Empowering People with Digital Public Infrastructure

Summary

This panel discussion focused on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and its impact on people globally. The panelists explored the definition and components of DPI, including connectivity, unified payment structures, and digital identity. They highlighted successful implementations like India’s Aadhaar system and the UAE Pass, emphasizing the importance of interoperability and open-source access.

The conversation delved into the role of AI in DPI, with experts stressing the need for sustainable and inclusive scaling. Power consumption emerged as a significant challenge in AI implementation, prompting discussions on alternative energy sources and efficient computing. The panel also addressed the broader definition of infrastructure, encompassing physical elements like transportation and energy alongside digital components.

Panelists emphasized the importance of public-private partnerships in developing DPI and the need for proper governance structures. They discussed the potential benefits of DPI, such as improved access to services and economic opportunities, while also acknowledging concerns about privacy, security, and potential misuse.

The discussion touched on the challenges of cross-border data flow, dispute resolution, and the need for standardized interfaces in an increasingly AI-driven world. Panelists stressed the importance of user awareness and protection in the digital sphere, as well as the role of governments and companies in safeguarding individuals.

The session concluded with a reflection on the need to consider underrepresented communities in DPI development and the importance of learning from diverse global experiences to create more inclusive and effective digital infrastructure.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Defining digital public infrastructure (DPI) and its key components like connectivity, payments, and digital identity

– The role of AI in DPI and challenges around power/energy requirements for AI infrastructure

– Examples of successful and problematic DPI implementations around the world

– Balancing convenience, security, and privacy concerns with DPI systems

– Ensuring DPI is inclusive and represents underserved communities

Overall purpose:

The goal of the discussion was to explore the current state and future potential of digital public infrastructure, including its benefits, challenges, and implications for society. The panel aimed to highlight both opportunities and risks as DPI becomes more widespread globally.

Tone:

The overall tone was informative and thoughtful, with panelists offering nuanced perspectives on a complex topic. There was a sense of cautious optimism about DPI’s potential, balanced with acknowledgment of significant challenges. The tone became slightly more urgent when discussing risks and the need for responsible development, but remained constructive throughout.

Speakers

– Brendan Vaughan: Editor-in-chief of Fast Company

– Rene Saul: Co-founder and CEO of Capital, a Latin American bank for small and medium-sized enterprises

– Pervinder Johar: CEO of Avathon, an AI platform with a focus on industrial AI and infrastructure

– Hoda Al Khzaimi: Vice Provost for Research Transformation and Entrepreneurship at NYU Abu Dhabi, Research Assistant Professor

– Rodrigo Liang: Co-founder and CEO of Samba Nova, an AI for enterprise scale company

Additional speakers:

– Helena Laurent: Representative from Consumers International

– Christian: Scientist in Davos

Digital Public Infrastructure: Opportunities and Challenges in a Connected World

This panel discussion, featuring experts from various fields, explored the concept of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and its global impact. The conversation delved into the definition, components, benefits, and challenges of DPI implementation, as well as its future directions.

Definition and Scope of DPI

The panelists began by addressing the definition and scope of DPI. Hoda Al Khzaimi, Vice Provost for Research Transformation and Entrepreneurship at NYU Abu Dhabi, emphasized that DPI provides seamless government services to citizens, particularly in the context of smart cities and the internet era. She highlighted successful implementations like India’s Aadhaar system and the UAE Pass.

Parvinder Johar, CEO of Avathon, broadened this definition by arguing that DPI encompasses physical infrastructure beyond just digital services. He emphasized the importance of industrial AI and its application to physical infrastructure, introducing an important dimension to the discussion and highlighting the need to consider both digital and physical components when developing DPI.

The panelists generally agreed that DPI includes key components such as connectivity, unified payment structures, and digital identity. They stressed the importance of interoperability and open-source access in DPI systems.

Benefits and Potential of DPI

The discussion highlighted several potential benefits of DPI:

1. Improved access to services: Hoda Al Khzaimi argued that DPI can reduce inequalities in access to services globally, citing examples such as improved health insurance coverage in India.

2. Economic growth and efficiency: Rene Saul, Co-founder and CEO of Capital, noted that DPI facilitates cross-border travel and economic growth. He provided examples of successful implementations, such as Mexico’s digital passport, which significantly improved border crossing efficiency.

3. Global collaboration: Rodrigo Liang, Co-founder and CEO of Samba Nova, pointed out that DPI enables global collaboration on issues like healthcare.

4. Fraud reduction: Rene Saul highlighted DPI’s potential to reduce fraud in various sectors.

The panelists expressed cautious optimism about DPI’s potential to transform service delivery and create new economic opportunities.

Challenges in Implementing DPI

Despite the potential benefits, the discussion also highlighted significant challenges in implementing DPI:

1. Power and energy requirements: Rodrigo Liang emphasized that the primary challenge in scaling artificial intelligence and DPI is power consumption. He stated, “We’re out of power today, and the AI journey has only started.”

2. Infrastructure integration: Parvinder Johar highlighted the need to integrate aging physical infrastructure with new digital systems.

3. Security and privacy concerns: Rene Saul stressed the importance of balancing convenience with security and privacy considerations in DPI systems.

4. Cybersecurity threats: The panelists acknowledged the increased risk of cybersecurity threats and scams enabled by digital infrastructure.

5. User education: Hoda Al Khzaimi emphasized the need to educate users on protecting themselves in the digital sphere.

6. Dispute resolution: The panel discussed challenges in resolving disputes in cross-border digital transactions.

7. Potential misuse: Hoda Al Khzaimi raised concerns about the potential misuse of DPI for surveillance or societal ranking.

Future Directions for DPI

The discussion concluded with reflections on future directions for DPI development:

1. AI integration: Rodrigo Liang suggested integrating AI capabilities into DPI while maintaining data privacy.

2. Interoperability: Hoda Al Khzaimi stressed the importance of developing interoperable systems across countries.

3. Infrastructure development: Parvinder Johar highlighted the need to address power and infrastructure needs, particularly in developing regions.

