World Economic Forum on Agile Governance

Today in Tokyo, I am attending the World Economic Summit on Agile Governance: Governance Principle & the Pluriverse. That is a mouthful - here is the description: 

Digital and physical spaces increasingly coexist in today’s world, creating what some have called a cyber-physical systems (CPS) society. The role of cyberspace as both a source of value and a shaper of the “real” physical world is expanding, yet the social vision and governance model for such a society remains underdiscussed. Efficiency and manageability are hallmarks of highly digitalized CPS societies, but they can also be more humanistic if governed wisely. A well-run CPS society can handle complexity and respond to the diverse needs and values of its members, facilitating harmony and coexistence. The concept of the pluriverse encourages the development of a new, digital-age common sense – a shared vision that enables collaboration and agile governance suited to the needs of our emerging epoch. It is a worldview that includes radical difference and diversity, based not on a modern ontology that universalizes one type of rationality and separates humans and nature, but on a relational ontology in which all living beings and artifacts are interconnected and the principle of non-hierarchy is recognized.

This meeting is part of the G7 Digital and Tech Ministers’ taskforces that I am part of. We have been developing principles for the new digital economy.

Working with Japanese officials and academics on these questions has been particularly rewarding and illuminating for me -- in my book The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future, I compare the attitudes of the Europeans and Americans to Japanese and Korean societies in the vision on how automation, AI and robotics can help [or harm] society. The taskforce has confirmed for me that Japan is forward-thinking on these issues compared to European counterparts that focus disproportionately on the risks and potential harms of AI. Of course both are needed - the critical and constructive.