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Artificial intelligence is the main topic of this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum — a large gathering of political and corporate leaders — in Davos, Switzerland.
Fabrice Coffrini | AFP/Getty Images
Of all the corporate buzzwords, artificial intelligence is the one that was on the lips of every major corporate leader at this year’s World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland.
Many CEOs of prominent companies and investors in industries ranging from financial services to marketing have spoken about the potential of AI technology. Here’s a compilation of quotes from some of the top corporate leaders attending the WEF Annual Meeting this week:
Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak
Khaldoon Al Mubarak, CEO of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, told CNBC that he believes the world has not yet fully realized the extent of change AI will bring to every aspect of human life:
“Demand will be extremely high in terms of enabling this technology. So the technology, the AI opportunity, which is the infrastructure side of it – whether it’s energy, whether it’s transmission, whether it’s power, but also all forms of technology, of energy technology that will help fuel that huge demand, I would also add to that data center building, chip building,” he said.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers
Larry Summers, president emeritus and professor at Harvard University, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, January 21, 2025.
Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Larry Summers, an American economist who served as the 71st U.S. Treasury Secretary, said on a panel moderated by CNBC that the “moment of stunning technological opportunity” — including emerging AI systems — is leading to unprecedented innovation in fields such as medical science :
“I believe that artificial intelligence will eventually be to the Internet as the computer was to the calculator. This is a moment of stunning technological opportunity. That doesn’t mean everything will automatically be fine… This is a moment of epic challenge for governments in my country and governments everywhere,” he said.
Nicola Mendelssohn of Meta
Nicola Mendelsohn, Head of Global Business Group at Meta.
Holly Adams | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Nicola Mendelsohn, head of the global business group at Facebook’s parent company Metasaid the tech giant’s advertisers are already seeing a return on their AI investment.
“The majority of our advertisers are using one of our products or our suite of product benefits … So AI at the heart of everything, especially generative AI is also coming more and more to the fore,” she said.
Edelman CEO Richard Edelman
Edelman boss Richard Edelman said he believes AI has the potential to improve workers and speed up productivity – but warned of the risk of AI being “discarded” if business leaders don’t upskill staff:
“The biggest risk is that artificial intelligence will be rejected… We have to embrace it by making sure that everyone is retrained. I do this in our company like crazy. You should use this. You must try it. I think artificial intelligence is the great hope for optimism because it will improve our ability to work, it is your tool to be smarter, better and faster.
Randstad CEO Sander van Noordende
Sander van’t Noordende, CEO of an HR firm Randstadwarned of job disruption risks posed by AI, saying he sees design and admin jobs as most at risk:
“If you look at the jobs that are going to kind of disappear, anything that has ‘clerk’ or ‘designer’, ‘executive assistants,’ it’s kind of under a lot of pressure. [There are] many new jobs in technology, in security, in AI…. There will be new jobs, and there are many jobs that still need to be done, in healthcare, in technology, in hospitality, all kinds of jobs where AI no it doesn’t really help,” he said.
Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch
Arthur Mensch, CEO of French AI firm Mistral, said there is a competitive race between world governments for AI leadership:
“This is an industrial revolution. It will reshape our industries over the next 10 years. And we really need – the industry needs – to adopt it as quickly as possible because it’s a really competitive market… It’s been interesting to talk to administrations that are also looking for sovereign solutions that we’re the only ones able to provide, so it’s both a challenge and an opportunity, but actually what it shows is that if you’re not thinking about AI today and how it’s going to change your business, you’re doing it wrong.”
Mensch also talked about the technological advancements coming to the AI industry this year, predicting that the world will move away from language models like OpenAI’s GPT to more comprehensive systems:
“I think the focus needs to shift to systems. Models are part of systems, but systems are connected to data, connected to tools, able to actually do things on your behalf, able to act in an agentic way… This is where this This also means that the industry that accepts, will distill its expertise into these systems,” he added.
Mistral is backed by an American technology giant Microsoft — who is also an investor in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, told CNBC on Tuesday that he sees AI tools eventually becoming better than humans at almost every task:
“At some point we will get to AI systems that are better than almost all humans at almost all tasks. The term I used for this in an essay I recently wrote is a country of geniuses in a data center. It’s sort of an emotive phrase for all the power and positive things and all the potential negative things that I think we’re very likely to get in the next two or three years,” he said.
Anthropic is a competitor to OpenAI. He counts the likes of Amazon and Google as investors.
Lloyds chief executive Charlie Nunn
Lloyds Banking Group Chief executive Charlie Nunn applauded the UK government message last week on a bold plan to expand the nation’s computing infrastructure to spur domestic AI development:
“AI is at the heart of what we do. I really welcome what the government has just done. Keir Starmer talks about AI being a bigger part of the future. We definitely think this is true in financial services. It allows us to protect customers, help them get And I think the exciting part that’s coming is that it’s going to give us an opportunity to really differentiate what we can do, to enable customers to get a different banking experience and from their financial services provider. It’s a huge growth opportunity for us,” he said.
CEO Dennis Machuel
Dennis Machwell, CEO of human resources group Adecco, told CNBC on Wednesday that he sees AI driving better productivity among the global workforce:
“It’s both an opportunity and a responsibility. This is an opportunity because it will create better productivity, it will create more innovation and definitely growth,” he said.
