Today, we witness fundamental changes in the world of geopolitics, technology, security, climate, and society. We chose the theme “The Future Reimagined“ to invite speakers and participants to envision the future together from three perspectives: geopolitics, security and society. Bringing together 22 thought leaders from various backgrounds, featuring 18 talks and four panel discussions, the symposium aims to distil key future scenario vignettes so that we can be better prepared for the future. IRAHSS is part of the Singapore Foresight Week 2019 (23–26 July).

Panel 1

Panel 2

GeopoliticsReimagined

SecurityReimagined

The global environment today has witnessed unprecedented volatility, with the rise of populism and global power shifts challenging the consensus of the current global order. How has the global chess game of geopolitics been transformed by existing political, economic, environmental, security and technological headwinds? The advent of technological developments, such as in 5G and Artificial Intelligence, has introduced a new dimension of interstate competition and altered the dynamics between states and non-state actors such as business corporations. What strategies should states adopt to remain nimble and adapt to the uncertainties in this evolving global climate?

5G. Artificial Intelligence. Gene editing. Technologies that were once confined to the imagination of science-fiction novels have become a quintessential part of our daily vocabulary today. In this regard, the intersection of technology and security has redefined our traditional understanding of threats, conflicts and terrorism. What are the interests of various state and non-state actors and how will these players navigate the minefield of an ever-evolving security landscape?

Are technological advancements a boon or bane for ageing societies that are becoming increasingly interconnected and diverse? Technological developments, such as the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, create exciting opportunities to enhance the quality of life for citizens while simultaneously widening existing fault lines and presenting new pressures on national identity and social cohesion. How should governments harness the transformative potential of future technologies while mitigating their potential pitfalls?

Making sense of our interconnected and globalised world demands multidisciplinary approaches and perspectives. Contemporary developments, such as the seismic global power shifts, the automation of warfare and the technological revamp of social spaces present implications that are cross-cutting in nature. Following discussions that spanned across the three main areas of geopolitics, security and society, how can we piece together the various threads to complete the puzzle of envisioning the future for our world?

Panel 3SocietyReimagined

Panel 4The FutureReimagined

0815 - 0845

1050 - 1115

1230 - 1330

Registration

Tea Break

Lunch

0845 - 0900

0900 - 0930

1115 - 1230

0930 - 1050

Symposium Opening

Opening RemarksPeter Ho, Senior Advisor to the Centre for Strategic Futures andChairman of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore

Panel 1 DiscussionsModerated by Lam Peng Er with speakers from Panel 1

Lam Peng Er, Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute,National University of Singapore

Panel 1: Geopolitics Reimagined

Ann Mettler, Director-General and Head, European Political Strategy Centre, European Commission & Chair, European Strategy and Policy Analysis System The Future is Now: The European Union in a Fast-Changing World

Jie Dalei, Associate Professor of Political Science at Peking University’sSchool of International StudiesThe Nature of U.S.- China Competition

Barry Pavel, Senior Vice President and Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategyand Security at the Atlantic Council2020s Security Implications

Bruno Maçães, Senior Adviser at Flint Global in London, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute in WashingtonThe Power Game in a Connected World

PROGRAMME23 JULY 2019DAY 1

1330 - 1530

1530 - 1600

1700 - 1730

1900 - 2100

Tea Break

Connecting The Dots

Dave Snowden, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge,Founder and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at theUniversity of Wales

IRAHSS 2019 Dinner @ SKAI Suites on Level 69

(For invited guests)

1600 - 1700 Panel 2 DiscussionsModerated by Noah Raford with speakers from Panel 2

Noah Raford, Chief Futurist, Dubai Future Foundation

PROGRAMME23 JULY 2019DAY 1

Panel 2: Security Reimagined

Jason Healey, Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University and Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Atlantic CouncilNew Landscape of Cyber Security and Conflict

Shashi Jayakumar, Head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), and Executive Coordinator, Future Issues and Technology, RSIS Threats Present and Future

Daniel Erasmus, Futurist, Scenario Thinker, Founder Digital Thinking Network and CEO of the AI/Big Data platform NEWSCONSOLENovel Risks at the Edge

Alexander Ling, Principal Investigator at the Centre for Quantum Technologies, SingaporeKeeping Secrets in the Quantum Era

Ken Liu, Hugo-and Nebula-winning author of speculative fiction, Programmer, Lawyer, Technologist (The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories)Deflection Over Confrontation

0845 - 0900

1030 - 1100

1230 - 1330

Guests to be Seated

Tea Break

Lunch

0900 - 1030

1100 - 1230 Panel 3 DiscussionsModerated by Gillian Koh with speakers from Panel 3

Gillian Koh, Deputy Director (Research), Institute of Policy Studies, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

Panel 3: Society Reimagined

Cécile Wendling, Group Head of Foresight at AXATrustworthy AI and the Future of Society

Yeong Zee Kin, Assistant Chief Executive (Data Innovation and Protection Group), Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore and Deputy Commissioner, Personal Data Protection Commission“SOC-AI-EITY”: Human Augmentation and Human-AI Interaction

Kristel Van der Elst, Executive Head at Policy Horizons, Canada Policy Reimagined to Support Society in the Next Digital Economy

