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Artificial intelligence is the topic of the day at this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum – a large gathering of political and corporate leaders – in Davos, Switzerland.
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Of all the corporate buzzwords, artificial intelligence is by far the one that was on the lips of every top corporate executive at this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Numerous CEOs of big-name companies and investors in industries spanning financial services to marketing have spoken about the potential of AI technology. Here’s a compilation of quotes from some of the top corporate executives attending the WEF annual meeting this week:
Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak
Khaldoon Al Mubarak, CEO of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, told CNBC that he thinks the world has yet to fully recognize the extent of the change that AI will bring to every aspect of human life:
“The demand will be very high in terms of the enablement of that technology. So, the technology, the AI enablement, which is the infrastructure side – whether it’s energy, whether it’s transmission, whether it’s energy, but also all. forms of technology, of energy technology that will help fuel this huge demand, I will also add to that data center build-out, chip build-out,” he said.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers
Larry Summers, president emeritus and professor of Harvard University, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, January 21, 2025.
Stefan Wermuth Bloomberg | Getty Images
Larry Summers, an American economist who served as the 71st US Treasury secretary, said on a panel moderated by CNBC that “a moment of amazing technological possibility” – including emerging AI systems – is driving a unprecedented innovation in fields such as medical science:
“I believe that artificial intelligence will ultimately be to the internet, as the computer was to the calculator. It is a moment of amazing technological possibilities. This does not mean that everything will automatically be fine … It is a moment of challenge epic for governments in my country and governments everywhere,” he said.
Nicola Mendelsohn of Meta
Nicola Mendelsohn, head of the global business group at Meta.
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Nicola Mendelsohn, head of the global business group at Facebook Metasaid the tech giant’s announcements have already seen a return on its AI investments.
“The majority of our advertisers are using one of our products, or our suite of product advantages… So, AI at the heart of it all, especially generative AI coming even more to the forefront,” he said.
Richard Edelman CEO of Edelman
Edelman boss Richard Edelman said he thinks AI has the potential to empower workers and boost productivity – but warned about the risk of AI “refusal” if business leaders they have no personal skills:
“The biggest risk is that AI is rejected… We need to get this accepted by making sure that everyone is rehabilitated. I do this in our company like crazy. You have to use this. You have to try it. I think that AI is the great hope for optimism, I think it’s a great chance, because it will improve our ability to work, and it’s your enabler to be smarter, faster,” he said.
Randstad CEO Sander van’t Noordende
Sander van’t Noordende, CEO of the human resources company Randstadwarned of the job disruption risks posed by AI, saying he sees jobs in the realms of design and management as being most at risk:
“If you look at the jobs that will disappear, everything that has ’employee’, or ‘designer’, ‘executive assistants’, is under a lot of pressure. [There are] a lot of new jobs in technology, in security, in AI …. There will be new jobs, and there are a lot of jobs to be done, in health, in technology, in hospitality all kinds of jobs where the AI is not. it doesn’t really help,” he said.
Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral
Arthur Mensch, CEO of French AI firm Mistral, said there is a competitive race going on among world governments to lead the way in AI:
“This is an industrial revolution, it will strengthen our industries in the next 10 years. And we need – the industry needs – to adopt as fast as possible because it is effectively a competitive market … It was interesting to administrations that are also looking for sovereign solutions that we are the only ones able to provide So it is a challenge and an opportunity, I would say But effectively, what is shown You have not thought about AI today and how it will change your activity, you hurt.”
Mensch also talked about the technological advances coming to the AI industry this year, predicting that the world will be moving away from language patterns like OpenAI’s GPT to the most comprehensive systems:
“I think the focus should be shifted to systems. Models are part of systems, but systems are connected to data, connected to tools, able to actually do things on your behalf, able to act in an agentive way … This is where this has changed, it also means that the industry that adopts it will distill its expertise in those systems”, he added.
Mistral is backed by the US tech giant Microsoft – who is also an investor in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CNBC on Tuesday that he sees AI tools eventually becoming better than humans at almost every task:
“At some point we will reach AI systems that are better than almost all humans in almost all tasks. The term I used for this in an essay I wrote recently is, a country of genius in a data center. It’s kind of an evocative phrase for all the positive things and all the potential negative things. That’s what I think we’re quite likely to get in the next two or three years,” he said.
Anthropic is a competitor of OpenAI. Count the likes of Amazon and Google as investors.
Charlie Nunn, CEO of Lloyds
Lloyds Banking Group CEO Charlie Nunn applauded the British government announcement Last week of a bold plan to scale the national computing infrastructure to boost domestic AI development:
“AI is at the heart of what we do. I really welcome what the government has just done. Keir Starmer has talked about AI being a bigger part of the future. We definitely think that’s true in financial services. It allows us to customer protection, help them get more out of their financial services I know financial services provider is a great growth opportunity for us,” he said.
CEO Denis Machuel
Denis Machuel, CEO of human resources group Adecco, told CNBC on Wednesday that he sees AI leading to better productivity among global workforces:
“It is an opportunity and a responsibility. It is an opportunity because it will create better productivity, it will create more innovation and definitely growth,” he said.
