Innovative Work Models for the Future with Xiaochen Zhang

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Welcome back to the show.
The future of business and AI might very well be determined by how we define purpose in business. Is it about profit or is it about people and profit? Today, we're going to discuss how AI might impact the future workplace. I'm Stephen Sakach here once again with Tullio Siragusa and Mike Liwski. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Liwski** (0:41)
Thanks so much, Stephen. And I'm pumped today. The energy is high and I can't wait for the discussion with our guests. As advertised, we're excited to welcome Xiaochen Zhang, a pioneering force in the realms of blockchain, fintech and AI. As the founder and president of FineTech4Good, Xiaochen leads global initiatives that harness the power of technology for sustainable development and social impact.
His work spans advising governments, corporations and startups on how to leverage innovative technologies to create meaningful change. Xiaochen's innovative work with AI 2030 and his leadership at FineTech4Good make him the perfect guest to discuss the future of AI and its implications for business and society. His efforts in promoting financial inclusion and sustainability have earned him recognition as a global blockchain leader by Lattice80 and a top 10 FinTech influencer by Analytica.
In this episode, we'll explore Xiaochen's insights on the future of AI, its disruptive potential and the balance between technological growth and societal consciousness. We'll dive into questions like what makes him optimistic about AI's future, the potential disruptions AI might cause in the workplace and how prepared we are as a society for some of these changes. We'll also discuss AI mentors and the critical importance of a culture of learning and personal growth in an AI-driven future. Lastly, Xiaochen will share details about the upcoming AI conference and other exciting projects that he's working on. Let's dive into these critical topics and welcome the remarkable Xiaochen Zhang to the podcast. Welcome.
Thank you.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:30)
Xiaochen, what are you most optimistic about with the future of AI?

**Xiaochen Zhang** (2:37)
I think definitely it's from the efficiency gain.
And when we just talk about, if we take the whole world as a system and naturally the system is accumulating a lot of costs, the cost of communication, the cost of finding information, the cost of operation, and all those costs are just making the system very heavy. And from the system theory, that's the system collapsed because of those kinds of costs. Where that's when we have AI, naturally that's many of those costs in the system can be addressed by efficiency gain. And there that no matter we talk about having the AI bot or AI agent to just summarize all the information, provided that information directly to the final users, or just to remove some of the process, which is just redundant, or just to just introduce a new way of doing things where that's many of those type of time span or intermediaries who are involved in the process can be removed by just making the system much smaller, much more connected. And the relationship between the final user and the solution provider to becoming a lot closer, that can just address a lot of systematic and related problem that we face as of now.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:19)
Yeah, I think too, when I think about that, I think maybe like the speed in healthcare and things sometimes just when you've got those decisions and stuff to be made really quickly, but be able to bring all that systematic information and all the different possibilities in together and within a fraction of a second, you have that at your fingertips. I mean, something like that, it's like literally, yeah, life and death, it's sort of struggling.
What keeps you up at night when it comes to AI?

**Xiaochen Zhang** (4:48)
Yeah, let's come back to why did I started AI 2030? And that's exactly the main reason and where although AI is exciting and it has a lot of benefits, but if we don't do it properly, irresponsibly, and then the consequences will be irreversible. And that is not just impact one person, one company, and then the whole humanity may be impacted in a very different way.
And there that we identify or develop our AI 2030 framework and response way framework, which include the six pillars.
AI need to be developed with the consideration of sustainability, privacy, preserve, accountability, fairness, safe and secure. And all those pillars are really important. If any pillar are not being properly addressed within an AI system, naturally, the final users could be getting impacted. The society can be impacted. A good example is that if you are a financial service company and introducing AI products for loans or insurance and all that, and if your AI have bias, and naturally, your customer are being declined for no reason, you don't want to be that service provider. And then, again, in a similar setting that if your regulator ask you, your AI system makes a certain decision, impact your final customer, me as a regulator, we want to know what happened. You tell the regulator, sorry, and it's AI made, and we cannot explain that. That is not good enough, and then you may just face serious consequence. And then when we look at the security safety side, that if we just have AI system, for example, running our safety, running our transportation system, and if AI system fails, and naturally, you can imagine if you don't have AI developed in the way, that's the governance is being, government structure is being established properly, and the safety and the security part are being addressed properly. And you may just really face this mass transportation related challenge, even it's life and death related situation. So that's why to make AI responsible is critical. And of course, if you just expand that from a corporate view into the humanity, and then we are seeing the, artificial general intelligence may come to becoming a reality. And if you say now, and without the broader new social consensus, if AI is being used to managing the weapon with a destructive weapon, and then AI could just cause the humanity-related damage at that great level.