In this weeks episode we speak to Nichol Bradford, Founder/ Partner, NIREMIA Collective and Leila Toplic, Head of Technologies Initiative, NetHope who make the case for Artificial Intelligence and explain how we can lead AI as Women.

We then speak to Paula Langton, Partner, Campbell Lutyens who discusses the current world financial order and actually just how little it would take to shift it a little and what a vast and rapid impact this would have.

Another episode filled with incredible leadership insights from female leaders.

[00:00:31] We'll be successful so that women the world over will be able to say If that's leadership, I'm in.

[00:01:11] If our approach to leadership is gonna resonate with women, it's gonna resonate with women in what context? What's going on in the world that will influence how we lead? So last week we had some fantastic input on the environment and climate change, on geopolitics and in the legal framework globally that give us a real sense of what's going on.

[00:02:09] So, Leila first, first on AI. Technology that Leila delights in and is deeply wary about and shouts at us as leaders ,shouts at us as women leaders to reframe our approach to AI before it's too late

[00:03:01] It's, um, being used in some really interesting and important ways, um, whether it's to detect diseases like skin cancer and malaria, and then recommend treatments or to predict natural disasters before they happen, and, um, therefore enabling, enabling us to prevent loss of life or loss of resources and infrastructure, or maybe even to reach more, uh, people with information they need, like healthcare and education, and do that at the massive scale.

[00:04:02] We have this very powerful technology that is sort of a, a general, generally applicable across everything we do and care about. Yet at the same time, this technology comes with many challenges and risks. We do have this kind of rapidly closing window of opportunity to design and sort of shape the direction of AI so it is, um, actually humane and designed for humans. It is equitable and also, um, it's ethical, um, and, um, aligned also with, uh, with many of the regulations that are either already in place or that are coming. Um, maybe just to explain, there are, there are a number of examples today of AI systems being designed and also being deployed, um, to either unintentionally or intentionally make discriminatory decisions. Like who gets a job, who gets access to healthcare, social security services, or even finance, like credit, to surveil people, uh, both in public spaces but also in the workplace or to encroach on privacy through, um, the misuse of our data. You might ask why. Well, one of the reasons, uh, is that AI is not perfect.

[00:06:09] As leaders also need to be intentional about who builds AI and who deploys it for what purposes, and also with what values that we prioritize.

[00:06:26] Leila: The values, um, anytime we're creating a system, we are introducing values, so whether our, our own individual values or the values from the institution that we are part of, or the societal values.

[00:07:01] So that would be, again, setting the objectives and then designing the system to deliver on those objectives. Also deciding, you know, we can do so much with AI, but the question is like, should we. But we need to recognize that it's not magic, it's not perfect. It's a tool that we get to set the objectives for and decide how we design it and where and how we use it.

[00:07:59] One of the new skills that leaders need to have is the ability to work with AI systems effectively and safely. So to give you an example, being able to know when to accept AI recommendations. So let's say you're a doctor and AI has diagnosed, um, something and is potentially recommending a treatment. So knowing when to accept it and when to overrule it.

[00:08:55] And be intentional about creating more of the collaborators that can augment our knowledge and our skills, and also give us more time to do things that are, again, uniquely human.

[00:09:13] Leila: That's right. AI as, um, um, a collab as a collaborator rather than the decision maker. Human is a decision maker. Human gets to decide what problems do we solve, but also at the end, how do we do that? AI has an incredible, is an incredible, powerful technology that can find some really interesting patterns in large sets of data and do it much faster than humans.

[00:10:56] We end up in a world that is where AI systems could be scaling really discriminatory practices and entrenching the inequality we already have.

[00:11:28] Leila: All the time. So there's both. I mean, they're sort of, it's not black or white, so we have unintentional misuse, and that could be addressed with AI literacy and some of this awareness. Then we have on the other end of the spectrum, intentional misuse, so let's say AI systems being used for surveillance, and then we have so many kind of degrees in between setting the wrong objectives and, and let's say optimizing for efficiency and productivity at the cost of human wellbeing. So the time is now to understand it, to use it for the right problems, and to have the right processes and people in place to actually guide the deployment, the design and deployment of AI. So don't wait. Get, you know, understand how you can use it, but also just be intentional about how you do it.

[00:13:31] Nichol: Um, so the compounding thing is it's, you know, the, there's five major areas. There's, uh, data, which is where AI is. Um, there's materials, energy, food, and transportation. And these five areas are all having AI come on top of them and are compounding with one another. Cause it takes the exponential curves and puts grease on them. Because an example would be five years ago, I, I was, it was when, um, AI was first getting applied to material science and I was talking to a guy who creates materials and he said that prior to that in the community they would, the humans who do this would basically come up with a new, you know, maybe six to seven new materials like mankind would develop. All of mankind, like all the professionals who worked in this space would identify six to seven new materials a year. And at the time that I spoke to him, because of AI, they were at 36,000 per year. And that's happening in all the different areas.

[00:15:19] The second thing that people are not really thinking about is the full impact of longevity, and, and a lot of it is that, you know, there's the shift from, you know, lifespan to health span, but also the reality that, you know, the, the drugs that we should get in about 10 to 15 years are really going to change society in, in big ways.

[00:16:10] But one of the things that will come about from women being able to have a, uh, a child at any time in their lives of their choosing, is it, it's kind of the end of the mediocre man. Like his time is short. Cuz if you think about like, all of the women who like put up with, you know, nonsense because they're trying to get that baby out, like that's gonna be done.

[00:17:01] There's like, you know, there's a, there's a cohort that, well it's just time, you know. I'm thinking like old mind, like there are some old mindsets that, you know, uh...