Jaan Tallinn, Co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and co-founder of SkypeThe Social Anchoring Effect in Estimating Long Term AI Impact

PROGRAMME24 JULY 2019DAY 2

1330 - 1500

1500 - 1530

1700 - 1730

Tea Break

Connecting The Dots

Dave Snowden, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge,Founder and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at theUniversity of Wales

1530 - 1700 Panel 4 Discussions Moderated by Peter Ho with speakers from Panel 4

Peter Ho, Senior Advisor to the Centre for Strategic Futures andChairman of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore

PROGRAMME

Panel 4: The Future Reimagined

Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development, University of OxfordThe Second Renaissance

Chris Luebkeman, Founder of the Foresight, Innovation and Incubation team at ArupVision 2050: Considering Four Scenarios

Thomas W Malone, Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Founding Director of the MIT Center for Collective IntelligenceThe Human-Computer Superminds in our Future

Peter Schwartz, Chief Future Officer, Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning at SalesforceBeyond Minority Report

24 JULY 2019DAY 2

LINE-UP

OPENING REMARKS

CLOSING REMARKS

Peter HoSenior Advisor to the Centre for Strategic Futures and Chairman of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore

Peter Ho is the Senior Advisor to the Centre for Strategic Futures, a Senior Fellow in the Civil Service College, a Visiting Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Peter Ho is Chairman of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore (URA), Chairman of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Chairman of the Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE), Chairman of the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Steering Committee, and Chairman of the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) Governing Council. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the National University of Singapore (NUS), and a board member of the National Research Foundation (NRF), a member of the Board of Governors of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), and of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP).

When he retired from the Singapore Administrative Service in 2010 after a career in the Public Service stretching more than 34 years, he was Head, Civil Service, concurrent with his other appointments of Permanent Secretary (Foreign Affairs), Permanent Secretary (National Security & Intelligence Coordination), and Permanent Secretary (Special Duties) in the Prime Minister’s Office. Before that, he was Permanent Secretary (Defence). He was also the inaugural Chairman of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.

Dave Snowden divides his time between two roles: Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge as well as the Founder and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at the University of Wales. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy, organisational decision making and decision making. He has pioneered a science based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory. He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style.

He holds positions extra-ordinary Professor at the Universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch as well as visiting Professor at Bangor University in Wales. He has held similar positions at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Canberra University, the University of Warwick and The University of Surrey. He held the position of senior fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang University and the Civil Service College in Singapore during a sabbatical period in Nanyang.

DaveSnowdenFounder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge,Founder and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at the University of Wales

SPEAKER

Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore

MODERATORLam Peng Er

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 1GEOPOLITICSREIMAGINED

Dr Lam Peng Er is a Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute,

National University of Singapore. He obtained his PhD from Columbia

University. His latest single-authored book is Japan’s Peace building

Diplomacy in Asia: Searching for a more active political role (New York

and London: Routledge). Lam is an executive editor of the International

Relations of the Asia-Pacific: A Journal of the Japan Association of

International Relations (Oxford University Press) and the Asian Journal

of Peacebuilding (Seoul National University). He is also Singapore’s

country coordinator for the second track activities of the Network of

East Asian Think Tanks (NEAT) and Network of ASEAN China Think

Tanks (NACT). His album of original compositions titled Oceans without

Fishes is available on Spotify and Apple iTunes.

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 1GEOPOLITICSREIMAGINED

Ann Mettler is a Director-General at the European Commission where she is Head of the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), the in-house think tank reporting directly to President Juncker. In this capacity, Ann also serves as Chair of the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS), an inter-institutional project aimed at strengthening the EU’s foresight capacity and anticipatory governance. Ann was Politico’s “Top five women shaping Brussels” in 2018. That same year, she was named one of the top 100 women in German business by Manager Magazine.

Prior to her current role, Ann was for eleven years Executive Director of the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think tank she co-founded in 2003. From

2000-03, she worked at the World Economic Forum, where she last served as Director for Europe. Ann holds Masters Degrees in political science and European law and economics, and graduated with distinction from the University of New Mexico, USA, and the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn, Germany.

The next decade will be defining for the future of Europe and Europe’s role in the world. Seismic global power shifts; pressure on liberal democracies; challenges to global governance; the transformation of economic models and the very fabric of societies; new uses and misuses of technology; contrasting demographic patterns; and humanity’s growing ecological footprint – the world is well on its way towards a new geopolitical, geo-economic and geo-technological order. What role will Europe play in this fast-changing world? How can the European Union ensure that it doesn’t end up a middle power, caught between the United States and China? What will it take for Europe to build-up its strategic autonomy?

The future is now, and tomorrow’s challenges (and opportunities) are determined by today’s choices. But the future is not what it used to be. The world is far more complex, contested and competitive than it used to be – and is changing at unprecedented pace. The interconnected and interdependent nature of national, European and global affairs has put a new premium on agile policy- and decision-making, resilience, strategic foresight, and anticipatory governance – all of which are more important now than ever before. Despite being more necessary and urgent, developing a ‘culture of preparedness’ and proactively shaping the future has also become more difficult and testing.