4. Inclusivity: Brendan Vaughan, Editor-in-chief of Fast Company, emphasized the importance of ensuring DPI represents underserved communities.

5. Lightweight deployment: Hoda Al Khzaimi discussed the need for lightweight deployment and development of semiconductor structures to address energy concerns.

6. Private-public partnerships: The panel highlighted the role of collaboration between private and public sectors in developing DPI.

7. Africa’s digitalization: The discussion briefly touched on Africa being the fastest continent moving towards digitalization.

Unresolved Issues and Future Considerations

The discussion raised several unresolved issues that warrant further exploration:

1. Ensuring DPI systems are built on data that represents currently underserved communities, including data that isn’t yet digitized.

2. Developing specific measures to protect individual privacy and data sovereignty as AI agents increasingly interact on behalf of humans.

3. Balancing the convenience of digital services with growing cybersecurity threats and scams.

4. Evolving identity verification systems, as illustrated by Parvinder Johar’s personal example of obtaining a birth certificate in India.

The panelists suggested potential compromises, such as developing lightweight and efficient semiconductor technologies to address power constraints, creating open marketplaces for DPI data to allow user input on services, and sharing DPI resources and best practices across countries to enable wider adoption.

Conclusion

The discussion on Digital Public Infrastructure revealed a complex landscape of opportunities and challenges. While there was general agreement on the potential of DPI to improve service delivery, enable economic growth, and facilitate global collaboration, the panelists also highlighted significant hurdles in implementation, particularly regarding power consumption, infrastructure integration, and security concerns.

The conversation emphasized the need for a holistic approach to DPI development, considering both digital and physical infrastructure components. As DPI continues to evolve, addressing issues of inclusivity, sustainability, and cross-border cooperation will be crucial to realizing its full potential and ensuring its benefits reach all segments of society.

Brendan Vaughan: Welcome. My name is Brendan Vaughn. I am the editor-in-chief of Fast Company. Fast Company, for those of you who don’t know, is an American business publication that covers innovation. Welcome to Empowering People with Digital Public Infrastructure, emphasis on people. We are going to get into this very fascinating and complicated and important subject with our panelists here today. If you share on social about this, please remember to use the hashtag WEF25. So digital public infrastructure, it’s not a new concept at all. It’s been around for a long time. It feels new right now because we are at such a crucial moment in making sure that it is done right. A lot can go right. A lot can go wrong. We’re going to get into all that today. I want to introduce my panelists. To my left is Hoda Alkhaimi. She is the vice provo for research transformation and entrepreneurship at NYU Abu Dhabi, as well as a research assistant professor there. To her left is Rodrigo Lange. Rodrigo is the co-founder and CEO of Samba Nova, the AI for enterprise scale company, with an emphasis on democratizing access to AI at enterprise scale. To his left, Rene Sall. Rene is the co-founder and CEO of Capital, a Latin American bank for small and medium-sized enterprises. And finally, Parvinder Johar, CEO of Avathon, an AI platform with a focus on industrial AI and infrastructure. I’m going to start with Hoda. Let’s start with the basics. When we say digital public infrastructure, DPI, what do we mean and how does DPI impact people specifically?

Hoda Al Khzaimi: Great question, I think, Brendan. When we talk about DPI, it’s the intersectionality between what’s happening today and introducing government technologies. I’m sure you all realize that there is a huge kind of interest that maps of investment of over three to four trillion USDs into creating a new sector, a new niche out there around government technologies. And digital public infrastructures came into manifestation because governments want to make sure that they provide seamless services in the rise of smart cities, in the rise of the Internet. And it is actually a stack of services that can be provided to the public and to citizens that would hopefully give them access to health care, give them access to financial services, and as well to governmental services across the board. When we see the current implementation, and if I ask the audience how many implementations of digital public infrastructures do you think do exist out there, I’m sure you would have one or two or three examples available. But in reality, according to UNDP, we have around 200 countries trying to build their digital infrastructure to provide for these kinds of digital services for their citizens. The stack normally requires a specific structure. So the first structure, we start by having connectivity and access to Internet. We know that we globally, we have around 40% of the population of the globe disconnected. So it’s a great nudge for countries to make sure that they provide connectivity for their citizens as well. And the second layer starts with unified payment structures, or making sure that their citizens actually are connected on financial platforms. And globally, we know that we have 1.7 billion people who do not exist within financial structures. Again, that’s a positive economic nudge for people and countries and government to bring in the unconnected on financial structures to the system. And there is a layer that exists around digital identity. And there is almost 1 billion people that don’t have digital identities or any form of identities in the world. So again, it’s a nudge to improve inclusivity on such economic structures and different economic structures. The expected return of investment on all of these kinds of different services that exist around DPI is not less than 3.2 trillion USDs. And the number of transactions that has been mapped across different systems, I think we have a very successful example on what India has tried to achieve in their Aadhaar system. And I think as well in what UAE achieved with their UAE Pass system, we have also positive examples that exist across Europe. And those examples are quite important because it’s not just about a country building the stack of the digital public infrastructure, but also providing for an open source access for other countries to be able to replicate these services, to be able to as well provide for their citizens. And we’ve seen positive example where India, for example, provided open access for the stack to countries in Africa like Rwanda and Philippines and Vietnam and other parts of the world. And we’ve seen as well governmental exchange program that exists between UAE and different governments around the world that also encourage a nudge collective development of DPI infrastructure across the map. So the optimal, I think, application of DPI infrastructure is the ability to intertwine all of this frontier technologies that are existing within digital service infrastructure and provide them for their own citizens.

