Trust Impact CEO Matt shares his 25-year vision for social impact

1. There will be a re-distribution of opportunity. The saying ‘talent is equally distributed, opportunity isn’t’ is something that has resonated throughout my career as a charity CEO. I’ve met countless people living in disadvantaged communities with incredible talents who have had little opportunity to use them.

That may change in the next 25 years. As Mustafa Suleyman says in his book The Coming Wave, extremely powerful AI tools will be available at very low cost, and equally accessible by everyone, not just the rich and those with opportunity. This offers a chance for anyone to create and develop new ideas and businesses using these tools. What will this mean for re-distributing opportunity?

2. Human-to-human skills will be at a premium – when I went to school my teachers told me that the best jobs were those that required you to retain and recount knowledge – doctors, solicitors, teachers. The development of AI means the world’s knowledge is now largely available instantly and to everyone.

Instead, the human skills of empathy, compassion, relatability and understanding will become more and more important as people put a premium on human-to-human contact.

3. There will be more emphasis on the ‘Social’ in ESG – whilst there has rightly been a focus on the Environment and Governance parts of ESG over the past decade, the ‘S’ of ESG has tended to be more about internal EDI and staff development.

At Trust Impact we’ve found businesses and organisations are not usually aligning their core business purpose with their social purpose, and as a result are trying to do too many things and are finding it difficult to measure the impact of their work in communities.

All of this will change as customers, employees and shareholders demand to know more about the social impact businesses are having in their communities. Live data collection and visualisation (like www.trst.uk/cadentfoundation) will make it easier to know the impact in real-time. Understanding, measuring and maximising social impact will be essential.

4. AI will bring huge change, and some of it will create great social impact! –
AI will undoubtably create huge change, but also has the potential to create some great social impact. Here’s a couple of examples of AI creating positive impact in the world already.

1) SameSame have created an AI based chat-bot, delivered via WhatsApp, to help hundreds of thousands of LGBTQI+ young people across Africa with advice, confidence building and mental health support, delivered by a team of just five people.

2) Be My Eyes are using AI to help blind and partially sighted people receive live audio descriptions of the world around them in real time, opening up the possibility of a wearable tech transforming people’s daily lives – a small video camera and ear piece could provide live descriptions of the world.

AI will change the way we live, the way we work, and for businesses reduce operating costs. We have a choice of what future we would like to see from this change – one where increased profits are used to benefit a few people, or one where we change the way we live and work for everyone – allowing us to spend more time with our families, friends, or doing hobbies. Maybe even allowing us all to work a three-day week!

At the end of the presentations, Professor David Park, Dean of the Business School asked the panel what young people starting their professional careers should be thinking most about going into the next 25 years.

My answer… don’t listen to your teachers.

Matt Stevenson-Dodd is founder and CEO of Trust Impact