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What impact will AI have on gender equality?
At the current rate of progress toward gender equality, the World Economic Forum estimates it will take 131 years for women to attain parity in income, status, and leadership.
While technology is a powerful tool to help close the gender gap, it can also be weaponized. GZERO’s special presentation “Gender Equality in the Age of AI” featured candid conversations about the opportunities and threats that exist online, and how artificial intelligence will impact them.
Produced on the sidelines of the 68th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, the program featured leading experts from government, technology, and philanthropy. Moderator Penny Abeywardena, former NYC Commissioner for International Affairs, was joined by Jac sm Kee, co-founder of Numun Fund; Vickie Robinson, general manager of the Microsoft Airband Initiative; Michelle Milford Morse, the United Nations Foundation’s vice president for Girls and Women Strategy; and Lucia Ďuriš Nicholsonová, a member of the European Parliament from Slovakia.
“The beauty and the promise of digital technologies is the opening up of democratic and civic participation space,” said Jac sm Kee. “But what is happening right now is the direct closing down of these spaces through deliberate attacks.”
The discussion focused on three key areas: gender-based online violence, the need for greater digital inclusion and access, and increasing leadership roles for women in all aspects of public life.
In a recent study from UNESCO, 58% of women and girls surveyed globally said they had experienced online violence, defined as a range of abuses including harassment, stalking, and defamation. Female journalists and politicians experienced these threats in even higher numbers.
During GZERO’s program, European Union parliamentarian Lucia Ďuriš Nicholsonová shared incredibly disturbing messages she has received throughout her years in office, many including violent and profane language and graphic sexual threats.
“These words are real. The people who are writing these words are real,” Nicholsonová said. “We can erase them through algorithms online, but they will still exist. I think we really need to know what is out there because it's a real threat.”
Michelle Milford Morse of UN Foundation explained to the crowd gathered at the NYC event that these kinds of abuses have compounding impacts on victims. “More than half of young women are experiencing some form of abuse and harassment online, sometimes as young as eight,” she said. “I don't think that we're thinking enough about the accumulation of that over time and the real harm to their mental health.”
But technology, when used for good, is also a powerful tool that can help close the gender gap. Microsoft’s Vickie Robinson described the importance of connectivity and digital skills. Of the estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide who lack internet access, the majority are women and girls.
“It's critically important, now more than ever, we need to make sure that we close the digital divide once and for all, but that we bring along with that the skills, we make it affordable, we make it accessible,” Robinson said.
The conversation then turned to leadership, and the need for more women in positions of authority in all industries and sectors of public life.
“Parliaments and legislators that have more women, they prioritize social services for children and the most vulnerable. When they engage in peace agreements, those peace agreements last longer. They're more likely to protect biodiversity,” said Morse. “There is no argument for half our human family to be shut out of society.”
The program was part of the Global Stage series and produced by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft and the United Nations Foundation. The series features politicians, private sector leaders, and renowned experts in conversation about issues at the intersection of technology, geopolitics and society.
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How is the world tackling AI, Davos' hottest topic?
It’s the big topic at Davos: What the heck are we going to do about artificial intelligence? Governments just can’t seem to keep up with the pace of this ever-evolving technology—but with dozens of elections scheduled for 2024, the world has no time to lose.
GZERO and Microsoft brought together folks who are giving the subject a great deal of thought for a Global Stage event on the ground in Switzerland, including Microsoft’s Brad Smith, EU Member of Parliament Eva Maydell, the UAE’s AI Minister Omar Sultan al Olama, the UN Secretary’s special technology envoy Amandeep Singh Gill, and GZERO Founder & President Ian Bremmer, moderated by CNN’s Bianna Golodryga.
The opportunities presented by AI could revolutionize healthcare, education, scientific research, engineering – just about every human activity. But the technology threatens to flood political discourse with disinformation, victimize people through scams or blackmail, and put people out of work. A poll of over 2,500 GZERO readers found a 45% plurality want to see international cooperation to develop a regulatory framework.
The world made great strides in AI regulation in 2023, perhaps most prominently in the European Union’s AI Act. But implementation and enforcement are a different game, and with every passing month, AI gets more powerful and more difficult to rein in.
