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South by Southwest Headwinds for Tech
This week’s South by Southwest is one of the biggest tech events in the world, boasting 75,000 delegates and 5,000 speakers.
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Lawyer jobs being taken by robots is a popular media theme these days. However, after having attending the South by Southwest (SXSW) technology conference last week, I think the robots may, in fact, be needing us. In the next few years, technology will take us to a level of complexity that is almost unimaginable. That complexity will stretch our existing legal frameworks and require highly skilled lawyers to navigate outcomes.
SXSW is one of the most important technology events on the global calendar. More than 75,000 delegates descended on Austin, Texas, to hear over 5,000 speakers ranging from IT company execs, Hollywood celebrities and no less than six 2020 presidential candidates, including Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz. The big tech companies pay millions to completely transform sleepy restaurants into “Experience Spaces” to capture the eye of SXSW’s young “influencer” crowd. In fact, the event has been called the “Millennials’ Woodstock.”
The big theme from the event was the ubiquity of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Eminent futurist Amy Webb was asked at the end of her session on tech trends — attended by more than 2,000 people — why she had not mentioned AI. She said the answer is simple: “AI is in everything and every industry, now and in the future.” AI was everywhere at SXSW — in sessions from healthcare, transport and finance, all the way to storytelling. So too was the concern about bias in AI, with at least six sessions dealing with this topic in whole or in part.
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Nina Varumo is a freelance portrait and documentary photographer based in Stockholm. A recent project of hers Kvinnor till sjöss (‘Women at sea’) is on ongoing photo series highlighting the working life of female seafarers in order to change the stereotypical image of what and who is a seafarer.
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Companies have been publicly reporting on their financial performance for over a hundred years. However, they are increasingly having to make public non-financial disclosures relating to sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters as a result of rules, laws and regulations issued by stock exchanges, governments and regulators worldwide.
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