Irving Wladawsky-Berger

An Open Source, Standards-Based Approach for the Future of Supply Chains

In 2018 I participated in a blockchain panel at a conference of senior supply chain executives representing a variety of industries and companies. I welcomed the opportunity to learn how these supply chain executives felt about the potential impact of blockchain technologies in complex supply chains.

At the time, I was convinced that blockchain technologies would be a major next step in the evolution of the internet. Two years earlier, for example, the World Economic Forum (WEF) had named The Blockchain as one of the Top Ten Emerging Technologies for 2016 in its annual list. The WEF report compared the blockchain to the internet, noting that “Like the Internet, the blockchain is an open, global infrastructure upon which other technologies and applications can be built.  And like the Internet, it allows people to bypass traditional intermediaries in their dealings with each other, thereby lowering or even eliminating transaction costs.”

I also believed that supply chain applications would emerge as the killer app for blockchain technologies, that is, an IT application whose value is simple to explain, its use is fairly intuitive, and the application turns out to be so useful that it helps propel the success of new technologies or products. For example, spreadsheets and word processing played a major role in the 1980s adoption of personal computers, as did e-mail and the World Wide Web in the 1990s mainstream success of the internet.

But, it hasn’t quite worked as expected, either for blockchain technologies or for their applications in supply chains. “Blockchain, the technology underpinning bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, for years has been viewed by some companies as a way to drive industry-transforming projects, among them the tracking of assets through complex supply chains,” according to “Blockchain Fails to Gain Traction in the Enterprise,” an article published in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). “So far that hasn’t happened.”

Health and AI

The March 30, 2024 issue of The Economist includes a special  section on Health and AI, with six articles on the topic. “Artificial intelligence (AI) is generating excitement and hyperbole everywhere, but in the field of health care it has the potential to be transformational,” said the lead article, “The AI doctor will see you … eventually.” “In Europe analysts predict that deploying AI could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year; in America, they say, it could also save money, shaving $200bn-360bn from overall annual medical spending, now $4.5trn a year (or 17% of GDP).”

Healthcare is a system of coupled systems, encompassing medical and pharmaceutical research; the delivery of healthcare to patients by a variety of practitioners, including hospitals, physicians, nurses, and pharmacists; and the insurance companies and governments that pay for healthcare. It’s a highly regulated industry, which creates major barriers for the sort of innovative start-ups that have been the engine of transformation in other sectors. In advanced economies, a handful of companies, — e.g., Cerner, Epic, Athena, — support large healthcare providers with proprietary platforms that don’t interoperate with each other, making it difficult for smaller companies and startups to develop innovative AI tools and applications as has been the case in other industries.

There’s considerable hope that AI could help us better deal with the inherent complexity of the healthcare sector. “AI systems can enhance diagnostic accuracy and disease tracking, improve the prediction of patients’ outcomes and suggest better treatments,” notes The Economist. “It can also boost efficiency in hospitals and surgeries by taking on tasks such as medical transcription and monitoring patients, and by streamlining administration. It may already be speeding the time it takes for new drugs to reach clinical trials. New tools, including generative AI, could supercharge these abilities.”

However, “although AI has been used in health care for many years, integration has been slow and the results have often been mediocre.” Among the major reasons for the slow progress are the concerns about accuracy and trust necessary to protect patients’ safety. “Improving accuracy and reducing bias in AI tools requires them to be trained on large data sets that reflect patients’ full diversity.” But, while there’s lots of available health data, the data is highly fragmented making it difficult to use properly.

An Economic Framework for Understanding AI

“Artificial intelligence (AI) systems touch the lives of virtually every American,” said “An Economic Framework for Understanding Artificial Intelligence,” an overview of the economic potential of AI which was recently released by the White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) as part of their “2024 Economic Report of the President.” “In recent years, AI systems have advanced rapidly as recent developments in computing, data availability, and machine learning models have simultaneously come together to produce rapid improvements.”

“Still, much remains unknown,” the CEA added. “While AI’s capabilities will depend in part on the technology itself, its effects will be shaped by economic, regulatory, and social pressures. How society deploys this technology and what technology-specific guardrails are implemented will be critical factors in determining both the breadth and magnitude of its effects.”

“An economic framework, combined with a basic understanding of AI technology, allows us to make predictions about when, how, and why AI may be adopted. While such a framework can also tell us what broader effects AI adoption may have, applying economic insights to an evolving and proliferating technology like AI is especially challenging. However, it is also especially valuable, because decisions made at the onset of a new technology have a greater influence on its eventual impact.”

The AI Economic Framework is a rather long and comprehensive document. Let me briefly discuss a few of the its key points.

Who Still Works from Home?

Remote work, — aka work from home (WFH), — has been around for decades, but took off in the mid-late 1990s with the explosive growth of the internet. Some even predicted that the internet would lead to the decline of cities, because it would enable people to work, be in touch with friends and colleagues, and shop from home. Why would anyone choose to live in an expensive and crowded metropolitan area, when they could live in a more affordable, less stressful, potentially healthier location? Instead of declining, superstar cities continued to generate the greatest levels of innovation and good jobs, thus attracting a disproportionate share of the world’s talent.

But, everything changed when the COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide in early 2020. “The coronavirus crisis is forcing white-collar America to reconsider nearly every aspect of office life,” wrote a June, 2020 NY Times Magazine article. “Some practices now seem to be wastes of time, happily discarded; others seem to be unexpectedly crucial, and impossible to replicate online. For workers wondering right now if they’re ever going back to the office, the most honest answer is that even if they do, the office might never be the same.”

The article cited the experience of Accenture, which at the time had around 500,000 employees in more than 200 cities in 120 countries. Before the pandemic, no more than 10% worked remotely on any given day. But, by the middle of March, nearly all were asked to work from home. Employees adapted quickly, said Accenture’s CTO. The volume of video calls went up by a factor of six while audio calls tripled. Despite having to switch from face-to-face to audio and video interactions, overall productivity actually went up as measured by several metrics.”

A Deteroriating Global Risk Outlook

“Last year’s Global Risks Report warned of a world that would not easily rebound from continued shocks,” wrote Saadia Zahidi, managing director of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in the Preface of The Global Risks Report 2024. “As 2024 begins, the 19th edition of the report is set against a backdrop of rapidly accelerating technological change and economic uncertainty, as the world is plagued by a duo of dangerous crises: climate and conflict.”

“Underlying geopolitical tensions combined with the eruption of active hostilities in multiple regions is contributing to an unstable global order characterized by polarizing narratives, eroding trust and insecurity,” she added. “At the same time, countries are grappling with the impacts of record-breaking extreme weather, as climate-change adaptation efforts and resources fall short of the type, scale and intensity of climate-related events already taking place.”

The Global Risks Report 2024 is based on two complementary surveys: the Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS), the WEF’s source of original risk data, which includes the insights and opinions of over 1,500 leaders from academia, business, government, the international community and civil society; and the Executive Opinion Survey (EOS) of over 11,000 leaders from 113 countries who were asked to identify risks that pose the most severe threat to each of their countries over the next two years. In addition, the report includes insights from over 200 risk specialists.

The WEF report analyzed global risks and presented its findings along three distinct timeframes:

• The current term are the risks most likely to present a material crisis on a global scale in 2024.
• The short term considers global risks which are likely to play out over the next two years.
• The long term considers global risks that are likely to be most severe over the next ten years.