The Long View
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by Mark Elsner, Grace Atkinson, and Saadia Zahidi in the World Economic Forum…The Global Risks Report 2025 presents the findings
of the Global Risks Perception Survey 2024-
2025 (GRPS), which captures insights from over
900 experts worldwide. The report analyses global
risks through three timeframes to support decisionmakers in balancing current crises and longer-term
priorities.
by Lucy Bernholz in Blueprint 2025…Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society: Blueprint is an annual industry forecast about the ways we use private resources for public benefit in the digital age. Each year, the Blueprint provides an overview of the current landscape, points to big ideas that matter, and directs your attention to horizons where you can expect some important breakthroughs in the coming year.
by Laura Bicker in BBC…Over the next decade, about 300 million people, who are currently aged 50 to 60, are set to leave the Chinese workforce. This is the country’s largest age group, nearly equivalent to the size of the US population.
by Dan Milmo in The Guardian…Geoffrey Hinton says there is 10% to 20% chance AI will lead to human extinction in three decades, as change moves fast
by Jennifer Doudna in Wired.com…The genome-editing technology can be supercharged by artificial intelligence—and the results are already being felt.
by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze on Margaretwheatley.com…Emergence is the fundamental scientific explanation for how local changes can materialize as global systems of influence. As a change theory, it offers methods and practices to accomplish the systems-wide changes that are so needed at this time. As leaders and communities of concerned people, we need to intentionally work with emergence so that our efforts will result in a truly hopeful future.
by Steven Glinert in Noahpinion…Electronic warfare (EW) is a bit of a sleeper in the US arsenal. The US invented its modern form and has used it to great effect in every war we’ve fought, especially since 1990. Indeed, if you want to know what the literal “war” in “chip wars” is, it’s this. The US spends about as much on it as its much cooler and flashier younger sibling, cyberwarfare (around $5b) and spending is due to increase. Likewise, the Chinese think of it as essential to their victory in a potential war against the US. Finally, it has become a defining aspect of the war in Ukraine, with Russian and Ukrainian forces playing a cat and mouse game between drones and electronic attacks.
by Max Roser in Our World in Data…Very few think the world is making progress. In this article, we look at the history of global living conditions and show that the world has made immense progress in important aspects.
by Yuval Noah Harari in The Guardian… Forget Hollywood depictions of gun-toting robots running wild in the streets – the reality of artificial intelligence is far more dangerous, warns the historian and author in an exclusive extract from his new book
by Kate O’Flaherty in The Guardian…Apple is about to launch a ChatGPT-powered version of Siri as part of a suite of AI features in iOS 18. Will this change the way you use your phone – and how does it affect your privacy?
Danish Refugee Council writes in Global Displacement Forecast 2024…The fighting that has torn across Sudan since 15 April 2023 has turned the country into one of the
world’s largest displacement and protection crises, and one of the most dangerous environments for
humanitarians to operate in. The stage has been set for a long war.
by Azeem Azhar in Exponential View…While he doesn’t say it explicitly, it seems that Eric expects the next two years to be faster and more turbulent than the previous two.
by Tim Barker and Dylan Saba in Phenomenal world.com…An interview with Sarah Harrison on the mechanics of US foreign military sales
by Nate Hagens in The Great Simplification…Artificial intelligence has been advancing at a break-neck pace. Accompanying this is an almost frenzied optimism that AI will fix our most pressing global problems, particularly when it comes to the hype surrounding climate solutions.
by Adam Satariano, et al in The New York Times…Companies across the world reported disruptions, citing technical issues from a cybersecurity software update.
by Adam Tooze in Chartbook….As the World Migration Report for 2024 confirms, the Mexico-US border is by some margin the largest single corridor of country-to-country migration in the world.
by Cade Metz in The New York Times….The big leap, of course, is imagining how human consciousness would merge with a machine, and people like Mr. Kurzweil struggle to explain how exactly this would happen.
by Alexander Burns in Politico…Justin Trudeau probably won’t ask Joe Biden if the U.S. is headed for a war between the states. But a report from within his government says it’s time for Canada to get ready.
by Hannah Devlin in The Guardian….Researchers find instances of systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing, pretending to be human and modifying behaviour in tests
by Yuval Abraham in +972 Magazine…The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.
by Lauren Goode in Wired…..Jason Matheny, CEO of the influential think tank Rand Corporation, says advances in AI are making it easier to learn how to build biological weapons and other tools of destruction.