So where do these luminaries see the path forward? Tune in to our full discussion from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, above.
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An artificial intelligence sign is displayed on a phone screen, with the shape of a human face and binary code in an illustration.
AI will get stronger in 2024
While its lawyers are suing the world’s most powerful AI firms, reporters at The New York Times’ are simultaneously trying to make sense of this important emerging technology — namely, how rapidly it’s progressing before our eyes.
On Monday, veteran tech reporter Cade Metz suggested that AI will get stronger in innumerable ways.
“The A.I. industry this year is set to be defined by one main characteristic: a remarkably rapid improvement of the technology as advancements build upon one another, enabling A.I. to generate new kinds of media, mimic human reasoning in new ways and seep into the physical world through a new breed of robot,” Metz writes.
Huh? He’s referring to the advent of mass-market AI-generated video. Just like Midjourney and DALL-E brought AI-image generators to us in 2023, new tools will make it easy to type and generate whole videos made by AI.
Not only that, but popular chatbots like ChatGPT will become multimodal, meaning they can respond just as seamlessly with images, video, and audio as they do today with text. So perhaps there will be a true one-stop-shop for all your generative AI needs.
Logical reasoning of AI tools could also improve greatly this year, he suggests, allowing them to better function as “agents” to whom humans can delegate tasks and offload responsibilities.
Dust off your sci-fi classics: Smarter AI systems could power smart robots — though they’ll almost certainly invade factories first, rather than trying to become at-home personal butlers.
Jacinda Ardern on the Christchurch Call: How New Zealand led a movement
During a Global Stage livestream conversation hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed that when she reached for her phone to share the heartbreaking news of the Christchurch massacre, she found a horrifying surprise: A livestream of the massacre served to her on a social media platform.
For a period of 24 hours, copies of the footage were uploaded to YouTube as often as once per second, spreading the 17-minute massacre faster than tech companies could shut it down.
The experience drives her work at the Christchurch Call, combating online extremism and working with government and civil society to build guardrails against the exploitation of technology by extremists, , she explained during a Global Stage livestream conversation hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Watch the full Global Stage Livestream conversation here: Hearing the Christchurch Call
Can data and AI save lives and make the world safer?
The global climate crisis is acute. In the last few months alone, Hawaii, Morocco and Libya have experienced climate-linked catastrophes that have wiped out communities and killed tens of thousands of people.
At the same time, emerging tech – notably artificial intelligence and data ecosystems – are becoming increasingly sophisticated and influential. There’s been much focus on the perils and threats posed by these scientific developments, but how can they be proactively harnessed to mitigate climate challenges and create a more resilient world?
On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, GZERO Media held a Global Stage livestream event unpacking these complex challenges and opportunities, in collaboration with the United Nations, the Complex Risk Analytics Fund, and the Early Warnings for All initiative.
This urgent conversation was be moderated by Nick Thompson, CEO, The Atlantic; and featured Melinda Bohannon, Director General of Humanitarian and Development at the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office; Ian Bremmer, President and Founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media; Vilas Dhar, President and Trustee, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation; Dr. Comfort Ero, President and CEO of International Crisis Group; Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction; Amina Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General; Amandeep Singh Gill, UN Envoy on Technology; Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President, Microsoft; Axel van Trostenburg, World Bank Managing Director; and Anne Witkowsky, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations at the US Department of State.
Emerging tech is presenting huge opportunities to identify climate hotspots and scale damage and destruction. Indeed, Smith says that satellites are able to not only capture visual images, but also gather “data streams” on fossil fuel emissions. In addition, AI is also being harnessed to identify communities affected by climate calamities and see which “people have been rendered homeless.” Still, tech companies can’t do it alone. In order to identify what their exact needs are, Smith adds, partnerships with NGOs and other stakeholders are key.
Amandeep Singh Gill had much to say about how these processes are applied in real time, particularly when addressing world hunger. “Across 90 countries, 700-800 million people are at risk of food insecurity,” he notes, adding that using data across institutions has allowed the multilateral organization “to get assessments about where food insecurity is going to spike next, and that allows us to respond in a better way.”