Brendan Vaughan: Thank you. Yeah, so before we go any further, so interoperability, payments, digital identification, these are all the sort of pillars of DPI and the important things that need to get right worldwide, not just in certain places. Before we go any further, I thought it might be helpful for us to identify one example of, because I said at the beginning, this concept has been around for a long time, one example of good DPI when something went well and one example of where we’d like to avoid this kind of thing. And I’ll just put it out to the rest of the panel and see who’d like to

Rene Saul: bite on that. Well, hi everybody. My name is Rene. Thanks for the invitation and a pleasure being here with you guys. I said I’ve seen that, for example, I’m going to talk about a personal experience that I would like to share. Mexico has the digital passport, right? Usually when you get to the borders, you see like if you have a treaty and you get in this line and you don’t have a treaty, you get in this line, especially in the European Union, right? When I was arriving this time, I now have my digital passport, which is what that law, that passport was created by our Secretary of Economy now, and he was the Foreign Affairs Minister and he implemented this. I arrived to Europe for the first time and I saw the sign with other three countries that had electronic passport. So I saved 35 minutes just to enter Europe when it took me one hour. So that’s one of good examples on that. And another good example of this technology is it opened our borders. You can open the borders easily because you can track it better. And if you open the borders, you know, in a correct way with DPI, that increase the economy. It comes money to each country. So I do believe that these things, they cannot see it not as like a crucial thing, but for economies, it’s very, very important, the DPI. Those are two good examples that I will like to mention on the cross-border options, because of course, I see

Rodrigo Liang: DPI in three verticals, the economic one, the social one, and the cross-border one, which I gave these two examples. Yeah. Maybe I’ll add a summit over where American AI chip company focused on making artificial intelligence computing access a lot more available to a broader community. And so one of the things we think about is how do we actually involve a global scale on issues that are of global interest? And so in the US government, you know, as you know, the national labs do a lot of work around science and healthcare and things like that. And the level of global sharing, if you create an infrastructure that allows you to actually exchange ideas, exchange knowledge, exchange models, when it comes to things that we’re modeling in the realm of healthcare and science, you actually get a lot of collaboration across the planet. And these are issues that we saw very first, front and center when COVID was coming. And you looked at how we are all globally trying to understand kind of what was happening, modeling, well, that was just the spread of COVID versus kind of the structures. around the biology itself and how do we actually go and create the right vaccines. I think you saw a lot of global collaboration all enabled by the fact that you have standards across borders that allows you to actually do that knowledge exchange and build on each other’s understanding. And so we’re a part of that, very proudly part of that in the United States. And we think that we need to continue to do that because I think these are things that will affect us all. And you find ways to share that.

Brendan Vaughan: It’s really, really important. And I totally agree. Yeah, so I would add to that email. Pretty good DPI, email protocol. In the US, not so good. Walking away from net neutrality. The rest of the world, we didn’t do that. Not so good, I would say. Let me stay with you, Rodrigo. Let’s talk about AI. We have to, right? How will AI represent a core component of global DPI in the future and how do we ensure that it is scaled sustainably and inclusively? The high implementation costs could challenge resource-constrained countries, to name just one example. Yeah, I mean, I think, look, our companies focus on core infrastructure, right?

Rodrigo Liang: And so to the extent that we look at the planet today as an internet well-connected planet, and we talked about even now, still millions of people are not connected, I think artificial intelligence is gonna follow a similar track. My belief is AI should be accessible to everybody on this planet. It’s something that’s gonna touch all of us all the time. Right, and so you need to figure out kind of what is the infrastructure required in order for you to make that accessible. And so today, we already see that this technology in terms of building models, building models that are regionalized, building models that actually serve things of our local community, those are all tied to infrastructure that are available in that community, whether that’s data centers, whether that’s semiconductors, whether that’s power energy and power sources to power those things. These are all things that we have to think about. Now, in some places, we’re based in Palo Alto, in some places, you do have expertise, you have technology, you have chips, you have data centers, you have power sources in order to be able to actually support all the infrastructure required to train models, to inference models, to create use cases, to actually make it accessible, to do kind of the facial recognition for seamless access into countries, all of that. And yet, what happens to places where you don’t have those resources? So we’re very focused on making sure that at an infrastructure level, we make it so that you can actually make the capabilities available across the planet, because that’s gonna be really important. And here, I’ll say this, probably the number one challenge that we all have when we’re scaling artificial intelligence from here on out is all going to be about power. Yeah, it’s going to be about power. We’re out of power today, and the AI journey has only started, right? And so you see this fervor in even this conference this week, you see all this fervor around, how do I build data centers? How do I find energy? How do I figure out more efficient sources of energy? How to cool it? All of these things are tied to this clear, very clear outlook that we’re out of power, right? And we’ve got to find ways to be more efficient. And some of our little piece of that is, let’s start by just using less. Can we achieve the capabilities? Can we achieve the compute needs by just using less? Because that will buy us time. That will buy us time to figure out the longer term infrastructure needs around energy cooling, all of the things that we talked about this week. But we do need to be thinking holistically about how to actually do this at scale,

Brendan Vaughan: because we’re gonna be on this journey for the next two decades. Yeah, I mean, I’ve heard this week a fair bit about nuclear being an option for power. That is not something that is equally distributed around the world, certainly. So let’s talk about that for a minute. How do you all see, Hoda, maybe I’ll go with you here. How do you see this question of where this power is gonna come from and how that will affect DPI moving forward? I think there is definitely a constant evolution of how we generate energy and what are the solutions that are available in different markets.

