UNCTAD Press conference 23 February 2021

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Aceter, Central European Time.

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Ontario Universal Aeon St la directis de la Division la Technology logistics Shamika Ceraman on Torah antipusional detai in Isabel Johanshu Don la parole over to you.

Thank you, Catherine.

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And first of all, welcome to the press launch of our 2021 Technology and Innovation Report.

This report focuses on an issue that was already critical prior to COVID-19, but was important has been even further highlighted by the crisis frontier technologies and concerns about inequality or how we can promote innovation with equity.

And I first want to say a few words on the key underlying issues of this report.

First is speak about frontier technologies which are defining force of today's world.

And when I speak about frontier technology, the report speaks about artificial intelligence, Internet, thing of thing, Internet of Things, big data, blockchain, 3 day printing, 5G, robotics, drone, nanotechnology, gene editing and solar photovoltaic.

That's all the things that we are looking at in this report.

Secondly, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated their power.

Artificial intelligence and big data have been used for screening patients, tracing, tracing various cases, predicting its evolution and developing vaccines, of course.

Thirdly, there is another site to the count the risks of rapid technological change.

Frontier technologies leave many people behind.

And in many countries, the use of these technologies is constrained by a lack of capacity to absorb new technologies, lack of skills, lack of infrastructure, lack of financing.

And how can countries to that barely afford basic services, afford these technologies?

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Fourthly, the central part of this edition of this report is that we are at the early stage of a new wave of technological change, and this wave can have implications of historic proportions.

Therefore, all countries need to understand what is happening, be prepared to catch this wave of change and write it forward.

However, there is also a lot of indesirable effects of rapid technological change which are already visible.

The concern over inequality and the causal relationship with technology is at the forefront of this report in many parts of the world.

Within country, Inequality has increased over the past 40 years within countries and it has undermined societal cohesion in several countries.

Choices in trade and fiscal policy, education, labour market, health services have contributed to this trend, but technological change has accelerated it.

In terms of inequality among countries, our report shows how each wave of technical technological progress since the Industrial revolution was associated with sharper inequality.

Before 1800, there was very little income disparity across countries.

Inequality was mainly a matter of domestic class divides.

Today, the average gap in per capita income between developed and developing countries is 47149 U.S.

dollar, leading to varying degrees of economic, social and even political tensions.

There are also disparities in education.

In 2018, in low income countries, only 41% of the population in the relevant age group were enrolled in secondary education.

In upper middle income and **** income countries it was 90%.

This is important because inequality in education, of course, perpetuated income and other forms of inequality.

If past technical technological revolutions have exacerbated inequality among countries, we need to understand how developing countries can get ready to deal with the new wave of technical technological change.

And for this purpose, the report present of Frontier Technology Readiness Readiness Index.

This index assesses the national capabilities to use, adopt and adopt frontier technologies in an equitable manner and without surprise.

On the top, we have developed countries, the top five are United States of America, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Sweden and Singapore.

Large economies from the South are also well ranked.

For instance, China is in position 25, Brazil 41, India 43 and South Africa 54 and it is interesting that several countries perform much better than could be expected on on the basis of their GDP per capita.

And Shamika will explain the detail about this interesting index.

They have also succeeded those country who are which are over performing, also succeeding in diversifying the economy through industrial and innovation policy.

And they have invested heavily in innovation and technological learning.

So that's really important.

And our analysis also shows that the developing countries as a group, including the top over performing in developing countries have lower rankings for ICT connectivity and skills.

This is concerning given that ICT connectivity and skills are crucial for using and driving frontier technologies.

Only half of the world's population has ICT connectivity in the post countries.

Internet access is exorbitantly expensive.

Developing countries just need to work towards universal Internet access and ensure that their population have opportunities to learn the skills needed for frontier technologies.

Finally, to foster innovation with equity, we need two things.

First, we need strong leadership at the domestic level.

