Andrew McAfee of the MIT Sloan School of Management stopped by HuffPost Live at Davos on Saturday, where he spoke about the book he wrote with his colleague Erik Brynjolfsson called The Second Machine Age.
“We are in the early stages of an era of unbelievable technological progress, really that we haven’t seen since the first machine age, which was the Industrial Revolution,” McAfee said said. “And we should all be optimistic about that.”
McAfee did say he scratches his head wondering “as we get to a point where digital technologies acquire more and more abilities that used to belong to people alone, are we at a point where the destruction is going to outpace the creation, and if so, what should we do about that?”
See more of McAfee’s discussion above, and below, live updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:
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“Could there be a piece of technology that figures out an intelligent next question to ask somebody? Yeah,” McAfee said.
“For 200 years of industrial technology, we’ve been making workers obsolete,” McAfee said.
McAfee said nobody knows if we’re reaching the point where technological developments could lead to unemployment.
Andrew McAfee of the MIT Sloan School of Management on HuffPost Live
“We strive to have the majority of our graduates female,” EFE’s Ron Bruder said.
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Woods said it’s normal for government entities to reach out to consulting groups, but usually the process takes a lot more time.
“The coordination has been better than I’ve ever seen it on a global scale,” Woods said.
Courtois said new devices are “enabling people to do more stuff, to do great stuff.”
Courtois also spoke about new technology being developed by Microsoft that will allow users to interact with 3D holograms.
Courtois shared how Microsoft played a role after the recent terror attacks in Paris, partnering with French law enforcement and the FBI to get police information they needed within 45 minutes of the attack’s start.
Jean-Philippe Courtois on HuffPost Live
Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, spoke about the steps his company is taking to maintain the public’s trust as data moves further into the Cloud.
Courtois said Microsoft has been focusing on several aspects: improving how they anchor the data; certification and compliance of infrastructure; and transparency.
“This is a big deal to actually report back to society what we do with data and how we deal with government requests,” Courtois said about being a transparent company.
Valerie Keller and Cheryl Grise of the EY Beacon Institute talk with HuffPost Live about how to transform your business through a better sense of purpose.