Strong Europe, Better World. With profound global changes underway, it may seem easy to dismiss Europe, as too small and too insignificant to really make a difference. That would be a grave mistake. Europe is still a normative superpower, the place that sets the global gold standard when it comes to human-centric technology and digital rights, to regulation and consumer welfare, to social protection and inclusive societies.

But not only does Europe need Europe, the world needs Europe as well – as an inspiration for a better future; a sound balance between economic, social and environmental objectives; a beacon of democracy, diversity and freedom; and a true champion of multilateral solutions and collaborative approaches in a world increasingly dominated by nationalism and zero-sum politics.

The Future is Now: The European Union in a Fast-Changing World

ABSTRACT

Director-General and Head, European Political Strategy Centre, European Commission & Chair, European Strategy and Policy Analysis System

Ann Mettler

Associate Professor of Political Science atPeking University’s School of International Studies

Jie Dalei

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 1GEOPOLITICSREIMAGINED

Jie Dalei is an associate professor at the School of International Studies of Peking University in Beijing, China. He specializes in security studies related to China, the U.S., and East Asia. He has published articles in Chinese and English journals on alliance politics, China-U.S. relations, Chinese foreign policy, and cross-Taiwan strait relations. He got his Ph.D. degree in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012. Before coming to Penn, he studied at Peking University, where he got his B.A. in international studies and economics as well as an M.A. in international politics.

The U.S.-China relationship has entered a new era of competition, but it is not yet entirely clear what the nature of that competition is. There are conceivably four different types of the competition. The first is that it is about trade and economics. This is obviously happening and has been the headline news since early 2018. The second is that it is a comprehensive strategic competition, i.e., the traditional great power politics about who will the dominant power in Asia and beyond. This is engendered by the relative power shift between the U.S. and China, but it is also exacerbated by the U.S. inclination to overstate the extent of threat for mobilization purpose as well as by Chinese official media’s tendency to boast Chinese achievements and capabilities for domestic consumption. The third is that the competition is ideological. The irony is that until very recently, China was at the defensive end of ideological differences between Beijing and Washington, i.e., China has always been concerned about “spiritual pollution” and “peaceful evolution”. Now the U.S. has accused Beijing of its “sharp power” activities inside American society and saw Beijing’s sale of surveillance technology and equipment as spreading authoritarianism. The fourth is that the competition is between civilizations, a thesis that we heard from a U.S. State Department official not long ago. The four types of competition are, of course, not mutually exclusive, but in an ascending order each is more fundamental than the previous one. The nature of U.S.-China competition determines whether the competition is zero-sum, what the end game could be, and what options are available for other regional players.

The Nature of U.S.-China Competition

ABSTRACT

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 1GEOPOLITICSREIMAGINED

Barry Pavel is senior vice president and director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, focusing on geopolitical risks, grand strategy, technology, emerging security challenges, and defense strategies and capabilities. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Pavel served as the special assistant to the president and senior director for defense policy and strategy on the National Security Council staff, serving both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. In this capacity, Pavel led the development of five of the first eight Obama Administration Presidential Study Directives. Pavel was a career member of the Senior Executive Service in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for almost eighteen years. Pavel holds an MA in security studies and an MPA in international relations from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and a BA in applied mathematics and economics from Brown University.

We are in a new era of history, characterised by five defining elements that are reshaping the globe, geopolitics and societies. These forces – Great Power competition, the challenges of the digital age, the new information environment, the domestic unravelling of Western democracies, and the continued US withdrawal from its predominant global role – portend a decade ahead unlike any that we have seen since before the Second World War.

What are the implications of these developments, and how might we reimagine geopolitics and our strategies to effectively navigate these uncharted waters?

2020s Security Implications

ABSTRACT

Senior Vice President and Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council

Barry Pavel

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 1GEOPOLITICSREIMAGINED

Senior Adviser at Flint Global in London,Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute in Washington

Bruno Maçães

Bruno Maçães was the Minister of European Affairs in Portugal from 2013 to 2015. He is a senior fellow at both the Hudson Institute in Washington and Renmin University in Beijing and the author of two recent books, The Dawn of Eurasia and Belt and Road. The Dawn of Eurasia was selected as a book of the year by both the Financial Times and Foreign Affairs. He holds a doctorate in political science from Harvard University.

World politics is going through a remarkable transformation. Conflict between great powers seems to be returning. Trade disputes have grown into trade wars with no end in sight. Technology has become a battlefield between states afraid of falling behind, in the race to control powerful new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Every day, China extends its reach into some of the critical transport and communication infrastructure, whilst the United States fights back by excluding Chinese companies from global value chains under its control.

The world we live in is no longer that announced by the dreams of a liberal international society following the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s conversion to globalization and capitalism. And yet, if international conflict has made a comeback, its impact so far has been limited. Global trade has not collapsed, multinational companies continue to invest and operate across borders and citizens enjoy growing access to international travel. Scientists and universities from different countries work together on research and technological innovation. Some global organizations and institutions seem weakened, but others have been created or expanded.

Increasingly we seem to live in a world neither at war nor at peace. Conflict takes place below the threshold of kinetic war or other forms of direct confrontation, but is no less intense because of that. I will speak about the strategies states should adapt in the new world of competitive integration.

