Amitabh Behar keynote at Wikimedia Summit 2024: transcript

Key points

• He thanks the audience and salutes them as custodians of public knowledge while privatization of land, water and forests is the main trend.
• He says Wikimedians work in a post-truth world, amid both the possibilities and the anxieties of AI, and while big tech companies gain power.
• He says the Summit's focus on internal questions of organizing is important for how the movement shows up in the world.
• He cites Oxfam's report: since 2020 the top five billionaires doubled their wealth while 5 billion people became poorer.
• He says 80% of profits went to shareholders and that the top 10 companies are valued above the combined GDP of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
• He says Oxfam needs to be more credible and authentic in building power against inequality.

Chapters

1. 0:02Greetings and thanks to the Wikimedia community
2. 0:37Public knowledge in a post-truth, AI and big tech era
3. 3:04Looking inward, and the Oxfam link to Davos
4. 4:34Oxfam's inequality report figures
5. 5:33Inequality against modern principles and Oxfam's credibility

Full transcript

0:02Good morning. Many thanks for inviting me. I'm really, really delighted to be here. And I must say, hugely privileged. So greetings from Oxfam. And I'll later talk about Oxfam because I'm not sure the only person that I was speaking to did not know Oxfam. So I must introduce Oxfam. So it's my responsibility. I'll do that later. But I wanted to start by saluting all of you.

0:37Certainly I bring solidarities from the work we do, but a big salute for two specific things. And the second one is also in some ways an encouragement and a nudge. First, I think we just heard the Minister. I think what you're doing is absolutely remarkable, being custodians of public knowledge, and I underscore public, in a time when privatization of pretty much everything, including land, water, forest, everything, is really the primary trend.

1:22You're standing strong. Ensuring that knowledge remains public. So a big, big, big salute to you. Second, you're doing this in a particularly difficult time. And we kind of heard references to that. And I'll be very brief on this, but this itself is a full conversation. And I would say you're doing it in three key particular moments. One, in this post-truth world, where you really, you know, facts are being fabricated and you are trying to bring in legitimate, credible knowledge to the people. So that's remarkable. The second, we talked of AI and I'm sure a group like this would have healthy skepticism for AI, both with the possibilities it provides, certainly. There are huge possibilities, but huge anxieties

2:25also, what it could do to knowledge. And the third, at this juncture, when you're essentially seeing the big tech companies take over power in all possible ways, you stand strong and tall. In ensuring that even knowledge does not get further privatized. So a big, big salute to you. And at this juncture, the journey that you're doing is pretty much linked to that of how do you ensure knowledge is going to be democratized and remain democratic.

3:04So I see these, what Francesca was saying, the three days of engaging with your internal questions. You know, it's important at times that you don't have the gaze only external. You turn your gaze inside and you're grappling with, I think, really, really fundamental questions for how do you organize yourself. But that's going to be critical for how do you really show up in the world. So let me now take you to Oxfam. I'm still not going to talk about Oxfam, I'll do that a little later, but let me take you to the Oxfam world. But I'll do that via Davos, the World Economic Forum. I'm sure many of you know that we do the annual inequality report at Davos and we get fantastic traction pretty much every media house.

4:02The cover story is our inequality data that we bring out at the World Economic Forum. So I want to talk about this year's report, just two, three facts. This is to build the context that I want to build. This year's report highlights, and I've been doing this report now for six years, but every Every time I present the report, I feel angry and, to be honest, frustrated also.

4:34So let me give you what our report is saying. We are saying we are entering a decade of division. Just in the last three years, since 2020, the top five billionaires have doubled their wealth. Top five have doubled their wealth, whereas 5 billion people, that's 60% of the global population, has become poorer. That's the inequality that we are looking at. 80% of all the profits made have gone to the shareholders across all the profits made, while majority of the workers around the world are not being able to even meet the cost of inflation. They're just not being able to keep up with inflation, their wages. So that's the level of inequality and just one more from our report.

5:33The valuation of the top 10 companies, top 10 corporates, is more than the combined GDP of Africa, Latin America and Caribbean. That's the kind of inequality we are living with. So, you know, when you're living with this kind of inequality, as I said, I feel frustrated, but I also think that we need to constantly challenge this inequality because it goes fundamentally against the principles with which, at least I think, the modern world has been built, the normative framework of essentially looking at freedom, equality, justice and fraternity. It fundamentally goes against that so as Oxfam we are constantly trying to build power and constantly thinking how do we do it better and and one of the things that we have learned is that we need to be way

6:36more credible. Our voice needs to be more authentic and that cannot happen if

Source and licence

Recording: File:Keynote Amitabh Behar - Wikimedia Summit 2024.webm by Kwertz (2024-05-23), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. The transcript, summary and chapters on this page are shared under the same licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.