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Opening Plenary OEB Global 2018
Date Thursday, Dec 6 Time – RoomPotsdam I and III
Technology is changing society. The way we live and the jobs we do will never be the same again. In twenty years, the world of work will be unlike anything we have ever known. The development of artificial intelligence will allow machines to replace workers in many industries on an unprecedented scale. Humankind will face some fundamental, existential questions. Why are we here? What are we doing? How are we different from the machines?
Education will shape our response to the immense challenge of this new age. But education and training will have to change too. So will the nature of employment. Learning will no longer be a brief phase in life. It will become a central part of our existence. In an era of constant and increasing change, we will discover a new appreciation of learning and an understanding of its place in the future. We will learn to love learning.
Anita Schjøll Brede
Co-founder of Iris.ai and Faculty at SingularityU Nordic, Co-founder of Iris.ai and Faculty at SingularityU Nordic, Norway
"Can Machines Love?" and Other Musings on Being Human in the Age of Machine Intelligence
Anita is the CEO and Co-Founder of Iris.ai; one of the 10 most innovative artificial intelligence startups in 2017 according to Fast Company. Iris.ai is an AI Science assistant, able to read, digest and connect scientific knowledge, that will grow up to be the world’s first AI Researcher within a decade.
Set out to democratize access to science, Iris.ai can reduce R&D departments’ time to map out existing research by 95% and remove current requirements of having deep domain expertise involved in the process, thus allowing more people to solve more difficult problems.
Anita is a highly sought after public speaker, voted one of the Nordic’s most inspiring women in tech, twice TEDx speaker and 500 startups, SU Global Grand Challenges Awards and TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield alumni. Anita is also the first Norwegian to attend Singularity University’s Global Solution Program in 2015 – and she put on the first Global Impact Challenge Norway in 2016.
Anita has never had what she refers to as “a real job” and Iris.ai is her fourth own startup. The past 10 years of her career have spanned over 9 industries including developing an e-learning tool in Silicon Valley, performing theatre for babies, reducing energy consumption in the process industry through heat exchanger network optimization, getting 30 (mainly middle-age, male) engineers to dance to ABBA in front of their co-workers, facilitating solar light business creation in Kenya, being in the centre of several startups crashing and burning, organizing entrepreneurial conferences and trying to disrupt the recruitment industry. She also dropped by 6 universities on the way. And built a race car.
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Bryan Caplan
Professor of Economics, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, EconLog Blogger and Author, USA
Locked-In: Why Fixing Education Is So Hard
I'm Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and blogger for EconLog. I am the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, named "the best political book of the year" by the New York Times, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, and The Case Against Education. I am currently colloborating with Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s Zach Weinersmith on All Roads Lead to Open Borders, a non-fiction graphic novel on the philosophy and social science of immigration, and writing a new book, Poverty: Who To Blame. I've published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, and appeared on ABC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. An openly nerdy man who loves role-playing games and graphic novels, I live in Oakton, Virginia, with my wife and four kids.
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Geoff Mulgan
Chief Executive Officer, Chief Executive of NESTA and Author, UK
Acting Now to Prepare for the World and Jobs of Tomorrow
Geoff Mulgan has been Chief Executive of Nesta since 2011. Nesta is the UK's innovation foundation and runs a wide range of activities in investment, practical innovation and research. Under his leadership it moved out of the public sector to become an independent foundation; greatly expanded its work, partly through creating new units, centres and funds in fields ranging from evidence and impact investment to challenge prizes and skills; and complemented its work in the UK with work in dozens of countries around the world.
Between 1997 and 2004 Geoff had various roles in the UK government including director of the Government's Strategy Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister's office. From 2004 to 2011 Geoff was the first Chief Executive of The Young Foundation. He was the first director of the think-tank Demos; Chief Adviser to Gordon Brown MP and reporter on BBC TV and radio. He has been a visiting professor at LSE, UCL and Melbourne University and is currently a senior visiting scholar at Harvard University. He has helped set up many organisations including Demos and the Young Foundation as well as the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX), Uprising, Studio Schools Trust and Action for Happiness.
Geoff co-chaIrs a World Economic Forum group looking at innovation and entrepreneurship in the fourth industrial revolution. He has advised many governments around the world and is currently chair of an international advisory committee for the Mayor of Seoul and a member of advisory committees for the Prime Minister’s office in the UAE, the Scottish Government and SITRA, the Finnish Innovation agency.
Past books include ‘The Art of Public Strategy’ (Oxford University Press), Good and Bad Power (Penguin) and ‘The Locust and the Bee’ (Princeton University Press). His most recent book is ‘Big Mind: how collective intelligence can change our world’ published by Princeton University Press. His books have been translated into many languages. Geoff has also given TED talks on topics including the future economy, happiness and education.
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Moderator
Donald H. Taylor
Chairman, Chair, Learning Technologies Conference, UK
Donald H Taylor is a 25 year veteran of the learning, skills and human capital industries, with experience at every level from design and delivery to chairman of the board. He has been chairman of the Learning and Performance Institute since 2010.
A recognised commentator and organiser in the fields of workplace learning and learning technologies, Donald is passionately committed to helping develop the learning and development profession.
His background ranges from training delivery to director and vice-president positions in software companies. Donald has been a company director and shareholder for three companies through start up, growth and acquisition.
He is an influential writer and speaker in the fields of the professional development of L&D and of technology-supported learning. He was the 2007 recipient of the Colin Corder award for services to training and has chaired the Learning Technologies Conference since 2000. He also chairs the Learning and Skills Group, hosting its bi-weekly webinar programme, and edits Inside Learning Technologies Magazine. He is a graduate of Oxford University and in 2016 was awarded an honorary doctorate by Middlesex University in recognition of his work developing the L&D profession.