AI Takes Center Stage at Davos
On the main thoroughfare in Davos, Switzerland, once filled with the promotion of crypto companies.
However, in 2024, AI has become the focal point, overturning trends from the past few years. The presence of crypto companies at this year's Davos is notably scarce.
At the World Economic Forum in January 2022, despite the cryptocurrency market downturn, companies were still promoting "Bitcoin Pizza Day" and non-fungible tokens.
In January 2023, crypto companies reduced their lavish spending at Davos, but the rapid rise in AI investments and attention over the past year, especially driven by the ChatGPT hype, is evident.
ChatGPT, launched at the end of 2022, gained explosive popularity.
$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$ represents the typical example of publicly traded AI, with its stock surging by 239% in 2023.
Global tech companies are fiercely competing to lead in the field of AI, with emphasis from Intel to Salesforce. Telecom company Swisscom even established a venue called the "AI House."
Davos 2024: Hindustan Times
More than 20 conferences focused on artificial intelligence discussed everything from education to ethics, and even the "hard power" of artificial intelligence in geopolitics.
Bill Gates, Marc Benioff and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg are regular visitors to Davos. OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, Meta AI’s Yann LeCun, Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and AI pioneer Andrew Ng, among others, will be on hand.
According to the agenda, future forums will also include "360-degree interpretation of artificial intelligence regulations", "Ethics in the era of artificial intelligence", "Education meets artificial intelligence", "Gen AI: A blessing or curse for creativity?", etc.
The tech industry has long had a strong presence in Davos. Now, artificial intelligence is taking center stage at an unprecedented rate, attracting huge amounts of capital and inspiring both wonder and fear.
OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and other big names will give speeches here to discuss issues such as ethics, supervision and energy consumption of artificial intelligence.
“Crypto companies no longer have to prove themselves”
However, the crypto industry, for its part, did not seem to resent this shift in Davos.
Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer at Circle, the issuer of stablecoin USDC, has been a frequent visitor to Davos. Over the past eight years, Disparte said the blockchain and crypto industries have had to “tell the story of the technology, not the story of the outcomes.”
"Today, there are very few crypto places on the Promenade. They are all turning into AI companies, which is great," Disparte said. "This shows that crypto is becoming a background technology." "This is not unlike the way the Internet had to go through the dot-com bubble phase, putting the development of the Internet into more durable, trustworthy and secure hands."
AI investments are rising rapidly, with 15 of the world’s most successful venture capital firms investing more in AI and machine learning startups than crypto companies in the third quarter, according to PitchBook data.
In addition, there is a view that crypto companies no longer need to prove themselves, and the SEC’s approval of a Bitcoin ETF last week is considered to be the moment when cryptocurrencies officially become a legal asset class.
Davos 2024: AI takes over WEF's main area pushing crypto aside
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