Hoda Al Khzaimi: It’s hard to say that it would be only nuclear because we see people are as well trying to develop this new green technologies infrastructure. We see cloud infrastructures, like for example, in Dubai I’ve seen one of the largest cloud solar systems that are developed to support energy generation for cloud infrastructures in Dubai. But also you go around the world and you see proposals around connecting nuclear to cloud structures, but at the same time, is this gonna be doable? Because yesterday we’ve heard the President Trump talking about the fact that there is a proposal to phase out nuclear and maybe use more of coal structures around it. So I think we live definitely in a fragmented energy markets. We definitely need to innovate around how we are powering up our frontier technologies. Are we doing our due diligence? I don’t think so, because the way we are generating even semiconductors and chips are not ideal and lightweight. We have to think of lightweight deployment and lightweight development of the different kind of semiconductor structures that should exist that will maybe will utilize lower footprint of energy and maybe think of alternative power sources than the current one, than lithium or whatever it is, sources that are light, I’ve heard, and we also work with scientists who work on sodium-based reactors and their work as well on phosphorus-based reactors. Yes, they don’t scale up into high clouds yet, but they also have a smaller footprint in terms of physical structures and they can fit into different modalities. So I think there is a lot of experimentation to be made in order to make the technology ready for it to be at the hands of everyone around the world. But we should work today on sharing infrastructures and resources across the map. How can we build this localized hubs across the world so we can encourage computing power at the different hubs globally is a question that we should work with. I think the world at the moment was in a tension in between quantum computing structures that are centralized on the clouds and in between edge computing structures. And today, I would say in 2025, the percentage of devices that work on edge computing and fast edge computing structure are getting higher because definitely users, they want to have maybe 6,000 services at the tip of their fingers and they want to have a faster compute platforms on the go. And I think this would eventually get us to that kind of tipping point where we develop different cloud structures massively. But towards your question, the first question where you asked us about providing positive and negative DPI kind of examples. Yes, DPIs are being created to provide services and access of global citizens to hopefully remove and reduce inequalities of access to services globally. But at the same time, it could be a Swiss knife. It could be a double sword kind of infrastructure where you, at the moment where you do have existence of AI and we know that AI should not be used at mass services. So we need to be selective on where we use AI examples on a DPI infrastructure because you don’t want to subject the citizens for mass analytics if they don’t want to have this mass analytics infrastructure. If you apply DPI in Europe, for example, you do have to go by the GDPR law that also allows citizens not to be analyzed and have that kind of selectivity. So how can you go with that if you don’t want to analyze population data as you sometimes need to do that for health pandemic outbreaks? And how can you make sure that you don’t subject citizens to surveillance, you don’t subject citizens to societal kind of mistrust where you go into kind of ranking structures for societal services? So making sure that DPI infrastructures are equal and fair is also another component that we have to work towards and we have to engineer into the structure

Brendan Vaughan: of development that we have today. Absolutely. Parvinder, let’s go to you. Your company focuses on industrial AI. So talk to us a bit about what you’re seeing on the kind of vanguard here as far as what local governments, public institutions, how are these organizations using AI to improve their operations and how does that intersect with best practices when it comes to DPI?

Pervinder Johar: Absolutely. So I think our focus is on what we call the physical infrastructure of the world. So when we talk infrastructure these days, people think data centers. When we talk infrastructure, we think power, energy, transportation, so rails, ships, planes there, basic materials, which is mining, and then the safety for mining and others. So there’s been this notion of digital side of the infrastructure, but the reality is every human being on the world relies on the basic core infrastructure first, because without that there is no food, and there is no water. So I think when we think industrial AI, and what we are focused on is that. And there are three continuums of that infrastructure. First one is the infrastructure that we have created in the past. So I’ll give you an example, kind of planes. Couple of years back, or last year, you guys all saw the news probably that Air India bought planes from Delta. Delta does not manufacture planes. They were old planes for a developed economy in the U.S. that U.S. consumers do not want to take it. And for India, which is again kind of a big economy, for them there are newer planes. And if you go down, kind of the planes around the world, you go to African countries, and you go to kind of the very developing countries, these planes are even older. And people rely on kind of using those planes for flying. Same thing happens on locomotives. Same thing happens on cars. So many of the cars in developed countries, kind of we salvage them for parts, but many times they end up kind of in another part of the world. And then the core issue we have from public and people’s side of it, there is about $100 trillion worth of infrastructure which is aging. And no one, we talk about $3 trillion, $5 trillion, no one is talking about spending another $100 trillion for you to kind of go and improve the core infrastructure that we rely on. So what we focus on is that how do you go apply AI to make that safe? How do you maintain it? So a plane might be 40 years old. Even fighter jets on defense, so I think if you think of F-16s, it’s a 50-year platform. There’s a fifth-generation planes which have all the sensors and the AI in it, but there are still first-generation planes which kind of many of the people around the world kind of are using. If you think of energy, on energy there’s renewable energy, but there is also oil and gas. So our focus is, give you an example on kind of the liquid natural gas, we are applying AI for seismic exploration, because when you’re exploring to go, say, kind of even with the new administration, and we talk about drill, drill, first you have to know where to drill. And that where to drill means that it can take you, today it can take you two years just to figure out where to go and explore, whether it’s for any mineral, any material, because it’s in India, whether it’s in the US, anywhere else. So we are applying kind of seismic sound waves, or how do you go and kind of figure out that this is the right place for us to go drill, because if you make that mistake, that’s a costly mistake for kind of all people living in that area, that you just have done something. So that’s kind of current, so I break it up into three. So there’s $100 trillion of infrastructure that is aging, needs to work with DPI, we think of DPI only as payment. And I’m back to that DPI has to first include the core infrastructure we all rely on. Before we talk about that, how do we pay for it, we need to figure out how to go from point A to point B, which is transportation, or how do we get power, and how do we get water. Water is a big issue in the world today, and I think that’s kind of part of it too. Then you get into present, and present includes kind of whether it’s seismic exploration or smart cities, and so all of the work which is going on around the world, how do we keep our cities safe. So we have products around computer vision, or how do you go to a digital twin, kind of which is again all applications of AI. So even in Middle East, kind of there are new cities being built. Yes, they can be smart cities, but then how do you go back to live in San Francisco Bay Area, and we have parts of San Francisco Bay Area which are not that safe. In U.S., railroad crossings today, there are about five to six people who die every week. We don’t think of it, and this is the most developed country in there, and some of it is that kind of, and we have the technology now with the AI, to be able to monitor it, stop a car, kind of do all type of other things. If you take it back to kind of the other parts of the world in there, the numbers are even much, much more that we don’t look at it, so that’s kind of present, kind of how do we live, what are these smart cities. And then there’s a future where we’ve been working with Boeing as a joint venture on autonomous air traffic control systems, where if you think whether it’s three years from now or eight years from now in there, we will have autonomous flying and air taxis and others, and where are we going to find people who are going to do air traffic control systems? So when you think of that core, so the reason this session was interesting to me, that as we think of DPI’s current definition is so focused on the financial and digital identity part of it, but eventually over the next five to ten years, these two things will converge. You won’t need a digital identity by the time you have the facial recognition and other things built into your smart cities and other. School safety is a big, big issue, so we have deployed our industrial AI platform in Round Rock High School in Texas for children’s safety, which is again a core issue. So hopefully that gives you a perspective, it’s a slightly different perspective of what we mean by DPI. It’s a great, it’s fascinating.

