Long before coronavirus appeared and shattered our pre-existing “normal,” the future of work was a widely discussed and debated topic. We’ve watched automation slowly but surely expand its capabilities and take over more jobs, and we’ve wondered what artificial intelligence will eventually be capable of.
The pandemic swiftly turned the working world on its head, putting millions of people out of a job and forcing millions more to work remotely. But essential questions remain largely unchanged: we still want to make sure we’re not replaced, we want to add value, and we want an equitable society where different types of work are valued fairly.
To address these issues—as well as how the pandemic has impacted them—this week Singularity University held a digital summit on the future of work. Forty-three speakers from multiple backgrounds, countries, and sectors of the economy shared their expertise on everything from work in developing markets to why we shouldn’t want to go back to the old normal.
Our mindset is everything: what one person sees as a crisis, another person sees as opportunity.
The magnitude of economic and social disruption caused by COVID-19 (25% of small businesses have closed, bankruptcies are up 26%) means that many existing business models are being upended. In some cases, entire industries.
As an entrepreneur, you should be asking yourself: What challenges or problems can I solve? What are new digital business models I want to experiment with?
Covid-19 did not only cause a health crisis around the world; It led to severe economic, social, and political challenges in various countries.
In response to the World Health Organization recommendations, governments imposed various precautionary measures in the course of managing its risks. Measures varied from mere social distancing to total lockdown and isolation in quarantine centers.
Public services were hindered in some states, and private institutions have closed their doors, while jobs were remotely performed. However, the luxury of remote working could not be enjoyed by everyone around the globe due to technological restraints. That much likely applied to law practitioners who limited their practice to a single jurisdiction, which lacked the technological infrastructure and a technological-based judicial system. Thus, the situation has compelled legal practitioners in those jurisdictions, to innovate and find solutions to circumvent the faced challenges and face the post-COVID uncertainty. It has also compelled practitioners in the most advanced jurisdictions to overcome post-COVID repercussions and plan for a long-term sustainable practice amid the rise of Artificial Intelligence, which would undermine the human presence in this industry.
Legal practitioners faced hurdles to cope with the new situation as public services in most jurisdictions were hindered during the quarantine time. However, access to justice was not interrupted in jurisdictions with advanced digitized judicial systems and technologies’ based public infrastructures.
Taking the UAE as an example, legal practitioners did not face the same challenges. The UAE’s leadership that managed the public health risk with rational public policies succeeded in mitigating the pandemic spread and minimized its negative impact on the socioeconomic spheres. Consequently, the first ranked country in the Arabic world to succeed in the management of the pandemic, and 18th globally, according to a study made by the British research center “Deep Knowledge Group,” maintained the continuity of public services. Notably, the access to justice was upheld, and legal professionals remotely worked, as they conducted their activities via Information Communication technologies (ICT), whereby court hearings could be held virtually via the judicial system’s platforms.
Unlikely, others whose practice was limited to a single jurisdiction that lacked technological support faced severe hurdles. Such a struggle was evidenced during the discussions held with colleagues practicing in North African and Middle Eastern jurisdictions at the Tunisian Lawyers’ Association Virtual Conference 21–22 May 2020. During the Conference, law practitioners from various jurisdictions discussed their harsh reality and severe damages caused by the pandemic on the socioeconomic dimensions across their jurisdictions in general and their professional dimension in particular. They stressed the need to find practical solutions to mitigate these damages and to join efforts to develop a modernized legal industry across their jurisdictions. Some speakers who experienced a total loss of income expressed their disenchantment about the primitive judicial systems within their jurisdictions. Nonetheless, all participants agreed that the starting point toward improving their situation is to innovate and propose unconventional solutions to overcome the pandemic damage and plan the way forward. They emphasized the need to focus on developing Alternative Dispute Resolutions (ADR) to minimize their dependency on the old-fashioned judicial systems and demand their reform and digitization.
However, the pandemic was not the precursor of many legal practitioners’ skepticism about many old-fashioned judicial systems. Technological progress and globalization have disrupted the global legal industry.
The latter was challenged since before the pandemic outbreak, as it has witnessed an unprecedented rate of change for the last several years.
Taking a stance to analyze the legal industry’s development globally, it could be stated that it has been witnessing a business model shift. ICT has unlocked new dimensions for the legal practitioners, enabling their practice to expand from a single-jurisdictional practice to a multi-jurisdictional practice. Disruptive technologies and globalization have increased the cross-border transactions and transformed the conventional legal market into a globalized market. ICT enabled the legal practitioner to overcome many of the legal requirements imposed by the national authorities on foreign lawyers, as they could offer direct legal assistance to cross-border clients or through local collaboration in the foreign jurisdiction.
The legal professional had to face challenging changes within the industry. He had to circumvent the increased competition and sophisticated legal issues through innovating unconventional solutions.
Thus, traditional skills, based on legal knowledge, negotiation, problem-solving, analytics, management, and communication have to combine non-traditional skills based on innovation, system thinking, people’s skills, cross-collaboration, complex problems’ solving, multidisciplinary knowledge, technologies and data, leadership and time management, to face the challenges as mentioned earlier.
