How Can AI Help Socio-Economic Development?

all right good afternoon um this is a double challenge coming after the space panel and the graveyard shift so we're going to try to make this interesting um thank you for being with us uh first um and I'll introduce myself so Maran alovi I'm a partner at Gibson dun um I'm also a director at abana and I I you looking around I see Iana members here for those of you who don't know Iana a quick word of introduction it's um uh we are the preminent preeminent uh organization connecting Finance professionals between um North America and the Middle East it's a not for-profit um this is one of the first sort of events we're participating in so look out for abana you'll hear a lot more um and and particularly apt I think um a lot of you know abana started in New York many of us uh in New York think of New York as being sort of the finance capital of the world so connecting the finance Capital to the capital of capital seems very apt so we're delighted to be here uh I'm delighted to be here with Keith and uh and Tanya why don't we start maybe Keith want don't you introduce yourself um and tell us a little about what you do and then we'll do the same with t certainly um thank you everyone for the privilege of being here to speak with you today I'm very new to the firm of Gibson dun uh and before that I spent 14 14 years as Google's Chief privacy officer um where I also served on the AI governance steering committee um for Gibson Dunn I co-chair our worldwide artificial intelligence Practice Group as well as our Tech and Innovation Industry Group so we had Jane earlier uh Apple uh and you were at Google so interesting uh just a quick plug for Gibson done there Dan please awesome thank you thank you for having me and I'm so excited to be here in this incred ible room if I may say it is a very inspiring space so my name is Tanya and I'm the founder and CEO of Aiden um education has not evolved in decades and with everything that's happening with AI we're solving a very urgent problem at Aiden to prepare young minds for this radically new future and so we're reimagining education and we've created AI integrated curricula that we're rolling out across schools but of course there's some interesting questions that come with that because it's quite a responsible um role to take and we need the you know the support and insights of experts like the gentleman sitting on the stage with me today so I'm here and we're very excited to have this conversation and Tanya I think you also have I um looking at your sort of I think it's a Weekly Newsletter AI empowered teacher um so how did you get into sort of the intersection of you know technology Ai and education it's an interesting story so funnily enough and I think you might find this amusing I wanted to become a lawyer pretty adamantly when I was when I was a college student in Boston and I at the time I was exposed to the work of Ray kurtzweil who's the former director of engineering at Google and he's one of the best well best known predictors of future technology so I was 18 then I'm 30 now for context and that was 12 years ago and so when I was exposed to it I realized that the landscape of work is going to be very different than it is currently and so I dropped my dreams of becoming a lawyer got into technology worked in cyber security at VMware for a few years um and I was very passionate about education reform probably since then because you know I I realized that this things are changing really fast it's just when I said it back back then people thought I was crazy and now you know lo and behold the world has caught up and the problem needs to be solved that that's a great story uh and glad you made that uh you know took that left turn at the fork um so this this panel is titled how can AI help socioeconomic development and I think for those of us and I I've been um I first came to Abu Dhabi moved here uh 28 years ago it's remarkable how things have changed but looking at how development is is is um you know what's driving development uh in this region in the UAE in Abu Dhabi um you know I see some clear Trends um you know there's this you know the the importance of pivoting away from traditional Hydro H carbons uh there's a desire to create jobs and make sure that um the demographics that are remarkable um in this part of the world in terms of young population finding jobs for people uh but also a desire to work uh almost like a public private partnership right it's no longer about um using State funds to throw money at your problems it all works together and I I think as as we think of socioeconomic in particular maybe income inequality is less of the Forefront I think education is really one of the big ones and job creation you know I wonder Keith your thoughts on how AI you know leads to labor disruption is that a net positive or negative and you know how how do people think about how AI can help with job creation sure um you know when I was at Google we we had this incredible mission of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful and the way that the world realized the incredible benefit of Google SE Arch was through exercising regulatory restraint um even though this technology was operating really in some ways in Gray areas in the law in areas that weren't really well established because the utility of the product was so readily apparent to both users and to Regulators all over the world the it was given a tremendous amount of latitude it was allowed to grow and prosper uh and we didn't have regulatory challenges that prevented economies around the world from realizing the benefits of that that technology I think that's very similar in some respects to the moment we're in now with respect to AI um there are very real fundamental legal questions uh that are operating just beneath the surface of the way that these Technologies are going to interface with economies around the world um