Critics have aimed barbs at technology for solving short-term, high-payout problems. To be fair, the critiques aren't always distorted. While it's true urban dwellers can hail a ride and order take out more easily, we're still far from ending global hunger, realizing gender equality, or creating affordable, clean energy. Changes are underway, though, as these weighty concerns are finding much-needed aid from a set of smart, passionate technology leaders. Fortunately, efforts are underway to arm global leaders with smart technology.

In financial services, the near future will see a shift in power toward the customer. That was the general consensus among SAP and the bankers and insurers participating in the first SAP Next-Gen Boot Camp on Machine Learning in Financial Services, held at the SAP Innovation Center Potsdam last week. Forty-six SAP customers from banking and insurance gathered to discuss the current and future challenges these sectors face, as well as to gain hands-on experience as to how machine learning can help master them. Machine learning and artificial intelligence provide unheard-of opportunities to banks and insurers to gain actionable insights from the large amounts of data they are dealing with on a daily basis. Banking is currently experiencing the need to accommodate the wishes of a generation who expects to have "a bank on their phone" (Stephen Lofthouse, University College London), a development that FinTech startups have caught on to much faster.