue be relevant five years from now, ten years from now.
So we need to rethink our educational system and the platforms that lie beneath it in order
to ensure that people continue to evolve as you demand and new skills become relevant.
So the first is is continuous, flexible, on demand, the lifelong learner, both formal and informal.
AI driven personalisation. The content, the context,
the methodology of teaching is going to be adapted to the individual needs of the students and as those needs of the student change over time,
as we learn more about how that student reacts to different stimuli.
Then the content in context will shift as well. Education will become immersive and interactive.
I imagine being a marine biologist and learning about, um, your discipline in a virtual underwater setting,
or you're a palaeontologist, um, learning about about dinosaurs on a dinosaur island or an astronomer.
That's that's, that's that's interacting with, with with asteroids in a virtual space environment.
It's going to become gamified, it's going to be fun. It's going to be interactive.
The ability to bring people together globally on a common platform language will no longer be a barrier because I will provide instantaneous,
real time translation, the ability to interact with people in, in, not just in other countries,
but people who do not speak your language as a first language and to neutralise that barrier.
So you're learning, um, you're experiencing a greater cultural diversity and in, in the way that the content is being delivered to you.
And continuous monitoring and assessment by most of you've probably heard about
brain computer interfaces ability to actually communicate directly from the brain.
But nothing has to be written that just brain thought to thought, ability to to understand students,
how they respond to stimuli, and how the student teacher relationship is is unfolding using brain computer interface interface.
That's going to be important in terms of being able to create this baseline and understand how we educate people most effectively.
So education is going to go through the enormous shift. And how can we not talk about health care?
And I think when we talk about the expected shifts in health care by 2030, Am reminded of the the quote from the Canadian,
uh, science fiction author William Gibson, who said that the future is already here is just unevenly distributed.
To a large extent. A lot of the things I've identified here do exist in, in, in, in non mainstream more, um, test and learn sort of way.
Um, but this limitation will enable five health care at scale.
I think most of you are familiar with £0.05. But the idea of of health care being about preventative, not being personalised, about being predictive,
about being participatory, about being precise, those are the goals of the future health care system.
How can technology help deliver that with greater ease and greater efficacy?
The first is that consumers, if not already, will become the CEOs of their own health.
I've got friends with doctors today who said the biggest challenge is to get patients coming in the morning already having self-diagnosed.
Nobody ever comes into a doctor's office saying, can you help me, doctor?
It's I've got this problem, and I found it on Google and tell me why I'm wrong.
And it puts them in a moral dilemma because then you say, well, you know,
I tell the patient the wrong and risk losing the patient because they go somewhere else and get get the treatment they want.
Um, or do I, um, do I execute my, my professional standards in a way that I believe is right,
but the ability for consumers to be masters of their own domain,
to be CEOs of their own health ecosystem is going to become increasingly, um, uh,
feasible due to the emergence of of wearable devices, smart sensors, smart technology.
All right. This is already here. The study about a year ago,
where 4000 Swedish adolescents agreed to have a small microchip placed into the skin that provided all of their biometric vitals a cholesterol level,
sugar level. All this stuff is being fed into one single database.
Is that something we'd be willing to do in compromise or data privacy to get a better health outcome?
I think we all going to find that these, these, um, technologies are going to allow the,
the consumer to be much more empowered and much more knowledgeable about the health options.
We have to meet them in in that context.
Smart IoT devices in the home will converge to provide these personalised health experiences and outcomes in a much more preventative way.
We've all seen around telehealth, right?
We know that that going forward, it's inevitable that that health care is delivered in a more than no fashion.
Right? Instead of going to a dermatologist to have a, uh, an image of a, um, the skin, uh, uh,
a mole or freckle, your ability to take the photograph from your iPhone and have it imaged remotely.
Right. Tell a surgery we already see is is becoming a significant game changer in in the health care industry.
This is a $5.9 billion industry growing at a CAGR of 16.1% year on year.
This is going to be massive by 2030. By then, AI is changing all aspects of the health care, uh,
ecosystem and value chain from from early disease detection all the way through to the
use of genomic data to predict disease risk and provide personalised prevention plans.
So all this is, is going to become mainstream by 2030.
And listen when we're talking about understanding the relationship between humans and technology.
I think we have to go to the very fundamental dimensions of what it means to be human.
As a behavioural scientist, we need to understand people in the context in which they live,
and we assume certain things are fixed or static and somewhat dynamic.
But the reality is, in this new world, this new paradigm. I think the things that we assumed were static are not right for me.
You know, time is is there are 86,400 seconds in in a day and, you know, 5240, uh, feet in a mile, right?