It could be stated that to keep pace with the disruptive global legal industry’s development, the law practitioner must master a non-conventional legal practice by gaining in-depth knowledge of emerging disruptive technologies and managing their implications on laws and policies in various jurisdictions in light of the international laws governing their related activities. Even though it is not always easy to start learning new disciplines while having full-time employment and other commitments, it is a bittersweet challenge that could bring new opportunities and position the legal practitioner on a new level, with access to new disciplines. Thanks to ICT, it is never late for any professional to acquire knowledge through online classes and training to unlock new dawns for his carrier. Legal practitioners shall circumvent their judicial systems dependency from one hand, and they have to be creative and innovative on the other hand.
To face the technological development in light of the rising Artificial Intelligence’s threats, the legal practitioner shall not merely adapt to the new legal industry’s reality, but to lead his way through an uncertain future. Such an approach, from personal experience, has proven its efficiency during the Covid-19 turbulent times to come to terms that exponential thinking, innovation, and a multidisciplinary knowledge are essential to circumventing both the Covid-19 challenging situation and the legal industry metamorphosis amid crises.
The year 2020 will not only be associated with the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak and its socioeconomic and political challenges; it will mark a turning point in the history of humanity’s evolution. The pandemic has challenged our lives as it altered the way we interact, the way we work, and the way we think. Covid-19 did not only unmask the challenges the global civilization has been witnessing due to the technological revolution but also the need to embrace those technologies. It has also called exponential thinkers to find disruptive solutions to circumvent the current and future challenges while excelling their way through toward the future. Since laws are the common denominator among all human activities, law practitioners should lead the way forward in this change through having a futuristic insight, while grasping the technological development from a multidisciplinary approach.
Photos Credit: Pixabay (The use of the above photos conforms with Pixabay terms & conditions and falls under the scope of “fair use” doctrine).
The Space Force’s announcement last week that United Launch Alliance and SpaceX will launch expensive spy satellites and other military payloads brings a long and often fierce battle for government funds to an end — at least for now.
Why it matters: This type of government money — particularly in light of the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic — is key for space companies that often work on thin margins.
The state of play: ULA was awarded the bulk of the funds — $337 million — for two missions due to launch in 2022, with SpaceX winning $316 million for one mission launching that year.
In the end, we look back at our careers and reflect on what we’ve achieved. It may have been the hundreds of human interactions we’ve had; the thousands of emails read and replied to; the millions of minutes of physical labor—all to keep the global economy ticking along.
According to Gallup’s World Poll, only 15 percent of people worldwide are actually engaged with their jobs. The current state of “work” is not working for most people. In fact, it seems we as a species are trapped by a global work crisis, which condemns people to cast away their time just to get by in their day-to-day lives.
Technologies like artificial intelligence and automation may help relieve the work burdens of millions of people—but to benefit from their impact, we need to start changing our social structures and the way we think about work now.
Bacteriophage can reduce bacterial growth in the lungs, limiting fluid build-up. This could decrease the mortality of patients affected by COVID-19, according to the peer-reviewed journal PHAGE: Therapy, Applications, and Research.
“The bacterial growth rate could potentially be reduced by the aerosol application of natural bacteriophages. These prey on the main species of bacteria known to cause respiratory failure,” says Marcin Wojewodzic, PhD, University of Birmingham (U.K.). Decreasing bacterial growth would also give the body more time to produce protective antibodies against the disease-causing coronavirus.
Used correctly, phages have an advantage here of being able to very specifically target the bacteria that cause secondary infections. They would remove the problematic bacterium but leave an otherwise fragile microbiome intact.” Martha Clokie, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of PHAGE and Professor of Microbiology, University of Leicester (U.K.)
The pandemic of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has caused the death of at least 270,000 people as of the 8th of May 2020. This work stresses the potential role of bacteriophages to decrease the mortality rate of patients infected by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus. The indirect cause of mortality in Covid-19 is miscommunication between the innate and adaptive immune systems, resulting in a failure to produce effective antibodies against the virus on time. Although further research is urgently needed, secondary bacterial infections in the respiratory system could potentially contribute to the high mortality rate observed among the elderly due to Covid-19. If bacterial growth, together with delayed production of antibodies, is a significant contributing factor to Covid-19’s mortality rate, then the additional time needed for the human body’s adaptive immune system to produce specific antibodies could be gained by reducing the bacterial growth rate in the respiratory system of a patient. Independently of that, the administration of synthetic antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 viruses could potentially decrease the viral load. The decrease of bacterial growth and the covalent binding of synthetic antibodies to viruses should further diminish the production of inflammatory fluids in the lungs of patients (the indirect cause of death). Although the first goal could potentially be achieved by antibiotics, I argue that other methods may be more effective or could be used together with antibiotics to decrease the growth rate of bacteria, and that respective clinical trials should be launched.
Both goals can be achieved by bacteriophages. The bacterial growth rate could potentially be reduced by the aerosol application of natural bacteriophages that prey on the main species of bacteria known to cause respiratory failure and should be harmless to a patient. Independently of that, synthetically changed bacteriophages could be used to quickly manufacture specific antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. This can be done via a Nobel Prize awarded technique called “phage display.” If it works, the patient is given extra time to produce their own specific antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and stop the damage caused by an excessive immunological reaction.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused the death of more than 270,000 people, as reported by 8th May 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). The crisis we observe is the joint effect of globalization and the properties of the new virus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the disease, Covid-19. SARS-CoV-2 stands for “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome COronaVirus 2” describing one of the most dangerous symptoms in Covid-19. