The Future of NEOM and Giga Projects | Cityscape, Saudi Arabia | Smart Cities Keynote Speaker – Matthew Griffin

By Matthew Griffin Featured Futurist Featured Futurist Panel Sessions 26th December 2023

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

In this panel session futurist Matthew Griffin explores the impact that emerging technologies, both current and distant, will have on the future of Smart Cities and the lives of citizens in Saudi Arabia and beyond.

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Firstly, thank you to the team at Cityscape Global in Riyadh for asking me to join ministers and regional entrepreneurs on a panel to discuss the role that emerging technologies will play in powering future smart cities such as the half a trillion dollar smart city NEOM, and 13 other Saudi Arabian gigaprojects.

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On the panel we had myself, Dr. Maher Shirah, the Director General of Smart City Development and the KSA RCRC, Musaed Alotalbi, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation and Smart Cities, Othman Al Dahash, CEO of IOT Squared, and Feras Albanyan, CEO of AQALAT, and first discussed how the more commonly known technologies will help transform how citizens live and work in these ultra modern cities.

Cityscape, The Future of NEOM and Smart Cities, with Futurist Matthew Griffin

Then we dove in and explored how the impact that these technologies will have on the privacy and security of individuals, explored how cities could become self-funding and tax free havens thanks to Citycoins which use the city’s own infrastructure and Web 3.0 to make and mine cryptocurrencies that are tradable on decentralised exchanges, and explored how, throughout the life of these cities Artificial Intelligence (AI) and computing power will progress enough to turn these cities into Exascale computer nodes – and the impacts thereof.

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Then, finally, we rounded out the session by covering the ethical questions some of these technologies raise and how to deal with those, before final summaries and close.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.