Algorithms for hope

Humans have used their intelligence to cultivate plants, tame animals, cut trees, divert rivers, mine stones and mineral, and create machinery. Over the last two generations, we have created our own intelligence: artificial intelligence. We can feed data to machines and machines can learn from that data. These processes can help us in fields across our lives, from medical research to traffic flows, from forecasting climate change to managing admin. In this conference, we will focus on the many positive aspects of artificial intelligence, how it already enhances our daily lives and how, in these currently challenging times, working together with the technology, it can create new horizons for all of us. 

Swiss Re Institute, the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute (GDI), and IBM Research, are all using or seeking the best forms of augmented intelligence to use in their respective industry segments. The conference will gather networks of artificial intelligence research and practice with thought leaders and decision makers from society, business and government.

The Algorithms for Hope conference, staged virtually at the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue, begins with a simple pretext. Algorithms can help us. They can and they are benefiting society. From developing new medicines, to eliminating bias, from accelerating learning to helping preserve rainforest, algorithms can have great utility for all of us. That is not to say algorithms are not without faults. They can be gamed, can sustain past prejudice and create a biased vision of the world. They require careful management and ethical accountability. If this is achieved, they provide us all with the basis for hope.

Hosted by Florian Inhauser, and jointly produced by Swiss Re Institute, Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute and IBM Research, the conference featured speakers from across a range of backgrounds, all using technology in innovative and transparent ways to forward ideas that will ultimately benefit society.

In the introduction to the event, Christoph Nabholz, Swiss Re Institute, emphasised the role of behaviour in health; and how the correct application of learning algorithms can help us all lead healthier lives. Abdel Labdi, IBM, reflected on how artificial intelligence has vastly speeded up the R&D process, creating accelerated discovery in fields ranging from food safety to sustainability, from energy storage to cyber risk. We are pushing intelligent robotics upstream into discovery phases and removing trial and error. Lukas Jezler, Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, emphasised, in the conclusion of the event, the greater speed and accuracy algorithms can bring to research.

In a full day of discussion across a wide range of subjects, the use and potential of algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence all shone through. We have technology that not only meets our needs; it can, if positioned well, give us hope.