Juno News - January 18, 2024What’s being discussed at the World Economic Forum？
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Summary
In this episode of The Andrey Lawton Show, I'm joined in Davos by my producer and videographer Seanan who makes a rare audio cameo on the program, and also by True North journalist and editor Cosman Gerja, who is with me in studio.
Transcript
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i wanted to give you a bit of a scene setter for what you can expect this week i i'm joined
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in davos by my producer and videographer sean who you can't see but i understand you heard a few
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moments ago he made a rare audio cameo on the program and also by true north journalist and
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editor cosman gerja who is with me i was gonna say in studio he's joining me in my hotel room
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which is not nearly as salacious as it sounds i i promise you uh cosman good to have you uh joining
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us in in davos here let me just ask you because you're a first timer at this you've not seen this
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uh conference in action before what is what have your early impressions been here i think the uh
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most extraordinary impression i've had is the fact that life goes on in davos i mean driving through
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the city you see you know school children returning home uh you see people walking around biking etc
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while at the same time all of these global elites descend on this place to set the global agenda
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so it's a really interesting juxtaposition that happens where you see ordinary people going about
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their everyday lives yet there are consequential decisions being made at this conference yeah and
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i think that it's interesting because you're right in some ways like there are still locals here
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but it's also weird and i've talked about this in the past that like all of these stores that exist
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every other week of the year are just completely gone and when you walk down the main drag it's like
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you know the india pavilion and the second india pavilion and the third india pavilion and so it's like
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i remember the first time i i came i was looking on google maps ahead of time and saying oh that might
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be a good restaurant to check out and then you get there it's like oh the restaurants just picked up
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and left town because the world economic forum is here so i the theme this year is rebuilding trust
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they they've got you know some heavy hitters on the lineup there's the the premier of china lee chung
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there's uh javier malay who's the president of argentina who interestingly has been here before as an
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economist uh emmanuel macron no one officially from canada as far as the canadian
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government is on the speakers list now whether they'll they'll make appearances i i don't know
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but what is it you're looking out for this week i think the uh issue of trust kind of like underwrites
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everything that's happening here and uh true north has reported on their global risk report which the
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world economic forum releases every single year and the number one issue that they chose in the short
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term for 2024 was misinformation and disinformation and i'm interested to see what some of the speakers
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will say uh are the solutions to these proposed problems how do we deal with what they call
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misinformation or disinformation and the consequences which i think they think is the declining trust in
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institutions that they're a part of so solutions might what they might look like uh i i expect some
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bizarre and heavy-handed uh propositions being made the other major thing is uh ai seems to be
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everywhere at this conference this year there are a bunch of different pavilions and we are having uh we are
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going to see the uh ceo of open ai samuel altman showing up and and discussing giving a panel and uh
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so i i'd like to see what he has to say yeah and i actually have a clip that i'll share a little bit
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later on in the show of klaus schwab like six years ago or seven years ago talking about ai and and it is
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interesting to see i mean it's one of those things where we don't quite have an answer in society to how we
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deal with this and and so i i'm very i'll say nervous about how politicians who don't really
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know much about the issue are going to come away from this conference where they are talking about
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it a lot uh thinking like it's it's just you know some know nothing politician who's here like i i
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ran into earlier chris coons who's a senator in delaware i presume this guy who's like you know 70
0.98
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has nothing to do with ai doesn't know anything about it but he's the type of guy who could like be in
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some panel and they all say this is something's a good idea and he brings it back to washington
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says you know what we ought to do so i i'm nervous about that and so in the case of sam altman you
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know maybe he can you know bring bring something relatively sensible to the discussion there also
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has just been this massive massive number of sessions i saw on the agenda devoted to climate
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change and like every possible angle imaginable there's like you know how to transition away from
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fossil fuels how to transition to renewables how to accelerate the transition net zero net zero net like
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they're doing it's like the same discussion like 20 different times and we even saw a little bit
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of that walking around today on the streets like there was the one we were going to go into the
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climate hub but the climate hub had opened uh until tomorrow so we'll we'll give you a fair report
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on the climate hub on tomorrow's show but that seems to be a really pervasive theme here as well
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yeah no climate seems to be top of mind still but it's not the theme of the conference that
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seems to have changed uh to an entirely different issue and while i i think you know we we came here
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on the day where protests were happening and all of these left-wing protesters were pressuring
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the global elites to take more action uh calling them hip hypocrites etc and if you're here
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one of the things that you see is like the helicopters flying by uh we we we know that there are private
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jet terminals you know when i arrived here at the airport there were designated world economic forum
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areas waiting for these global people to come so they're all flying in and the hypocrisy is mounting
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and i do think that uh they're aware of it to some degree right and it it'll be interesting to see
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how long that continues how long they will keep pushing this climate issue when it's apparent to
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everybody that they are not really part of the solution right yeah and just i mean as a as a an
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illustration of this we were trying to find there's like all of the you know they they take the private
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jets in and then when they get to the private jet terminal they transfer from a private jet to a
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helicopter and then they take the helicopter to davos and then they get from the helicopter to a
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limo and the limo takes them to their hotel it's a it's a really sustainable way of doing these but
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we were trying to find the heliport and the reason we couldn't find it on on a map when we
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were looking is because it does it's not actually a heliport the rest of the year it's a farmer's
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field so it's like what better illustration of the world economic forums approach which is to just
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like cover up the farmer's field with helicopters for all of the uh the jet-setting elites all right
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right well we are looking forward to seeing what you do the rest of the week cosmon uh it is great
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to talk to you and great to have you here at all as well thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show
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