Brendan Vaughan: It’s a great perspective because it does take the sort of traditional definition of this term and spins it forward to what it’s going to become so broad that, I don’t want to say it becomes meaningless, it doesn’t become meaningless, it’s very meaningful, but as everything becomes digitized and so many areas of life become private and public touch, and we need to make sure that private business in these public spheres is operating according to rules that we have agreed upon, it just gets incredibly complicated, enormously important. It can be as something as sort of seemingly simple as the real ID that I’m going to need in just a few months in the US to fly, or I have to remember to bring my passport even if I’m going to Cleveland from New York. So it’s that sort of simple, that’s a traditional way, but what you’re talking about is the new definition, so really, really fascinating. At this point, I would actually love to open it up to questions. Let me just comment real quick on what this is. What I’ve seen in this conversation is something very important.

Rene Saul: Everything is connected. This AI, energy, infrastructure, where are you going to put it, where are you going to, in the cloud, here, everywhere, and my point here is DPI is here to facilitate things. That’s the core of technology, simplifying, and this is very enriching and we’re going to take a lot of lessons, but the main point of the DPI is to simplify things, and that’s going to make a better world, period. Right. Question. I think we have a mic runner, yeah. Hi there.

Audience: Thank you so much. Helena Laurent from Consumers International. I’m really interested in two questions. First, what’s being done to measure the outcomes? We talk about all of the great work being done to think about access and make sure that’s fair and consent-based. What’s being done to make sure that when I get a digital ID, I get a digital payment, it actually improves my life? Because that’s the whole point of this. We see a lot of digital bank accounts, for example, being opened and then lying dormant because they don’t actually work and people aren’t helped through this journey properly. The second part is what’s being done to think about inter-country flow of data, especially things like when something goes wrong, and I believe in this bright new world and I buy from overseas, but it goes wrong, my ability to get redress and that across exchange and interoperability for me as a consumer, as a citizen. So is it going to work in practice in the way the bright new future is painted?

Hoda Al Khzaimi: Thank you. I think the magic of DPI infrastructure is that not only government can deploy and develop them, but also it’s a private-public partnership. We’ve seen examples clearly in Africa. There was one of these African banks working on green structures and building a green capital where they developed a trade platform. This trade platform supported, I think, merchants from across different African markets. So they used their own financial infrastructure that existed across African countries to build this one platform. So if you are like an SME that’s coming into trying to build this green market infrastructure and you want to know where is the best, cheapest rice commodity that you want to buy from African markets, then through this platform they made it easy for you to acquire that asset, to buy it, and to have a KYC infrastructure and have a payment as well infrastructure. The users on the platform are motivated to open a bank account because they didn’t have a bank account in the past and motivated as well not to just activate that bank account, but they’re not to engage into trade activities. So this is one of those examples. In India we’ve seen this kind of behavioral, I would say, economics services that has been introduced where the users were nudged to open bank accounts because they will have access to health insurance through their bank accounts. So they were motivated to keep the bank account, I would say, active and utilized and used because it would enable their access to health insurance services using maybe less than half a dollar to open the bank account, between one dollar to half a dollar to open the bank account. This makes this type of services extremely cheap and accessible to the public in a world that it was not accessible before. So I think the leverage that we have in between very resourceful individuals, which are the bank services sometimes, who comes with a strong, as well, I would say, compliance infrastructure normally. They’re heavily audited, they have high KYC infrastructure. KYC infrastructure helps us a lot in developing these digital services because if it’s only a digital provider developing for this, I’m sure certain kind of things will fall off the crack. We’ve seen, as well, tendencies of making financial acquisition of assets easier to the public. People who are coming, students right now, or waitresses in London can acquire an asset in Dubai through this kind of blockchain crowdfunding of units of real estate in Dubai. And this was not possible in the past. Without this kind of infrastructure, they can’t have that kind of investment structure possible. So I would say the compound effect of mature services and proper governance structures that exist across platform helps in this. I agree with you in terms of the dispute infrastructure. What if I was existing in a specific market and I have a dispute over a traditional digital service in another market? We still have a bit of a challenge in this because we need this kind of legal governance infrastructure across different commodity markets. In the EU, you do have this law that protects you and digital market access, I think, law, which makes things easier in terms of understanding disputes infrastructure. But also it makes your, sometimes it makes the access to service harder because we’ve seen it. Like AI was deployed across different consumer services in different countries, but it couldn’t access to the EU because the DMA had a stricter data regulation infrastructures and protection for users, which is correct, I would say. And it would also nudge, you know, industries across the globe who are developing these infrastructures to build for people, build for services, and not just build for profit. They have to think of user privacy. They have to think of the well-being of the citizens, not just for the profit. So it’s a good global collective for us because if they improve these devices for Europe, then they can improve it as well for the rest of the world. I think I was just going to add, I think this is going to be an ongoing challenge for all

Rodrigo Liang: of us. I think, yeah, with artificial intelligence, it’s only going to get more complex. And so I think we have to just be thoughtful about it. I mean, you know, I always go back to the first principles of the fact that individual data privacy security, I think that’s always going to be of paramount importance. I think nations are also going to have data sovereignty rules that I think that that will also continue. And so you’re going to have to operate around that. And now you’re going to have data that is actually embedded into agents and artificial intelligence models that have to interact with each other while actually adhering to data security, privacy, and sovereignty rules. And so I think, you know, just understand, just want to go back to really understanding what are those standard interfaces and standard exchange models that allow you to actually share what’s necessary to share without actually breaching these first principles. I think it’s something that we’re going to have to consider because it is going to only get more sophisticated as humans are gradually being less and less directly interacting and you have agents interacting on our behalf.

