Speaking at the Ai Everything conference in Dubai, Amy Webb, Futurist and Founder of Future Today Institute said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not about robots but about the future of humanity. She added that businesses need to think about AI holistically.

The AI expert and bestselling author of ‘The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity’ argues that executives need to get a better understanding of the technology to take full advantage of it. She explained that there are only nine companies in the world that effectively have the lion share of patents. Those firms are well capitalised and are effectively building out the frameworks for the future.

The nine companies are China’s Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, as well as US-based Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and Apple.

“The 9 drivers are not interoperable,” she told her audience. She added that the challenge is that leaders from government and businesses often lack context and do not actually understand what the technology is about. She explained that their understanding is important because the decisions they are making will have long-term ramifications.

Ai Everything is hosted by the UAE’s National Program for Artificial Intelligence with the support of global association partners International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in strategic partnership with Smart Dubai.