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The opening session of EFG Hermes’ One on One last week featured a panel, moderated by Enterprise, to address the question on everyone’s minds: Are we or are we not endangered by AI? Our panelists, who are friends, came from two very different schools of thought:
In one corner: Renier Lemmens (LinkedIn) is the outgoing CEO of Riyadh-headquartered fintech player Geidea who has served on the boards of more than a dozen fintechs in London and around the world. He’s a veteran of McKinsey in London, New Delhi, and San Francisco and was CEO of PayPal for EMEA. He began his career as a banker with Barclays.
In the other corner: Our friend Wael Fakharany (LinkedIn) is CEO of Edenred Middle East, which empowers businesses and more than 2 million cardholders in the UAE with smart financial technology. He’s a digital optimist to the core, with a track record that includes service as a senior executive at Google, Google X, Careem, IBM, and Oracle.
The debate: How might AI impact frontier and emerging markets? How can executives across the region can adapt to the new normal?
“Many of us will not have a job, or those who succeed us won’t” was Lemmens’ starting point into the discussion. In finance and investment, more “forward-looking” companies have already started to appoint AI committee members that are now participating in meetings. Having that kind of co-pilot with infinite knowledge of your company and your competitors, and the ability to access any data about them in a matter of seconds, will have a big impact on jobs, Lemmens said.
It’s already happening, Lemmens argues: Geidea piloted AI in the legal department, and saw a massive improvement in productivity in terms of contract analysis and negotiation, Lemmens added. “Did dozens of people lose their jobs? No, but we did cancel two vacancies for paralegals,” he said, adding that the software it was piloting was an off-the-shelf, early-stage software. “It’s very early days but there’s already a significant impact [and] dislocation of [certain] types of jobs will happen in a very big way.”
For Fakharany, it’s more a matter of being one step ahead and using AI to enhance performance. “AI is legal performance enhancing drugs; some people will fall off the bandwagon but others will do more things than others,” he said. “As a manager, I would ask my team to give me more efficiency and productivity because they have superpowers with the help of AI; they would only be out of a job if they’re unable to leverage that superpower,” he added.
History also tells us that jobs will change, but will not be replaced completely, Fakharany argues, referencing the evolution of TV — from traditional cable to streaming — and software — from CDs to cloud storage.
For emerging markets, AI can help create more potential for financial inclusion and help them leapfrog, Fakharany said, adding that AI can help advance financial education and literacy, as well as access to financial services. Developed markets, on the other hand, will use AI for better fraud management and to create more sophisticated financial models, he added.
The expansion of AI will also help level the playing field, as both EMs and developed markets are grappling with similar challenges associated with AI, Lemmens said. Companies need to be discovering and working through those challenges now, or they’ll fall behind, he added.
But EMs still have some catching up to do in terms of regulations, Fakharany said. “The good news is there’s a lot of young people and energy here, and in KSA and Egypt, with a lot of labor arbitrage,” he added. The bad news, according to Lemmens, is that the burden of more education will be placed on people who don’t have access, possibly pushing them to less attractive jobs or unemployment.
Which sectors can get the most out of AI? Fakharany thinks B2B software, companies that streamline supply chains, and last-mile delivery are promising, while Lemmens believes AI can transform healthcare service delivery and drug development.
The age of soft skills + BS radars: While AI continues to develop and become more commoditized, the jobs of the future are those that center around the study of human beings, like anthropology, Fakharany argued. Lemmens, on the other hand, believes everyone will need to dig under the hood of AI and understand how it works to develop a “BS detector” that can allow them to stay ahead of the curve — AI, he says, is too important to be left exclusively to your CTO or CIO.