We argue for building stronger National Science, technology and innovation capabilities.

Address gender gaps in science and technology.

Adopt redistributive fiscal policies, secure equitable access to education and lifelong training, as well as provide a more level playing playing field for workers.

Policy makers need to be particularly mindful about the labour impact of technology and that technology policy cannot be separated from other policies, especially industrial policy.

All that helps developing countries to assess their innovation ecosystems.

That's what we call in or Jango STI review, Science and Technology innovation review through a multi stakeholder approach, and this exercise supports countries to identify where the gaps are in deploying these these new technologies.

Second things that we need in order to really foster innovation with equity is international cooperation and an inclusive dialogue that's indispensable to address sensitive aspects of frontier technologies.

This includes addressing the lack of consistent ethical frameworks for technology, such as artificial intelligence and gene editing.

It includes also giving an equal voice to developing countries in governing the impact of technological change on societies and the planet, and thirdly, devising policies to ease technological transfer.

These contentious issues must be debated and the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development offers an impartial and trusted platform for doing so.

So, I want to end my introductory remarks with re emphasising that we have a shared responsibility and interest that developing countries do not miss this wave of frontier technologies.

Otherwise it will further deepen inequalities which are already strong.

Hence, societies and productive sectors need to be well prepared and built for the and built the required skills.

So that was what I wanted to say in the beginning.

And I give back the floor to Kathleen.

Thank you very much.

Without any delay, I will give the floor to Shamika Siriman for some completed complementary remarks and details about the report.

Shamika, you have the floor.

I already see a question for you all.

We'll take the questions right after.

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Over to you, Shamika.

Thank you, Catherine.

Let me put to you at the very beginning that we are living at the beginning of a new technological revolution that could very well widen great divides between countries that we see today and that is what they're highlighted.

Just to emphasise what she said earlier, today the gap in the average income per capita between developed and developing countries is 40,749 U.S.

dollars in real terms and compare this to 17 thousand U.S.

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Now, many factors affect inequality.

Globalisation of production and finance is one of the biggest culprits, wars, epidemics and of course technology.

We argue in our report that the world is at the peak of the age of ICT and starting a new wave hold the industrial, you know, Industry 4.0 technology.

We have covered 11 technologies that are driving Industry 4.0 that Isabel mentioned and you know, these are AI, the robotics, Internet, print, big data and also doing everything.

And in our report, we can't estimate the value of these technologies and we find that these technologies represent 350 billion market today and while that by 2025 could grow to over 3.2 trillion U.S.

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And this is an underestimation.

And very few countries create the technologies that drive this revolution.

In fact, it's China and the US story, but all countries will be affected by it.

Almost none of the developing countries we studied for the report are prepared for the consequences.

The Cabello mentioned the index that we have calculated and how far the developing countries run.

And we also find that each wave of technological change has brought inequality in new shapes.

Most Industry 4.0 technologies that are being deployed in developing countries now save labour in routine tasks affecting mid level skill jobs, and they reward digital skills and they reward capital.

This can be seen, for example, with significant increases in the market value of the leading digital platforms of the world during just this COVID-19 pandemic.

The largest gains have been made by Amazon, Apple and 10:10.

This is not surprising given that a very small number of very large forms provided most of the digital solutions that we have used to cope with various lockdowns and child restriction.

So how will the industry 4.0 affect developing countries and what are the lessons that they can learn from developing developed countries who are already deploying this technology?

So in this report, we focus on very big questions.

One, Will AI and machine learning and robotics reduce employment in developing countries?

The report finds that most alarmist estimates of boom state scenarios do not take into consideration that not all tasks in a job are automated, and most importantly, that new products, tasks, professions and economic activities are created throughout the economy.

You see, while tech creation is in the hands of engineers and scientists, tech deployment ISM is much more complicated.

It depends on economics.

The low wages adjusted for skills in developing countries plus the demographic trends will not create economic incentives to replace labour in manufacturing.

