At BI-Fudan MBA & BI Norwegian Business School 2017 Annual Meeting, the managing Director of The Economist Global Business Review, Mr. Wu Chen gave a speech of <the Future is here>.

In Mr. Wu’s journalism career, he has worked for BusinessWeek in Hong Kong, Bloomberg News in Singapore, and the international news department of Xinhua (New China) News Agency in Beijing.

Mr. Wu indicated: Technology is fast developed and we have already been in the era of digital economy.

Data is the future petrol, on which most our home appliance and gadget depend. (i.e. Tesla process data with speed of 115G/s).

The network-effect in Web 2.0, a phenomenon whereby a good or service becomes more valuable when more people use it, well explains the success of TMD (Toutiao, Meituan, and Didi).

Their high quality platforms are processing tremendous number of users’ data based on daily use, each user data optimize the experience of the next one, and platforms finally become increasingly intelligent. Because of god-sight of industry leaders, the future start-ups will face big challenges.

At the same time, Mr. Wu pointed out AI is the hot trend, which will bring great ROI for potential investors.

As we all know that, AlphaGo is the best example of how AI mimics cognitive function that humans associate with other human minds, such as “learning and problem solving”, so there will be more collaboration or interaction between human and machine.

When AI is integrated in a robot, the robot will be allowed to adapt to various environments and be able to take accurate actions. Let’s take Didi as an example. The future Didi drivers would only need to focus on their driving without any distraction of extra missions, for the reason that AI could solve other problems for them.

Future world is accelerating its changes and for future economy, there are 5 trends:

• Multiplier effect

Future economy will be influenced by multiplier effect, which means if there is an injection of new demand into the circular flow there is likely to be a multiplier effect.

This is because an injection of extra income leads to more spending, which creates more income, and so on. The multiplier effect refers to the increase in final income arising from any new injection of spending.

• Cross over & two-way attached

The crossover will open the new era of human-computer interaction; there will be more collaboration between brain and computer, further completing the computer artificial intelligence.

• Impact of capitals

As we mentioned in previous, how human invest on intelligence and capitals will definitely have great impact on economy.

• Decentralized

In the future, work will be divided into independent parts and get done by decentralized working pattern.

• Customized

Another trend is customized product, realizing small production in small scale to satisfy niche needs of every one (e.g. local brewer).

True, AI will provide convenience to our world and individual life, but it will also bring challenges:

• Broaden the wealth gap

The globalization and technology innovation will not solve automatically or proactively the wealth gap. However, the digital divide will broaden the gap. The wealth gap doesn’t mean exclusively money, but also opportunities: the chance of education, medical service, special products etc.

If we look at the left-behind children, they may have the same digital devices, internet etc. but they don’t have the equal opportunity of education, work, and other services. The man-power and capitals are more centralized in big cities, and leave suburb areas even more isolated, which is exactly the situation of business. The platform economy makes the giants stronger and smaller ones eliminated.

• Unemployment

Machine or robots will become the substitution of man-power, replacing majority of junior or simple positions and bringing millions of job-losses.

AI will overturn the current education and working system, the current career ladder will disappear and we will be lifelong learning and develop our professional skills in horizontal way. This is the big issue that we face in the future and we have to be prepared and find solutions.

• Aging society

Aging issue is both positive and challenging. In a positive aspect, elder people could have working opportunities, making positive contributions to society, either as mentors or as direct participants. AI is to learn, and human is to decide; “Silver economy” is a huge cake for the whole industries.

But, aging society brings the serious issue of aging welfare system, how to make it properly function is the biggest question.

The future is here. No complacent, embrace creativity, and be ambitious!