The price of having a say on AI in Davos 

Artificial intelligence dominated slogans and showcases again this year in Davos, during the WEF. Keystone / AP

In Davos, small organisations struggle to be heard amid an artificial intelligence (AI) debate dominated by billion-dollar companies. A reportage from the Alpine town during the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Tammy Mackenzie did not come to Davos to do business or court investors. She is here to bring a perspective on AI that doesn’t come from a billion-dollar company. 

Tammy Mackenzie is co-founder and director of the Canadian thinktank Aula Fellowship. Sara Ibrahim / SWI swissinfo.ch

“We want to make sure everyone can have a say on AI, from ordinary people to those who represent great powers,” says Mackenzie, who leads Aula Fellowship, a thinktank based in Montreal, Canada, that advocates for more inclusive AI.   

Mackenzie is among several technologists and entrepreneurs who are concerned about the concentration of power in AI. She has spent years trying to raise awareness through research, data and campaigns. If AI systems are not designed with marginalised groups in mind, she argues, they risk reinforcing exclusion. The tools used in hiring or health, for instance, are already making automated decisions that reflect the biases of those who build them.

But the largest challenge has been delivering this message in the right rooms – especially when decision-makers gather in a remote Swiss town during the most expensive week of the year.

>> Even Swiss AI is not immune to bias, despite efforts to ensure ethics and transparency:

Looking for ‘honest and courageous’ people

The World Economic Forum (WEF) transforms Davos into a high-level international networking hub. Attending can carry costs beyond what many small organisations can afford.

Mackenzie and I are sitting on a small sofa in the middle of Davos’s Kulturplatz on a Thursday afternoon. During WEF, this sober square turns into a strange crossroads of sausage vendors, tech promoters and people taking a break from closed-door meetings along the Promenade.  

During the WEF, Davos’s Kulturplatz also welcomes those promoting climate-friendly technologies. Sara Ibrahim / SWI swissinfo.ch

In this normally quiet street, companies and countries pay sums that can exceed $1 millionExternal link (CHF775,000) to turn a shop or office into their own showcase during WEF week. AI dominates the slogans and signage. Among forum invitees, the spotlight falls on top tech executives such as Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Jensen Huang (Nvidia) and Satya Nadella (Microsoft), debating AI’s supposed existential risks and its extraordinary promises for society.

For Mackenzie, being in Davos is a way to get closer to the centres of power where the future of artificial intelligence – and therefore that of millions of people – is being shaped. She wants to bring large firms such as Microsoft and Palantir, which also develops AI systems for military use, to the table with researchers, policymakers and ordinary citizens affected by the systems they build.

Her to-do list, she says, includes finding people with power who are “honest, courageous, and hopeful about our biggest problems”.

“Every major change in history has happened because people sat down together and changed what no longer worked,” she says. I raise an eyebrow. This sounds a bit naive. But Mackenzie insists she truly believes it. She was born an optimist, she says; the only thing that truly makes her angry is injustice.

Optimism alone doesn’t buy you a seat in Davos 

Until a few weeks earlier, Mackenzie didn’t know whether she would be able to afford the trip to Davos. Access to WEF and its side events is by invitation, and finding a place to stay is prohibitively expensive. During the forum, renting an apartment in Davos can cost up to CHF95,000External link per week.

Flights and five nights in the most modest lodgings for Mackenzie and a colleague would have cost her thinktank C$9,000 (CHF5,100) – money it did not have. She made it to Davos only thanks to a donation campaign and financial support from friends, colleagues, family members and foundations promoting inclusive AI.

Her invitation came through a chance encounter months earlier in Montreal with Daniel Dobos. Dobos is the director of research at Swisscom and co-initiator of the AI House, the main high-level AI networking venue in Davos during the WEF. “Tammy is fantastic: she’s full of energy and passion. I wanted her organisation to be able to come to Davos,” he says.

On the edges of the AI House

Dobos says initiatives such as the AI House struggle to include voices like Mackenzie’s. It’s hard to balance between big companies – paying for visibility and panel slots – and smaller, less influential actors for whom participation is financially and logistically difficult. 

“If we want to be credible, we also need to give more space to smaller organisations,” he says.

Inside the AI House, selected entrepreneurs, researchers and AI gurus circulate. Yann LeCun, former head of AI research at Meta, was on the stage one day. Another day, Talal Al Kaissi, interim CEO of G42 – the controversial AI company founded by the Emirati royal family – was invited to speak about AI sovereignty.

>> Switzerland also aims for greater sovereignty in AI:

On the edges are under-resourced but mission-drive organisations like Mackenzie’s, along with young start-up founders searching for the right connections. I watch Mackenzie exchange contacts at the end of panels. But she’s also there as an observer. After a discussion on AI and military decision-making, she questions the absence of companies whose technologies are already used in war and conflict.

“We need these companies at the table,” she stressed, saying that this is the most effective way to make sure their systems reduce inequality and harm instead of amplifying them.

Entering the circles that matter 

Jennifer Ai is a serial entrepreneur and researcher. Sara Ibrahim / SWI swissinfo.ch

In the AI House networking room – a space with comfortable sofas and high tables –  we meet Jennifer Ai, an entrepreneur in her thirties with a surname that seems almost too apt. She also travelled from Canada, and this is her first time in Davos. Like Mackenzie, she is working on a project aimed at democratising access in the tech industry. 

Her latest venture seeks to use AI to digitise the fundraising process for global start-ups. Raising money for small businesses is still largely a matter of luck: the luck of being in the right place and of knowing the right person at the right time. “It means attending events, paying exorbitant fees, trying to meet someone randomly,” Ai says.

When she started out, she knew no one and spent hours searching for investors, writing emails, learning how to seize the moment. “It felt miserable,” she recalls. But her perseverance paid off, she says, flashing the confident smile of someone who knows they have finally entered the circles that matter.

Eating pasta every day

Although both Mackenzie and Ai made it to Davos, they were far from living the life of a stereotypical Big Tech billionaire. Ai commuted daily from Zurich, a trip that takes more than two hours by train. Mackenzie slept in a shared dorm-style room nearly two hours away. The train cost her around CHF112 ($145) per day, and a bed in the dormitory ran to about CHF150 a night. 

“Everything cost about twice as much as in Canada, and often only luxury options were available,” she says.

To save money, Mackenzie mostly ate fruit, bread, cereal and dried meat from the supermarket. Over the week, she only had four hot meals – three of them were pasta.

In Davos ‘we can set the table’

Despite the struggles, Mackenzie says the trip was worth it. In Davos, she walked up and down the Promenade, stopped by Big Tech venues and spoke with staff at reception desks, arguing that companies can build better products if they listen to what the people who use them want.

“This is a basic rule of marketing. But for it to work, companies, tech experts and ordinary people need to sit down together and talk,” she says.

She would not name the companies she approached or detail the conversations, but she says she felt welcome. She is convinced Big Tech will only change its attitude if it fears losing legitimacy. 

Later in the evening, we find ourselves once again outside the AI House, after unsuccessfully searching for a panel on labour exploitation. My feet are frozen and my stomach is rumbling. Mackenzie looks fresh and energetic. I wonder whether this is her layers of merino wool or her optimism. 

Tomorrow the WEF will be over, and the Promenade will empty, as if this vast gathering had never happened. Before saying goodbye, I ask whether she really believes she can convince Big Tech to give up billion-dollar businesses simply by exchanging business cards in Davos.

“I’m not here to convince anyone,” she says. “We can only do one thing: set the table. If people then show up and sit down, something will change.”

Edited by Gabe Bullard/ts