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I'm saying that not yet, but as these technologies are are produced and deployed at scale and the prices will come down and then of course the the low wage advantage of developing countries would evaporate.

And this is something that we need to keep in mind.

And another big concern for developing countries is that multinational enterprises could take advantage of country technologies to keep production at home or offshore, reassuring manufacturing that had previously been moved overseas.

Now if this happened, it could stop the ship of traditional industries such as garments, spookwear and low tech electronics to less industrialised countries in Asia and Africa.

And the feasibility of reassuring thus, however, depends on economics such as the low wage advantage and scale economies.

And it may also make more sense to keep production in developing countries that have growing populations and expanding middle classes which offer prospects of growing market.

Now another big concern is the job polarisation.

This is the expansion in **** and low wage jobs and the contraction in middle wage jobs.

So now in developed countries this has happened to a certain extent.

In the last 20 years, job polarisation has been associated with 4% reduction in medium skilled jobs.

But in lower medium income development countries there is an increase of 6% in the same.

So it is expected that low and lower middle income development countries will be less exposed to potential negative effects of AI and robotics on job polarisation.

And then another thing that we looked at was that the impact of AI on inequality between countries will depend to some extent on the type of input data.

Say for example, AI is primarily using big data generated by users and this will mainly meant to be US entire.

They are competing digital platforms with massive amounts of user data.

But you see if the if the AI is going to primarily use big data generated by Internet of Things, this may benefit other countries with strong manufacturing bases such as the EU, Japan and the Republic of And if the AI uses machine learning and the implications are different.

So now how should developing countries prepare for the fancy technological revolution because the wave has not come to their shores yet in anticipation, developing countries need to prepare.

And here as somebody said, I want to emphasise and this is a very important point, that the government in developing countries have a very big role to claim to create an enabling environment so that climate spectrum can adopt and adapt these technologies for local condition.

You see, universal Internet access, skills developed and social protection, appropriate regulations are all part of this package.

The final sector in developing countries will not invest in risky new endeavours that use country technologies if conditions are not right to survive and fire.

So the governments have a big and then we also see in our report that how much societal enough policy that can be tolerated is also a political decision if the government has a role.

That is, countries with income distribution policies have managed to tackle enough policy.

For example, we show that the United States and Germany display about the same income in a policy before taxes and transfer you see as measured by the Guinea coefficient.

But policies in Germany are more progressive and redistributing, so inequality after taxes and transfers is almost 10 points lower than in the United States.

And in the report we also highlight several measures to rein in big tax profits and its wealthy, such as a robot or information tax and by which you move appropriate tax deductions for investment and also thinking of wealth taxes.

Now the next big thing I want to put to you is about unions, labour unions.

You see, much malign and weak labour unions in developing countries will also have a very big role to play to protect work rights, especially with gig work on platforms and automated factory.

We have seen humans and machines working well when labour unions are active and strong.

In Denmark, Germany and Norway, labour unions have successfully pushed for professional training to prepare workers for industry 4.0 workers.

There are many lessons for developing countries from those who deploy these technologies 1st, and this is the intention of this report, to bring this lesson to developing countries.

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1 is on bias and I also want to talk a bit about the social activism.

You see a very specific concern that we addressed in the report is the biassed define and uninternal constituencies of AI and ethical considerations of gene editing.

You see biases within AI systems can arise in very, you know, very different ways, either because they employ biassed algorithms or they use biassed data for training.

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And gene editing also raises ethical questions, such as what constitutes an ideal human being.

From the outset, it is extremely important to establish ethical frameworks and regulations for these technologies.

I know ethics and regulations are considered bad words in some circles, but I think we need to bust this lip if the if human health is subject to strict standards and regulations as we witness for COVID-19 vaccine approval.

And which is it's good.

So should there be ethical standards for technologies that affect our species future?

So we painstakingly kind of under undertook together ethical frameworks and guidelines for AI.