There was a given. But but when we look at perception or perception of time and space is changing because of our relationship with technology.
There's a time space compression. How we relate to time and space.
People who are heavy users of devices. I'll process information more quickly and see time moving more quickly.
In fact, 15% quicker than people who are low users of devices or infrequent users of devices.
We think about it in terms of of attention span. Has implications for many of the things we talked about.
Our attention span in the last 25 years has dropped from the 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
Attention span is actually less currently than the average goldfish,
and not sure if any biologists that room know how you figure out the attention span of a goldfish,
but apparently it's it's higher than the average human today.
The attention span is shifting on. Memory is changing as well.
Our ability to to store information is becoming more and more difficult because
of the way in which we gather and process information through scrolling.
But our relationship to the present is also changing. What is the present today?
We live in, in in such a strange, um, version of of of what is what is the the now as we're scrolling because when it's,
we're scrolling, it's actually already happened. Right. But it's these strange perceptions of space and time that need to be completely redefined.
And then our relationship to the truth. Right.
We all grew up in a in a society where there was a version of the truth, and you agreed to it or not.
But now there are multiple versions of the truth. Our ability to distinguish between what is real and what is virtual.
Now our tendency, if not propensity, to use psychological filters to reinforce our own personal version of the truth that we want to project.
All of this is made possible through technology or social environment.
We assume that the internet has provided this on social media. This wonderful ability to connect with people in, in, in greater magnitude as it has.
But at what expense and expense is that?
We are now seeing greater instances of isolationism and alienation in society because people don't have those same meaningful relationships,
the very superficial, um, uh, surface level relationships.
About a work environment and how we relate to people and work in a remote environment does change who we are as human beings.
Right and their own identity. How that's changing through technology, right?
We've talked for years about the accident of birth, and how much of a life is defined by the things outside of our control or gender or appearance.
Right? Right nicety. But now we're able to manufacture or create the version of ourselves we want to be, or at least project to others.
The version that we create on social media is probably not the same version that exists in the physical world.
Yeah, we've talked to clients in the past about when you're marketing to an individual,
what version of that individual your marketing to the version exists in, in the physical world.
Right. That you would identify as a as a friend or a brother or sister or parent or you.
Marketing to the version of themselves they've created on social media.
Right. The version they want to be seen as time.
And this relationship to beauty, I think, is interesting as well.
It was a study last year amongst American plastic surgeons that said 48% of people who, um, went for for uh,
facial cosmetic surgery cited looking better in selfies as the main motivation for wanting cosmetic surgery.
Right. Again, it's almost the use of the self. But we have to rethink.
The relationships that we have to a broader environment because as behavioural scientists rely on traditional
assumptions of time and space and relationships and self as we start to think through intubations intervention.
So if we start to walk back from the future to figure out how do we deliver a future that does,
um, align with our, uh, our desires and our aspirations?
The first is we're not going to get there through single approaches.
So I call the quintet of change with the ability to bring together data and innovation and digital,
supported by strategic foresight and behavioural science to create this forward thinking culture,
we can only address the complexity of change, these multiple dimensions working together.
We've got to move to more of an ecosystem view of the world.
For years we talked about winning in the platform economy. The reality is the world is becoming a network of ecosystems.
So if you're working in the health care industry today, your ability to understand the interrelationships exist between payer, provider,
patients and other stakeholders, and to create experiences that unite these different groups and create new sources of value,
using data and intelligence to create these, these,
these new intersections between the different constituents that make up that that particular ecosystem is going to be particularly important.
We need to start thinking about innovation differently, right?
The vast majority of innovation is looking at incremental change, addressing single problems one after the other, which delivers very limited return.
If we really want to start to drive change and leverage innovation in a much more impactful way,
we've got to start to think of innovation in a much more holistic and disruptive manner.
And innovation really is, is, is a number of different possibilities coming together.
There are multiple kinds of innovation and companies who are doing innovation.
I think with the greatest efficacy and scale, the ones who are able to deliver innovation across many of these different modes.
Um, Merck is an interesting one, right? As an example.
So about eight years ago, Merck was looking to grow its vaccine business from 5 billion to 10 billion.
And its initial strategy for doing that was to introduce more vaccines into mature markets,
but realised it couldn't get any further than 8.5 billion on that strategy.
The only way to get to 10 billion was to start to explore opportunities to introduce vaccines in developing markets.
So focussed on two vaccines Gardasil for cervical cancer and roll attack for rotavirus.
The problem is that in the countries that wanted to get into this virus with those, there's some this vaccine,
subsaharan Africa, in particular countries like Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal and Nigeria and gone in and so forth.