Rene Saul: You still need to maintain those rules so that you actually protect the sanctity of kind of those first principles. What happens if your agent buys something from an agent that doesn’t want to take it back? Yeah. Just to talk of it really quickly, the FinTech revolution was possible thanks to the API. It may allow things to do faster. Open accounts faster. Open digital wallets. I think that’s one of the things that you’re… Yeah. I’ll also… And that’s what we have to work on with the government. Also DPI reduce a lot of the frauds. And that’s where we’re hitting. I think that’s one of the benefits of the DPI. So trust it. Just trust it. We’re working on it. Make it trustworthy. Yeah. That’s our job. I agree. I agree. Let’s go back to basics.

Hoda Al Khzaimi: These DPIs are not just developed in silos by technology companies. So I think because financial services, when they provide anything that requires financial transaction, they require higher KYC infrastructure, AML, entry money laundry kind of structure. And they’re highly audited. Which means this should give you a little bit of peace. Because they go through… And the blockchain. Not the blockchain aspect. Because it’s massively a technology kind of concept. But the fact that they have the liability. They have the obligation to do their due diligence by different financial kind of layers that exist on top of them. This should give you the peace of mind that it’s not only just the government executing on this. It’s not just a solo private IT digital infrastructure that’s experimenting with this. It’s also users protection, data protection laws that we have to comply to. So it’s a beautiful orchestration of different ecosystem players that we have to abide to. And the voice of the citizens, the voice of the people are being heard into this platform. So the minute you… I mean, it depends on the jurisdiction for sure. But the minute you… And specific jurisdiction. The minute you report this, they are reporting platforms for these DPI infrastructure. The minute you report service inaccuracy, then it’s been taken into consideration. Because it affects the ranking of the maturity of the service that’s being provided. Dubai, for example, I should use this example. What they have is they provide these digital services. If people and players fail to provide for these digital services on an annual basis, there is like a domestic ranking that they fail. And if they fail this domestic ranking, then they’re publicly listed into the failed domestic rank. And no company, no organization, and no public sector players want to be into that rank. Great and productive question.

Brendan Vaughan: Thank you. This gentleman here has been waiting patiently. By the way, just as a quick fact, do you know that the fastest… Well, they get the microphone. The fastest continent moving towards digitalization is Africa. I heard it here in the forum yesterday. I didn’t know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Money payment. Yeah. Hello, I’m Christian. I’m a scientist here in Davos.

Audience: So there’s a lot of organized crime that does a lot of cyber crime. And this digital infrastructure enables this. I mean, I also experience it every day in my life. bombarded by phishing attempts, there are ransomwares that have paralyzed the National Health Service in the UK. I mean, there’s billions and billions of costs. Not only it’s a loss for the victim, but also these cyber crimes are funding things that are not always very, let’s say, positive. Sorry? I mean, I am thinking about the Lazarus Group in North Korea, for example, which is funding its nuclear program with, like, you know, like cyber crime. And I personally, in my life, I’ve been going through now an undigitalization as much as I can. I’ve removed many apps, all the bank cards I didn’t need, because they’re a door to this crime. And I have, I had to think, okay, is this like, what is this adding to my life? How much is this of a risk? And how much is this taking away from my life? Like, I was spending some time on apps or advertisement, and I was feeling more like a commodity of the algorithms than the other way around. And so, and we’re also constantly tracked on our phones. It’s very handy, of course, when I’m using transport in Switzerland. It’s amazing. I click a button. But then, then the company knows where I am all the time. So I feel like there’s not a lot of, like, of course, maybe, like, people who drive this may have an interest in driving this forward for profit or whatever. But I just, like, what’s your opinion on the risks? And where can it be beneficial? And where should we maybe hold and say, well, okay, maybe paper is less risky, because given all the, like, old grannies that are getting scammed of their pension, maybe it’s not such a great idea to, to move forward?

Rene Saul: Where’s the balance between convenience and… In the banks on our side, we see it every day. This is our everyday thing. And for us, it’s a mandate that we have to inform our customers what we’re doing in their benefit. And not only that, on what we’re doing in behind to protect us, but also to protect you guys. And we also try to educate our people and our clients to know what’s coming so they don’t get into this phishing or these activities and be, and protect themselves from whatever it is, it is. I mean, before, the way you rob a bank is you went to a branch and you just wear a gun and then just took out the money, right? Now, it’s cybersecurity. That’s the way you rob a bank right now these days. And that affects you and that affects us. So we have to inform you, we have to protect. Exactly. And we have to invest in cybersecurity to protect your identities. That’s what we do on our side. And I should say that physical harm, harm in itself, either physical or

Hoda Al Khzaimi: digital, is a probabilistic problem. It will happen in the digital sphere, it will happen in the physical sphere. We expect you to protect yourself in the physical sphere. And we expect you as well to use every tool that is around you to protect yourself in the physical sphere. In the digital sphere, that’s the same case. Users have to have an awareness to protect themselves. And what are the mitigation tools that are available for them to hedge the risk of being just a consumer of these technologies? What’s positive is that if this data provided by the DPI infrastructure are open and in many, many, many kind of scenario, you have open marketplaces for these data, users themselves can nudge governments and can nudge providers of these services and to tell them what do you want and what do you don’t want and, you know, control the trends of how to deploy and build for solutions. Thank you.

Brendan Vaughan: But don’t governments and the world’s most powerful companies share some of the responsibility for helping individuals, many of whom are nowhere near as sophisticated as they are technologically, protect themselves? Purvinder, do you want to get in here?

