Business Insights Event
Hundreds of business executives and thought leaders met at an event hosted by New Scientist in London to discuss how the latest innovations will affect their industries
Some of the brightest and best minds from the bleeding edge of technological innovation, from fields as varied as quantum computing, artificial intelligence and the space industry, spoke to a packed crowd of scientists, business leaders and policy-makers at New Scientist ’s Emerging Technologies Summit in London last month.
Stephen Cave, who leads the University of Cambridge’s Future of Intelligence institute, made clear the importance of such an event, during the first fireside chat of the day: “Technological transformation of this profundity and rapidity needs to be dealt with at all of these levels – there is a role for us to play as individuals, as consumers, as users and as corporations, thinking through the impact of the technology we’re making.”
This impact includes many upsides, such as how artificial intelligence is set to transform numerous industries. Hebe Middlemiss at AstraZeneca showed how the pharmaceutical company was using generative AI to help speed up drug design and testing, and shrink drug development timelines from years to months or days. In a discussion on how AI is also set to change the creative industries, Elliott Millard at media consultancy agency Wavemaker UK revealed how ad agencies are already widely incorporating AI tools into their workflows. These upsides are present not just in businesses, but at a wider scale too. Peter Knight, who helps lead the UK’s quantum strategy, mapped out in detail how the billions of pounds in recent government investment has led to groundbreaking research and commercial interest in the UK’s quantum ecosystem. One example of this commercial buy-in is with banks, demonstrated by Philip Intallura at HSBC, who spoke about how the bank is using quantum key distribution, an ultra-secure communication method impervious to the decrypting power of quantum computers, to secure financial information that it sends between data centres.
The audience also heard from the world of policy and government, with Chi Onwurah, shadow minister of science, research and innovation, reiterating how important these emerging technologies were for Labour le
