• Speaker: Daniel Samaan, International Labour Organization
• Moderator: George Metakides, President of the Digital Enlightenment Forum

Abstract

We are in the year 2030. How will the world of work look like in 2030? Based on today’s megatrends artificial intelligence (AI), climate change, population aging and others, the author develops scenarios for possible Futures of Work in different regions of the world: Robots have not replaced humans but AI and smart machines have become indispensable parts of our working lives. Efforts to mitigate climate change may fail but still trigger an ecological transformation that leads us into a more sustainable future. Mass production might enter its last decades but people may instead work in small shops and in more agile organizations. Can we work without jobs? In all these transformations AI and the digitalization are likely to play crucial roles. Whatever the future will be in 2030, thinking through such scenarios helps us perceiving opportunities and risks today, and shape the Future of Work that we want.

About Daniel Samaan

Daniel Samaan is an Economist and Senior Researcher at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva. He is an expert in the analysis of global labour market trends, specialized in the links with globalization, new technologies/AI, sustainable development, and a new work culture.

He has been an author and part of the core teams of several ILO reports. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and he is a regular public speaker on various labor market topics and on the Future of Work. Daniel previously worked at the economic policy research center, SCEPA, and in the consulting industry in New York City. He holds a PhD in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York and a master’s degree in economics and business administration from the University of Passau in Germany.

About George Metakides

Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, George Metakides received his Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic from Cornell University in 1971. He pursued an academic career at MIT, Cornell and Rochester University until 1978, when he returned to Greece after being elected to the Chair of Logic at the University of Patras.

Since 1984 he has held senior positions with responsibility for Research & Development policy, funding and international co-operation in European institutions. He established and headed the department for Basic Research and International Scientific Relations in Information Technologies at the European Commission from 1988 to 1993. He was the Director of the ESPRIT (European Strategic Program for Information Technologies), from 1993 until its completion in 1998, followed by the Information Society Technologies (IST) Program (1998-2002). In 2002 he returned to his professorship at Patras until his retirement in 2012.

He has contributed to the establishment of international institutions (including the launch of the World Wide Web consortium in 1993), has received a number of awards and honorary degrees and is a corresponding member of several National Academies.

He is currently visiting professor at the University of Southampton, Adjunct Professor at the European University of Cyprus, President of the Digital Enlightenment Forum, and Advisor to several international organizations. He is involved in the analysis of the economic, political and social impact of digitization, related cybersecurity, data protection and regulatory issues and the promotion of international cooperation towards a digital ecosystem respecting shared human values.

Online Event

We are looking forward to seeing you:

• Participate via Zoom (meeting: 9638 9928 143, password: 0dzqxqiy).
• The talk will also be live streamed and recorded on our YouTube Channel.
• For further announcements and information, please visit the DIGHUM Website, which also provides slides and recordings of all our past events.

The DIGHUM Lecture Series

Digital Humanism deals with the complex relationship between man and machine. It acknowledges the potential of Informatics and IT. At the same time, it points to related apparent threats such as privacy violations, ethical concerns with AI, automation, and loss of jobs, and the ongoing monopolization on the Web. The Corona crisis has shown these two faces of the accelerated digitalization—we are in a crucial moment in time.

For this reason, we started the DIGHUM Lecture Series, a new initiative with regular online events to discuss the different aspects of Digital Humanism. We will have a speaker on a specific topic (30 minutes) followed by a discussion of 30 minutes every second Tuesday of each month at 5:00 PM CEST. This crisis seriously affects our mobility, but it also offers the possibility to participate in events from all over the world—let’s take this chance to meet virtually.

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