At an event of the University of Chicago during the World Economic Forum in Davos, the former head of the Indian central bank Raghuram G. Rajan, the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella, the former US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and co-founder of the Carlyle Group David M. Rubenstein discussed "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Society".
In addition to the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence, the exciting panel discussion also focused on the importance of data protection for the future of our society. Satya Nadella of Microsoft advocates a globally uniform, legal framework for data protection and surprisingly spoke out in favor of extending the Geneva Convention to include data protection rights. He spoke openly about the issue of the Supreme Court case against Microsoft, which is to be decided at the end of June. In it, the US Department of Justice demands the release of data of citizens and companies to US investigators - no matter in which country this data is stored, no matter what laws apply there. It is sufficient if the company that manages the data is active in the USA. That would be an affront; some people are talking about declaring war on Europe in the field of data protection. Europe has adopted a citizen-friendly data protection regulation (EU-DSGVO/GDPR), which will come into force on 25 May 2018. Presumably, the American way of "Big Brother is watching you everywhere" would mean the end of the use of American cloud services for European companies, as they would then be in conflict with European law; a hard blow to Microsoft products such as Office 365, OneDrive and Azure.
Former US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker described another example of "Big Brother" faith, where she personally fought against legal backdoors in cryptography for six months. "This was total nonsense, an absolutely bad idea, you could even say one of the worst. It took a lot of persuading in the government that backdoors don't make sense and only worsen national and international security instead of improving it."
According to Pritzker, Europe has embarked on a path of its own which must be respected. In the USA, he says, they are not ready. Bob Zimmer (Dean of the University of Chicago) added at the end of the event at the World Economic Forum: "These days it is even difficult to guarantee "free speech" at a university. The University of Chicago stands for "free speech", but times are changing." As a result of free exchange of ideas, it was stated that Chicago Booth, as the only business school in the world, has three teaching Nobel Prize winners.
Of the left: Professor Raghuram G. Rajan (Moderator Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, Chicago Booth), The Honorable Penny Pritzker (38th US Secretary of Commerce), Satya Nadella (MBA'97, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft Corporation) and David M. Rubenstein (JD'73. Trustee, The University of Chicago, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman, The Carlyle Group)
DRACOON CEO Alexander Zeyss participated as an alumnus of Chicago Booth in the exchange of ideas at the World Economic Forum: "Secure software that protects intellectual property against criminals, spies and governments is the future of a free society. Dissenters are its enemies. DRACOON will never accept backdoors. We would never bend and as one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in Germany we would like to lead the fight for data protection".
