Meta at World Financial Discussion board 2023: Constructing a Future Grounded within the Promise of Expertise

The snow boots are again. This 12 months, the World Financial Discussion board returned to its conventional winter slot for the primary time because the pandemic. 

The 2023 annual assembly hosted a record-breaking variety of politicians, enterprise leaders, NGOs and numerous specialists to debate probably the most urgent problems with the day. 

This 12 months’s theme, ‘Cooperation in a Fragmented World’, nodded to the challenges going through the worldwide neighborhood, from the conflict in Ukraine to inflation to local weather change. 

Meta renewed its yearly presence with a delegation of 6 executives, in addition to a pop-up headquarters, Meta Home, that hosted loads of conferences, demos of our Quest digital actuality headsets and a (very fashionable) scorching cocoa providing. 

Throughout my time at Davos this 12 months, I had the privilege of talking at occasions hosted by EY, the Monetary Instances and Digital Switzerland, assembly choice makers at Bloomberg’s The 12 months Forward session, and talking to German information retailers n-tv and Frankfurter Allgemeine about Meta’s priorities for the 12 months forward. I additionally had the possibility to sit down down with the chairman of McKinsey’s World Institute, Sven Smit, to speak concerning the financial outlook for 2023.

Whereas a lot of the dialogue at Davos centered round fast challenges, there have been additionally alternatives to look to the longer-term future. 

With that in thoughts, listed here are 4 key themes that got here out of my conversations at Davos:

Everyone seems to be speaking concerning the metaverse

The metaverse was an enormous dialogue level at Davos, with the World Financial Discussion board saying its personal metaverse venture: a brand new World Collaboration Village inbuilt partnership with Microsoft and Accenture. 

On Wednesday, Meta’s Chief Product Officer Chris Cox joined creator Neal Stephenson, the originator of the phrase ‘metaverse’, and others on a panel to debate the event of this new chapter in expertise. 

I used to be additionally in a position to illustrate potential enterprise implications of the metaverse at a gathering organized by the cross-industry initiative Digital Switzerland, attended by Swiss enterprise leaders.

Synthetic intelligence is on the rise

One other scorching subject, AI, bought loads of air time at Davos. 

We have been in a position to showcase Meta’s work on this entrance in two areas. First, the numerous AI computing energy that more and more drives the ‘discovery engine’ on our platforms. 

Second, our analysis into ‘generative AI’, the place algorithms create model new content material. Our Make-A-Scene AI analysis idea permits individuals to create digital landscapes or worlds with a mix of textual content and sketches, whereas our AI translation mannequin NLLB-200 can translate 200 completely different languages with state-of-the-art high quality. Many of those languages, reminiscent of Kamba and Lao, had little to no help by even the perfect present translation instruments at the moment.

Range is an ongoing precedence

Whether or not it’s digital entry or girls’s illustration within the C-suite. On Tuesday, I joined a panel at Davos, convened by EY and Equal Voice, a part of the Swiss media firm Ringier, to talk on girls’s equality within the company world. 

Whereas there’s nonetheless a lot to do, I used to be in a position to share that Meta has lately doubled the variety of girls in our world workforce, and that ladies now signify 37% of our world management. 

Sustainability remains to be high of the agenda

Regardless of the myriad challenges confronted by the worldwide neighborhood in 2023, it’s heartening to see that sustainability has maintained its place as a precedence subject for governments and enterprise leaders. The World Financial Discussion board’s new 20203 World Dangers Report lists environmental points as the highest 3 considerations heading into the subsequent 10 years. 

On Thursday, I joined Sanda Ojiambo, the pinnacle of United Nation’s company sustainability initiative World Compact, on the Monetary Instances Davos Day by day Present to debate how firms can help the sustainability agenda. I shared Meta’s dedication to the UN World Compact, which we joined in 2021, and to sustainable company operations. This makes us one of many largest company consumers of renewable power on this planet. 

As ever with Davos, the chance to have so many productive conversations in a single place is invaluable. However we should translate these discussions into actual motion if we wish to make a long-lasting change. Management by way of partnership is an ethos that I’ll be taking again down the mountain with me. 

Till subsequent 12 months.