Fourth Industrial Revolution: It's all about impact

World Economic Forum Technology Governance Network expands to more than 100 organizations, five G7 Nations.
They will help design human-centred policies for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution is moving faster than anyone expected,” said Murat Sönmez, Managing Director and Head of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network.
“Businesses and governments are falling behind in responding to this pace, continuously operating in the ‘too late zone’. As the platform for global technology policy the Centre Network aims to accelerate the creation and implementation of forward-looking governance protocols.
“The addition of Affiliate Centres is critical in capturing this opportunity so that the Fourth Industrial Revolution benefits not just the few but society as a whole.”

Focused on impact

Over the past year, the Network helped Rwanda write the world’s first agile drone regulation and is scaling it across Africa and Asia, developed actionable governance toolkits for corporate executives on blockchain, co-designed the first-ever Industrial IoT (IIoT) Safety and Security Protocol (with pilot implementation by a leading global insurance company being announced this week), and created a personal data policy framework with the UAE for governments looking to balance the risks and opportunities of emerging technologies.
At this year’s Annual Meeting, a new global initiative focused on accelerating the responsible and sustainable development of smart cities was launched. This work will be based in Japan, where more than 90% of the population currently lives in cities.
Leveraging Japan’s role as chair of the G20 Summit this year, a coalition of G20 cities will be formed to help ensure that global smart city efforts are built upon a common set of human-centred principles and shared policy frameworks.
This week, Centre teams will be previewing new policies to help corporate boards steward the responsible adoption of AI by their companies and new blueprints to ensure that internet-of-things devices are deployed effectively and responsibly.
Over the next months, teams will be launching

  • a policy playbook to ensure safe, equitable, efficient and sustainable adoption of autonomous vehicles;
  • a governance framework to balance anonymity and transparency on blockchains that will be piloted this year by the Government of Colombia;
  • a data-sharing platform in India that enables precision agriculture while protecting privacy, which can be scaled up globally;
  • guidelines for government use of AI that will be piloted by the United Kingdom and numerous other governments;
  • Precision Medicine Readiness Principles that can be used by policy-makers in low-resource contexts beginning with partners in Africa;
  • and a governance framework to unlock cross-border access to health data for precision medicine that will be piloted by institutions in Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The best maritime news and insights delivered to you.

subscribe maritime fairtrade

Here's what you can expect from us:

  • Event offers and discounts
  • News & key insights of the maritime industry
  • Expert analysis and opinions on corruption and more