It was a pleasure to give a speech at the Mont Pelerin Society 2024 in New Delhi. It was one of the most fun MPS meetings I’ve been to so far, following becoming a member a few years ago. The theme of the meeting was how to bring about freedom and prosperity for the remaining 6 billion people in the world that have not thus far enjoyed this development.
The meeting was, as always, under the Chatham House Rule, so we cannot talk about who said what, but the broad themes of the discussions were upbeat on the potential of countries like India where the GDP per capita is low but the energy and ambition are high .
In my panel discussion, on artificial intelligence, we discussed the positive and negative aspects of AI, in particular how it empowers people around the world to build things that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive, but also results in a centralisation of power, potentially in the hands of governments and/or government crony corporations.
The other speakers on the panel, all of whom were esteemed experts, were:
Archana Gulati | Senior Strategic Advisor [LinkedIn]
Archana Gulati is a strategic adviser on digital transformation frontier technologies and competition regulation. She also teaches at leading universities and public policy Institutes. With over 33 years of experience, her journey began as an Indian Civil Services officer (1989 batch), and she continued to excel in her field after taking voluntary retirement in 2021. Her career milestones include serving as a Senior Adviser on Competition Law with Trilegal and as the Head of Public Policy at Google, India, until October 2022. Archana has been an expert with the International Telecommunication Union since 2010.
James Lawson | Chairman, Adam Smith Institute [LinkedIn]
James Lawson blends experience from business, think tanks and government. James is Chairman of the Adam Smith Institute, familiar to many here at MPS. His day job is a Director at Helsing, one of Europe’s leading Artificial Intelligence companies, with a particular focus on Defence. Helsing has raised over $800m in venture capital funding to date, and is valued at over $4.5billion. Previously, in government, he was appointed by successive Prime Ministers as a Senior Special Adviser in the Cabinet Office. And he was a Director at Microsoft, as CTO for Defence. He is a trusted adviser to executives and governments about transforming their operations through artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other digital technologies. James was keen to emphasise that his remarks are off the record, and do not represent the view of Helsing.
Nikhil Pahwa | Founder and Editor, MediaNama [LinkedIn]
Nikhil Pahwa is the Founder and Editor of MediaNama. Nikhil is a TED Fellow, an Asia21 Fellow and was named one of India Today Magazine’s “Indians of Tomorrow”. He has been profiled in Forbes, Wired, and GQ. He is on the advisory board of the CyberBRICS project. MediaNama was awarded as an Ecosystem Builder by Fortune Magazine in 2016. He also co-founded the Internet Freedom Foundation, which focuses on advocacy for digital rights in India. Nikhil writes TechNik, a monthly column for the Economic Times.