[00:17:49] Nichol: One of the things about equity with longevity is lots of things compound. Things of value compound over time. So today we have compound interest on money, which it's like if you miss compounding, then you know a little bit, you know, even a, a little bit of interest that compounds over time, you know, on the back end or, or later years. You know, it's, it's, it's a foundational amount of money, the difference. Um, and poor people typically don't have access to compounding.

[00:19:57] The last part is on, uh, deep humanness. In the future, that is coming, and that is actually already, the beginnings of which is already here, um, there's going to be a, well, how do I put this? So software is taking more and more tasks. And the tasks that it's leaving are very human tasks, like how we work together, how we solve problems together, how we communicate with each other.

[00:22:17] Julia: Thank you, Nichol. I think you and Leila have a common message that AI is fabulous, as long as we are, as leaders are not sleeping on our watch, that we ask the questions that we think through the issues and, and that we perform one of the key roles of all leaders, which is to make change less frightening for people and um, more something they can question and interrogate and understand.

[00:23:38] Paula: The biggest piece of the pie is, is public equities, the stock market, and it's around 125 trillion that goes into the stock market and the global bond market or debt market is a very similar size or even a little bit bigger.

[00:24:14] And, um, more than half, so about 54% of pension funds assets are in the stock market. About 30% are in debt, and the remainder is in alternatives. 300 largest pension funds account for 24 trillion. And if we think about, you know, a GDP of let's say Japan or the UK, it's about three or 5 trillion. This is this huge amounts of... huge amounts of money.

[00:25:26] If you look at that list again, probably next year, I'd imagine that probably some of the Middle East, uh, firms are gonna be back in that, that top 20 again. And it changes so much depending on what is happening around where the sources of capital are coming from and what's happening in, in the world at that particular time.

[00:26:25] And then the other very, very large categories are banks and asset managers, and banks and asset manager... if we look globally, the 500 largest asset managers, I believe account for about 130 trillion last year. Um, with BlackRock being the largest there with about 10 trillion a lot of the largest asset managers globally are based in the US.

[00:26:53] Paula: So they are very much global, but you know, you get family office, let's say the, um, the Lego Family Office or the [__] family, which is come from retail. So lots of different sectors where the wealth is coming from all over the world, very large, um, Chinese family offices, very large, um, Indian family offices. It's, it's really very, um, very global and very diverse.

[00:28:01] Alternatives, however, you could generally hold your money in that for quite a long time. And something like private equity, you typically hold it for 10, 12, sometimes even 15 years, even longer if it's an infrastructure fund.

[00:28:41] So we see more Europe, investing in Europe, US investing in Europe and in the US and and Asia to Asia.

[00:29:07] Paula: There are so many different parts to this particular puzzle. There's so much data out there, there's so many different objectives. It's, um, it's pretty hard to follow and, and track. So the, the interesting thing is, as it relates to this question, but also sustainability and increasing regulation, is the requirement to be more transparent and disclose more information and, you know, just linking back to this information and where capital flows, I think it'll become more evident, let's say, if, um, where money's going in the area of sustainability in E S G and I think there'll be more pressure to disclose publicly people's portfolios and what, what people are doing towards transition.

[00:30:09] Paula: If we took just 1% of pension funds and diverted that for sustainability, that's 240 billion that could go into that particular area. And what we are seeing, and I'm very heavily in this area, is um, investors needing to increasingly decarbonize their portfolios. And people are really at the start of that journey.

[00:30:59] You know, so it's good business sense as well as doing something for the climate. And, but you know, there's such a small amount of an overall pension that's going in towards green investment. It's, it's quite extraordinary. So if you can, you know, change the, the language in terms of, you know, at state level, or uh, or regulatory level of pension funds and what they actually invest in, you can move more money more quickly. You know, there, there are still states in the, in the US that have, it's actually against the law to be investing in anything to do with the climate sustainability, cuz it, it's, it goes against, let's say the, the oil mission of the particular state. So I think it is very important to understand how these flows work, what investors are, are looking for, how the money, how money moves.

[00:31:58] Paula: Um, endowments and foundations are things like university pockets or maybe health foundations. It's a slightly smaller category, but an important one.

[00:32:26] So as of the beginning of this year, there are 180 billion worth of climate funds out there, up from, I dunno, maybe 50 billion a couple of years ago. And, and the biggest growth came, came from Europe at that particular time. What we're seeing now is many more global funds, and assuming acts like the IRA in the us, the Inflation Reduction Act, which is really driving, um, sustainable economies, assuming that still stays and is in place and is followed through, um, we're seeing real change actually this year in terms of the amount of funds and opportunities available in the, in the United States.

[00:33:30] So we've seen the California state plans putting a lot of capital in. We've seen Singapore put a lot of money cuz they're obviously on, on the, on the coast, um, Australia, similarly and so often that, that, that's the, that's the catalyst. Um, um, where, where we do continue to need capital is in the venture capital space, which is more early stage solutions of developing climate.

[00:34:08] Julia: Is understanding this almost more important than understanding government?

[00:34:31] Julia: Thank you Paula, and forgive me if many of you who are listening to this are much better educated on the financial systems and that some of that was quite basic. It's, um, it, uh, it wasn't basic for me. I'm, I, I'm, I have a lot to learn.

[00:36:35] So there are lots of other context interviews we could have done. We've chosen these, there's a lot going on in the world and, um, it's good to think about that as we, as we move towards the last chapter of the expedition and, and face up to the challenge of producing an approach to leadership that resonates with women today, in the context today. I hope you found this useful. Lots of love. Talk next week