In the near future, a post like this may become a rare occasion, as the majority of texts will be generated by AI. That's one of the predictions about the development of AI shared by Alexander Klöpping during the Compact Magazine celebration event hosted by KPMG on 7 June in Amstelveen. The journalist and tech entrepreneur told the audience, consisting of readers of the magazine, KPMG clients and prospects, a truly fascinating story about the rapid development of AI and what this will mean in terms of Digital Trust.

The day continued with four workshops related to Digital Trust, including ESG, AI, Digital Trust, and data regulations. Together with Maurice op het Veld and Eelco Lambers from Data Analytics and Vera Moll from Sustainability Reporting, the guest speaker Juriaan Duijvestijn from FrieslandCampina shared their exciting ESG journey in preparation for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. The interactive breakout sessions confirmed that sustainability reporting sounds like a challenging task for many organizations due to new KPIs, changes in calculation methodologies and tools that are not fit for purpose. But the conclusion was that it's a rewarding exercise as the end goal is not only about compliance, it is also about solving the problems the world is facing.

The workshop on the safe and ethical application of AI in organizations was led by Ylja Remmits, Marc van Meel and Frank van Praat from KPMG. Various AI dilemmas were discussed during this workshop, as many possible ethical issues can be raised when using AI. It was highlighted that as the age of generative AI has begun, organizations need to address the unique challenges of AI. The workshop shared potential ways to deal with dilemmas, such as the risks of ChatGPT and how to prepare for it.

The Digital Trust workshop was hosted by Augustinus Mohn of KPMG and Professor Lam of the Singapore Centre for Research in Digital Trust and Caroline Louveaux of Mastercard. As described in the theme of this workshop, ‘How to achieve Digital Trust in Practice’, it covered the overview of Digital Trust decision-making and Trust technologies with practical examples such as in Singapore, the Digital Trust Centre is investing to develop implementable Trust technologies, and Mastercard is using anonymized data to analyze data to do good for society. The workshop was followed by interactive discussions on the use cases of Trust technologies, such as enabling modeling without actual data for privacy compliance.

Peter Kits and Alette Horjus from Digital Law in collaboration with Manon van Rietschoten from IT Assurance & Advisory shared the impact of the upcoming EU Digital Single Market regulations. The participants were involved in an interesting conversation about how these acts will affect their companies and what competitive advantage a compliance will offer in the long run.

The workshop sessions were followed by a panel discussion between the workshop leaders and the audience, and in response to the question ‘What have you learned today to improve Digital Trust in your organization?’, the honest answer from the audience was ‘We have way more work to do’.  This is of course a good signal for us at KPMG, as with our strong tech propositions we are in a strong position to help our clients close the outstanding work. This successful event was concluded with a warm ‘thank you’ to all the leads of the Compact editorial team, who have overseen the magazine for half a century, highlighting how far the Compact has come. From its beginnings as an internal publication in the early seventies, Compact has evolved into a leading magazine covering IT strategy, innovation, audit and transformation, definitely with the aim of continuing for another fifty years.

A more detailed coverage of the event will be published in the July edition of Compact Magazine.

 

Authors of this blog: Kaori Sasaki and Kate Boklina (both from KPMG Enterprise Solutions)