- 2 days ago
Every discussion about AI eventually turns to compute, models, and infrastructure. Yet the success of AI adoption will depend just as much on people. How do organizations prepare employees for roles that are changing in real time? How can skills become more portable across companies and industries? And what new forms of collaboration are needed to support workforce transitions at scale? This session marks the launch of a new coalition of leading organizations committed to building the human infrastructure required for the age of AI.
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00:20Good morning everyone, actually we're living through much more than the tech revolution.
00:28Generative AI has helped billions of people to perform tasks they were not fully ready for and to spare time
00:36as their own rhythm and on their own way.
00:40But agentic AI is quite different.
00:43It allows us to automate vast parts of processes and so it changes or it will change how we create
00:53value, how we organize work and how we develop skills.
00:58Faced with this shift, the question is not only what AI can do in a company, the question is what
01:07do we want to do and to be together?
01:09And so what will be the new role of each person in a corporation?
01:17Anticipation, creativity and courage will be key to build a smooth transition.
01:23And so to deal with this burning topic, it's my pleasure to talk with three prominent business leaders.
01:31And first of all, you, Cecile, you lead an industrial group.
01:35Your great value, in addition to emotional connection that we have with your products and everybody knows Kiri or Babi
01:43Bell, your value also comes from high precision agri-food expertise.
01:50Yet agentic AI can improve your performance and it can also change or even disrupt your organization.
01:58How does it happen?
02:00So first of all, let's give a bit of context about Bell Group.
02:05The group, Bell, is a family-owned business.
02:09And this is a group of 160 years, which means that we've been through many, many revolutions.
02:18And the reason why I believe that we have succeeded to go through all this revolution is because we are
02:24super clear on why we are here
02:27and what is the utility of this company.
02:30And our purpose, and I really mean it, is to give access to healthy and sustainable food to everyone.
02:39Because food is not a business like any others.
02:42Food is first and foremost a human right.
02:45So to come to your conversation and your question.
02:49For us, when we have seen the technology and agentic AI revolution coming, the good news is that it's certainly
02:58a way to accelerate on our mission.
03:02It's certainly a way to find solution to be able to feed the 10 billion people we will have to
03:08feed in 2050.
03:11Because we all know and we are clear that the food system of today is not capable to feed these
03:1710 billion people in a healthy way and taking care of the planet, planetary limits.
03:25So we see that with agentic AI, it's a revolution, not a transformation.
03:30It's a revolution because exactly as you said it, it's not only that you get productivity.
03:34It does not only replace that task, it thinks, it plans, it acts.
03:41Which means that you can replace, we can reframe, you can rewire a full end-to-end process.
03:48So to give example, on the future of food revolution, we can imagine that we accelerate the time to market
03:57for innovation.
03:58Innovation when we find solution to replace animal protein by protein coming from plants.
04:04Because we all know that we need to eat more plants in our day-to-day diets.
04:09That's the purpose of that.
04:11And at the same time, because it's a revolution, the number one thing we need to address is not the
04:17technology,
04:19but the human impact of the technology.
04:23It's a human and organizational revolution.
04:27And that's where the coalition is extremely meaningful for us.
04:31Thank you very much.
04:35Gauthier, in business like you want, in Publicis, so media, advertising, which is based mostly on intellectual services and talents,
04:45what are the roles or will be the role of AI agents?
04:50And how is your activity changing?
04:53Hello, everyone.
04:56As Cecil mentioned, Publicis has 100 years this year, and clearly we are here because since 100, we are partner
05:05of a client.
05:06And when I say partner of a client, that means people are part of their client.
05:11What is very important for us is the trust client in our industry.
05:15So, clearly today, we see AI as an opportunity.
05:21Let's be frank.
05:22Majority or maybe half of the company is scary and half see an opportunity.
05:27We need to be very frank with this.
05:29AI in a true way.
05:33Why some people are scary?
05:35Because, yes, that's true, that AI will accelerate some change in repetitive tasks in where we have no value.
05:43So, we will use AI to automate it, as you say, tasks.
05:48But what is important and what I think is our mission is to change this vision and to be sure
05:54that we can increase the value of our mission, of our industry.
05:59We can change the work of people.
06:01The big mission of Publicis is to be sure that we have 120,000 people in the world.
06:07We hired last year 6,000 more.
06:10And we will continue to hire people because we think that new people or old people can deliver more value
06:17with AI.
06:18Yes, for one part of our industry, we will for sure reduce tasks which are not creating a value.
06:26That's true.
06:28But we have a fantastic opportunity to create new tasks to serve better our clients.
06:34And this is, I think, what we really want.
06:36We are not here to squeeze the organization and to please, as my boss said, our investor.