Still, having access to copious amounts of data is one thing, but figuring out how to use it to effectuate change is quite another. “There's a real gap between the information that's out there and the ability to act upon the information that's out there,” Dr Ero says, adding that “lack of policy and action” and failure to act quickly when crises are identified are hindering these global efforts. Dr Ero points to the situation in Somalia, which is still grappling with an insurgency by the Al-Shabaab terror group while also facing floods and trying to rebuild its society. “All the data points are showing the stresses that Somalia has to deal with, but why aren't we able to respond to that?” she asks, highlighting poor governance and lack of political will as impediments to progress.
When asked about how these issues might be affected by the fact that heads of state from four out of five permanent members of the UN Security Council did not show up at the UN General Assembly this week, Amina Mohammed said there is “huge momentum” from governments and stakeholders. “The 2030 agenda is urgent, and we really do just feel that there is a movement to make that happen. There's a sense of determination … too many people are at stake.”
And there’s one elephant in the room when discussing climate change and tech advancements: China. One big issue, Bremmer notes, “is that China is really distracted by very significant domestic economic challenges and that has put real constraints, material constraints, on their foreign policy strategy over the long term,” he says.
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2021's Top Risks: global challenges intensify
Eurasia Group today published its annual list of the main geopolitical threats for 2021. For the second year in a row, the #1 Top Risk is rising political polarization in the United States, which not many years ago was deemed one of the world's most stable nations, with strong institutions and — as the sole global superpower — with a clear mandate to lead the world on many fronts.
That's all gone, for now. Why, and what does this mean for America and other countries?
As outgoing US President Donald Trump continues to undermine democracy by questioning his recent election loss to Joe Biden, and Republican lawmakers heed Trump's call to erode the legitimacy of US political institutions, we've reached a new normal in American politics, Eurasia Group Chairman Cliff Kupchan said during a livestream discussion to launch the 2021 Top Risks report.
That new normal is that in future US elections, the American president will be rejected by half the country no matter his agenda, Kupchan explained: in the current political environment, the world simply cannot look to the US to solve any global problem, much less a once-in-a-generation crisis like the coronavirus pandemic.
For Ian Bremmer, president of GZERO Media and Eurasia Group, America is in no position to provide global leadership at a moment when other countries would have hugely benefited from it, so other rising powers may fill the void created by the US abdication from its own role as superpower. The prime candidate to do so is China, which is increasingly competing with the US for global influence.
Indeed, Kupchan expects US-China rivalry to intensify — albeit in a different way than under Trump — when Biden takes office. There'll be a bidding war between both sides to win global hearts and minds as the new US president attempts to "multilateralize" US competition with China on issues such as COVID-19 vaccines or green technology.
Bremmer believes that China has the upper hand in vaccine diplomacy, and that unless Biden's US vaccine rollout is a roaring success, China is better positioned to exercise its soft power throughout the developing world with jabs that are cheaper and easier to distribute than the American vaccines.
Sustainability will be another arena for competition. Biden will try to clip China's wings on Chinese quest to benefit economically from the world's renewed push for renewable energy due to the pandemic, Bremmer added.
A longer-than-expected recovery from COVID-19, furthermore, is poised to make the world even more "GZERO" than it was a year ago. Kupchan said that the lasting scar tissue of the pandemic will create haves and have nots between and within countries in a leaderless world where the US is simply too divided to govern itself — let alone the international system it helped create after World War II.
For Bremmer, the coronavirus did not spur a more "GZERO" world, which we were already in before COVID-19, but underscored its urgency by accelerating all other geopolitical risks. It made everything a lot worse, a lot faster.
Watch the above video for more insights from both experts on other 2021 Top Risks, including why we'll see huge inequality in how different parts of the world recover from the 2020 public health crisis, and questions posed by readers. Check out the full report here and GZERO Media's summary here.
Watch Ian Bremmer explain the "Top Risk" of 2021: divided US domestic politics
Today, GZERO Media's parent company, Eurasia Group, released its annual report on the top 10 geopolitical risks that will shape the year.
