DUBAI: As artificial intelligence reshapes economies and societies at unprecedented speed, global technology leaders meeting at the GITEX Global conference have been debating the rapid acceleration of AI disruption.
One of the more poignant conversations on Wednesday this week tackled whether innovation can truly serve the public good, in a session titled “Digital Futures: Global Impact at the Speed of Innovation.”
Guy Diedrich, senior vice president and global innovation officer at Cisco’s Digital Impact Office, argued that the future of AI and emerging technologies depends as much on trust, ethics, and human capital as on algorithms and investment.
He was speaking to Australian journalist and CNBC Anchor Amanda Drury during a live session at the conference.
“Creative Destruction is when you come up with a new innovation, when AI is released, when quantum comes and all of a sudden everything before it gets churned out,” Diedrich said.
“It goes away because you have to make room for that new innovation, for that new economic growth, for that new opportunity.”
He warned that progress will stall if societies fail to invest in people, arguing that there was a symbiotic relationship between social good and capital gains.
“You’re never going to get the full value of that innovation unless you have developed your population, unless they have that intellectual capital in place,” he said. “The two have to go side by side.”
Central to that balance is trust as the true “engine” that drives the digital economy, he said.
Without it, he argued there could be no movement as people would begin opting out — choosing not to share data which would be detrimental to the evolution of AI.
Several high-profile cases, such as a Samsung data leak via ChatGPT in 2023 have created doubt over whether AI can be trusted with sensitive information.
Many have called on governments to place heavier regulations on tech companies, which Diedrich welcomed but cautioned that it could result in hindering innovation.
