Welcome to the LSE Events Podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences.
So, good evening.
Thank you all for coming.
Particularly in this extreme heat stress, it's very good of you to be here.
Or maybe some of you knew in advance that this is an air conditioned room.
But you're here not for the air conditioning, you're here to attend the global launch of Smarter Than The Storm.
Now I'm not going to summarise Smarter Than The Storm because the authors are here and they're going to do exactly that.
But I do want to say that the combination of climate
and AI that it focuses on is clearly critical and I've never seen them put together
in such a creative way as the authors of the book have done.
They are of course Amitabh Kant and Siddharth Sinha who are here on my right.
They will speak for about 45 minutes between them and then we'll have a commentary for a total of about 15 minutes
or so by Emma Howard Boyd and Ruth Katamuri.
So let me very briefly introduce the speakers.
Amitabh Kant is a very old friend.
For me, that's the most important.
But he's also a very distinguished national and international public servant.
IAS officer, Indian Ministry of Service.
He was Secretary of Tourism and Secretary of Industry, the highest positions in those ministries.