06:43For sure, so many companies love to say that thanks to AI, we need to reduce.
06:47No, we don't need to reduce.
06:49We need to increase the value.
06:50We need to increase when we are a company that has publicis, creating, producing, et cetera.
06:57We need to deliver more for our clients.
07:00And this is very important.
07:01And I will love the sentence because I love it.
07:04It's future cheese.
07:05And we need to be happy with AI.
07:08But we need to control it.
07:10So not to be only focused on how to reduce, but more how to create.
07:17So it's a change of mindset.
07:19And this is not easy, but I'm sure we'll come back on this.
07:22Thank you very much.
07:24So helping people to change, it's more or less what you do every day, Denis.
07:30Actually, your core mission is ADECO is to support career transitions and professional changes.
07:37So you call yourself a people company.
07:40But it means also that you're directly impacted by AI.
07:44What are the opportunities and what are the challenges for you?
07:48And how do you handle them?
07:50Yeah, first thing, we are a bit younger than the company.
07:53We're only 60 years old.
07:55But we have a great purpose, which is to make the future work for everyone.
07:59Which is to make the future for everyone in the era of AI, right?
08:04And the first thing that we have to address is the speculation about the labor market impact of AI.
08:12And to make sure that fundamentally, AI doesn't happen to people, but it happens with people, right?
08:23And so we want to lead the human side of the AI transformation.
08:27And it starts by really understanding the way work is done.
08:33And to give you an example, we've addressed the recruitment aspect of AI.
08:43People say, no, all the recruitments are going to be done with AI.
08:46We believe that we need a human in the loop.
08:49And for that, we've mapped very clearly talking with our recruiters, working with them to replace fear by proof points
08:59that there's still a space for humans, particularly in the recruitment process.
09:04And mapping every little tasks that they're doing that you have to achieve in a full recruitment and look at
09:12where the humans have the highest value and where AI can be better than humans at doing things.
09:19And in doing so, you don't create fear, you create joy.
09:23Because fundamentally, people focus on what they love to do and where they are best at.
09:29And that creates a word of mouth in the company, like for the people that have started to use AI.
09:35This creates positive momentum about, again, an AI that is not a predator, but a support to what they do.
09:44Thank you very much.
09:45Actually, you work in HR for many companies.
09:49What is the situation of your clients?
09:52Because they are really diverse.
09:53Are they facing the same situation?
09:55And are they as bold as you are?
09:58Well, actually, what they're telling us, what you were saying as well, right, is, you know, the job apocalypse will
10:05not happen.
10:06Yeah.
10:08And that's good news, right, for all of us.
10:10Right.
10:10And so they all face this big dilemma of what work has to go to AI, what work has to
10:21remain humans, but also how do I orchestrate this hybridization of the workforce?
10:28That's what our clients really are, you know, working on at the moment.
10:35I agree.
10:35I mean, the marketing of fear of the job apocalypse is probably bad because fear is a bad advisor.
10:42But on the flip side, we also know that saying to everybody it's going to be okay is not the
10:48right solution either, because people have to be prepared and have to learn how to change pretty drastically and pretty
10:55frequently, perhaps, and navigate in their career.
10:59So, CĂ©cile, a few months ago, we had an interesting conversation on this topic, how to find the balanced way
11:06and how to help people to be prepared.
11:09Can be people, for example, in some roles like accountants or whatever, you know that you will need less and
11:16how to continue to be able to hire young employees.
11:22And so you said a company cannot face such a challenge alone, even a very large one.
11:29So you asked for a coalition of the willings, companies gathering their ideas, gathering their data, gathering their reflection to
11:38be able to do things together.
11:40Can you tell me a bit more about that?
11:42Yeah, for sure. First of all, you understood that I have this conviction that tech could bring good to the
11:48society.
11:50And at the same time, it could bring the worse. And we all know that. Let's face it.
11:56I wanted to bring this coalition because I'm absolutely convinced, exactly like you, that my job is to create within
12:05my company and at a broader scale, the right conversation.
12:08Because at the end of the day, a company is just a sum of conversation.
12:13And based on this conversation, you ask the right question and then you act.
12:17So the real question for us is how to make sure that the way we deploy and its agentic AI,
12:24AI and gen AI was more about productivity.
12:28Agentic AI is the true revolution because it changed all the processes within the company.
12:34And we have the purpose of this coalition is to bring collective intelligence to first anticipate.
12:42I'm not telling you that, yes, there is a huge, massive revolution happening in two months.
12:49But if you look at the speed and the scale of deployment of agentic AI right now, in three to
12:56four years, we have to be ready for the transition.
12:59And the human time is not the time of organization and business.
13:05It takes time for people to be reskilled, to be upskilled.