The Power Game in a Connected World

ABSTRACT

Chief Futurist, Dubai Future Foundation

MODERATORNoah Raford

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 2SECURITYREIMAGINED

Noah Raford is the Futurist-in-Chief and international representative of

the Dubai Future Foundation, an organisation which has been described

as part DARPA, part Disney, and part Mayor’s Office. Noah is part of

a team that identifies emerging opportunities, strategic partnerships,

and future initiatives for the Government of Dubai, and responsible

for the Foundation’s thought leadership and partnerships activities.

Some of the projects he has recently led or helped to create include

the Museum of the Future, the Dubai Global Blockchain Council and

the Dubai Future Accelerators.

Previously, Noah was an advisor on futures, foresight, and innovation in the UAE Prime Minister’s Office,

a senior strategy consultant at Monitor / GBN, CEO and co-founder of the technology foresight company

Futurescaper, North American Director of Space Syntax Limited, and the Senior Research Advisor to

Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment.

Noah completed his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his masters at the Bartlett

School of Architecture, and his undergraduate degree at Brown University. He has served as a member

World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Agenda Council on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, a Senior

Research Fellow at the London School of Economics, a fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and

as a member of the International Futures Forum.

He lives between Dubai and London, is married with two children and is a semi-retired techno DJ.

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 2SECURITYREIMAGINED

Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University and Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Atlantic Council

Jason Healey

Jason Healey is a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs specializing in cyber risk and conflict. Prior to this, he was the founding director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council where he remains a Senior Fellow. He is the editor of the first history of conflict in cyberspace, A Fierce Domain: Cyber Conflict, 1986 to 2012. He helped the world’s first cyber command in 1998, the Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defense, where he was one of the pioneers of cyber threat intelligence. During his time in the White House, he was a director for cyber policy, coordinating efforts to secure US cyber-space and critical infrastructure. He created Goldman Sachs’ first cyber incident response team and later oversaw the bank’s crisis management and business continuity in Asia. He is president of the Cyber Conflict Studies Association.

For decades there has been zero net progress in cyber security as innovations by defenders are easily matched and exceeded by attackers. New technologies, including the Internet of Things and AI, seem likely to exacerbate this historical trend. Combined with humanity’s deepening dependence on IT and increasing geopolitical clashes in and through cyberspace, this means an increasing chance of systemic geopolitical, societal, and economic crises. There are only a few potential paths that preserve stability without sacrificing the openness, global interconnectedness and resilience of the Internet. The future of security must start with these paths before they fade away.

New Landscape of Cyber Security and Conflict

ABSTRACT

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 2SECURITYREIMAGINED

Dr Shashi Jayakumar assumed the appointment as Head, Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) on 1 April 2015, and the appointment of Executive Coordinator, Future Issues and Technology on 1 Aug 2017.

Dr Jayakumar was educated at Oxford University where he studied History (BA 1997, D.Phil, 2001). He has published in various peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes on topics relating to medieval history (the focus of his doctorate). He was a member of the Singapore Administrative Service from 2002-2017. During this time, he was posted to various Ministries, including the Ministries of Defence, Manpower, Information and the Arts, and Community

Development, Youth and Sports. He was from August 2011-July 2014 a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. His research interests include extremism, social resilience, cyber, and homeland defence. He is currently completing a major book project relating to local (Singapore) politics (forthcoming, National University of Singapore Press, 2019).

The focus is on major threats that Singapore has had to deal with in recent years. The first, terrorism, is generally well known but has seen evolutions, or certain wrinkles in radicalisation patterns, in recent years. The second, cyber, is of comparatively more recent vintage; but that notwithstanding, important “attacks” in this domain have taken place in recent years – attacks that we are still digesting the ramifications of. The threat actors’ modus operandi will evolve further, most likely with an increasingly deep understanding of human behaviour and the threat surface that the nascent SMART Nation affords it. Finally, threats from the domain traditionally known to some as “hybrid warfare” are increasingly starting to rear their head. These occasionally use established cyber means, but have truly come into their own using social media and computational propaganda. Does Singapore’s status as a would-be SMART Nation make it more resilient against these new threats, or weaker?

Threats Present and Future

ABSTRACT

Head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), and Executive Coordinator, Future Issues and Technology, RSIS

Shashi Jayakumar

Futurist, Scenario Thinker, Founder Digital Thinking Network and CEO of the AI/Big Data platform NEWSCONSOLE

Daniel Erasmus

SPEAKER LINE-UP

Daniel Erasmus is a leading futurist and scenario thinker. With 20 years of experience in this field, Daniel founded the Digital Thinking Network (dtn.net) where he has lead global scenario planning processes for global clients in the public and private sector as well as central banks. (2017).

Daniel coined the term “Early Learning Systems” to describe a new type of global awareness system, NewsConsole, which processes well over a billion text items to give its clients insight into today and tomorrow’s news. DTN scenarios and analytics have anticipated the global financial crisis by two years, the increase in global oil prices (2003), as well as the recent oil price collapse. In the public sector The DTN has structured the transformation of Rotterdam

through creating an International Advisory Board which lead to the visionary goals of a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2025 and being the #1 intercultural city in Europe. The 21st Century re-design of the breakthrough disruptive innovation process GameChanger for Royal Dutch Shell. In 2001 Daniel lead the development Van Gogh Museum online initiatives including the Van Gogh Gauguin Experience which received several awards including a Cannes Cyber Lion nomination and an ID Magazine Bronze prize.

Born in South Africa, Daniel lives in Amsterdam with his wife Elisabeth, three daughters and a son. He can be found in his office in Amsterdam or on planes, trains and cafes with a laptop, a ristretto (lately a green tea) and a yearning for the warm plains of Africa.

Daniel Erasmus shall explore deep future edge issues ancillary to the dominant conversation framed in geopolitical, nation state or rouge actor terms. The exploration will divide the security landscape in 3 layers; technological system challenges (wars agains one); natural system challenges (mass migration in the 100s of millions) and political system challenges (return of 19th century politics). If time allows, Daniel shall explore recent work designing new cybersecurity reference architecture and blockchain architecture for a bank and central banks as well as early learning systems built on top of Erasmus.io, a global sense-making platform that augments human intelligence by tracking 100s of millions of URLs, processing billions of articles and extracting half a billion entities.

Novel Risks at the Edge

ABSTRACT

PANEL 2SECURITYREIMAGINED

Principal Investigator at the Centre forQuantum Technologies, Singapore

Alexander Ling

SPEAKER LINE-UP

Alexander Ling has been a Principal Investigator at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore since 2010. He leads a team that aims to bring quantum instruments out of the lab and into field deployment. His team has deployed instruments in diverse environments, ranging from Singapore’s urban fibre networks to satellites in space. Alexander received his PhD from the National University of Singapore, and has worked at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States.

Advances in quantum technologies are expected to accelerate in the next decade. Driven by the promise of commercial value in applying quantum systems, a business eco-system has emerged, populated by established corporations as well as start-up ventures. While quantum information processing is being actively investigated for many pressing societal problems, there lies a stark fact: the technology can be weaponized to break existing encryption. How do we ensure privacy in this era? I will discuss the concept of a hybrid security eco-system, and why it makes sense to adopt some of its features even if the eventual threat is a few decades away.

Keeping Secrets in the Quantum Era

ABSTRACT

PANEL 2SECURITYREIMAGINED

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 2SECURITYREIMAGINED

Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an author of speculative fiction, as well as a translator, lawyer, and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he is the author of The Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (The Grace of Kings (2015), The Wall of Storms (2016), and a forthcoming third volume and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016), a collection. He also wrote the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker (2017).

Ken frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, history of technology, bookmaking, the mathematics of origami, science fiction, and other subjects of his expertise.

In addition to his original fiction, Ken also translated numer-ous works from Chinese to English, including The Three-Body Problem (2014), by Liu Cixin, and Folding Beijing, by Hao Jingfang, both Hugo winners.

One important principle from taichi is the concept of 四两拨千, which could be translated as “a thousand-pound strike can be resolved with a well-placed gentle shove.” Deflection, rather than confrontation, will become increasingly important both as a source of security threats and the path to their resolution.

In the tightly-coupled, fragile and increasingly technology-mediated future, individual bad actors will have many opportunities to take advantage of sources of strength over which they have no direct control, but which they can manipulate at little cost to wreak havoc: geopolitical tensions among great powers and conflicts between fracturing national identities can be stoked through social media to benefit terrorists and extremists; automated systems and machine learning can be “deceived” by adversarial examples; code-based (as opposed to law-based) institutions can be exploited through flaws with no easy way to recover.

Rather than reacting to these threats with increased surveillance and paranoia, I believe the better path is finding the leverage points to make societies more robust against such bottom-up threats, to deflect rather than to confront with overwhelming force.

Deflection Over Confrontation

ABSTRACT

Hugo-and Nebula-winning author of speculative fiction, Programmer, Lawyer, Technologist (The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories)

Ken Liu

Deputy Director (Research), Institute of Policy Studies,Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

MODERATORGillian Koh

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 3SOCIETYREIMAGINED

Dr Gillian Koh is Deputy Director (Research) and Senior Research Fellow

in the Governance and Economy Department at the Institute of Policy

Studies, National University of Singapore. Her research interests are in

the areas of party and electoral politics, the development of civil society,

state-society relations, state governance and citizen engagement

in Singapore. Dr Koh conducts surveys on Singaporeans’ political

attitudes, sense of identity, rootedness and social resilience. She was

part of the team that produced the IPS Study on Social Capital in

Singapore (2017) about the impact of the diversity of social networks

on Singaporeans’ sense of belonging to the nation. Dr Koh has helmed several IPS scenario-planning

projects – Singapore Futures. Scenarios for the Next Generation (2006); IPS Prism (2013); Action Plan

Singapore (2016). She has published, co-published articles on civil society and political development;

co-edited books on the same, and has been editor of the National University of Singapore Society’s

journal, Commentary since 2016.

Group Head of Foresight at AXACécile Wendling

SPEAKER LINE-UP

PANEL 3SOCIETYREIMAGINED

Dr. Cécile Wendling is Group Head of Foresight at AXA. With more than 15-year-experience in long-term thinking, her role is to anticipate trends and disruptions that will impact the way people live and work in the future. She has worked on the Future of Artificial Intelligence, the ethics of algorithms, potential development of the blockchain, the future of trust, the future of work and driverless cars, among other topics. She has a PhD from the European University Institute and is an Associate Researcher at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations (CNRS-Sciences Po Paris). She teaches foresight methods and on the digital transformation of the firm at Sciences Po Paris. She is a member of: the board of Impact AI, the High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence—European Commission, the scientific board of future of cities think tank Palladio and the scientific board of foresight think tank Futuribles.

The adoption of new technology (AI etc.) raises new questions around trust in societies. How can we have a trustworthy AI when it is said, even by experts, to be a black box and to have implicit biases?

The European Union High Level Expert Group on AI has defined three pillars of trustworthiness:(1) Legal: data protection regulation etc.;(2) Ethical: asking ourselves the right questions on diversity and autonomy;(3) Robustness: cyber protection of our societies.

However, principles are not enough, we need tools as well: technical tools — to de-bias data set; and governance tools — to ensure traceability and auditability of decisions.

This summer, the European Commission is launching a pilot phase for companies to test ethical guidelines developed for the use of Artificial Intelligence, to assess the trustworthiness of AI. This is the first time such a large experiment is being launched. This will trigger dialogue between all stakeholders and help to identify the need for further research. Work at the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) on trustworthy AI technical standards is also taking place in parallel.

We have already witnessed numerous events in our society that signals to us the importance of building trustworthy AIs: Google employees out on the streets showing dissent around the poor use of AI; social movements against facial recognitions that are discriminatory towards black women; and the failure of algorithms in French University Admissions.

The questions to anticipate for the future are:(1) education of board members to new technologies;(2) identifying the change in organizational culture to account for ethics in all decisions even automated ones; and(3) the geopolitics of AI and how it impacts the way that people live.

Trustworthy AI and the Future of Society

ABSTRACT

SPEAKER LINE-UP

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Yeong Zee Kin is the Assistant Chief Executive (Data Innovation and Protection Group) of the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) and Deputy Commissioner of the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC).

In his capacity as ACE (Data Innovation and Protection Group), Zee Kin oversees IMDA’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Industry development strategy. This is one of four frontier technology areas IMDA has identified for its transformational potential for a Digital Economy. The other three are cybersecurity, the Internet of Things, and immersive media. In his role as an AI and data analytics champion, Zee Kin’s work includes developing forward-thinking governance on AI and

data, driving a pipeline of AI talent, promoting industry adoption of AI and data analytics, as well as building specific AI and data science capabilities in Singapore.

As the Deputy Commissioner of PDPC, Zee Kin oversees the administering and enforcement of the Personal Data Protection Act (2012). His key responsibilities include managing the formulation and implementation of policies relating to the protection of personal data, as well as the issuing of enforcement directions for organisational actions. He also spearheads the public and sector-specific educational and outreach activities, to raise both awareness and compliance in organisations and individuals in personal data protection.

As society evolves and organisations and households increasingly leverage AI, widespread and pervasive human-machine interaction will become a daily reality. In the short run, this raises the question of how we can prepare Singaporeans for the future of work and how we can help them remain relevant in AI-driven organisations. In the long run, this raises questions of how we can prepare ourselves for a society where human-AI collaboration is pervasive and widespread – not just in the workforce, but in every facet of our lives.

To do this, we need to be able to understand the nature of human-machine interactions and collaboration, and to get clearer insight on how organisations can be guided to adopt AI seamlessly and with minimal repercussions. On a broader level, we also need to think about preparing Singaporeans for and accustomed to widespread human-AI interaction (such as through education).

A fundamental step towards this future is also the creation of societal trust in AI, which is the bedrock upon which AI adoption and innovation can flourish. In this regard, Singapore has taken steps to build trust among government, industry and society in AI. These initiatives will be shared with the audience, with a call to participate and collaborate where possible.

“SOC-AI-EITY”: Human Augmentation and Human-AI Interaction

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Assistant Chief Executive (Data Innovation and Protection Group), Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore and Deputy Commissioner, Personal Data Protection Commission

Yeong Zee Kin

Executive Head at Policy Horizons, CanadaKristel Van der Elst

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Kristel Van der Elst has 17 years of experience in forward-looking strategy and policy advisory roles. She works with senior executives and policy makers including heads of state, ministers, heads of international organisations and think tanks, and CEOs providing the insights, resources and processes to help them turn long-term strategic thinking into actions and impacts. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Strategic Foresight Community, the OECD Governmental Foresight Community, the Strategic Foresight for Research & Innovation Policy in Horizon 2020 (SFRI) European Commission Expert Group, and the Independent Advisory Committee to the Global Burden of Disease initiative.

Kristel is an established speaker, moderator and facilitator at high-level events including Davos, OECD, European Commission and Oxford, and the author of numerous reports and articles. She is also a HuffPost blogger. Kristel is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and teaches in Executive Education progammes at Said Business School, University of Oxford and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Kristel holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management, a Masters in Development Cooperation from the University of Ghent, and a Masters in Commercial Engineering from the Free University of Brussels. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar, a Global Leadership Fellow and a Certified Professional Facilitator.

As a broad suite of technologies are maturing and combining, they are poised to transform the economy and hence society and behaviours. These transformations have deep and broad policy implications. They call for policy makers to imagine what might happen and what is needed in the future to protect and support society in the face of disruptive change. This presentation highlights some key social policy areas that ought to be reexamined and why policy making itself needs to be reimagined.

Policy Reimagined to Support Society in the Next Digital Economy

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Co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and co-founder of Skype

Jaan Tallinn

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Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa. He is a co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (cser.org), Future of Life Institute (futureoflife.org), and philanthropically supports other existential risk research organisations. Jaan is on the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (thebulletin.org), member of the High-Level Expert Group on AI at the European Commission, and has served on the Estonian President’s Academic Advisory Board. He is also an active angel investor, a partner at Ambient Sound Investments (asi.ee), and a former investor in and director of the AI company DeepMind (deepmind.com).

It took 30 years for the scientific consensus to reach the correct number for the electron charge - arguably, because the researchers were anchored in the prominent but incorrect early result by Millican in 1910. Similarly, our civilisation seems to be mis-estimating the potential impact from AI, because we’re anchored by the early opinions about a decade ago when the median expected effect from AI was roughly zero. Very interestingly though, this anchoring is mostly a western problem: Asian AI researchers have both much shorter timelines for superhuman AI and seem more eager to talk about the long term risks than their western colleagues.

The Social Anchoring Effect in Estimating Long Term AI Impact

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Senior Advisor to the Centre for Strategic Futures andChairman of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore

MODERATORPeter Ho

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Peter Ho is the Senior Advisor to the Centre for Strategic Futures, a

Senior Fellow in the Civil Service College, a Visiting Fellow at the Lee

Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Peter Ho is Chairman of the Urban

Redevelopment Authority of Singapore (URA), Chairman of the Social

Science Research Council (SSRC), Chairman of the Singapore Centre

on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE), Chairman of

the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Steering Committee, and

Chairman of the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological

Enterprise (CREATE) Governing Council. He is a member of the Board

of Trustees of the National University of Singapore (NUS), and a board member of the National Research

Foundation (NRF), a member of the Board of Governors of the S Rajaratnam School of International

Studies (RSIS), and of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP).

When he retired from the Singapore Administrative Service in 2010 after a career in the Public Service

stretching more than 34 years, he was Head, Civil Service, concurrent with his other appointments of

Permanent Secretary (Foreign Affairs), Permanent Secretary (National Security & Intelligence Coordination),

and Permanent Secretary (Special Duties) in the Prime Minister’s Office. Before that, he was Permanent

Secretary (Defence). He was also the inaugural Chairman of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.

Professor of Globalisation and Development, University of Oxford

Ian Goldin

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Professor Ian Goldin (https://iangoldin.org/) is Oxford University Professor of Globalisation and Development, founding Director of the Oxford Martin School and Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technological and Economic Change. Ian was World Bank Vice President and Director of Development Policy, after serving as Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and Economic Advisor to President Nelson Mandela. Ian previously was Principal Economist at the EBRD and Programme Director at the OECD.

Ian has a BA and BSc from the University of Cape Town, an MSc from the London School of Economics and a Doctorate from the University of Oxford.

He has been knighted by the French Government and nominated Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. OECD.

Ian has published 21 books, the most recent of which are Age of Discovery: Navigating the Storms of Our Second Renaissance and Development: A Very Short Introduction.

We live in a Second Renaissance, characterised by a new information revolution and explosive creativity. The unprecedented growth in incomes and improvements in life expectancy globally over the past three decades has been due to flows across national borders of ideas, trade, technologies and people. The pace of innovation has accelerated. The speed, scale and complexity of this integration has far-reaching implications for societies. Because of growing complexity, integration of systems and greater innovation, the future is more uncertain. The only certainty is surprise, posing growing challenges for foresight. But advances in science, global knowledge and greater historical insight provide perspectives on emerging trends.

Globalisation has led to rapid economic development, particularly in Asia, which is likely to be sustained. Rapid ageing, associated with rising life expectancy and collapsing fertility will radically reshape politics, economics and the health demands on governments. Africa remains the exception and the source of the greatest demographic and development uncertainty. The demographic and broad economic trends are relatively robust. The future of globalisation is a major uncertainty, notably for the advanced economies.

When things change more quickly, people get left behind more rapidly. Dynamic cities are pulling ahead of decaying towns and regions, and may be expected to continue to lead to rising inequality within countries. Meanwhile, advances in artificial intelligence and robotics is transforming the nature of work and is likely to replace significant numbers of jobs and further widen inequality. AI already can replace manufacturing and services, repetitive tasks, removing what have been the middle rungs of the development ladder and accelerating a reshoring of production, but not jobs, closer to markets. 3D printing and personalised consumer preferences accelerate these forces.