We found 167 of them and they are in the report and mostly driven by the private sector and some by academics with inconsistencies and some contradictions.

You know, Big Tech cannot be trusted to come up with ethics.

This must be international, must have stakehold efforts with developing countries at the table.

Though they are not party to creating these technologies, developing countries will certainly be affected by them.

So they need a seat at the table.

And my last point is related to this.

It was social activity, you see.

Vigorous social activity activism is critical to ensure that frontier technologies work for all and not for the few.

You see, technologies are not deterministic and they can be directed towards goods.

It's left for the private sector.

However, AI will be used to basically entice me to buy yet another blue T-shirt.

But social activism can push AI to attack human trafficking.

If combined with big data, AI can monitor disease outbreaks and develop vaccines for forgotten diseases of the poor.

So social activism also can generate wider debates on how these new technologies affect physical drives, privacy, data ownership, online security, and especially on how they can promote their students.

And this is quite critical, so I can go on, but I think Kathleen is nodding her head, so let me stop here.

Shamika, thank you very much.

I will now give the floor to you online.

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Ravi, can we give the floor to Ravi Khan?

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If it's not you, please introduce yourself.

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Over to you.

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Thank you, Catherine.

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I work for several publications in Washington here as well as in India.

My questions are there are two.

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First to the Secretary General, the question here is, Madam, you spoke a lot about the gains and the inclusiveness and the equity that has to come about from technology and the 4th wave of technology development.

But frankly, most of the issues relating to inclusive and equity are being have been addressed in your report of last year, the Trade and Development Report, which has very clearly showed the asymmetries that exist which lead to inequalities.

How do you exactly address technology apartheid without addressing the crucial issue of the intellectual property regime that that completely hinders any prospect of sharing technologies?

Where does untapped stand on this issue?

And secondly, today the WTO is discussing about TRIPS waiver.

Where does untapped stand on TRIPS waiver at a time when, who has supported it?

And so can you please indicate what your answers are, what to address these two questions, Isabel over a few?

Yes, thank you, Catherine.

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So I will answer to your question.

First of all, regarding what you said about the TDR, it's totally true that the asymmetry is huge regarding the fiscal space that the developing country doesn't have, cannot mobilise.

And the developed countries, when you look at the figures, what the developing countries could really put put on put on the on the table regarding the support to the economy, it's very few regarding the developed countries.

That's that's totally true.

It's why I think that it's important to look at in this, this framework of inequality to the specific inequalities in technologies.

And that's exactly the, the, the goal of this report.

This report will really identify where are the inequalities and how we have to we, we can and try to to fulfil the gap between the developed countries and developing countries regarding their access to this technology issues.

And it's exactly what we would like to do regarding intellectual, intellectual property and tweets.

It's true that even prior the COVID-19, but especially after and with all the question of vaccine and the big inequality regarding access to vaccine, there was a lot of question that that will really promote the debate and the discussion.

We are not able to change the rules.

We are open to discussion in order to look at how what we have to do with intellectual property could help developing countries to have access soon and soon and easily to vaccine and quality medicine and health system.

We have seen also with the mask, the ventilators etcetera, all the aspect of the COVID reveal brutally the inequalities and it's why we are probably to change intellectual property rights, but also the trips in the trade relationship.

So we are working on that, trying to equip the countries and the especially the developing countries to have a strong voice in the places where it can be decided to change the rules of the game.

Of course, UMTAD has not unfortunately, the capacity to change the rules.

We are there really to try to look at those issues through the lens of development and how it helps the countries to yes, to decrease the level of inequality and, and especially leaving try to leave no one behind.

Thank you, Ravi, I suppose it's a follow up question that you have and we'll take your question, Katherine, right after.

Follow up question to Madam Acting SG.

The question is straight and simple.

Why is Ontad not taking a stand on the TRIPS waiver which is being supported by the World Health Organisation?

Isabel, over to you.

