Daniel Susskind

Economic growth is perhaps civilization's most powerful achievement. Over the past two centuries, it has freed billions from poverty, extended human life expectancy, and expanded education and opportunity across the world. Yet this progress has come at a steep price: deepening inequality, environmental destruction, and technological disruption that strains the social fabric. In this keynote, drawing on his critically acclaimed book Growth: A Reckoning, Susskind argues that the answer is not to abandon growth but to fundamentally rethink what we mean by it — reorienting economies around what societies genuinely value rather than what is simply easiest to measure. He offers leaders a rigorous but accessible account of growth's past and a practical framework for shaping its future.

What fuelled growth in the 20th century was investment in human capital — expanding access to schools, universities, and professional training. The century ahead will look different. As AI systems become capable of generating the new ideas and knowledge that previously required human expertise, the engine of economic progress is shifting. Countries and companies that understand this transition and invest accordingly in the technologies and institutions behind it will pull ahead; those that don't will fall behind. In this forward-looking keynote, Susskind sets out a rigorous yet optimistic roadmap for navigating the new economics of growth in an age of machine intelligence.

AI systems can now write code, draft documents, design buildings, and diagnose medical conditions — tasks that were, until very recently, considered exclusively human. What does this mean for the future of work? It is one of the defining questions of our time, and in this keynote Susskind draws on his bestselling books and years of academic research to offer a clear-eyed answer. Rather than catastrophizing or dismissing the challenge, he maps out what is genuinely at stake — for workers, organizations, and policymakers — and explains what leaders can do to ensure their people and institutions are well-positioned for the transition ahead.

Technology has always changed work, but something qualitatively different is happening now. For the first time, machines are taking on not just manual or routine tasks but the knowledge-intensive work traditionally performed by lawyers, doctors, architects, accountants, teachers, and other professionals. Drawing on his co-authored bestseller and years of subsequent research, Susskind argues that we will neither need nor want professionals to work in the future the way they did in the 20th century. This is ultimately an optimistic talk: one that helps leaders in the professions understand the forces reshaping their fields — and how to position themselves to flourish in the decades to come.

To prepare people for the future of work, the education system must change — not incrementally, but fundamentally. What we teach, how we teach, and when we teach must all be rethought. The challenge is that our educational institutions were largely designed for the 20th-century economy, not the one that is emerging. AI is now performing tasks we once believed required years of specialist training: medical diagnosis, legal drafting, architectural design. Susskind examines what this means for how individuals should invest in their own development, and what organizations and governments need to do to build workforces capable of thriving alongside increasingly capable machines.

The debate about technology and work has generated enormous amounts of writing — much of it contradictory, alarmist, or simply wrong. In this keynote, Susskind cuts through the noise by identifying the core myths distorting our thinking about automation and AI, explaining why they mislead, and offering a more grounded framework for what is actually likely to happen. Drawing on his celebrated TED Talk and research from A World Without Work, he helps audiences separate genuine structural threats from exaggerated fears — and equips them to make better decisions in a landscape defined as much by hype as by real technological change.