A resource for anyone interested in global business, culture, sustainability, and travel. Here you’ll find news, updates, best practices, trade shows, and even trade leads.
Venture capital firms have invested over $1.7 billion in generative AI solutions over the past three years, with AI-enabled drug discovery and AI software coding receiving the most funding. A report from Gartner explores five industry use cases for generative AI.
The 2023 Global Peace Index (GPI) — the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness — showed, for the ninth consecutive year, a deterioration in the level of global peacefulness. Overall, the global economic impact of violence measured at around $17.5 trillion in 2022, or 13% of the global GDP. Despite this global deterioration, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region registered the second-largest improvements in peacefulness, with Libya showing the most improvement for the second consecutive year.
The global economy is set to slow substantially in 2023, according to a new report from the World Bank. The lagged and current effects of monetary tightening, as well as more restrictive credit conditions, are expected to weigh on activity in the second half of the year, with weakness persisting into 2024. Excluding China, growth in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) is set to decline markedly, with the outlook weakest in countries with elevated fiscal and financial vulnerabilities. The resurgence of recent banking sector turmoil represents a serious risk. Widespread financial stress could have especially severe economic consequences.
The 2023 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Financing Sustainable Transformations warns of a lasting sustainable development divide as SDG financing needs are growing but development financing is not keeping pace. It calls on the international community to align financing with sustainable development by combing three sets of actions. First, scale up development cooperation and SDG investment. Second, strengthen the international financial architecture. Third, accelerate national sustainable industrial transformations.
Download the 2023 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Financing Sustainable Transformations
According to a new report from the United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global trade was worth a record $32 trillion in 2022, but amid deteriorating economic conditions and rising uncertainties, growth turned negative in the last half of the year and is set to stagnate in the first half of 2023.
The silver lining was the strong performance of trade in environmentally friendly “green goods,” says UNCTAD’s latest Global Trade Update.
“This is good news for the planet,” says Alessandro Nicita, one of the report’s authors, “as these goods are key to protecting the environment and fighting climate change.”
Business trends in 2023 revolve around corporate sustainability. From adopting the circular economy to cleaning up the global supply chain, 2023 is the year that companies must put sustainability in business into action. University of Navarra IESE Business School professors explore ways to put sustainability at the heart of business.
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The past year proved that AI is here to stay.
In this session at SXSW 2023 in Austin, Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s co-founder and president, discussed the future that is here already and the ethical guardrails that come along with this new era of innovation. The conversation provides an insider’s look at the research lab behind popular creative tools “DALL·E” and “ChatGPT” and some of the most sophisticated advances in AI.
SXSW dedicates itself to helping creative people achieve their goals. Founded in 1987 in Austin, Texas, SXSW is best known for its conference and festivals that celebrate the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries. An essential destination for global professionals, this year’s online event features sessions, showcases, screenings, exhibitions, professional development and a variety of networking opportunities.
New technologies to generate insights without exposing the underlying data is ushering in a new era for value creation in the digital economy. This session at Davos 2023 focused on mapping the genome to reducing the carbon footprint, and on how business leaders unlock value from data collaboration at scale.
The session was part of the ongoing Digital Transformation of Industries Initiative of the World Economic Forum. The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
The Global Risks Report 2023, developed in collaboration with Marsh McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, is part of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Initiative. The report details major risks the world will be facing in the coming years.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its global growth forecast for 2023 amid colliding pressures from the war in Ukraine, high energy and food prices, inflation and sharply higher interest rates, warning that conditions could worsen significantly next year.
“For many people, 2023 will feel like a recession,” said IMF Research Development Director Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas.
The latest World Economic Outlook forecasts show that a third of the world economy will likely contract by next year, marking a sobering start to the first in-person IMF and World Bank annual meetings in three years. The IMF said global GDP growth next year will slow to 2.7 per cent, compared to a 2.9 per cent forecast in July, as higher interest rates slow the U.S. economy, Europe struggles with spiking gas prices and China contends with continued COVID-19 lockdowns and a weakening property sector.