- London, UK
Kenneth Cukier Keynote Speaker
- Best selling author and authority on emerging technology and digital disruption
- Fellow, Said School of Management, University of Oxford
- Deputy Executive Editor, The Economist
Kenneth Cukier's Biography
Kenneth Cukier is the Deputy Executive Editor at The Economist, and host of its weekly podcast on technology. He is also an associate fellow at Said Business School at Oxford, researching artificial intelligence.
His most recent book is “Framers: Make Better Decisions In The Age of Big Data”. In this book, he shines a light on what more ‘data’ can’t accomplish: the unique ability humans have to frame new questions, create original new mental models and so get better results than anyone could have previously imagined.
Kenn is the co-author of “Big Data: A Revolution That Transforms How We Live, Work, and Think”. It was a NYT bestseller translated in over 20 languages, and sold over 1 million copies worldwide. It won the National Library of China’s Wenjin Book Award and was a finalist for the FT Business Book of the Year. Kenn co-authored a follow-on book, “Learning with Big Data: The Future of Education”.
Previously, Kenn was a foreign correspondent for two decades in Europe, Asia and America. In 2002-04 he was a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Kenn’s writings have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times and Foreign Affairs, among others.
He is a frequent commentator on CBS, CNN, NPR, the BBC and was a member of the World Economic Forum’s global council on data-driven development.
Kenn is a trustee of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In 2007-2018 he was a director of International Bridges to Justice, which fosters legal rights in developing countries, and served on the board of advisors to the Daniel Pearl Foundation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a board director of The Open String Foundation, which provides classical instruments to children in poverty.
Kenn has given keynote talks at Google, Facebook, IBM, Stansberry, Linklaters, Microsoft, McKinsey & Co, VM Ware, Schroders, GE, Visa among others. He has also spoken at the IMF, World Bank, US State Department, Council on Foreign Relations, Aspen Institute, Royal Statistical Society and the universities of Harvard, MIT,,Oxford and Cambridge, among others. He has given several TED talks and has spoken at the World Economic Forum.
Kenneth Cukier's Speaking Topics
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-Reframing: the power of Mental Models and the Limits of AI
We think that more data helps us make better decisions or that AI will steal our jobs. But the reality is different. Our ability to "frame" the world is an essential human capability -- and more important than the information itself. It's a power that makes people smarter than algorithms. But we need to get better at framing and reframing in order to solve our toughest challenges. And this means vaunting the value of pluralism: working with those who frame the world differently.
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-Demystifying Generative AI -- and the Future of Creative Professions
The astounding success of ChatGPT has captivated people and led to predictions of a jobs apocalypse. Although some jobs will certainly be destroyed at a dramatic speed and scale -- think "graphic designers on gig-work platforms" -- the reality is different: AI will need people to shape the output for others, and those professionals will command even higher income and have more satisfying work. But it will take a new set of skills -- very classical human skills of curiosity, tenacity, imagination and ambition -- to succeed.
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-The need for "A Data Duty of Care"
We like to think we 'use data' in society, but that's far from reality. In most areas, we still do not collect, store, analyse, share and base decisions on data. Does the NHS use smartwatch data? Does public transport have sensors on all vehicles for road safety in real time? The list goes on. Today we tolerate this -- but won't for long. Business, government, healthcare, transport and more need to not make data-driven decisions a "nice to do" once in a while, but at all times. We need a "data duty of care" -- a positive obligation to use data in decisions with the risk of liability if one does not. This means privacy rules will need to be rethought to allow more uses, even as it regulates other uses far better than today.
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Generative AI and the future of work
What does it mean when the production of knowledge falls to near zero cost? A lot of things change -- but some things increase in value. How can professionals ensure their job isn't stolen by a bot?
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- The Spiritual Potential of AI and Consciousness
The spectacular performance of technology like ChatGPT raises the question: can AI be sentient or conscious? The dogma among techies is yes. After all, the brain is made of physical atoms in biology and we're conscious, so why not an AI in silicon? But this makes no sense. Humans not only have a sense of a transcendence and spiritual sentiment that an AI cannot have, but more obviously, people have a life-force (for lack of a better term) that AI does not. This spiritual side of our humanness is so obvious that it's rarely noted, yet the scientistic materialists of AI discount it -- as if saying there's no such thing as "air" because it's invisible. If anything, AI can help us appreciate the deeper parts of ourselves and sense of higher purpose -- that we can tap to build better lives, relationships and societies.
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