My top takeaways on AI from Davos

AI was front and center at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. Here are my top takeaways from the event.

My top takeaways on AI from Davos

5 min read
  • AI was one of the main topics at Davos, with major questions emerging about its development and best use cases for helping humanity, not harming it.
  • AI has immense potential to augment the HR professional’s work, with even more advanced versions like AGI able to do more functions.
  • The call for responsible approaches to AI echoed throughout the conference.

Last week, I had the good fortune to attend the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. A who’s who of global leaders gathering under the event theme of “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,” AI took center stage as one of the most important topics impacting life as we know it today.

As I watched sessions and talked with many of the world’s leading minds in AI and human capital, some common themes emerged. There were plenty of healthy debates about the pros and cons of AI’s rapid development and potential use cases that left an undeniable impression on me. We are truly at the crossroads of something great that could help us, but only if we use it responsibly.

From my leadership perspective in AI and HR, here are my key takeaways from Davos. These are the pressing issues that I will continue to think about this year, especially AI’s impact on the future of work.

One thing is certain: We’ve only just begun to realize its full capabilities and power to advance what people can do. 

What the future of AI, including Agentic AI and GenAI, looks like

GenAI is no longer a novelty—it’s part of everyday life. 

During a discussion, OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil shared that platforms like ChatGPT now serve 300 million weekly users, with 3 million developers actively building tools and applications around it.

As GenAI becomes a cornerstone of our personal and professional lives, it is more critical to learn to integrate it effectively. Weil envisions a future where advanced AI tools are just a tap away, embedded in smartphones and ready to streamline daily tasks like filling out forms for your child’s sports league.

On the business side, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar highlighted how GenAI is already transforming industries. 

In wealth management, for instance, AI bots would enhance client meetings by listening in and providing real-time, personalized recommendations, eliminating the need for follow-up meetings and saving valuable time. 

Friar also pointed to GenAI’s growing role in education, citing OpenAI’s partnership with Oxford University as an example of how AI is enriching learning environments.

As AI evolves, it will also draw on regulatory frameworks from industries like health care and law, ensuring ethical and compliant use. 

Looking ahead, experts predict that GenAI could surpass human capabilities in certain tasks by 2027—or perhaps even sooner—heralding a new era of innovation and efficiency.

Watch leaders in AI research and development discuss its advancement into artificial general intelligence, or AGI, in this session from WEF Annual Meeting in Davos.

How artificial general intelligence, or AGI, may impact the future

By now, we know there is no one type of AI. AI is a broader category with many different variations being developed to do many different things.

As AI advances, it is becoming more intuitive, and more intelligent models are emerging. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is one of the newest categories that is pushing the boundaries and has the potential to learn or understand anything a person can do. 

And while AGI has the potential to do incredible things, as this panel debated, if not properly developed, it has the potential to be misused.

In this session, the panelists outlined use cases of what’s already happening, like using AI to build semiconductors, to potential uses that can benefit humanity, like creating climate models to help us fight natural disasters. 

For those pro-acceleration, they see it as a tool that will only advance what people can do, with developers course-correcting AI when it veers into poor, or even dangerous, territory. 

“When people talk about AI being dangerous, I think it sounds a lot like talking about your laptop computer being dangerous,” said panelist Andrew Ng, Executive Chairman, LandingAI. “Absolutely, your laptop can be dangerous because someone can use your laptop to do awful things, just like someone could use AI to do awful things.”

Serious concerns about rapid development of AI were addressed, including the impact of surpassing human intelligence, developing agency, and ensuring its safe and ethical use. But the overall consensus wasn’t that we should stop developing AI or AGI—it was that we must approach it with great care to ensure it becomes the helpful tool we need to solve today’s biggest problems.

“The more I learn about GenAI LLMs, the less I feel like I know it, because I start realizing the kind of things that I didn’t know about that I didn’t even know that I didn’t know about, “said Yejin Choi, Professor and Senior Fellow, Stanford University. “I think both possibilities do exist, but the important aspect of this is that we don’t know for sure which is true exactly, and we have to be prepared for this.”

As AGI advances, it will go from doing what we’ve trained it to do to understanding the world. Every version will be replaced with a more advanced version. The AI will only get smarter, more intuitive, and able to do more things that people do.

The larger question remains how we’ll work with it.

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The increased opportunity for critical thinkers and leadership 

Conversations around people’s roles with AI centered around the key skills everyone will need to develop to work with advancing technologies.

We’ve long touted skills as a way to determine who is best-suited for a job, project, or task. But with AI taking over more of the technical skills in day-to-day operations, it’s the truly human skills that are taking center stage.

“We need people who are agile, critical thinkers,” said Joe Ucuzoglu, Deloitte Global CEO. “It’s the leadership skills that are harder to develop than the technical know-how.” 

Ucuzoglu stressed that the top skills people need to develop are the ability to be agile and drive change. Generalists who are able to bridge the gap between what needs to be done for people and the people who are working on the technical side, like engineers.

McKinsey echoed this need for thoughtful and purposeful leadership as well. Many organizations still struggle with finding capable leadership, even in this age of better succession planning. For instance, the top skills for a CEO go beyond business acumen to include having inspiring energy and a mindset that is constantly learning and thinking long-term. This evolving list of skills is making it even more difficult to find great leaders in this age of AI.

What I left Davos with was this: No matter who you are or your role, there is no more urgent time than now to learn as much as you can about what AI can do for your career growth and your business. Without it, you risk being left behind. And that’s something no working professional—or business—can risk today.

Chano Fernandez is the Co-CEO of Eightfold AI. 

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