At the rhythm we are going at currently, we will unfortunately not reach the set goals. So, we need to change, fast. So where do you start to change the world? Joris believes that it starts with individuals, which is why he created a company whose value revolves around helping people have a fossil-free and carbon-neutral home. “We take away all the reasons for people to say no by making the process so easy. So why shouldn’t they transform their house tomorrow?”, Joris stated. From solar panels to heat pumps, THE FCTR E uses the latest technology to transform your house.

And by making it a simple process, he is hoping to grow his business fast, because “technology is no longer a barrier”. Thus far, he has transformed eight million homes in the Netherlands. He’s working on broadening his business concept to include all of Europe which would broaden his target to over 100 million houses. The goal is to help make it easy for individuals to make a difference but also send a message to larger energy companies that consumers are ready for a shift.

Mark has also come up with an out-of-the-box solution. He is the founder of Follow This, a company which encourages people to buy 

shares of Shell and push them to align their goals with the Paris climate agreement. “I want to convince big investors that this is really necessary and that one by one they must change.” So for only 31 Euros, you can buy company shares and spur the oil company to become greener. He believes Shell must change their business model if they want to stay in business and hopes that if they hear consumer voices loud and clear they will start doing so sooner rather than later.

Lastly, Masja believes that big companies have a role to play as well. She sees that there is a lot of floating money that wants to make an impact but isn’t always going to the right places. That’s why Robeco, an international asset manager, is pushing its clients to invest in green solutions and be more energy-efficient since that is the future. “I truly believe that if companies do not make the energy transition, this will make their lives more difficult”, comments Masja. Thus, Masja is playing a role and contributing by ensuring that a company’s money goes directly to a cause or startup.

The overall message is that there are many business opportunities for smaller companies and startups. Knowing that our future needs to be greener and more sustainable, new companies can quickly incorporate such values and instil efficient but sustainable practices. Or your business proposition could be about helping individuals and brands alike to become more sustainable. Regardless of how you go about it, simply recycling company printouts is not enough anymore.

All three panellists agreed that there is an obvious opportunity to be taken, a gap in the market so to say, that new businesses should take advantage of, urgently. Because we are nowhere near meeting the goals set during the Paris climate accords. But everyone can make a difference. If this is then supported by governmental infrastructure, then there is a chance that, together, we reach the set objectives.

At Dept Festival, Muhammed told the story of his friend Ahmed who came to Canada as a refugee. When he arrived, he needed to find a lawyer and fill out legal documents within two weeks. He also needed to schedule a medical exam with a pre-authorised physician, just so that he could apply for a work permit. He also needed to start looking for a place to live before he could receive any sort of social assistance. Getting access to the right resources could mean the difference between life and death.

Muhammed was volunteering at the YMCA when he met Ahmed and his family and this is when he noticed and started to appreciate the effort and coordination that resettlement requires. He wants to help refugees overcome the barriers which make them feel as though they have lost control. He believes that AI can help restore their rights and the dignity that many people lose when seeking help.  

This insight was so meaningful that he quit his academic career to build Atar, the first-ever AI-powered virtual advocate that guides its user step-by-step through their first week of arriving in a new city. After asking a couple questions about the refugee’s circumstances, Atar will generate a custom to-do list that 

tells this individual everything that he/she needs to know, from where to go, how to get there, what to bring with them and what to expect. The user can ask a question at any time, and if Atar doesn’t have an answer, the user will be connected to a physical person who can help them.

By providing people with a detailed to-do list, Atar can easily be scaled 10x using minimal resources. With thousands of refugees to seek asylum in Canada over the past few years, Muhammed and his team quickly saw what it looks like when there are more people who need help than there are resources to help them. 

The real game-changer is that they help humanitarian and service organisations collect data and analytics that’s necessary to understand the changing needs of newcomers in real-time.

Muhammed highlighted three principles that need to be followed when developing a tech-driven solution for the social good: 

• Literacy

• Privacy 

• Security

To enable refugees to easily us an app service like Atar, Muhammed and his team have first to understand the cultural backgrounds of the users. Many women (as Muhammed pointed out) never took a cab alone without their husbands in their home country or used smartphones.

So it is all about UX in a broader sense that has to be taken care of within the app service. Privacy questions come up when people were asked to share their phone number and felt hesitant to do so. Lastly, security is closely intertwined with privacy, since people hope that their information does not fall into the wrong hands. Understanding the motivation behind these three principles helped Muhammed and his team to create technology-driven solutions that are easy to use and impactful and support the 10x scaling of resources. 

It’s scary to be forced out of one’s home and have to move to a foreign country. That’s why Muhammed wants to be sure that refugees get the assistance they deserve when many countries do not have the people and resources to help them.

His concept was not revolutionary, we have had AI assistants before, but the way he used it was new. He proves that you don’t always have to create something from scratch to create something new, sometimes an idea but applied in a different context is enough to be innovative.

Because, as technology continues to evolve so does the job market. Think about it, sixty years ago, people were hired as computers to conduct calculations and computations by hand. Luckily, we now have machines to do that for us. Maybe your future career will be dramatically different than what you first imagined if it is not obsolete. Many of us realise that jobs such as truck and taxi drivers, for example, will disappear due to self-driving technologies. But other, less obvious jobs could be on the line as well. For example, it takes a radiologist eleven years to be able to correctly read an x-ray with an accuracy rate of 96%. However, there is now a computer that can do this with an accuracy rate of 94%. So, will highly educated doctors suddenly transform into the assistants of robots?

Hypothetically, their job could change to simply reading machine produced analyses instead of interpreting results themselves. Likewise, according to research, there is a 94% chance of accountancy jobs being gone in a couple of decades. In 2018, 6095 Dutch students started their Accountancy education. This is 4,5% of all the college applications in 2018. So in a couple of decades, 4,5% of this generation could be doing tedious tasks or even be out of a job.

This new generation of jobs can be referred to as “bullshit jobs”. These are careers that have been dramatically automated. So much so that the person doing the supposed work is barely needed but they are still present and getting paid. Their main responsibilities could be supervising machines and pressing a few buttons every day.

This future filled with bullshit jobs is becoming a reality. Kids are dreaming of their future job, but they are not wondering whether if it will still exist by the time they graduate from college. Ironically, they may walk around with the latest gadgets but they are blissfully unaware that whatever orientation they pick will be altered by this same technology. Thus, we are responsible for showing the next generation that there are jobs available out there that they might not even know exist. Career paths which are not based on traditional jobs such as a nurse or a vet or a fireman. Jobs such as data scientist or UX designers. 

This motivation is why I choose to organise a monthly CoderDojo session in Rotterdam which teaches kids the basics of coding. I want to inspire and help them think about the numerous possibilities associated with coding. Because many children feel that coding is a skill they cannot learn because they are not smart or creative enough. But that is far from the truth. So I encourage children to look forward and think “oh wow, so many jobs I had never heard of before. I want to do what these people are doing.”

This shift in the job market is important for both us and future generations. We want to properly prepare our children for the future but we should brace ourselves as well. Luckily, we humans are very good at adapting so this is not only a doom and gloom scenario. We have a unique ability to reprogram ourselves on a daily basis, unlike robots who need to be told what to do. 

We often look to the past to decide how to move forward but it doesn’t have to be that way. We are perfectly capable of adapting to new technology, it’s basically in our nature. Its what makes us human. Remember that person doing a job named “computer”? Well, that may be obsolete but new careers will emerge with new names. As long as we continue to look forward and continue to reinvent ourselves.