Convergence: Quantum, AI and the Future of Payments

[Music] good afternoon uh excellences visitors from around the world friends and colleagues from Abu Dhabi welcome to the last session uh presentation after three long days and many hours so I'm the director of Adia lab I'll won't say much about it we are a research lab in basic computational data science and so that's what I'd like to talk about but in order to get you going here is I would like to do some mental teaser for you so that you can get your brain going after many lectures so do you remember the FIFA World Cup 2006 which happened to be in Germany and Italy one and so my brain teas for you is do you remember which was the most popular app that was used during FIFA World Cup 2006 does anybody know and I you welcome to raise your hand and Shout out an answer to that question Twitter no uh the fact was and this is why I bring this up is that in 2006 there were no apps and there was nobody with a smartphone at World Cup because iPhone was only released a year later so the reason I mentioned this is because uh phones have smartphones have so much been integrated in our life now there are billions of people using them and the average use is about 4 hours a day across the world now why I'm saying this I'll you connect it later and it is because Ai and Quantum are exponential Technologies and I would like to talk about what exponential Technologies are these are technologies that grow at a rate where performance capability and quality is doubling in a fixed amount of time and how does the doubling happening is because there are feedback loops that uh the technology increases for user base increased user base in is additional capital inflow and that creates Technology Innovation so as a perfect example and this is also very entertaining I I'd like you to look at these two pictures I hope you can see them this is a picture of New York Fifth Avenue on the left in the year 1900 and you see all horsedrawn buggies and you see one single uh horse here and then only 13 years later for pictures Resort res reversed there's only one horse left and all the rest are automobiles so that's a typical example of an exponential technology and what exponential Technologies do is they change our life in a couple of years from horse Throne carriages to Automobiles and this is an example of how uh exponential technology just get introduced from Z to 100% of us household how long it took for technology to be adopted and you see they all uh take a long time to start and then whoops it happens and here is a similar picture and this is why everybody's excited about AI jet GPT 2 years old took only two months to get a 100 million users and so you see that AI is not only on an exponential growth curve but it's on a growth curve that's very different from anything we've seen in the past so that's why it is so exciting now let me talk about Quantum Computing a little bit Quantum Computing is a similar technology that's currently going to be on exponential growth curve uh there are many reasons why Quantum Computing is so exciting I just want to point out that what you see here is not actually a quantum computer even though it shows up in every presentation it's actually nothing but a very expensive refrigerator it's made out of gold and it's necessary to have these super conducting circuits to be chilled to absolute zero almost absolute zero uh so Quantum Computing has uh exciting because it has it promise acceleration in many areas in particular in simulation of quantum systems but also in cyber security and optimization algorithms but generally every expert will say Quantum Computing is still here this part we haven't seen the takeoff of the curve yet but it will happen within the next 10 years so if we think about Quantum Computing and payments there are many opportunities for dramatic change for example Quantum comption can revolutionize will Rize cryptography and security and so this will directly impact payments and in particular Quantum algorithms can uh produce improved Quantum resistance Solutions and uh there's something called Quantum key distribution which can enhance security and then of course Quantum optimization can improve routing and uh for payments and fraud detection so these are just some possible areas and if you think about it trying to speculate about Ai and payments then uh AI enables real-time fraud detection uh and can analyze millions of transactions it can change payment experiences to be more personalized and will also Drive security so these all changes to speculate about and if you think about future scenarios we just heard about cbdc Central Bank digital currencies Quantum and could underpin a more robust infrastructure for Central Bank digital currencies uh they could help crossb payments through seamless Global Payments with minimal latency and high security uh Payment Systems can be very much defended against traditional cyber threats and can be made Quantum secure so these are a lot of things to think about uh but one thing I want to put in your mind there was also a section A discussion earlier this afternoon about AI agents so AI agents are software constructs that have been designed to perform particular tasks on your behalf so think of them as an executive assistant they interact with their environment with each other to execute tasks and they can range from simple rule-based systems to adaptive systems that use machine learning to interact so think of AI agent as a software entity that works for you and does what you do in general terms and objective based so what I'd like to do is just to again go back and stimulate your thinking is you your use your imagination his and I like history so the f o indish company my Dutch is not that good uh was the first corporation that was created in 16002 and those of you who study the history of Economics know that the First Corporation was created the first time that was a company with shareholders as an independent entity was super successful in created wealth for the Netherlands for 150 years and led to the Colonial exploitation of East Asia uh now I'm saying hypothesize that in 20 28 AI agents are made individual are made to basically get a legal entity status I don't know what this is but just like a corporation is a legal entity it doesn't involve any people directly so an AI agent can become a legal entity and then negotiate independently contracts manage assets bring innovative solution and so AI agents will blur for line between machine intelligence and corporate identity and so then I say as a hypothetical outcome in 10 years in 20 oh sorry in 2024 I don't know how to go back in 2034 I predict that an AI agent will be the most wealthy entity in on Earth by being uh the person who have massed most of the biggest crypto Fortune now I'm just putting this scenario out there because I think you want to think about the future in an exponential terminology about things that come together so just thinking about how single things grow is not going to give you the future and predictions are hard but they have to be creative and I'd like to show this little cartoon it's an internet meme Elon Musk said self-driving cars in two years jof Hinton who won the Nobel Prize said in 2016 radiologist will be absolute in 5 years and in 2024 we have Radiologists driving regular combustion engine cars to work so I think these predictions didn't come through because they are simple extrapolations just taking something that we know of today and can think about how will it be in the future will be faster better but what the example that I showed before with a phone is that we should think about things in the future in a way that if different technology come together and interact in unforeseen and unknown ways so I'm very much inspired by aim AAR with his book on exponential age and this is why I think gets important is is that we're here in time that's a very notional chart and so far for population has been growing and as we had more brains out there and more thinking going on we had more knowledge created and now the population is declining so we will have to rely on AI to create the knowledge to maintain our wealth and well-being in the future and so AI agents may be out here to create the future of knowledge that's why I think generally we should be very optimistic about where we are and I would like to thank you and I hope you think about this and take this in the discussion thanks [Applause] [Music]