Podcast #16: Tackling Humanity’s Biggest Challenges with Technology

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Momenta Edge Podcast. This is Ed Maguire, Insights Partner at Momenta, and today we’re pleased to have with us our special guest, Atti Riazi who is the Chief Information Technology Officer of the United Nations. She was appointed by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as the Assistant Secretary General, and new Chief Information Technology Officer. Atti has a long and accomplished career, she works as a philanthropist, she was previously a Global CIO at Ogilvy & Mather for over 9-years. She has experience working with large organizations both in the private sector and the public sector, she was previously Vice-President CIO of Technology for the NTA which is, New York City Transit. She also serves as Executive Director of CIOs Without Borders. 

So, we’re really looking forward to our conversation, Atti thanks so much for joining us. 

Thank you so much Ed, it’s a pleasure to be here with you, and with your audience.  

We’d love to get a bit of perspective on your background, and if you could talk about what has shaped your view of how technology plays a role in driving changes? 

Perhaps I can start with a story of when I was six-years old, my young brother received a watch that I’d always wanted, I figured if I can take this watch and put it in the ground and water it, perhaps I will get a watch too. Well, I did that, and he was distraught because he couldn’t find his watch, and I kept watering this thing. The days passed, and weeks passed, and nothing came out of it, and I felt awfully guilty about burying his watch and having it rusted. So finally, I told him what happened, and that I did not get a watch tree. I was watch-less for a long time. 

But what I’m trying to say is, as a child how we think about changes, evolution, human evolution, and evolution of culture and civilization, and that creativity and curiosity of a child, wanting to understand the roles around it. That watch kind of sparked my perspective as how things work, and why is it that you don’t create a watch through watering it. My life was shaped when I was five years old, I was really curious and interested in technology and how things worked, and how things compliment the life that we have for both in productive ways and perhaps not so productive ways. 

But putting that story aside, I’m intrigued by evolution, and human evolution you think about as humans we started using tools, and our purpose of using tools was really to understand control of energy in the beginning, either muscle energy or to usage of domestic animals, or in agriculture, later in natural resources, and now you see how its advanced the technology energy. 

I come from a culture where I remember when we didn’t have running water, and we didn’t have electricity where I grew up, we didn’t have a refrigerator, we didn’t have a television, and through my life I witnessed advancements of technology in that space, and how life drastically changed, and how humans started to use more advanced tools. I think that’s really what fascinates me, it’s about evolution of homo sapiens to the next phase of what I call us the connected sapiens, sapiens that have gone from being individuals to being connected and evolving through the use of technology. 

That’s a great point and one that I think is very consistent with the view that as humans have evolved from our predecessors, to develop civilization with towns and cities, and organizations, essentially that technology does in many respects reflect the next stage of our own evolution of humanity. I think you’ve encapsulated it beautifully. 

I’d like to pull the story a little bit forward to where you are today; you’re working with the UN which is a unique and super-national organization. As someone who’s worked in technology during your career, can you provide a bit of color about what the role of a CIO is, what are the challenges and the opportunities which that leadership role can bring to the table, and how you’ve seen it evolve over the last several years? 

I think CIOs are in an incredibly transformative position, and in a very difficult position, because what we have right now is we have this kind of IT paradox, where we have moved from using technology as a tool; hardware, software services are looking at technology as a tool, to looking at technology and understanding the experience and the impact of technology on human life and society, on finance, on income, on energy; and we as CIOs have this tremendous sophistication about innovation, not only CIOs, also technologists, scientists, innovators, we have this incredible sophistication, but when it comes to understanding about its impact on the environment, on our cultures, on human life and the future, we have a lesser understanding of the implications, and the broad implications. 

So, the CIOs are trying to battle with that issue, and I do think as some of the CIOs perhaps we are as humanity trying to understand that, because we are benefitting from the positive impact and the productivity gains of course; not all people are benefitting but a segment of the society is benefitting, but they’re also kind of impacted by the negative side. You think about the 20th Century, the biggest innovation of the 20th Century was the Internet, and it’s really changed the way humans react, act, live and work, and connect with each other, but we could never have envisioned the creation of the dark web where we’ve seen major crime shifting, drug trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking moving through the dark web. 

But I think as CIOs we have this responsibility to think about innovation in a different way, technology is changing, our life is changing, and society, and we really have to understand, have dialogue and advocate for responsible innovation to make sure that the change we are bringing about to society, and to government, and to our lives, is a change which is a positive change. I think that’s where the CIOs are, and its paradox is something we have to resolve, that technology is much bigger than a tool. So, we started as I started talking to you about how we started looking at tools to evolve. But we’ve reached a point where the tool is a bit smarter than us, and the tool has become its own species, it has gathered its own life, it’s not a tool that we can harness; it’s a tool that may harness us, and I think those are philosophical conversations we need to have. 

