Technology is like Force, depends how you use it: Mahindra

Invoking the famous Star Wars series, top industrialist Anand Mahindra today said technology is like the Force and everything depends on how we use it, as business leaders from across the world began debating here the challenges and benefits from the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Speaking here at the first official session of the World Economic Forum's five-day annual meet, which started last night, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also said the world cannot afford another digital divide and the key question was how to ensure that the fourth industrial revolution leads to digital dividends.
Participating at a session on the 'Transformation of Tomorrow' alongside Mahindra, Nadella said, "We cannot afford another digital divide. Key question is about how the benefits from the fourth industrial revolution will be spread.

"The fourth industrial revolution is digital dividend or digital divide?"
On the other hand, the Mahindra group chief said real opportunities to make change are when you do well and do good at the same time.
"In India, 65 per cent of the population are in villages. Now you can put 3D printers in villages... I know we can create artificial intelligence but can we create artificial empathy. How do we programme not artificial intelligence, but artificial empathy?

"Technology is like the Force and depends on how we use. Question is do we want Jedis or Sith," he said. Sith are the arch enemies of the quasi-religious Jedis in the famous Star Wars series.

At the same session, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg pitched for ending gender disparity.
"Men still rule the world and I am not sure it is going that well. When it comes to making decisions that impact our world, women are not at these tables where decisions are made," she noted.
The theme of the WEF meeting this year is 'Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution' and Nadella is one of the co-chairs.
Leaders at another WEF session said that over the next 30 years, two-thirds of all new energy supply would come from renewable energy sources.
The next energy transformation requires not just more renewables, but to fully integrate them into the energy system, they added.

Clean energy now accounts for more than half of all new energy supply, International Energy Agency's Executive Director Fatih Birol said.
The bulk of new installations, more than two-thirds, come from emerging countries, he added.
"To meet climate change and growth targets, around 40 per cent of future energy supply must come from zero-emission technologies," he noted.