Pervinder Johar: I think it’s absolutely and it’s fascinating to hear a lot of other people who are trying to do the same thing, that they will go kind of digital neutral or whatever the term is, but the reality is that, I’ll give you my personal experience. So I was born in India in the late 60s and there was no concept of a birth certificate in the city I was born in. So when I went for my passport for my education in the US, I had to go find kind of my parents or grandparents and two or three people to go vouch for that kind of this is when I was really born. And that was 16 years later after I was born. So if you think of that evolution over time, now we just expect to have a birth certificate for everyone. And again, birth certificates are somewhat protected because they were paper and now the paper has become electronic and electronic means that now we are on the electronic passports too. But the reality is that kind of that evolution was necessary. So if you think of that, even today, we were living in the world that the birth certificates were not produced at all, which is what it was at that time. That happened to my mother too. Yeah. So I think that’s kind of where you get into that kind of all of this is necessary too. But you’re right that companies are doing a lot of investment in cybersecurity and then it’s almost is that we do have a cybersecurity product, but you have to almost always keep up with the hackers. So it’s almost that as much investment is going in into kind of us doing something to be secure, equal amount of investment seems to be going into the cybersecurity crimes. And how do you go break it? And I think personally, even if you think of a lot of people are attracted by working for kind of how do I go hack something? Because that compensation seems to be higher these days in the compensation people pay for protecting someone. Let’s get one more question. So I thank you all for this. I appreciate it.

Audience: I want to follow up on Helena’s comment, which was we need to make trustworthy systems. And I think all of you have spoken very eloquently about playing defense, right? And we’ve got to go defend the systems that we’re building. But a lot of these systems have been built on assumptions based on data that doesn’t actually represent anybody who isn’t already on the system. And so, you know, there’s a there’s a huge question about the underlying data being representative of communities that we actually want to serve in the future, not just those that we currently have data about. What are we doing within DPI, whether we’re governments or the private sector or civil society, to bridge that gap between playing defense and really understanding and representing the communities that we’re all purporting to serve?

Brendan Vaughan: OK.

Hoda Al Khzaimi: I love the question. I think we’ve seen examples as well where these DPI infrastructure are not just built for current situational aspects, but for a futuristic sharing infrastructure platform in order to reduce inequalities. I’ve used the previous example in India when the Aadhaar was provided as an open stack so other countries in the world could learn, could develop, could as well share resources, because sometimes you don’t have that kind of infrastructure to develop in every country. So now we’re sharing resources, we’re sharing data, we’re sharing best practices so others can replicate and maybe 100 percent of people around the globe could use that. We’ve seen as well initiatives where ID for development and that’s by World Bank and you have other initiatives, I think, which is data for development. That’s meant as well to improve accessibility of the data provided on DPIs so others could benefit and use them in other parts of the world. And I think we need to learn. The learning curve should come from every part of the world and from the underdeveloped part of the world as well as the most advanced part of the world. In the most advanced structures, we care about infrastructure and heavy services and cost. But you would see brilliant examples coming from Africa where you don’t have that infrastructure, but they built brilliant solutions and payment infrastructures that required 60 percent less investment capital than others in a leading kind of industry. So we need to be humble to learn from across the spectrum and celebrate these kind of low cost solutions and bring them on the platform.

Brendan Vaughan: Perfect. Thank you. It’s such a great question. It’s going to be where we’re going to need to stop because we are out of time. But it’s a kind of a perfect point to end on the idea that we can’t just think of DPI as based on the known knowns, the data we have. We have to think about the data. We don’t have all of that known unknown data that’s out in the world, isn’t digitized yet in a way that is in the system. And just be very mindful of that as we move ahead. So thank you to our panelists for a really lively, thought provoking session. And thanks to the audience for the great questions. Thank you.

Agreement Points

DPI provides essential services and improves access

speakers

– Hoda Al Khzaimi
– Rene Saul
– Rodrigo Liang

arguments

DPI provides seamless government services to citizens

DPI facilitates cross-border travel and economic growth

DPI enables global collaboration on issues like healthcare

summary

The speakers agree that DPI is crucial for providing essential services, improving access to various sectors, and facilitating global collaboration and economic growth.

Balancing benefits and risks of DPI

speakers

– Hoda Al Khzaimi
– Rene Saul

arguments

DPI can reduce inequalities in access to services globally

Balancing convenience with security and privacy concerns

summary

The speakers acknowledge the potential of DPI to reduce inequalities but also emphasize the need to balance its benefits with security and privacy concerns.

Power and infrastructure challenges in implementing DPI

speakers

– Rodrigo Liang
– Pervinder Johar

arguments

Power and energy requirements for AI and computing infrastructure

Addressing power and infrastructure needs in developing regions

summary

Both speakers highlight the significant challenges related to power and infrastructure requirements for implementing DPI, especially in developing regions.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the need for innovation in infrastructure development, whether it’s in semiconductor technology or integrating aging physical infrastructure with DPI.

speakers

– Hoda Al Khzaimi
– Pervinder Johar

arguments

Need for lightweight and efficient semiconductor development

Aging physical infrastructure that needs to be integrated with DPI

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of physical infrastructure in DPI

speakers

– Pervinder Johar
– Hoda Al Khzaimi

arguments

DPI encompasses physical infrastructure beyond just digital services

Need for lightweight and efficient semiconductor development

explanation

While most discussions focused on digital aspects, there was an unexpected consensus on the importance of physical infrastructure in DPI implementation, including both traditional infrastructure and innovative semiconductor development.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers generally agreed on the importance of DPI in providing essential services, improving access, and facilitating global collaboration. They also recognized the challenges in implementing DPI, particularly regarding power, infrastructure, and balancing benefits with security concerns.

Consensus level

There was a moderate to high level of consensus among the speakers on the core benefits and challenges of DPI. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of the potential and obstacles in implementing DPI globally, which could lead to more coordinated efforts in addressing these challenges and realizing the benefits of DPI.

Different Viewpoints

Scope and definition of DPI

speakers

– Hoda Al Khzaimi
– Pervinder Johar

arguments

DPI provides seamless government services to citizens

DPI encompasses physical infrastructure beyond just digital services

summary

While Hoda Al Khzaimi focuses on DPI as primarily digital services provided by governments, Pervinder Johar argues for a broader definition that includes physical infrastructure.

