Citadel’s Griffin, Business Leaders Say AI to Change Economies

2023-11-09 14:52

Global business leaders contemplated how emerging technologies will change the way people live and work in an increasingly

Global business leaders contemplated how emerging technologies will change the way people live and work in an increasingly divided world on day two of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.

“Generative AI is the next new thing in machine learning,” Citadel founder Ken Griffin said Thursday. “This will be another wake up call for corporate America to focus on how to create productivity gains.”

Artificial intelligence will lower the cost of creating blockbuster animated movies drastically, according to longtime industry executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. Sara Menker, founder and chief executive officer of GRO Intelligence, said machine learning is helping to predict the demand, supply and price of every agricultural commodity globally.

As to the political future, Hillary Clinton said she expects a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election, with the Democrat prevailing against his predecessor. She said both Israel and the Palestinians need new leadership in order to have a chance of achieving a peace deal once the current war in Gaza is ended.

The global economy is fragmenting, with conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and tensions between the world’s two biggest economies forcing companies and investors to rethink the way they operate.

“There are winners as well as losers from the increase in geopolitical stress,” said Tom Orlik, chief economist, Bloomberg Economics. “The big picture, though, is a troubling one.”

While such concerns dominated on day one of the three-day forum, Thursday’s discussions were more focused on how companies and societies can benefit from technological advances. Citadel’s Griffin said his firm is already benefiting from AI.

Digital Transformation

The adoption of AI will accelerate the digital transformation of the entertainment industry by a factor of 10, said 72-year-old Katzenberg, who rose to prominence as a production executive at Walt Disney Co.’s movie studio before joining hands with filmmaker Steven Spielberg and Hollywood executive David Geffen to co-found DreamWorks.

“I don’t know of an industry that will be more impacted than any aspect of media, entertainment, and creation,” Katzenberg said. “In the good old days, you might need 500 artists and years to make a world-class animated movie. I don’t think it will take 10% of that three years from now.”

Mark Wiseman, chairman of Alberta Investment Management Corp., also spoke about the future benefits of AI, but cautioned that implementation will be slow.

“We’re going to be in the same boat as we’ve been in in other technologies,” he said. “It will change the world. It’ll change the world in ways that we don’t necessarily anticipate and it will take longer for it to take place.”

Separately, Griffin called for western nations to step up investment in nuclear power as a way to decarbonize the world. “China is one of the few countries making a huge investment in nuclear again,” said Griffin. “We desperately need nuclear power in the West.”

China also has a big lead in electic vehicle adoption. It could, in the future, have “nationwide robot freight networks” across the country, delivering goods in a timely and environmentally friendly manner and for the lowest possible cost, according to Julian Ma, the founder and CEO of Inceptio Technology, a company that develops autonomous driving software for trucks.

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Speaking at a panel session at the forum, Ma said fully autonomous trucks — which he called “freight robots” — would become a reality in future, with no driver and dispatched and managed virtually from the cloud.

The New Economy Forum is being organized by Bloomberg Media Group, a division of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.