I think that yes, we can take position and of course like The Who, we would like that the rule could be changed.

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We have to change the rules in order to help the countries to have access to vaccine, which is a real shame that it's the situation today is not acceptable regarding the access to vaccines.

So it's why, yes, so we we take position on that and I maybe it's not enough public for you or enough noun, but it's true that we are totally in the same in the same position than WHO and even the SG Guterres ask for that.

Thank you, Catherine.

Can we unmute Catherine?

Yes, Bonjour.

Hello, Catherine.

Thank you so much for for the for this press conference.

I have a couple of questions.

How do you see the way to improve and to accelerate the access to Internet because it is an issue that is discussed for many years already.

It is true that with the pandemic, it is highlighted because most of us are working remotely and we see now, in fact, we see, we feel the gap, but it exists already for many years.

And I would like to know what is the role of all these institutions?

I'm sorry about this naive question, but about all these institution and the work of, for instance, ITU and the Broadband Commission, what is their role if they are unable to, I would say, support not only technically but the governments in order to accelerate the access.

And in your press release you speak about the fact that there's also not enough participation in international debates from those developing countries.

But as you know, the, the access to Internet is difficult.

So if you, if you have to participate to a debate, I mean, the line should work.

And secondly, they should be aware about the, the events.

And most of the time, as you know, when it comes to Geneva, developing countries have very reduced teams that are working, diplomats that are working in Geneva that are covering all the issues of Geneva, meaning health, humanitarian, trade, intellectual property and so on.

And, and there is also the the, the language barrier, everything is in English and most of these developing countries are not English speaking countries.

So what are your proposals?

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Thank you Catherine, who wants to take the Isabel over to you.

Me and Shamika will compete because than me the specific role of different institution just more.

Maybe I will answer a little bit in French, just in order to give people to understand another language Docker Catherine Lotre Catherine in a break like Saturnett CEPAC Elk shows the rest some certain problem.

So that problem key the more they will see, the more they look like it's still like particularly particularly Africa.

He censor the code massive record deck on the landlocked say Buku predeficing extra importance or consider the LACSA physics like connectivity apresa meme control and connection the problem.

For example, but see the push the digital is a still excessive lattice don't large amount partage in focal A cadre legals for the bond candidate to have real and security system.

We confirms on the system.

For example, the telephony system telephonic like conference on them.

You don't in focus developer and cadre legalis that's remote in what party to travel the the like you said, you don't find a lot of nepotism delegation Geneva Evidamo maximum the trade official to this activity material accessible possible Alola Vupresche and Kovacu all is in English and especially the language and I I I we you know that in all the digital world all all activities, not only activities, but the framework is totally in English and even the way to think about the system is in English or in the cultural English English language.

And that's really something which is really problematic for a lot of countries and especially for, even for, for, for, for people not speaking English or French or Spanish, but speaking only African languages, for instance, how could you have access when you are only speaking lingual?

I was Swahili or another language to have access to that.

So the, the language question is a, is a, a, a huge barrier.

And it's of course not easy to, to, to change that.

But I think that Shamika could explain very well the role of each institution and how we collaborate.

Shamika, over to you, please.

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Actually, Catherine, you raised a very, very important question and unfortunately this has been a question for a very, very long time, access to Internet and we after have been talking about this and talking to government for a long time.

But today 60% of the world population do not have access to Internet.

And just imagine during the lockdown, you know, they simply did not have education, E, health, E working and, you know, having social connections to the Internet.

So this is the unfortunate situation.

And in many developing countries, especially in these developed countries, and Internet is also exorbitantly expensive.

So it's not just an access issue, but also affordability issue.

And then I also want to bring to your attention access to Internet will not solve all the problems.

I think at the four point of this technology, the report is to try to see how we can bring this technology for socio economic development of developing countries.

So you need lot more than the connectivity.

Unfortunately.

You need digital skills, you need finance, you need regulatory framework.

