The mood at Davos in the desert is one of anxiety

IN SOME waysAI, big business pow-wows are all alike. Talking heads make over-the-top predictions. The world’s problems are packaged into bite-sized quotes. Chief executives vie to use as many words as they can to say as little as possible. So too at the seventh Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, on October 24th-26th.Dancers in space-age suits rocked the stage and a young operatic star wowed the audience at the opening session. Large futuristic screens flashed buzzwords —, data, sustainability—in an arena fit for e-sports. Corporate and financial bigwigs engaged in a pretend boardroom dialogue at a roundtable in the centre of the conference’s main hall to discuss the state of the world. Drones hovered overhead.