David Rowan | The Leading Authority on Technology’s Impact on Business

David Rowan

The Leading Authority on Technology’s Impact on Business

David Rowan
Featured Keynote Programs

Why This is AI's "Netscape Moment" and What That Means for Your Business

Back in 1994, Marc Andreessen released a free web browser called Netscape Navigator that heralded the birth of the consumer internet. Netscape transformed what was an obscure academic and governmental hypertext network and opened the door to what became the multi-trillion-dollar internet economy. David Rowan, founding editor-in-chief of WIRED magazine's UK edition, and author of the bestselling book "Non-Bullshit Innovation" (Penguin), is convinced we're at the Netscape moment in the Artificial Intelligence era: at the very beginning of a massive series of disruptive industry upheavals built on AI that will create vast new wealth — and punish any business that underestimates the speed and depth of the shift to the new AI economy.

You can already see the signals:

--Deepfakes and synthetic voice actors becoming ever more convincing

--Generative AIs such as GPT-4, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, creating books, images or movies based on your text prompts

--Algorithmic content selection moving from TikTok to the wider entertainment economy (such as Spotify's new AI DJs personalising your playlists for you)

--Medical AIs reading patients' CT scans to spot tumours more reliably than human radiographers

--Autonomous cars driving more safely than humans, and autonomous swarm drones getting ready for the battlefield

--Hundreds of thousands of gamers interacting seamlessly in virtual world with no constraints on their in-game creative expression

But as with all exponential technologies, what we're seeing now is just a hint of the upcoming shifts that will impact politics, education, creative expression — even the very meaning of what it is to be human.

David works with technology founders and regularly travels to the research labs, and what he's seeing now is a Cambrian explosion of creative uses of AI colliding with ever increasing processing power. Today the buzz is around Large Language Models that enable compelling conversations with a machine; and around neural networks that can take still images and animate them as video (look at the latest Google Maps releases to see how a neural network lets you explore a fly-through of a restaurant, coded simply from a few photos). But tomorrow? We're getting closer to Artificial General Intelligence, when the machine can solve any challenge as well as a human. In the meantime, journalists are competing with automated story writers; lawyers with automated discovery engines; medical consultants with algorithms that have studied every footnote in every peer-reviewed journal.

Where do we go from here — and how should you prepare? David will explain how education is about to be personalised at scale — with each student having "Einstein" explain quantum physics at their own pace; how Hollywood is planning for a future where actors won't even need to be present to star in a blockbuster; where the customer-service agent is an AI who understand your mood and can respond to your facial expression; how we'll discover new drugs and new carbon-negative materials by simulating molecular interactions inside an all-powerful AI.

Longer term, we need an honest public conversation about ethics: about what it means to be human in an age ever more dominated by robots; about how we constrain the AI before its encoded biases and autonomous decision-making cause us harm; about how to ensure fair access to these AIs before societies become more polarised than ever. There's plenty of grounds to be optimistic: in fighting climate change alone, the AI can help us track and cut emissions and can conserve energy and water far more effectively than today's systems. In tracking our bodies' health, the AI will be our personal 24/7medical concierge service, spotting disease by analysing our breath or enabling the most soothing sleep. But how do we prepare for some of the more harmful consequences of this nascent revolution: from job losses at scale, to automated propaganda, to biases that entrench social and economic disadvantage?  

David will translate how AI is being applied today in top university labs and in the most ambitious startups, and help you understand what is about to happen in your industry. Because you can't assume it will be business as normal. 

The New Rules of Business

In fast-paced, fully customized talks, David Rowan tackles the latest trends in technology, innovation, and business, and reveals how your company can get ahead. Drawing on his extensive research in the field—he has taken 120 flights in the past year to understand from the front line how everything from genomics to 3D printing are changing the way businesses and consumers will operate—Rowan’s clear-eyed, accessible talks guide audiences through the new rules of business. Topics include:

· Ten technology megatrends you can’t ignore—and how they’ll transform manufacturing, hospitality, finance, insurance, entertainment, and travel industries
· The Internet of Things, big data and artificial intelligence: why the rules of business just changed
· Digital commerce and the future of retail
· The new rules of product innovation, and how to create a culture of innovation
· How to survive, prosper, and embrace transformation in a world of exponential technologies
· What you can learn from the smartest people in Silicon Valley
· How to disrupt your organization, and disruptive business models that can save media companies
· What corporations need to understand about mobile opportunities
· Trends affecting the television industry
· What your business can learn from startup thinking
· How digital transformation impacts the employer value proposition
· How digital meets physical in the shopping center of tomorrow
· The opportunities of 3D printing and the new “maker” culture.

Finding Opportunity Amid the Crisis

Technology offers hope for optimism as we emerge from the coronavirus crisis. Here are the growth opportunities — from re-inventing supply chains to rethinking education to building new brand heroes.

Why Business Innovation Has Never Mattered More

COVID-19 has forced business leaders to move insanely fast to adapt. But how do you build a culture of effective innovation? Here are the lessons from David’s 20-nation quest for non-bullshit innovation.

Ten Lessons from The Non-Bullshit innovators

David Rowan travelled across the world to understand what it takes for businesses and governments to leverage digital transformation in exciting ways. He shares ten lessons from his new book Non-Bullshit Innovation that can be applied to all sorts of organisations.

What Technology Means for the Future of Your Industry

David researches and prepares bespoke presentations for client meetings. Recent subjects have included the future of food and drink (clients including Unilever, Coca-Cola, Barilla); the future of aviation (IATA); the future of real estate (CBRE, Leading Real Estate, Cushman & Wakefield); the future of media (Sky, Schibsted, BBC); the future of healthcare (BUPA, Vitality, Kaiser Permanente); the future of financial services (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan).

The Future of the Workplace

How to attract talent, and motivate your team to perform its best work, in a fast-changing world when the “workplace” is more fluid than ever before.

My Recent Keynote Titles

•"Why this is AI's 'Netscape' moment — and what that means for finance"
•"AI may be the future — but what does it mean for your business today?"
•"How to be human in the emergent era of transformative AI, neural interfaces, simulated realities and planetary chaos"
•"What AI means for the data centre"
•"How exponential tech forces retailers to think like startups" 
•"The impact of AI on operational real estate"
•"How exponential tech could impact aviation cybersecurity"

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David Rowan

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