"My audience that day was an interesting one: composed of church leaders, theologians, philosophers and ethicists, together with digital innovators, experts in Artificial Intelligence etc. It was clear from discussions that many of the audience had obvious, profound reservations about automation, AI and robotics, and that I would need to navigate the discussion carefully. I was the final speaker, bringing to a close a whole day which had been somewhat dominated up until that point, in my view, by techno-sceptics. So how would my "pro-tech" message be received - seeking to take a common sense and balanced approach to these important issues."

I have worked with many of the largest banks and insurers in the world over the last 20 years, and all of them are focussed right now on the threat and opportunity of FinTech innovation.

Very simply: FinTech will cause as radical changes to banking and payments as the web has caused to the whole of society. Combine the gigantic power of the web and mobile tech with the profits of the entire financial sector worldwide, and you get one of the greatest opportunities to create digital wealth that the world has ever seen.

That's one reason why FinTech is one of the fastest growing areas of IT innovation with over $18bn invested a year.  In the first 3 months of 2017, Global FinTech startups raised $2.78n of investment from global venture capital firms, in 226 separate deals. In London alone there are probably over 10,000 FinTech startups - it is hard to keep track of the frenetic pace of change in this sector.

Why is FinTech so important?

FinTech combines all the power of the web, the potential of mobile transactions, the capabilities of cloud-computing, of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data analytics, and all the potential of mega-sized IT platforms, to completely transform how money is stored and transferred, globally.

A few years ago, I gave a lecture to the Pentagon (USPACOM), on how to reduce risks of future wars and reduce international tensions. It was one of the toughest assignments I can remember.

Our world spends over $1.8 trillion every year on weapons and other defence costs, or 2.5% of global GDP, down from 4% in the last days of the Cold War, equivalent to $250 per person on earth. Combined sales of the largest 100 arms companies is around $320 billion a year - yet most of it is completely irrelevant to the conflicts of the future.

40% of all global military spending is by one nation alone: America, which burns up more in this way than the next 15 highest-spending nations combined. This is a truly spectacular imbalance of military fire-power, and will be unsustainable in the longer term as we will see.  America only needs to spend 3% of GDP on arms to achieve such dominance – compared to Russia which today spends 4% of a much smaller economy, China 2%, India 2%, UK 2%, France 2%, Israel 6%, Saudi Arabia 9% and Oman 12%.... But how do we ensure world peace?....