Unexpected Differences

Emphasis on physical vs. digital infrastructure

speakers

– Pervinder Johar
– Other speakers

arguments

DPI encompasses physical infrastructure beyond just digital services

explanation

While most speakers focused on digital aspects of DPI, Pervinder Johar unexpectedly emphasized the importance of physical infrastructure in DPI, which was not a major focus for other speakers.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement centered around the scope and definition of DPI, the balance between convenience and security, and the emphasis on physical versus digital infrastructure.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers was moderate. While there were some differences in focus and emphasis, there was general agreement on the importance and potential benefits of DPI. These differences in perspective could lead to varied approaches in implementing DPI, potentially affecting policy decisions and resource allocation.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the positive impact of DPI on economic growth and access to services, but they emphasize different aspects – Hoda focuses on reducing inequalities, while Rene highlights cross-border facilitation.

speakers

– Hoda Al Khzaimi
– Rene Saul

arguments

DPI can reduce inequalities in access to services globally

DPI facilitates cross-border travel and economic growth

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the need for innovation in infrastructure development, whether it’s in semiconductor technology or integrating aging physical infrastructure with DPI.

speakers

– Hoda Al Khzaimi
– Pervinder Johar

arguments

Need for lightweight and efficient semiconductor development

Aging physical infrastructure that needs to be integrated with DPI

Key Takeaways

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) encompasses both digital services and physical infrastructure to provide seamless government services and enable economic growth.

Implementing DPI faces challenges like power/energy requirements, integrating aging infrastructure, and balancing convenience with security.

DPI can reduce inequalities in access to services globally but also introduces cybersecurity risks that need to be addressed.

Future development of DPI needs to focus on integrating AI capabilities, ensuring interoperability across countries, and representing underserved communities.

Resolutions and Action Items

None identified

Unresolved Issues

How to ensure DPI systems are built on data that represents communities not currently served, rather than just existing users

Specific measures to protect individual privacy and data sovereignty as AI agents increasingly interact on behalf of humans

How to balance the convenience of digital services with growing cybersecurity threats and scams

Suggested Compromises

Developing lightweight and efficient semiconductor technologies to address power/energy constraints

Creating open marketplaces for DPI data to allow users to provide input on services

Sharing DPI resources and best practices across countries to enable wider adoption

When we talk about DPI, it’s the intersectionality between what’s happening today and introducing government technologies… And digital public infrastructures came into manifestation because governments want to make sure that they provide seamless services in the rise of smart cities, in the rise of the Internet.

speaker

Hoda Al Khzaimi

reason

This comment provides a clear definition and context for DPI, framing it as a response to technological advancements and changing government needs.

impact

It set the foundation for the rest of the discussion by establishing a shared understanding of DPI and its importance.

Probably the number one challenge that we all have when we’re scaling artificial intelligence from here on out is all going to be about power. Yeah, it’s going to be about power. We’re out of power today, and the AI journey has only started, right?

speaker

Rodrigo Liang

reason

This insight shifts the focus from purely technological concerns to the practical challenges of infrastructure and energy requirements for AI and DPI.

impact

It broadened the scope of the discussion to include energy concerns and sustainability, leading to a more holistic consideration of DPI implementation challenges.

So when we think industrial AI, and what we are focused on is that. And there are three continuums of that infrastructure. First one is the infrastructure that we have created in the past.

speaker

Pervinder Johar

reason

This comment introduces a new perspective on DPI by connecting it to physical infrastructure and industrial AI applications.

impact

It expanded the conversation beyond digital services to include the role of AI in managing and improving physical infrastructure, adding depth to the understanding of DPI’s potential impact.

What happens if your agent buys something from an agent that doesn’t want to take it back?

speaker

Rene Saul

reason

This question raises important considerations about accountability and dispute resolution in AI-driven transactions within DPI systems.

impact

It prompted the panel to consider practical challenges in implementing DPI and AI systems, leading to a discussion on trust, regulation, and consumer protection.

What are we doing within DPI, whether we’re governments or the private sector or civil society, to bridge that gap between playing defense and really understanding and representing the communities that we’re all purporting to serve?

speaker

Audience member

reason

This question challenges the panel to consider inclusivity and representation in DPI development, highlighting potential biases in current approaches.

impact

It shifted the final part of the discussion towards considering how to make DPI more inclusive and representative of diverse communities, emphasizing the importance of learning from different global contexts.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by progressively expanding its scope from basic definitions of DPI to complex considerations of energy requirements, physical infrastructure integration, AI accountability, and inclusivity. The conversation evolved from a technical focus to a more holistic examination of DPI’s societal impacts and challenges, emphasizing the need for collaborative, globally-minded approaches to development and implementation.

How can we measure the outcomes and real-life improvements resulting from digital public infrastructure initiatives?

speaker

Helena Laurent (audience member)

explanation

Important to ensure DPI actually improves people’s lives and doesn’t just create unused accounts or services

What’s being done to address inter-country flow of data and consumer protection across borders?

speaker

Helena Laurent (audience member)

explanation

Critical for ensuring consumer rights and redress in cross-border digital transactions

How can we balance the convenience of digital services with the risks of cybercrime and privacy concerns?

speaker

Christian (audience member)

explanation

Necessary to address the growing threats of cybercrime while maintaining the benefits of digital infrastructure

How can we ensure that the underlying data used to build digital public infrastructure systems is representative of all communities, including those not currently well-represented?

speaker

Unnamed audience member

explanation

Critical for creating truly inclusive and representative digital systems that serve all populations

How can we develop more efficient and sustainable power sources to support the growing energy demands of AI and digital infrastructure?

speaker

Rodrigo Liang

explanation

Addressing the power constraints is crucial for scaling AI and digital infrastructure globally

How can we improve the core physical infrastructure (transportation, energy, etc.) using AI and digital technologies?

speaker

Pervinder Johar

explanation

Integrating AI into physical infrastructure is key for modernizing and improving essential services