No question. In fact, I know as we come into possession, or begin to develop these increasingly powerful capabilities such as obviously nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and biotechnology as well as Artificial Intelligence, we do have to think about principles that will guide how we develop technologies. I guess looking forward we certainly want to make sure that we don’t unleash unanticipated negative forces, but that’s one of the goals or one of the missions that uniquely a UN is capable of addressing. 

I’d love to get a little perspective from your experience. You’ve worked in the private sector, and now you’ve been working at the UN for several years, could you talk a bit about how your work with the UN represents a contrast from working in the private sector, or a more local organization, and how that does apply to some of these big picture challenges like the sustainable development goals? 

The sustainable development goals, as you know we’re endorsed by all countries, about three years ago, 17 goals very critical I would say to sustaining life and a healthy environment for all of us. It is the responsibility of not only the member states and the UN, but also the private sector to ensure that we can achieve these goals. I’m hoping that we do bridge this gap between governments and the private sector, because the last goal on the SPG is about partnership, and how do we come together to see that as value in addressing big social issues. 

So, coming from the private sector where the focus was improved productivity, improved margin, improved customer experience, improved products, to the UN where our goal is to improve human life, improve the environment, improve the oceans. How do you merge the two? I think this is where I have come to in my career, is what can I do to bring the two groups which desperately need each other and have to work together to bring value and ensure a positive future for humanity. I think that’s where I see synergies, tremendous amounts of synergy. 

If you look at world income, I think $30 trillion is produced and held by the private sector, whereas $3 trillion is held and produced by government, and when you think about addressing big social issues, the government, the NGOs, and the UN is responsible to addressing big social issues; but the private sector does invest sometimes in addressing those big social issues but at a very minimal level. I think we have to come together to own these social issues because some of these issues, especially when we think about issues on the environment, are created by the private sector. And the private sector has benefitted from it. And without having a good environmental plan, or without having a circular economy, we’re not going to be mitigating some of the issues that have been created.  

So, I think I have the compassion and understanding of what each sector is confronted with, and I try to bring the two together to understand each other’s vision and perspective, and really, we seek partnership under sustainable development goals from the private sector, because without that we will not be able to achieve those goals. 

You referenced circular economies, that’s a really intriguing concept. Could you provide a little color around it, what the dynamics of a circular economy is, and how do you foster the growth of a circular economy?  

We think about cities, what are cities about? Cities are about water, about energy, about food, they’re about waste, and mobility and home in the middle, that’s what the cities are about. The cities contribute to about 75 percent of CO2 creation, and it consumes roughly about 75-80 percent of energy. So, if you think about having a circular economy about just one area like energy and waste, how do we convert waste to energy? How do we convert plastic back into energy?  

I think we can begin to address some of these big issues, the fact is cities are filling up with plastic, the rivers are filling up with medical waste, and the tech sector is continuously promoting the purchase of electronics, and many of them with lead and mercury which are polluting the water, the ground and the earth, and we don’t have any plans of getting rid of the waste, governments are crippled by the amount of waste. The tech sector really hasn’t come up with a plan, so to me the circular economy actually does have value in terms of not only supporting the monumental goals of cleaning up the waters, the oceans and the earth, but also creating new industry and creating new business. The producers of products have a responsibility in implementing circular economy in markets, to be able to put the waste back in. 

I was in Vietnam a couple of weeks ago, I was in Saigon just looking at simple things; they’ve been cutting up tires to make flip-flops. So, think about that, it doesn’t have to be complicated, but it has to be innovative and it has to help local economy, and I think we have so many opportunities to create industry in local economies to have that circular economy where we take waste, and put it back, convert it to energy, or take it out of the environment and reproduce it as different products. I advocate and I ask the private sector to come to the table and have conversations about circular economy, because I find it irresponsible… and the message is to all industries, that I find it irresponsible that we produce tremendous amounts of waste, but we do not believe we have the responsibility to take that waste out. 

Absolutely, and I think you hit on a really key point there which is, a lot of these materials are generated by the private sector, they’re enjoyed by the public at large, but ultimately the clean-up falls to the public sector, or non-governmental organizations. When you talk about the issue with pollution in the oceans, there really isn’t anybody in charge of this.  

