Four For Friday | December 13, 2024
LF152 | Human services as the new luxury good, Accenture on responsible AI, rethinking aging and public wealth funds + McKinsey's AI knowledge platform.
Welcome to Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week, together with a bonus: AI Tip of The Week. Enjoy!
Humans for the rich, robots for the poor
Wired makes the case that human interactions are increasingly becoming a luxury. Affordable and scalable interactions in the future will be with AI services robots, not relatively rare and unaffordable humans.
My counter point to this is the opportunity to use AI and tech to make unpaid human interactions less ad hoc, perhaps time banking models will finally go mainstream, for example.
The So What? As tech and AI becomes ubiquitous, the value will shift to services that let humans and computers both do what they do best.
Accenture on the importance of ‘responsible AI’
Report on ‘responsible AI’ by Accenture, together with Amazon Web Services, which it sees as a key unlock to the greater adoption and successful deployment of AI services.
It defines responsible AI as: “an approach applying intentional actions to design, deploy and use AI to create value and build trust by protecting against the potential risks of AI.”
Why all this matters? Accenture suggests it will generate ‘360 degree’ AI value in six areas: improved financial performance, better customer experiences, better sustainability, talent attraction, improved inclusion & diversity and better risk & regulatory outcomes.
The So What: As the conclusion of the report puts it: “to become a leader in AI and deliver the expected return on your investments, you must first become a leader in responsible AI.”
Rethinking what it means to be old
The prospect of an increasingly aging society is still not something that has entered the mainstream, despite those of us interested in longevity banging on about it for years. The implications are for nothing less than a root-and-branch change to how society learns, works. plays and retires. And perhaps most of all, thinks about age.
This article in the Atlantic contrasts two recent books on the topic: Andrew Scott’s The Longevity Imperative and James Chappell’s The Golden Years. It finds Scott’s prescription for an evergreen society (it’s not how old you are, but what you do) more compelling than Chappell’s take, which (dramatically paraphrasing) seems stuck in the mindset where aging means inevitable decline and inevitable government handouts.
"Right now, Americans are receiving more than a decade of additional time in the most satisfying and prosocial period of life. This is potentially the greatest gift any generation of humans has ever received. The question is whether we will grasp it."
The So What? There’s still far too little understanding and acceptance of the new demographic reality, and it’s therefore open season for smart entrepreneurs to build products that meet emerging needs without pandering to age-old stereotypes.
Public Wealth Funds
This is a time when governments everywhere are likely taking notice of Elon Musk’s agenda at DOGE, to remove $2 trillion of government costs. Although less dramatic and Insta-worthy, other countries are likely wrestling with how to square the circle of record low levels of trust and faith in governments, disconnected populations and a litany of existential and expensive projects to work on.
One approach for a government efficiency drive (h/t Dominic Endicott) is to look at what Sweden did. They massively increased the value of government assets by accounting for them more accurately, and managing them in a more professional way.
Examples include better accounting for forgotten government buildings or relocating a school that was situated in Brazil’s most expensive city block by the beach in Rio, to somewhere less expensive.
The article suggests that governments consider creating ‘public wealth funds’ (PWFs). A PWF is ‘an asset manager concerned with active management of a portfolio of operational assets and/or real estate’, with an example being Singapore’s Temasek. In contrast, a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) is concerned typically invests in liquid securities traded on major mature markets.
The So What: Although Musk’s language and ambitions are radical (and time will tell if it works), we need to have a conversation about government efficiency and effectiveness, both to better address societal challenges but also restoring trust in democracy. Introducing a third-party professional manager for government assets is an intriguing concept.
Bonus - AI Report of the Week
A fascinating paper by McKinsey about how they built its AI knowledge engine, Lilli. It’s used by 72% of the company and is estimated to reduce the time it takes consultant to search and synthesize information by 30%.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen