I am no meteorologist, but it is true that it is very hot here.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump arrived in Davos to address the assembly, and for more than 90 minutes his speech meandered through comments about the economy, Greenland, windmills, Switzerland, Rolex, Venezuela and drug prices. It was a nasty conversation full of complaints, complaints and outright lies.
A small example: Trump made a big claim that China, despite being the world leader in manufacturing windmill components, doesn’t actually use them for energy production. indeed it is world leader in generationToo.
I did not get to see this spectacle from the room itself. Sad!
By the time I reached the Congress Hall, where the address was being held, there was already a huge crowd of people waiting to get inside.
I recently finished moderating a panel on “intelligent co-workers,” aka: AI agents in the workplace. I was really excited for this because the speakers represented a diverse cross-section of the AI ecosystem. BCG CEO Christoph Schweizer had a macro strategic vision; HP CEO Enrique Lores spoke to both hardware and large enterprises, Workera CEO Kian Katanforosh gave an inside perspective on workforce training and transformation, Hippocratic AI CEO Manjul Shah addressed working in the high-risk sector of healthcare, and Amini AI CEO Kate Cullot gave perspective on the Global South and Africa specifically.
Interestingly, most of the panel shied away from using the term co-worker, and some even rejected the term agent. But the scene he painted was definitely one of humans working with AI and enhancing what’s possible. For example, Shah talked about agents calling 16,000 people to conduct health and safety checks during the heat wave in Texas. This was a great discussion. You can watch the whole thing here.
But by the time it came out, the pressure of people outside the Congress Hall had increased so much that I could not go inside. In fact I couldn’t even get into the nearby overflow room. I made it to the third overflow room, but getting into it meant walking through a group of people packed so tightly together that it reminded me of being at a turnstile concert.