Are there some ways that technology can be applied to advance partnerships between the private sector, government, and NGOs, or organizations like the UN, to effectively address that first of all you don’t want to be polluting the environment, and spoiling the common resources that we all enjoy, but are there ways that technology can play a role in finding solutions? 

I think it can, I do believe in the tremendous positive impact of technology and innovation. I think we can find ways to mitigate, as technology aggravates it also mitigates. But we have to have the willingness and that willingness comes from the private sector, and as long as the private sector is driven by focus on profit, and pure profit without responsibility, I don’t know whether we’re going to get there. A lot of innovations we see are start-ups, there are innovations around these that have come from individuals, through people who care about these issues, and up scalable. I think what we have and we try to do is, give visibility to them, and try to connect them with partners in the private sector to make it more scalable. 

I think it will happen again through grassroots and through the people themselves. So, let me just share with you my experience in Seattle. I was in Seattle talking to some of our partners in the private sector, there was a great deal of enthusiasm and compassion about these issues. I think they are starting to see that there is value in resolving social and environmental issues, and they’re starting to figure out how they can do that whilst they also keep their stockholders happy around profit and growth. The fact is, if the world is at war, if you have 805 million people hungry, and if you have a billion and five people who don’t have access to the internet, or a cellphone, or a bank account, you don’t have a society that is conducive to buying products that you’re selling. 

So, with added risk in to big social issues of food, disease, healthcare, unrest, pollution, with added risk in that, we really cannot see a lot of growth, and that’s where I think our conversations are with the private sector, and I think we see some of the companies starting to think about, ‘How do I get engaged, and how do I resolve that?’ We desperately need their innovation and creativity to begin to think about these issues, because it is an economy-circular world which means whatever impacts, solutions and the plastic in the ocean doesn’t only impact the ocean around Hawaii, it impacts all of us. Plastic in shrimp impacts all of us, this is impacting all of us and that responsibility is something that we have to rise up to the challenge. 

No doubt, and I think you’ve alluded to something which I’m certainly seeing much more of, a focus at least amongst the millennial generation, on doing well by doing good. A lot of interest in impactful projects, impactful technologies, and a lot of it does have to be driven by the private sector. You’ve had the 1-1-1 model that Salesforce has really advocated for in Silicon Valley where you have one percent of profits, one percent of equity, and one percent of employee time that gets allocated to impact projects for impact.  

Just earlier this week I was at an event at the UN, focused on Blockchain for Impact, it was incredibly encouraging to see the growing number of start-ups and innovators now, that are really dedicated, using technology as a way to solve some of the big problems. The UN has been incredibly supportive of many of these efforts. But it’s not easy, when you’re dealing with multi super-national organizations and different countries, and the dynamics that are going on maybe politically or economically, it’s quite a multi-dimensional challenge. 

As you’ve worked through the UN on a number of these challenges, are there any common lessons that you’ve learned from successes, or any examples that stick out to you of successful impact projects, or where you feel a lot of promise with the UN and state and local governments? 

There’s so many different initiatives that we’re seeing blossom, either through the governments or through the private sector, around the sustainable development goals, to address the targets of sustainable development goals, many are innovative, many if scalable can address big issues. We’re talking to the private sector around building this platform for applications for social good, which people at application and analytic stage people can access, download, and use, because you have the app store, but I think it’s a different app store that a farmer can download for a particular need that a farmer may have, or data that the farmer may need for having a better crop, or better access to where the water is.  

So, to me that would be tremendous value going forward. I do think as you mentioned there are a lot of interesting initiatives and identity on Blockchain, because today we have over a billion women who don’t have a bank account. We have over a billion people that don’t have identity, we have 65 million refugees that leave everything at home and just leave, they can never prove their identity, or any rights to an asset that they left behind. And when we think about the impact of Blockchain giving people an identity, it makes a huge difference, because if you don’t have an identity you could be tried as an adult when you’re a child when you can’t prove your age, and look at child marriage, look at human trafficking with children that you don’t count, and you don’t know exist in your country, or are trafficked, especially a lot of girls. 

Those are some of the big issues that I think we can address through Blockchain and through some of these initiatives that are taking place around identity for everybody. 

Another interesting part of it is, we are shifting, there’s another shift taking place with Blockchain. The internet brought great prosperity to some, but many, many actually and especially a lot in middle-class have dropped to poverty level. What we’ve seen is, a furtive consolidate of wealth in the top two percent, and a reduction of wealth from everybody else. So, yes, technology is about prosperity, and we think it would bring further prosperity, but we have to solve this issue of lack of proper income distribution. It’s important when we think about areas of Artificial Intelligence when through AI you could impact many jobs in agriculture in the industrial system, even in professional areas you could impact. We have to have a different financial model to make sure we take care by 2025, I think 7.5 billion people.  