Because if I don't trust Internet, I'm not going to engage in any economic activities and put my, you know, credit card on Internet.

So the whole point of having a regulatory framework in place and financing has been a big problem for the, this budding companies of the, the digital economy.

Because simply because it's a new endeavour, it's a new type of business model and it is normally done by young people and they're not trusted when they walk into a bank.

So it's extremely has been extremely difficult for young to entrepreneurs to raise funds, embark on digital endeavour.

So there are barriers after barriers and barriers from the old economy brought to this emerging new economy.

And the issues of connectivity that you rightly mentioned has been there for so many years, 15 years after the World Summit on Information Society and this is a big issue raised then 15 years ago we talked about connectivity and we are talking about it now.

But unfortunately connectivity is in the hand of government.

It's a, it's a decision that governments take to, to prioritise infrastructure.

So our message is being reported is this is Internet is no longer an option and it is not a luxury product.

And this is a critical infrastructure.

If you don't have access to Internet and if you don't have electricity to, you know, power the Internet, you simply will not be able to catch the this new wave of technologies coming your way.

And this is our concern, that we don't want to see the developing countries yet again left behind in a very big technological regulation.

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Ravi, I see that you have your hand raised.

Am I right?

Can we unmute Ravi or it's.

[Other language spoken]

Yeah, Madam Shamika, I heard you are saying about the big tech and its brutal grip over the entire digital technologies as well as digital, you know, flows and things like that at, I mean, for example, they will not share their source code which has all these hidden, you know, algorithms which most mostly does the job.

Why is it that the Ongtad is not coming out against the JSIS?

Because the JSIS are perpetuating these asymmetries in the digital world in which about six or seven companies completely control the whole process.

Today, India and South Africa have come out with a paper against the JSIS.

For some reason, Ongtad Technology division is sort of support seems to be supporting this hairstyle negotiations which are so harmful to the developing countries.

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So we are going big off our report.

This is my other report that is coming out soon.

I think you should come back to us in September.

We will have lots more answers to you because the next digital economy report is looking at data flows.

But let me tell you what answered position has been with regard to any forms of negotiation or in commerce.

We have been saying from the very beginning, you see the whole data issue, it's a development issue and it is not just a trade policy issue.

So if we are going to bind our hands on this development issue, we need to think very, very carefully what we are doing.

So that has been our position and and we are doing this diagnostic studies here for e-commerce readiness assessment.

We have done them in 27 developing countries and we find that these countries are not ready for e-commerce.

Their e-commerce is is happening only in their local areas.

They're not engaged in cross-border e-commerce at all.

They don't have the regulatory frameworks, they don't have the finance, they don't have the skills, they don't have the logistics.

So it's the old world constraint plus this emerging new world constraints are pulling them away from this emerging big economy out there.

So our point is that it is extremely important for developing countries to have the space to develop their digital capabilities so that they can benefit from e-commerce because e-commerce, I think you probably know is one of the fastest growing areas of international trade and there are enormous opportunities for developing countries.

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I like to order my tea from Sri Lanka and to be delivered here in my house on a Friday.

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I like to I live in Ethiopia, I like to get Ethiopian coffee.

I like to get go to the producers and order and get them delivered.

I like the value added being caught at the farm, not by all types of people who are packaging and, you know, putting nice pictures on the packages, but the but the barriers are immense for developing countries to, you know, to, to, to get this potential realised.

So that has been our point of view for us.

This is a development issue.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

Let me just remind you that we are on the embargo this press conference as well as the press kit until Thursday morning, 25th of February at 7:00 AM CET.

Until that time, the whole team behind Shamika Celimani is ready to give you more details.

If you need any clarifications or if you have questions, the whole team is ready.

So if if there's no additional clarification to be to be handled in hand raised.

So I don't see any, we will stop here.

Thank you very much to our presenters acting as G Shamika, Salman and you all.

Thank you very much.

The press conference is is over.

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