Um. Vaccine preventable diseases.
One of them, one of those particular diseases, was not high up the hierarchy of need.
So Merck have two options.
The first option was to continue to educate the governments of those countries as to why they should embrace or adopt vaccine preventable diseases.
The other was to help those countries address the things that were higher up the hierarchy of need.
Things like, uh, food, sanitation and clean water and security and transportation.
Right. And data integration. These types of issues that would face this country is a problem is milk didn't have those capabilities.
So Merck actually created an innovation lab that would deliver those interventions that would be able to bring those
interventions into those those countries in order to tackle the issues that were high up the hierarchy of need.
And in doing so, take vaccines and their vaccines in particular, higher up the health schedule.
Right. So interesting way of of addressing innovation.
Uh, the, the women's royal canon, she if you guys know royal canon, which is the pet food brand belonging to Mars Petcare.
While canon started to lose market share largely on the basis of of new digital natives,
new entrants into the category that was stealing some of its, its, uh, its customer base.
So both talent decided to shift from being a pet food provider to being a pet service provider,
and recognising that as a as a pet parent, you have many decisions to make in terms of the breed of dog or cat.
Um, being able to find the right breeder, uh, the vaccine schedule, which is quite complicated if you're a pet owner.
Um, that's how you at the of um, the the schedule that follows, uh, finding a dog walker,
finding a groom, all these things were challenges for the average pet parent.
So they actually created a platform that would allow parents to make much smarter decisions across the entire value chain,
and delivering innovations at each of those those points along the way to create a much more meaningful value exchange with the customer.
So just interesting ways that companies have started to rethink their business model and rethink the operating model in order to deliver,
um, new areas of value in, in, uh, in existing or new markets.
I think at the core, at the heart of everything we do think about around technology, innovation and change is our ability to adopt a product mindset.
Instead of asking the question what technology should be investing in?
Do I chase this technology or that technology? Start with the problem.
What Columbine solving for? Why does it matter?
How is it impacting the lives of the people that I care about, and what are the different options for delivering against that particular problem?
Which technology is the most feasible. You start with the problem and work back.
Chances are we can deliver outcomes that deliver the value that you aspire to.
Behavioural science perspective. If behavioural science is really about.
Iteratively getting better and better. And understanding the curve of human behaviour and the application of behavioural science.
Is being able to bend that curve. As we look forward in time to 2013.
Beyond, we need to be asking ourselves. How do we bend that curve?
And for whom? That's the most important question we ask yourself as as behavioural scientists, the number of things need to start to follow.
First of all, begin with empathy. Focus on how designs and interventions improve human lives.
Think bigger about the impact you can deliver. Address individual biases and interventions in the context of a complex social ecosystem.
In order to drive constructive, systematic and lasting change.
Don't look at individual problems or individual circumstances of of of human life.
Look at the broader holistic ecosystem which this humans exist and live their lives and one to live their lives.
Integrate approaches and methods and disciplines in areas that you may be less familiar.
Neuroscience and computer science and philosophy. I just don't bring different lenses to the same problem.
Establish ethical guardrails to ensure that behavioural interventions are managed responsibly.
And target opportunities for how we can nudge individuals and society in a more positive direction.
And that is the opportunity, if not the responsibility,
of behavioural science as we start to navigate the most effective path to the future that we want.
So what matters most? I think for years it's interesting.
In business we would say the most important attribute was ability.
We wanted to hire people. Who could make decisions quickly.
I don't think that's what's going to get us to where we want to go. I think what's more important than ability is agility.
It's our ability to hire people. Who aren't afraid to admit they were wrong.
Who are quick to change their mind because the people with agility are the ones who are facing the next pandemic or the next technology disruption.
I'm going to anticipate the problems and the risks ahead of time and lean around the corner.
Have the courage to lead that change and not be a victim of it.
And at the heart, I think side by side with agility is creativity.
I think one of the greatest tragedies of,
of digital transformation is that the technology itself has become more magical and more impactful in our lives.
We as human beings have become increasingly complacent.
Over the problems we want to solve for, and why we're waiting for technology to give us the answer.
Technology is not going to give us the answer. It may help us get there quicker.
We have to figure out the answers we want and why.
Humans thinking 11 dimensions AI is a long way from being able to think in such a holistic way to create images at the source that.
Lastly. Remember, it's not about the world that we're changing.
It's very noble. This is your future and you have to design the future that you want.
The journey that you want to embark upon. As you embark upon that journey.
Be radically curious. Challenge convention. Challenge the new.
Pushback. Be bold, be courageous, be wise and have fun.
And build an extraordinary future that you'll be proud of. Okay.
Thank you.