the the ability of large language models to process the public internet uh to produce these incredibly valuable technologies that are going to to drive innovation and sort of production of a tremendous amount of economic value um when we are looking at the way that the world is evolving when we look at the way that Regulators are thinking about how we should approach these Technologies I think we need to look back to search we need to look back to the incredible Evolution that we've seen the The Economic Opportunity that those technologies have created for people all over the world um and recognize that this is a moment for regulatory restraint we need to proceed thoughtfully and cauti ious ly to make sure that we're allowing these Technologies to proceed responsibly but also boldly so that we're delivering these benefits to users all over the world and Keith I think on an earlier panel our partner Jane mentioned sort of the European approach um I believe there's something expected later this month um but in terms of just comparative approaches maybe a in a few words so you know European versus I don't know is it the US model um how would you compare and contrast in a nutshell sure so both Jane and I came up in the context of data protection privacy and data protection um and in that space Europe was widely perceived as being a Leading Light uh the general data protection regulation was widely perceived around the world as a positive evolution in a role model for other jurisdictions to create laws that were going to protect a fundamental human right to privacy um you Jane referred to the Brussels effect which was this idea that Europe was very Pro active in creating regulation and that that model was typically adopted and followed by other jurisdictions around the world AI is a little bit different like for a host of reasons if you look at the where these Innovations are happening like if you look at Silicon Valley if you look at the leading companies that are generating a ton of value in this space you recognize that aggressive regulation in the immediate term might create an undesirable headwind it might not actually Advance the public policy CS that folks are really after I think the other thing to bear in mind is we do not actually have a vacuum of law to address the public policy considerations when folks are concerned about protecting users from the potential problems or excesses of AI we have Consumer Protection Law we have intellectual property law we have legal tools and Regulators all over the world should be looking to the existing bodies of law that they have available to them and then give this time allow these Technologies to develop so so that when policy makers do decide that there's new and incremental legislation to be passed it's being done from a position of really understanding the trajectory of these Technologies and the actual impacts they're having on society rather than creating public policy based on speculation fear uncertainty and doubt yeah that's that's um clear contrast in terms of approach um so Tanya let me um as I think about education I guess let me start with what probably everyone in this room is thinking which is you know is my kid using AI to write their essay uh and get ahead I mean do you do you think about this just your thoughts what percentage of high school students are actually using AI um with their assignments do you think today I would say at least 60 to 70% and there have been surveys that have backed this up right especially most of them are concentrated in the US but even globally you can see a widescale adoption but of course there are a lot of risks that come with it and to Keith's point data privacy actually becomes top of mind for any education administrator any school we interact with schools on a daily basis and it really is a systems effort to get everyone in on this to be okay with it right that said fundamentally with AI uh with students using AI to write their assignments I really tell people we shouldn't worry about this but the only way we're not going to worry about it is if we are creating a curriculum that is fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature and that is focused on metacognition right so if we used to use writing as a way to think historically then now we need to rethink how we're going to teach kids about the way that they learn and the way that they think about problems in the world and they're you know entering a space where Technologies are being developed faster than laws are being developed to protect them and so they almost need to be going into these fields with that interdisciplinary mindset which is why the problem is so urgent current curricula in schools are way too outdated parents don't necessarily know how to guide their kid and so you need a system solution and you kind of need everyone to be part of the solution right to help them navigate those changes and T so tell us about you know Aiden and what you do what H how do you help I mean is it I think you talk about you know there's students there's teachers there's schools how do you what areas do you tackle how do you help them deal with exactly what you've described right so we've actually developed a completely AI integrated curricula that's fundamentally focused on metacognition and you know I could have gone and launched a fringe school that's that's interdisciplinary and an alternative to traditional education but I realized that wasn't solving the problem which because most kids are still in traditional schools so what we did is we created a curriculum that's on the platform that uses geni for teachers to change the way that they're teaching in classrooms and currently we have a number of partner schools and Educators who are testing that curricula so imagine you're a a grade 2 teacher in who's teaching English right you want to figure out how you can leverage AI to better help understand your your students personalized