Beverley Hills, LA – The topic to deal with in sunny rich Beverly Hills environs with the global who’s who putting in their two cents is: What is the future of humankind?
Well, the subject did bring out eclectic responses in the ongoing the Milken 2016 Global Conference in Beverly Hills, where more than 3,500 politicians, scientists, technologists, sports stars and actors are paying thousands in attending fees to make the world a better place.
There are panel discussions going on, on parallel platforms and somehow, there is a real media lacking as I could feel and more networking going on among the attendees especially when an event is only by invitation.
Seeing former vice-president Al Gore after having met him in Norway during the Nobel ceremony, was refreshing and he gave his stump speech on climate change, talking about global warming. Going down the memory lane, Gore said major progress had been made since he first started talking about it at the Milken conference some 11 years ago.
Taking a cue from a quote from his predecessors. Gore quipped, “Every great cause was met with no after no,” adding, “Then, eventually they say yes.”
In another high-level presentation, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, showcased the six “moonshot” initiatives he projected as a “change the world in the long term.” In a very interesting speech, Schmidt blamed cows as a leading source of global warming, and urged the audience to look at plant-based foods that could serve as a meat replacement.
Schmidt’s presentation focused on the entirety of human progress as he mentioned, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Aside from 3D printed buildings, his so-called “moonshot initiatives” are: a transition from meat-based diets to vegetable-based diets, the integration of virtual reality into society, opening up medical data through sensors and smartphones, the development of self-driving cars, and a tech-focused overhaul of education.
IBM’s Guru Banavar, the company’s vice-president of cognitive computing, mesmerized the attendees with a Watson software platform as an assisting tool for CEOs. Amazing presentations were enjoyed by the audience as some presentations talked of the Internet of Things (IoT), gene editing, the Mission to Mars, human connections in a digital world.
Guru had the last word as he said in the near future, “every professional will have a cognitive assistant,” like IBM’s Watson platform.