Horasis Global Meeting 2019

In such a busy time for Kambria, our team is in perpetual motion. While we are preparing for our Vietnam AI Grand Challenge, Kambria CEO, Thuc Vu, has been traveling across the pond between Vietnam, France, and Portugal to attend several important events. Most recently, he attended the Horasis Global Meeting in Portugal. The Horasis Global Meeting is focused on fostering a collaborative environment between leaders in government and business for the furtherment of globalization. With over 600 world leaders in attendance, including several heads of governments, this was an opportunity to brush shoulders with leaders across several nations in the name of catalyzing the important benefits of globalization.

The annual Horasis Global Meeting is one of the world’s foremost gatherings of business and government leaders, offering an ideal platform to explore and foster cooperation, impact investing, and sustainable growth across the world. As in previous years, the Global Meeting attracted over 800 world leaders from over 70 countries to discuss the current resentment of globalization centering discussions around the theme of “Catalyzing the Benefits of Globalization”, noting globalization has always been with us, and will continue – but we need to have more harmonious interactions to facilitate trade. -Armen Sarkissian, President of Armenia

Some of the political leaders in attendance were:

António Costa, Prime Minister of Portugal, Portugal
Armen Sarkissian, President of Armenia, Armenia
Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Belgium
Kristian Jensen, Minister of Finance, Denmark
Robert Dussey, Minister of Foreign Affairs & Cooperation, Togo

Robots with a Conscience

As a part of the event, Thuc was asked to participate in a panel discussion concerning the future of robotics. Leaders are aware of recent breakthroughs in robotics and artificial intelligence, and set out to have an important conversation about the ethical principles and responsibility we have moving forward as political and industry leaders. Among the topics discussed was the consciousness of robotics. Some of the scientific community believe that AI could become sentient sometime in the decade, so the question is, what if robots had consciousness? What is our response as humans to tackle issues within complicated moral issues? How will they respond to paradox?

As the panel discussed these questions, the panel quickly turned to the possibility of "Skynet," and how we make sure humans can work along side with robots safely. Among the topics were "implementing kill switches," and how innovators can preserve human attributes such as creativity, fairness, compassion.

Thuc described believing the "robot thought process to be like a finite state machine mapping inputs (from sensors) to a probability distribution of outputs (controller decisions), and outcomes (new state) - optimizing for a reward/utility function. So the answers to some of the points that were brought up based on this view will be whether the robot can change its probability distribution to include new evidence (in the case of paradox), or preferred input (in the case of human argument). We could bake a lot of the criteria of fairness or humanity into the utility functions of the robots, and have them learn and operate in maximizing for those criteria."

Another point I believe in is that for the next decades or two, we will see a Kambrian explosion of robots with very specific use cases. I think we are still far from the general AI/robotics. -Dr. Thuc Vu, CEO Kambria

While we are absolutely thrilled to be taking part in such an incredible time in technological development, one must consider the implications robots will have on our future. In the end, we had a fantastic opportunity to share ideas, our point of view, and ultimately, our passion as we welcome in the next age in advancements.

About Horasis

Horasis - a global visions community dedicated to inspiring our future - provides a unique platform for companies to globalize their organizations. In addition to the Horasis Global Meeting, Horasis hosts summits with a focus on China, India, and Southeast Asia. The event is co-hosted by the Portuguese Government and the City of Cascais. Held since 2016, the annual Horasis Global Meeting is one of the world's foremost gatherings of business leaders who interact with key government officials and eminent thought leaders.They have been called a ‘World Economic Forum for emerging markets’ (New York Times)