In a GZERO Live discussion, Ian Bremmer explained why US domestic politics were named the "top risk" for the second consecutive year, as we enter an era when every Oval Office occupant is seen as illegitimate by roughly half the country — including lawmakers that election skeptics send to Congress.
Willis Sparks explains the implications to US foreign policy when Republicans and Democrats disagree so sharply, as allies and potential partners are left to wonder whether the next "America First" president and foreign policy are just four years away.
Watch the full GZERO Live discussion here.
What does Brexit mean for the UK, London, and NYC? Will McConnell allow a US stimulus payment vote?
Brexit will be here on January 1st. What big changes are coming?
There are a lot of big changes coming. Most important for the average Brit is the fact that you no longer can work or have education access in the European Union. You have to apply with normal immigration patterns, as you would outside the EU. That's going to change the way people think about their future. But otherwise, a lot greater regulatory impact, declarations of customs for goods being transmitted, so the cost of trade is going to go up with the world's largest common market. You know, the idea of I mean, for financial markets is very important because you have financial groups that are losing automatic access to the single market in the EU as well. They're supposed to be new deals cut around that, but we aren't there yet. It's not a disaster, but the fact that all these changes are happening immediately, and they are a significant cost primarily on the smaller economy of the United Kingdom and that they're going to have to be borne at a time when the economy's not doing well, when coronavirus hasn't been handled very well, when global demand is already depressed, this is a big hit, and it's a big hit also on the back of almost five years of uncertainty around the UK.
I think one of the most interesting things is London is not going to be seen as as much of a global city. As someone who loves London personally, I think that's sad. But it's also really interesting because when you think about truly global cities in the world, I've thought Hong Kong, for example, certainly not any more with what's happened from the mainland and the introduction of the national security law. London really hard to say given what they've just done in the UK to limit connections with the European Union. There's in general lots of fragmentation in the world, globalization and globalism has taken it on the chin. I think this helps the United States, the world's largest economy, and it helps New York City because there is still a desire for financial markets, for global creatives, for talent and wealth to come together in places. Tokyo is an incredibly well functioning, really big city, but it's so much more homogenous. Beijing is an incredible place with a massive amount of dynamism, energy and wealth, but it's also in an authoritarian system and a reasonably closed marketplace. It just can't be global. So, I actually think that New York City is comparatively speaking, going to do a lot better as a place in terms of energy, momentum, ideas and wealth, even though in the coronavirus period, people have been leaving New York, L.A., Silicon Valley for places that are cheaper. I would be betting long on places that are global, especially in an environment that's going to be more unequal going forward and first tier cities doing well.
Are $2000 stimulus payments back on the table in the United States?
If McConnell decides that he is willing to put it to a vote, the answer is maybe, but I have a hard time seeing him do that personally. Keep in mind that that would be a gift to the Democrats who have been supporting this without taking away any of the other bits of the bill, the rescission that President Trump has demanded, the pork and spending that has come somewhat from Republicans, somewhat from Democrats. I think McConnell still believes that the way he exercises power is by determining the political agenda and only providing opportunities for things that he and his party supports. Now, there is the complication of the Georgia by-election and both of the GOP senators who are running in that by-election, Perdue and Loeffler have come out surprise, surprise, in favor of the $2000 stimulus, the checks, individual checks, for again, for everybody that that makes under a certain amount, and that's useful for them because they're running, it's politics as usual, but I don't think that necessarily makes McConnell any more likely to put it on the agenda. In fact, given the fact that politics are generally local, they get to say they supported it, they're not going to take a hit from the fact that it doesn't actually pass. So, I think it is effectively a nothing-burger. It's Trump saying that he pushed hard for those checks, for people's money in their pockets, and it was taken away. And if he wants to have a fight with McConnell, he certainly can.
Happy New Year. What does the world in 2021 look like?
I will not tell you that right now. I will tell you that next week you should all tune in for our top risks. We do it every year. And it is well in place. There is an enormous amount of work that goes into it. We will be putting it out on Monday, January 4th. And there's going to be a livestream to talk about it at 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time. You can watch on gzeromedia.com and all of our social media accounts. I look forward to seeing all of you then. Happy New Year to everyone.