So, when we think about Blockchain and the shift it will do in the banking system, where people can have peer to peer transactions, financial transactions, what we will see is a little bit of wealth that we’re paying to the bank for fees is going to come back to the individuals because that will be moving to a peer-to-peer model. So, if you think about someone in New York City who makes $500 a week, sends money to their family let’s say in the Philippines, they have to pay 20-25 percent to Western Union as a fee. So, here is $500 there’s $100 already gone. 

Think about peer-to-peer transactions, you have a transaction where you don’t have to pay the fee, you have a transaction that is secure, you have a transaction where your identity doesn’t get stolen, and you have a transaction which begins to shift at will from the center, back to the middle. So, something like that is very interesting, and I think it has a huge impact financial industry, but it would impact even businesses like Uber, where you can get someone to drive you, which would be a peer-to-peer transaction, such as going through a company that would charge a fee, and at the end the income is not equally distributed amongst the workers. 

I think these are very interesting to me, and of course they pose their own ethical and sociological, and economical issues as we further deploy them in this society. 

No doubt. The concern over this concentration of wealth, or concentration of power, I think has become quite apparent in the Internet segment where you have companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon that become so dominant and, in many respects they become so centralized that their power results from the amounts of data they’re able to harvest, and then use that to broaden their reach, and competitive advantages. I think when we look back at the early days of the 20th century, late 19th century where you had the trusts and the trust busters, and really the emergence of any trust, it seems we had so much hope that the internet was going to create all these demographic opportunities with longtail businesses. What’s happened is, in many respects it’s even magnified a lot of the disparities, and Blockchain and decentralized ledger technologies appear to be at least a way to get around the challenges of government, some government corruption, the unfair or, at least perceived as unfair but certainly disproportionate allocation of wealth and income. 

But there’s some problems again that fall outside of pure economics, and you’d alluded to for instance human trafficking, refugees, and even availability of water. What are the projects or uses of technology that make you most optimistic that there might be ways to mitigate some of these enormous challenges? 

As they say, our understanding is pessimistic, but our willingness is optimistic. I think when you look at the shift of crime to the dark web, it is crippling governments. We see maybe one percent of the one percent of these people getting caught. Human trafficking is a $32 billion business, most of the commerce has shifted to the dark web. We have 20 million modern day slaves which are 80 percent women, and 50 percent children, and when you think about trafficking, a lot of other issues that stem from it are illegal deforestation, illegal mining, there’s sex trafficking, sexual exploited children, so you have a huge problem. When you think about drug trafficking that’s of course a trillion-dollar business, much of it is shifted to the dark web, and with governments not having the capabilities this feel that they know how the product of the monster-track stops. 

That’s just a small view of it, there’s certain elements of this is cyber-wars, because industrial systems of most countries are so weak, and now they’re connected to the Internet, they can use it from anywhere, bring somebody’s electric grid down, and just have the country go dark which impacts human life, and you will never know who it is. We think in a physical world, technology has been exponential, it has exponential growth, but our thinking is not exponential, we still look at these things and we say let’s solve it in a way we know how to solve problems in a physical world. We still think governments with borders can actually influence some of these issues. The rule of law, civil society, enforcement of policies, really mean nothing in the dark web, they mean nothing, nobody cares that we have laws against trafficking.  

So, what is the answer? Because the private sector doesn’t care, it doesn’t bring them profit, the criminals which are a small percentage of the population are going crazy, and the governments, NGOs, and the UN are looking at this, and this huge change which is ungoverned. I think the only way we can address this is through technology itself, and it’s through crowdsourcing almost. We have an initiative we call The Digital Blue Helmet, and the Digital Blue Helmets are cyber-security people, they’re expert in cybercrime, cyber protection, cyber security monitoring, and they’re starting to look at two products that can track trafficking of people in the dark web, or cryptocurrency and money laundering. I think that’s where it makes me hopeful that I see there are technologies coming up to protect our identity, to protect our children, and to put some kind of virtual governance in illegal activity, and the same goes with terrorism and cyber-terrorism.  

So, to me that’s where I have seen some movement, and the only way we can really respond to that is globally through everybody who wants to do something positive and do something good, to begin to address these big issues in the dark web, because no one company, no one government, and no one NGO can address these issues, these are just beyond anybody’s grasp at this point. 

