A call for global cooperation in the Intelligent Age

Cultivate wisdom along with innovation

- BY KLAUS SCHWAB

THE 21ST CENTURY IS, SO FAR, BEING DEFINED BY its dramatic leap in intelligent technologies—a leap that has brought humanity into an era I call the Intelligent Age, in which large segments of global society now have access to unprecedented technological intelligence. These technologies are becoming deeply ingrained in our everyday lives and changing the world at the most profound individual and international levels.

Artificial intelligence is, unsurprisingly, the linchpin of this transformation. It has rapidly evolved from a specialized tool to a general-purpose technology that, like electricity and the steam engine, is reshaping industries, economies, and even the way we think about ourselves. This surge of technological development comes, not surprisingly, at the same time that the world is grappling with global challenges that demand our immediate, and collective, attention and action.

AI is empowering us beyond the limitations of our natural human cognition. It is bringing an entirely new level of efficiency and insight to everything from health care diagnostics to climate modeling. We need AI to help us tackle the complex, systemic problems that no individual stakeholder, or stakeholder group, could solve alone. Yet, as I have said previously about Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, the opportunities they present also bring profound risks—social, political, and economic disruptions that we must navigate with care.