Name: Introducing Converge, where leadership meets innovation
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This is Converge, a brand new platform which brings together global business leaders, entrepreneurs and change makers to inspire smart solutions for growth.

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We'll be exploring opportunities at the intersection of innovation, investment, sustainability and leadership with influential figures from the worlds of business, sport and entertainment.

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Coming up, Sustainability pioneer Stella McCartney talks leading change in the fashion industry.

I'm definitely a half glass full type of character and so I have belief that we can do it.

One of the so called godfathers of AI puts pressure on world leaders.

We're on track to build machines that have most of the cognitive abilities of humans and intelligence gives power.

And musician and activist Sir Bob Geldof on mentor the next generation.

Intellectuals rarely make good leaders because they play the mental intellectual game of being able to entertain several opposing opinions.

But first, we explore the importance of collaboration with Nile Rogers and Sir Richard Branson.

The music legend and business mogul recently announced a partnership but between their respective charitable organizations to help promote youth leadership and social change.

I caught up with the duo in London for an exclusive conversation.

You're announcing the partnership between Virgin Unite and the We Are Family Foundation.

When we were, when we were young, we were both fighting for different causes, so.

Although I suspect he was fighting for the same cause as well.

I left school age 15 to start a magazine to campaign against the war.

And in the meantime, over in America, I was in many, many anti war organizations.

And then I found myself in the Black Panther Party in New York City.

We started the Breakfast for Children program which wound up being adopted all across America.

So J. Edgar Hoover said that we were the greatest threat to American society.

And next thing you know, every school in America was doing that.

Our organization basically focuses on you.

And we believe that the youth of the world are the leaders of tomorrow and they're the leaders of today.

We have another organization called the New now, which is basically a group of young leaders, young version of the elders.

And they are then finding another 10 young people around the world who can become the leaders of the future every year and training them to step into positions of power one day.

And they're as bright as, you know, as us too.

They're obviously young, healthy, they're capable of anything.

They can jump on planes every day without feeling tired and they can achieve an enormous amount.

You make such a difference through the foundations that we've talked about.

And now with the partnership what does it mean to you personally?

Any of us who get ourselves into position where we can make a difference, however small it is, just shouldn't waste that position that we find ourselves in.

When we come to the end of our lives, we want to look back on our lives and feel that we gave it our best shot.

I think that when you get inspiration as a young person, you look at these people as heroes and you want to follow in their footsteps.

And I knew that music was going to be my life.

And I knew that musicians especially all the ones that I would run into, were the most altruistic people that I ever met.

Like, I know people from other arts, they didn't seem quite as willing to give, but

in our business they're really willing to give.

Stella McCartney is a business leader who places the environment at the heart of all her endeavors.

Her eponymous luxury fashion lab is famous for designs that rip up the rule book when it comes to protecting animals and the planet.

I've seen a shift over the last 25 years, but I'm afraid not a big enough shift.

There's not really any kind of goals being set for my industry to get to a timeline or get to some kind of better way of working.

There is a needle being moved, but it's a little too slow.

But I'm definitely a half glass type of character.

And so honestly, I have belief that we can do it.

I do need more people to join me in a more meaningful way and not in a greenwashing way.

Why don't you think they are joining you?

I think that, you know, I think I really believe anyone in business that is trying to be more sustainable or have a better way of coming at their industry for the environment, it comes from your heart and your soul.

You have to really, really mean it and believe in it.

And I think, I'm not saying that people don't believe in it, but

I think that it's rare that you get a character like me that's in a position like me, with a voice like mine coming at this kind of conversation.

In industries in general, there's always so many conversations and debates about profit and planet, which one should come first.

What do you say to business leaders and corporations that still argue profit should come?

You know, it's funny, I talk about this all the time.

There's a kind of association with if you're doing things for a good reason or for a good cause, that you're not allowed to make profit or make money in association with it.

Well, we're only going to see true difference if people can also build businesses in working this way, you can't.

People are terrified of losing their jobs.

You have to swap out businesses and you have to give people business models that are viable.

Artificial intelligence is often cited as the key to helping us live more sustainably and work more efficiently.

But along with the benefits, there are concerns.

Professor Yoshua Bengio is a leading expert in artificial intelligence based at the University of of Montreal.

He founded Quebec's AI Institute Mila with a mission to advance the technology for the benefit of all.

And he received the association for Computing Machinery's a.m.

turing Award, also known as the Nobel Prize in Computing, alongside fellow scientists Geoffrey Hinton and Yann Lecun for work in deep neural networks.

The three are regarded as the great godfathers of AI.

Back at the one Young World Summit, Yoshua spoke to me about the risks posed by this increasingly prevalent technology.

To understand the concerns, you have to understand that we're on track to build machines that have most of the cognitive abilities of humans, and

What are the questions we're going to be asking to the machines?

What are the goals that we're going to ask these systems to achieve?

This raises a lot of democratic questions because these machines cost billions to be built and trained.

Very few organizations and very few countries will be able to do it.

It's just going to get worse because there's a discovery that was made in the last few years that the bigger we make these systems, the smarter they are.

For now, at least, that's what's happened.

So there's going to be a concentration of power, economic power, which can be bad for markets, political power, which could be bad for democracy, and

military power, which could be bad for the geopolitical stability of our planet.

What do you feel governments should be doing?

The first thing governments need to do is have regulation that forces company to register when they build these frontier systems that are like the biggest ones that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to be trained.

Governments should know where they are, the specifics of these systems.

And then the second thing is there should be some level of transparency, so the companies should be forced to tell the government and potentially the public if there's you know, if it's possible, you know, for reasons of national security or something else, you know, they will be compelled to behave better than if they could do anything they want behind closed doors.

Liability is also another tool that can force companies to behave well, because, you know, if they're, if they're honest and, you know, if it's about their money, the fear of being sued, that's going to push them towards doing things that protect the public.

If they know that they can't be sued because right now it's kind of a gray zone, then they will behave not necessarily well because they compete with each other and they think that the first to arrive at AGI will dominate.

So it's a race and it's a dangerous race.

Since rising to fame with his band the Boomtown Rats back In the late 60s 70s, Sir Bob Geldorf has become an entrepreneur and author.

But he's equally known for his enduring activism.

Continuing to use his voice for good, Sir Bob is supporting the next generation of leaders at the One Young World Summit here in Montreal.

Bob, in your opinion, what makes a good leader?