Host: Artificial intelligence is changing how we work, bank, and do business. And the question is who gets the benefit. Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth has worked on that question for more than a decade, including through its Data for Inclusive Growth Forum here in New York. So joining me now is the center's founder and president, Shamina Singh. Shamina, welcome to Capital Markets.
Shamina Singh: Thanks so much for having me. Glad to be here.
Host: So Shamina, very busy week for you guys. Uh, and the center, you guys host the Data for Inclusive Growth Forum at Mastercard's New York offices. So if you can walk us through what is the forum and what are you guys trying to accomplish with it?
Shamina Singh: Well, thanks again for having me. You know, the, the Data for Inclusive Growth Forum is the recognition that um AI is going to advance. We know that it's advancing quickly. The question that we're trying to answer here is whether that advancement ensures economic uh inclusive growth opportunities for everyone, and that's the purpose of the forum is to ensure that we bring together leadership from across private sector, public sector, social sector. Academics, all of the power players that are shaping the destiny of AI and data and ensuring that they have the right conversations, the right partnerships that are informed, that are evidence based, that will hopefully ensure that it's a very important moment in time we're creating incentives to create a race for AI to the top, not the bottom.
Host: So, I'm interested to get your point of view because the center has been doing this work for more than a decade. AI is pretty much changing at a rapid pace. So, in your point of view, how has the technology changed from over a decade ago and how has the center changed with it?
Shamina Singh: So we started this work as you said over 10 years ago. Um, the, the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth is rooted in MasterCard, the company, and so from a data perspective, the company has been having to use AI for a very long time. To ensure that we maintain trust in transactions, so data allows us to look for patterns, and that is essentially what AI is, is pattern recognition around transactions. What we saw over 10 years ago is that social sector, government organizations, small businesses. Didn't have the access or the power to realize the power of their own data. And so what we started over 10 years ago was a capacity building exercise with an organization called Data.org to ensure that organizations could recognize, um, and organize themselves and their data to realize what was happening, um, with AI. 10 years on, what we've seen with the technology is again, technology is the driver. It's not the outcome. So what we're seeing is how are we making sure that the outcomes of AI, the outcomes of our programmatic work, achieve inclusive economic growth, um, and that is the power of technology to accelerate, but it's the power of the human engagement interaction to ensure that that technology does good things for people, not bad things.
Host: And, and, and I also want to get your point of view because there is a lot of skepticism about AI at the moment, you know, we have seen AI help businesses, but we've also seen the opposite of AI and the team that you work with, that you guys seem optimistic about AI. So, uh, what's the one thing leaders in business, government, or academia do to help make sure AI helps many people, not just a few, uh, individuals?
Shamina Singh: I think part of this is understanding that, you know, trust is really the the infrastructure of the AI economy. We think about it as a way that says, um, you know, responsible AI, strong data foundations, human oversight, clear accountability, those aren't compliance exercises. They're what allow innovation to scale safely and reach more people, communities, and small businesses. So, so as leaders of these organizations, what we're trying to ensure That we all remember that design is a choice. It is not something that happens by chance. And if we can ensure as leaders that we're making the right choices, the right design decisions that keep humans at the core, we can ensure that this technology, this AI evolution becomes a revolution that helps everyone over time.
Host: And I wanna talk a little bit more about inclusive growth. Is it a different problem in fast-growing markets like the UAE than it is here in the US specifically?
Shamina Singh: Uh, I think, well, inclusive growth is, is, is a, is a problem and an issue globally. Like I said before, there is a widening gap between the data haves and the data have nots. And whether you're sitting in the UAE or you're sitting in another country. What people are realizing, what our research is showing is that there's enormous appetite and enormous hope for what the technology can bring, but the gap comes in terms of the outcomes. What we're seeing in our research is that people are hoping that the outcome of AI will be inclusive economic growth, their lives will become better because of this technology. And so, whether, you know, in the UAE as we think about the compliance, the responsible growth, the regulatory policies around this, those have to be what we're hoping is those have to be standardized with other policies being developed in other markets. So right now the opportunity is around uniformity with standard and regulation, and what the UN week does is it Allows us to talk to everybody at the same time. So we're hosting the uh the UAE, we're hosting Vietnam, we're hosting India, we're hosting, um, all, all of the countries that are visiting New York City during this week, and we're hosting them and having conversation around a shared goal of inclusive economic growth through the power of AI and data.
Host: And Shamina, to wrap up, I mean, I'm definitely interested to learn more about having this forum in other parts of the world. Is that something you guys are looking for? And, and what's the future of this forum? Because it's something that is creating a huge impact here in New York.
Shamina Singh: Look, I think the single most important opportunity and challenge is building AI fluency at scale. People need more than access to AI. They need the ability to use it, question it, supervise it, and shape it. So I think as we bring these fora not only in New York City, but we have our ASEAN summit coming in November in Manila. We have the the Global Inclusive Growth summit will be in Washington DC in April. We're participating in the government summit in the UAE. We are participating in other summits summits around the world, and so we're taking this. Model globally to be sure whether we're convening or participating our impact and I hope our influence will be the same that we create and ensure trusted responsible human at the center design solutions for this enormously important uh moment for AI. The AI evolution needs to be a revolution for responsibility and scale.
Host: Well, Shamina, thank you so much for your time and you're right, this is a very important time for AI. Again, I wanna thank you for joining us here on Capital Markets.
Shamina Singh: Thanks for having me.
