Valdai Club

It’s well known that people usually say that they don’t like changes. At the same time, they have nowhere to go, all life is change and the end of each life is predetermined and known. Nevertheless, while a person is alive, he always tries to somehow improve his situation: for example, to earn more or start a family with a loved one. That is, some changes are desirable. The same is true of fear. It is impossible not to be afraid.

Russia is to hold a parade on Friday to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. The main point of parades is not the parade itself, but to move on to the future world we want to build after the parade. This is what both Russia and China are doing, with their leaders, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, meeting in Moscow during the celebrations.

The symbiosis of humans and machines is neither inherently good nor evil. We must embrace AI’s potential while remaining vigilant about its risks. Otherwise, we risk stumbling into a nightmarish new Stone Age, this time powered by robots, Valdai Club Chairman Andrey Bystritskiy writes.

This was the title of both the book and the film by the well-known fantasist and, perhaps, adventurer Erich von Däniken. With excessive cleverness, he claimed – and even claimed to prove – that aliens had visited Earth multiple times, exerting a profound influence on the development of humanity. Observing the current state of affairs on Earth, one might be tempted to believe in the namesake of the Russian White General Denikin and hope that aliens will soon return to help us unravel the chaos we find ourselves in.

The global crisis that we are experiencing is aggravated by an intellectual crisis of world political thought. Nevertheless, people are inventive, and maybe AI will help, writes Valdai Club Chairman Andrey Bystritskiy.

It is quite obvious that if we manage to avoid a planetary catastrophe, people on Earth will still have to somehow find a way to coexist, preferably relatively peacefully, comfortably, and even – this sometimes happens – happily. People have dreamed about this throughout the ages, it only remains to somehow clarify the parameters of this human dream.

In the foreseeable future, the fundamental approaches of Russia and China to world affairs will coincide. Both countries share strategic interest in sustainable development. So there is a reason for coordinating actions, both in Eurasia and in the world as a whole, writes Valdai Club Chairman Andrey Bystritskiy.

The African elites have formed a strong desire to achieve a prominent position both in the global hierarchy and in international trade and the overall distribution of global goods, writes Valdai Club Chairman Andrey Bystritskiy.

Real negotiations require genuine courage, political courage, and the realization that human lives are of great importance. It remains to be seen whether the West possesses the necessary political courage and sense of responsibility and whether it can detach itself from its rhetoric of hatred towards competitors such as Russia or China.

The melodic harmony of the modern world has yielded to the cacophony of conflict, which is only intensifying. The global military-political crisis is, regrettably, growing. It appears that significant efforts are required to address this issue.