February 5, 2025
This week, the World Media Group brought together a panel of leading journalists to share their insights from the World Economic Forum in Davos. Katie Palisoul, General Manager UK at POLITICO, chaired the panel, which included Faisal Islam, Economics Editor for BBC News; Ayesha Javed, Senior Editor at TIME; and Jeremy Kahn, AI Editor at Fortune.
The conversation covered many of the challenges likely to affect businesses in the year ahead, from the impact of US tariffs on the global economy to the rapid rise of AI, the dismantling of DEI programmes and reduced focus on sustainability. Below are some highlights from the discussion:
Living in a live-action Twitter feed
Palisoul began by asking the panel to summarise what stood out for them at this year’s Davos. Islam described it as “Like being in a live-action Twitter feed,” moving around between people, including the giants of the tech industry, “with the occasional troll coming in from the side and shouting at you for being part of the establishment.”
For Kahn, it was the fact that AI was everywhere. “You couldn’t go more than two steps in Davos without seeing AI and hearing about it in conversations.” But the most interesting developments in AI were not happening in Davos. “It was the stuff that was taking place in Washington and in China, with the Stargate announcement and news percolating through the week on DeepSeek and how good that model was,” Kahn said.
The Trump charm offensive
Islam recounted how President Trump’s speech promoting the United States as the premier destination for global investment stood out as both captivating and menacing. “He was projected like a 30-foot intergalactic emperor,” he said, “and he was very convincing with the optimism piece: Come and set up your factories in the US. We’re going to cut your taxes…It’s a golden age.”
This charm offensive was swiftly followed by a more threatening tone, suggesting that if people didn’t agree to his approach, he would put tariffs on all their exports, which would fund the US Treasury. A global trade war is escalating now that proposed tariffs have been confirmed for Canada and Mexico, and according to President Trump, will definitely happen in Europe too. Islam posited whether collective action from the rest of the world – Canada and Europe, for example – would be effective in resisting the US’s policies and growing economic dominance without escalating tensions, but scepticism remains about whether this could deter Trump’s aggressive trade stance.

European leaders despondent
Kahn noted a striking disparity between European and US leaders. “American CEOs were almost uniformly enthusiastic about the state of the economy and what the next year was going to hold,” he said. Even those with some history of opposing Trump seemed incredibly optimistic. “They went out of their way to say how great they thought things were going to be in the second Trump administration, whereas the European CEOs were rather dour and downbeat and very pessimistic about growth prospects for Europe.”
AI steals the show
AI emerged as the defining theme of Davos 2025, with nearly every conversation and panel touching on its transformative potential. The US-backed Stargate Initiative, which has invested heavily in AI and data centres, showcased the scale of the AI race. Meanwhile, the announcement about China’s DeepSeek model surprised many, by demonstrating cutting-edge performance at a fraction of the cost and resource usage of its competitors.
Another hot topic was the rapid growth of Agentic AI—autonomous systems capable of performing tasks and making decisions. While this innovation holds promise in areas like healthcare and scientific discovery, Javed expressed concerns. “From my perspective, there didn’t seem to be enough conversation around all of the risks in terms of what it means for the labour market, bias, disinformation and the concentration of wealth among very few people in power at the helm of these companies,” she said.
Agentic AI risks vs. benefit
In a session with Yoshua Bengio who is considered one of the godfathers of AI, Javed noted, “He seemed almost exasperated speaking to all these other people on the panel who were overly positive about the potential of AI and our ability to control it, how quickly it’s progressing, and how short-termist people are in terms of thinking about safety and regulation.”
Kahn noted that in the same session, Bengio had a ‘testy exchange’ with Andrew Ng, a well-known deep-learning pioneer. Ng was suggesting that the existential risks around AI control were overstated, and that there was plenty of time to figure it out. Bengio argued that by having views like that, Ng would be responsible if it all went wrong.
“Bengio was also trying to make a point that, actually, to do a lot of the things we want to in terms of positive benefits like helping with science or curing cancer or education, you don’t need to have agency,” Kahn explained. Despite the warnings, momentum suggests that slowing down the development of agentic AI may no longer be feasible.
DEI takes a low profile
The lack of discussion around DEI was striking compared to previous years. “Certainly, the American CEOs do not want to use that word or talk about that term,” Kahn said. Nonetheless, he believes many companies quietly remain committed to these goals, recognising the business case for diverse workforces. “I think the message that there’s a great business benefit from diversity is still there. I think CEOs actually do believe that, but they also realise that it’s politically dangerous, at least in the United States right now, to talk about DEI, and so some are going to very quietly continue to pursue those agendas.”
Javed agreed. “I think this will show how dedicated these companies really are, and how much they really do believe that diversity is good for business in the way that they have been saying for many years. It will be interesting to see how quickly we lose that progress, particularly at the board level within companies, as diversity is often one of the first things to suffer when companies are underperforming.”
Meta’s changes to policy
With regards to Meta specifically, Javed wondered whether its move to curtail DEI programmes was “Actually more of an ideological decision on the part of Mark Zuckerberg and Meta at large.” She noted how it tied in with its position on fact-checking, and changes to its Hateful Conduct Policy regarding how users can refer to women, trans and non-binary people.
The panel discussed what Meta’s scaling back on content moderation would mean for European users, given the differing regulations from the US. Kahn believes they will have to keep some measures in place to comply with EU legislation, such as the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, but it will be the bare minimum: “Where they don’t have to comply by law, they’re not going to comply.”
Sustainability no longer a priority
A lack of interest around sustainability was also apparent. Islam noted a Yo-Yo Ma climate change-themed concert, which, in previous years would have drawn large crowds, was sparsely attended. The tech industry appears to be deprioritising sustainability concerns in favour of maximising AI development. The sheer energy consumption of facilities such as Stargate’s planned data centres has raised alarms about the sustainability of current AI trajectories.
The rise of news influencers
Finally, following the White House’s decision to grant press passes to non-journalists, the panel discussed how the traditional media landscape is facing disruption from an increase in independent news influencers on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. While the lack of universal standards raises concerns about the spread of misinformation, Kahn was optimistic about what that means for existing trusted media outlets: “Business publications are in somewhat of a good position in that the audience still has to make decisions based on fact.” And, as long as people are still making decisions based on fact, information from trusted media brands that is both fact-based and fact-checked, will still have currency.