13:09There is a transition, which means that obviously we're going to create new jobs.
13:13It's going to transform the job of everyone.
13:16So how together, again, could we bring the best way to upskill everyone, making sure that we know how to
13:25build this hybrid workforce, working well together.
13:28And second, there is a reskilling topic.
13:32And reskilling is not upskilling.
13:34Reskilling is there is a job transition.
13:37This job, this kind of function has just disappeared.
13:43How do we support you to open a new chapter in your professional life?
13:49And I truly believe that we can do that.
13:51I think that you are the best partner to do so because we all have within the industry a pocket
13:58of jobs where we need more people.
14:02So that's how the collective power could bring us a lot.
14:09I know where I need more people.
14:12Publicis knows exactly what kind of jobs he will create in the next month and in the future.
14:19I believe that, Adeko, you have the same.
14:21I believe that AXA has a pocket of jobs where he needs more people.
14:25So bringing together industry, services, beauty, all that kind of enterprise, we have the opportunity to create a platform where
14:37we can support each other.
14:39Yeah, that's very true that this revolution has to be lived at the scale of the people and the company
14:44and not at the global scale.
14:46Obviously, there will be something like Schumpeterian in 20 years.
14:49Globally, we will have more jobs.
14:51Okay, but the question is for each of us, for each of you, what will be the new pathway?
14:57And that's what we work on to get together.
15:00That's really interesting.
15:01So, Gauthier, so we will share those data.
15:05We will share those reflections, trying to build this platform, perhaps to build some stuff to be able to upskill
15:11the people.
15:12What do you expect from such a common movement?
15:16I think CĂ©cile mentioned very clearly, together.
15:19I really think that we need collective intelligence.
15:23We need to accept to share, to share our learning, to share our fail, to share our success.
15:30What is important is we need to be very humble.
15:33We don't know where we go.
15:35We are learning every day.
15:37It will change next week, next month, next year.
15:40Anyone in this room is able to say what will be the next year.
15:44But together, we can be stronger.
15:46Together, we can be more intelligent.
15:49What is very important is maybe to share our trained program, share how we can combine hiring young people to
15:57managing maybe the oldest one.
15:59Where we can create value and when.
16:02Yes, we need to accept that we need to automate it because we need that to be competitive.
16:08I think this coalition is fantastic if, all together, we are able just to say we want to control and
16:16we want to, I would say, write a roadmap.
16:20What is very important is not to be blind in the future.
16:24It's to open eyes and to say, yes, it will be not easy every day.
16:28Yes, sometimes it will be great, but it could be much more better if, all together, we are able to
16:35define a clear roadmap, sharing framework, process.
16:40And maybe, which is very important, I know, for Cécile and Adéco, sharing our responsibilities also.
16:47Because at the end of the journey, all of us are CEO of company.
16:51We are not CEO of engine.
16:53We are not CEO of just data.
16:56We are CEO of company with people.
16:59We are producing product, intelligence, services for clients.
17:05So, for that, we need really to take this responsibility about economy, sociability, responsibility of everything.
17:14So, I think it's time to be clever more together.
17:18It's time to share.
17:19It's time to learn.
17:21And it's time to write all together, especially for friends, a clearer map of how we want to conduct this
17:27transformation.
17:28That's really interesting.
17:30And actually, it leads spontaneously to the next one, Denis.
17:34Actually, with your subsidiary, Air Potential, you already work on some, you're exploring some solutions, how to build those new
17:42career paths and help people to jump from a declining job for another one, which is rocketing up.
17:49So, can you tell us more about what you're doing?
17:52In a very short way, first of all, I want to commend you, CĂ©cile, for having started this coalition.
17:59This is so meaningful and so important at this very moment.
18:03Air Potential is an AI-native company that leveraged the billions of data that we have on the labor market,
18:11on what our clients are doing, on the way work is being organized,
18:15to help give insights to the C-suite, to all of us here, on how to find the optimized mix
18:22between what work goes to AI and what work has to remain human.
18:29So, we really bring the power of authentic AI to this goal that we all have, to your point, to
18:39make sure that we find the hybridization of the workforce is respecting the human side of the labor market.
18:51And that's fundamental if we want a humanity that is in peace.
18:56Thank you very much.
18:58Actually, this coalition, the three of you are part of this coalition.
19:02There were 15 companies at the beginning of VivaTech.
19:06And I said to Maurice Levy this morning that there's really a VivaTech effect because now we are 27.
19:14And I think it will continue to grow.
19:16So, it means that companies willing to do things together and to do things responsibly is really key.
19:24So, thank you very much.
19:25You're numerous.
19:26We'll be more numerous.
19:27Thanks to you.
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