RCM26Day 1 · 5 October 2026 · Headline fireside
The Human Future: AI, Happiness and How We Will Live, Work and Gather
Three takeaways
- 01Mo Gawdat said retail in the region has leaned on dopamine-driven excitement and awe, which fades and demands ever higher stakes; he sees a large opening for calmer mall experiences built on community and human connection.
- 02Replacing staff with robots treats efficiency as the only goal and turns a mall into Amazon, he warned. Instead, use AI to run operations in the background so people can serve guests, making malls feel more like a Ritz-Carlton.
- 03Protect the core business but run small, cheap experiments with consumers, as Google X did; Gawdat suggests business leaders spend about an hour a week tracking major AI trends and review how they apply it every three months.
About the session
Artificial intelligence is arriving faster than most organisations can absorb, and the leaders in this room will decide what it changes about the places where people shop, work and spend time together. Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer of Google X and author of Scary Smart, joins David Macadam to set out what AI will and will not change about human behaviour, how leaders stay confident and humane through rapid change, and why wellbeing is becoming a commercial advantage for the businesses that take it seriously.
“I think what we need to invest most is being human. And I think the differentiator is going to be how human can you be.”
From the room
Full album →
More from Day 1
Be in the room for RCM27.Dates to be announced. Register your interest to hear first.Register interest