It is not only inequality which is growing, so too is risk. Accelerating connectivity, rising through the Internet of Things and AI spreads not only opportunities but also creates a new form of systemic risks – the butterfly defect of globalization. The financial crisis showed how integration can lead to contagion, particularly when associated with mismanaged technical change, data overload and inadequate expertise and governance. In places where the crisis hit hardest the mistrust in experts and authorities is most acute. This and growing inequality within the advanced countries underpins the support for populist politicians and nationalist and protectionist tendencies. Pandemics, cyberattacks and climate change, like financial contagion, are a reflection of the new risks. Unless we create more inclusive societies and improve governance of risks they will overwhelm the benefits.

We are at a time of unprecedented national and global challenges. A crossroads for humanity. One imagined future could be dystopian with climate and other systemic risks exacerbating inequality and the race to the bottom in tax and governance associated with a fragmented dangerous world with increasingly subjugated and discontented citizens. The alternative is a continued Renaissance, with a cleaner, sustainable and more harmonious and inclusive world, where we have learnt to cooperate as citizens and nations through overcoming the challenges we now face

The Second Renaissance

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Founder of the Foresight, Innovation and Incubation team at Arup

Chris Luebkeman

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Dr Chris Luebkeman is Arup Fellow and Director of Global Foresight + Research + Innovation. He works with some of the world’s leading companies to develop a better understanding of the opportunities created by change in our built environment. Since joining Arup in 1999 Luebkeman has facilitated the creation of an e-commerce strategy, initiated research projects on the designer’s desktop of the future, and encouraged thinking about the evolution of the firm’s skills networks into a knowledge network. Luebkeman promotes the highest standards of design and technical skill to ensure that Arup is one of the world’s leading practitioners in its chosen fields. He is an active participant in conferences ranging in scope from those of the Design Futures Council to TED and WEF.

Scenarios are stories which we tell ourselves about what the future could be. They can be comforting, disconcerting, amusing, appalling, inspirational or perhaps even depressing. We use them to help us prepare for what could be or perhaps even to consider ways to bend the vectors a bit. It is now recognized that human systems are putting our planetary systems under significant stress. Thus, it was obvious to us to take a look at four worlds in which these two would be juxtaposed as the axes. Each of the resulting four worlds are compelling for different reasons. If we continue on the current trajectories with ‘business-as-usual’ then our societies will continue to have internal challenges, but the essential focus will be humans benefitting from whatever the planet has to offer – no matter the cost. This world we call Homo Deus or Humans Inc. We can also easily see a world in which both the societal systems and natural systems move towards collapse. Where the 1% live in segregated geodomes and the rest of us are struggling to get by. This world we describe as Extinction Express or ‘The Boiling Frog’. The world in which we see global agreements on personal carbon/resource consumption quotas can also be imagined; one in which individual ‘freedoms’ are sacrificed/repressed so that nature is able to restore herself. We call this Greentocracy or The Road to Regeneration. Finally, we can foresee a world in which both the planet and society are thriving together. The Post-Anthropocene is a world in which the physical infrastructure is providing more ecosystem and societal benefits than the natural infrastructure is replaced. The wealth and opportunity gaps are constricted, and sympathetic symbiosis is the baseline for all activities on our planet. Although future pathways are not clear, we can, and must, move forward with aspiration and intent. These four scenarios should help us to consider how we craft the parameters for that intent.

Vision 2050: Considering Four Scenarios

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Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Founding Director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence

Thomas W Malone

Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. He was also the founding director of the MIT Center for Coordination Science and one of the two founding co-directors of the MIT Initiative on “Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century.” His most recent books are Superminds (2018) and The Future of Work (2004). He has also published over 100 articles, research papers, and book chapters; been an inventor on 11 patents; co-edited four books, and been a co-founder of four software companies.

Many people today are worried that artificially intelligent computers will take away all our jobs or take over the world. But a much more likely possibility is that people and computers will work together in superminds to do many things that were never possible before. This talk will describe some of the most important kinds of superminds (including hierarchies, markets, democracies, and communities) and speculate about how computers may shape the future of these superminds—for good or ill.

The Human-Computer Superminds in our Future

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Chief Future Officer, Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning at Salesforce

Peter Schwartz

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Peter Schwartz is an internationally renowned futurist and business strategist, specializing in scenario planning and working with corporations, governments, and institutions to create alternative perspectives of the future and develop robust strategies for a changing and uncertain world. As Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning for Salesforce, he manages the organization’s ongoing strategic conversation. Peter leads the Salesforce Futures LAB – a collaboration between strategic thinkers at Salesforce and its customers around provocative ideas on the future of business. Prior to joining Salesforce, Peter was co-founder and chairman of Global Business Network. He is the author of several works. His first book, The Art of the Long View, is considered a seminal publication on scenario planning. Peter has also served as a script consultant on the films The Minority Report, Deep Impact, Sneakers, and War Games. He received a B.S. in aeronautical engineering and astronautics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

We created the film Minority Report twenty years ago and that vision has now become a reality. I will address what lies beyond Minority Report. How will the major advances in science and technology (e.g. CRISPR, AI, gravity waves, hypersonic flight and weapons, and more), the growing impact of climate change, decelerating population growth and new social realities (gender rights, the i-generation, social polarization and more) intersect in the radically new geo-political/geo-economic landscape? Among the impacts that I will address are the future of work and jobs, and the wild frontier of cybersecurity.

Beyond Minority Report

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