learning Pathways their outcomes their specific style of learning and that's exactly what we've created so someone can go onto our platform log in they have everything they've got their gen tools there to customize it and to be honest our biggest challenge right now is data protection data yeah exactly and and um to go back to um I guess the flip side of my question about you know what percentage of high school students are using AI for their essays um what percentage of schools and teachers are using sort of anti- AI techniques to kind of figure this out and is it effective do you think it is it's not effective Studies have consistently shown it's not effective you'll be fine your kids are going to be fine because students are very I mean young people are very Savvy and they're growing up in a in in a space where they already know how to take AI generated content feed it through another app that's called a humanizer which will take that AI generated content and make it sound human and then they'll feed it to the teacher so they know how to dup and you know manipulate that space so I I would say when chat GPT was initially released and of course it's not the only AI model but when it was released uh teachers were using a lot of those tools they found the efficacy to be not so great and so now they're thinking uhoh what you know what do we do what do you do yeah yeah and and uh so thinking about how this opens up a space I mean your you know Aiden is a four profit organization are you seeing um a lot of activity in this space I I think we chatted in our pre panel uh you know my brother Works in this space maybe not quite as AI but in terms of you know in in in the education space and there certainly has been money put into it but you know for-profit can be a challenge could you talk to us a little bit about where you think the areas of profitability may be and and and if you've seen activity levels in this space in terms of fundraising absolutely so for for us specifically for for organizations like ourselves who are doing this education is definitely a tricky space to be in right uh but something that we realized actually is that um we have to test our curricula through different ways directly with students right and so a lot of the the uh a lot of the efforts have been going around creating educational programs for those students so for example we're partnering with companies with larger Tech organizations that I will not maybe not name cuz I haven't gotten their permission to name them that are helping two lawyers here yeah that are helping us fund this effort and also so that we can make it accessible to all students globally right so that's where a lot of the the funding actually comes from uh and I have to say in places like the United States you've got nonprofits such as AI for edu that are doing this in a nonprofit setting so there are certain uh government structures that do allow for that to happen and it's not something we wouldn't consider in that space got it that that's uh that's really helpful um Keith thinking back you you know your the the kind of policy advice you give um and now having sort of being in the sort of Private Practice advising clients do you find um you know clients we talked about privacy and their focus on privacy but other elements from a socioeconomic perspective you know com combating biases or um you know concerns around discrimination based on backgrounds um what what are you seeing is it mostly self-regulation at this point in time going back to your point early or Are there specific concerns from a socioeconomic development perspective that Regulators need to bear in mind sure I mean all the things that you mentioned we've been you brief me well so I we we we've been seeing a a growing integration of legal complexity over the course of the last 20 years AI is an accelerant just as it is in all the other areas that we're talking about we've seen data protection competition harmful content online protecting kids and families all of these areas have been extraordinary challenges for regulators and policy makers around the world all of the things that we're excited and enthusiastic about in the context of artificial intelligence it is accelerating everything it is bringing everything to a historically unprecedented scale and it promises both unprecedented disruption as well as an incredible Economic Opportunity all of those things are going to cause the underlying and the adjacent legal challenges to become even more complicated and complex and pressing for regulators and policy makers around the world sounds like companies need good lawyers uh to navigate this um that's wonderful so Tanya Last Words as you look out do you think that 5 10 years from now do you think that you we will see a a complete overhaul of educational s the you know curricula at different levels to account for this or do you think people are going to be slower it's going to take some time I actually think this is the perfect opportunity in all of the various Evolutions in that Humanity has had over the last few decades to completely rehaul education and I I'm I'm I'm both a techno Optimist and a cautious Optimist and of course I'm trying to solve this problem so I have to say that I believe 5 to 10 years from now education is going to look completely different it's going to be challenge based it's going to be interdisciplinary it's going to be exciting to learn and it's not going to be reduced to assessments and writing things and you know so it'll be completely irrelevant whether or not you can ask chat GPT to write a history essay because creating products of value in society and creating more economic opportunities is what young people will eventually do all right you heard it here first uh folks uh thank you very much I think that is uh the end of our panel uh thank you very much we tried to keep people awake for the last one uh thank you very much appreciate it