#5 UN panel on digital cooperation with Cathy Mulligan

01/19/21 • 44 min

With guest Cathy Mulligan on how cryptocurrency enters the debate about digital cooperation at a UN panel? Sustainability in 2030 when 30% of the world's energy will be taken up by cloud computing, thought experiments like “do you actually need a central bank?”, what does universal connectivity mean?

If you’re being forced to use particular technologies because you're a developing country, are you being colonised by digital means? “If you want people to think about ethics, you have to talk to them before they start coding”

Dr Catherine Mulligan is a Visiting Researcher in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship group with a joint appointment to the Department of Computing where she is Co-Director of the Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research. Cathy delivers research in technical, economic and policy applications of digital technologies and digital transformation. In addition to her theoretical research, she also has extensive experience of translating her research into real-world solutions for multi-national corporations and start-ups alike.

Cathay is VP and Region CTO of North and West Europe at Fujitsu. She is a Fellow and an Expert of the World Economic Forum Blockchain Council through the GULF and a member of the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Co-Operation.

Until December 2017, Cathy served as standardisation lead for the Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) Task Force and Vice Chairman of the ETSI ISG on Context Information Management. She was also a Visiting Fellow at the Glasgow School of Art Institute for Design Innovation (INDI)

“My aim in life is to deliver on the promise of digital technologies in a fair and equitable manner for everyone in society. I do this by providing a unique combination of research skills and real-world industrial experience in both technology and digital economics. I started programming when I was 10 years old and never looked back - I've had the privilege of helping various technologies take off - including mobile networks, IoT and blockchain.”

GARI is a research institute that uses advanced technology, such as AI with Big Data, to visualise, understand and create the ability to manage globalisation.

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GARI is a research institute that uses advanced technology, such as AI with Big Data, to visualise, understand and create the ability to manage globalisation.

Previous Episode

#4 Volkswagen AI Director Patrick van der Smagt on new technologies and tackling SDGs

What makes the Volkswagen Machine Learning Research Lab different from other research institutions? Creating technologies that really work - not just creating methodologies that show it could work and publishing. Robotics literature has solutions but it always has some problems - solving them so that it can be applied is what is sustainable.

“Our general technologies evolve around predicting the future and using those predictions to make optimal decisions. At the moment I know what's going to happen in the next 10 steps, or 100 steps, and I can not only predict the state of my system but actually predict what my sensors are going to see. I can use that to react to unforeseen changes in my environment.”

Patrick’s project 10toGo: “We have 10 more years to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It’s not much time, so we must act now. In fact the UN has named the next 10 years the #decadeofaction. 10toGO, brought to you by Volkswagen Group and Microsoft, is our first joint step of action: a kick-starting platform for sustainable, data-driven innovation.”

Patrick van der Smagt is director of the open-source Volkswagen Group Machine Learning Research Lab in Munich, focussing on probabilistic deep learning for time series modelling, optimal control, reinforcement learning robotics, and quantum machine learning. Besides publishing numerous papers and patents on machine learning, robotics, and motor control, he has won a number of awards, including the 2013 Helmholtz-Association Erwin Schrödinger Award, the 2014 King-Sun Fu Memorial Award, the 2013 Harvard Medical School/MGH Martin Research Prize, the 2018 Webit Best Implementation of AI Award, and best-paper awards at machine learning and robotics conferences and journals. In 2018, he started a for-good initiative "10toGO" by supporting teams using machine learning for the UN SDGs. Also then, he initiated etami, an initiative on Ethical and Trustworthy Artificial and Machine Intelligence, creating an organisation with almost 20 multinationals and universities.

GARI is a research institute that uses advanced technology, such as AI with Big Data, to visualise, understand and create the ability to manage globalisation.

Next Episode

#6 Chrono-narcissism, philosophy & diplomacy in a high-tech world with Jovan Kurbalija

What you’ll hear in this episode with Prof. Jovan Kurbalija, Founding President of Diplo Foundation, ambassador of the internet, pioneer in cyber diplomacy and Head of the Geneva Internet Platform, secretariat member of the UN high-level panel on digital cooperation:

As a person promoting technology for the past three decades, my question is what are we going to pass on?
My concern is that generations (including mine) focus too much on project management logic of human society (outcomes, outputs, impact). And it's very popular in the European Union. I’m afraid that a lot of framing of current thinking is rather cognitive procrastination, trying to fit very complex reality into this project management framework.
We have to regain artistic thinking (Havel, Hasek, Confucius...). The Enlightenment era was misused by people who were supposed to promote it and develop it further, especially through technology. The pandemic has accelerated the need for these kinds of reflections.
On Obama’s two visits to silicon valley, the first enthusiastic, the second sceptical and cautionary of the growing power of silicon valley. Then Trump’s leaking of the defence budget and immunity of tech companies that host social media.
What are you working on at Diplo?: speech generator for diplomats, the future of meetings on open-source platforms
What are the limits of AI? Where is philosophy? The Hobbs, Roussos, Kants of today? We’re becoming a bit chrono-narcissistic - we think everything is happening now.
UN should understand technology but the UN shouldn’t be high tech. Big tech companies shouldn’t be governmental judicial organisation as google is becoming with the right to be forgotten or Facebook with this new court.
UN as a digital home for humanity?

GARI is a research institute that uses advanced technology, such as AI with Big Data, to visualise, understand and create the ability to manage globalisation.