I was going to say, it would seem that having an almost open-sourced approach to sharing information or providing the education and training that would be needed, it would be so useful. How do you see optimal or beneficial organizations or structures emerging to accomplish this? Because what you’re talking about, these are global solutions to global problems that in many respects don’t benefit from having the accountability of say a single-sponsor company or organization. But of course, I would think if you could get the right alignment of incentives or at least some resources to help empower people, that might provide a roadmap. Any thoughts about how to approach this? 

I think only a sense that we can provide is preserving the good of humanity. The fact is, to me it’s a virtual neighborhood watch, but today in the physical world if you cross the street you have a red light, you look right, you look left, if you’re hit by a car there is a way of tracking the person who hit you, there’s a court system, there’s a judicial system. In the dark web if your identity is stolen, your child is stolen, drugs are sold, there is no red light, and there is no criminal judicial system to protect you. So as human beings we are completely unprotected, and to me as I say, it’s a virtual neighborhood watch, we have to all wise up to the responsibility, and we have to come up with innovative ideas to protect our families, our society, and the good of the society. I think that’s the only way, you’ve mentioned open-source, I say open-society and engagement of everyone. 

So that’s why we call it Digital Blue Helmet, we are these virtual innovators and virtual people, we don’t have to be an innovator to participate, to fight back. Technology at this point to me is an organism, it’s this organism that we’ve created, this species we’ve created that we can no longer control, and it’s going through those teenage years. We’re sitting here trying to put in governance that doesn’t work, trying to figure out how to mold this thing, and this thing is beyond our grasp. The only way it could be governed is through self-governance, and it’s through self-learning, and it’s through creating its own white blood cells, and those white blood cells that would fight the viruses. 

If you begin to think not like a hardwired creature as we are, but as a silicon creature that we have developed, perhaps we can begin to mitigate, and we can begin to make it reformed and shaped where it creates a lot more good. Because it does create a lot more good, technology is incredible, the advancement of technology has really impacted so many areas, education, healthcare, communication, lots of social demographic movement has been because of the openness to knowledge and information, but we do have to mitigate this kind of virus that’s in the dark web, and I don’t mean the deep web, the dark web. We have to excite these white blood cells to get this tumor out and address it. We can’t sit back until the government pass the laws, or the private sector is going to do something. They’re not going to do something, it’s not going to get done, it is our responsibility to figure it out. 

That’s absolutely on point, you’re really articulated the challenge ahead. In a sense we all need to heed the call to action. The work that you’re doing at the UN, certainly it’s incredibly encouraging a lot of the innovation that’s happening at the edges and globally now. I hope we can harness it all for good. 

It’s been an amazing conversation, and I always like to ask our guests if you have a good book or resource that you’d like to share and recommend, do you have anything for your friends or colleagues that you like to recommend? 

I was at MIT a couple of weeks ago, I bought this book called, ‘Social Physics’. It intrigued me because I’ve always loved physics, and I’ve always tried to understand whether the laws of physics work in society. It’s written by Alex Pentland, and he talks about social network and how we as humanity are getting smarter because we are connected, the IQ of a group versus the IQ of an individual. There’s something that really caught me as I was reading this book, about how a long time ago humans used to sit around the fire and would share ideas and would share with someone and would come to an agreement. Then in the 1700’s the philosophers came and talked about individual rationality, that individuals tended to be rational. Then later of course we learned that rationality was based on the social perspective, social context, and could have prejudice, and could have perspectives that would go against rationality. 

Then we had the age of the Internet which connected us back in, to this kind of space, and I called it a promethean fire, and Alex calls it a promethean fire actually; it’s about the fire that we sit around and it allows us to become more compassionate, more understanding. It takes us from what I said earlier, homosapiens to connected sapiens which has a much better understanding of the world, has better decision-making, has better rational thinking, and how do we harness the value of that? What do we become, what is next for humanity as we get connected more into this network? As a network of species how do we do good to improve life for everyone and the environment, and how do we mitigate issues as they come up? 

So, I think the book is great for giving you that perspective, and also connecting the laws of physics to the laws of society, and how they integrate. 

That’s a fantastic recommendation, I’m going to put it in my shopping cart right after this call. Wrapping things up again, this is Ed Maguire, Insights Partner at Momenta, and our guest has been Atti Riazi, the Chief Information Technology Officer of the UN. 

I just want to thank you again for the time and the insight, it’s been illuminating and inspiring, and we really appreciate your time. 

Thank you, Ed, it’s been a pleasure to be with you, and thank you to all those that are listening to us. I always appreciate their feedback and comments we receive at the UN, and the partnership and support we get at the UN from everyone out there. We do need to continue partnership to achieve all the goals that are before us. So, thank you.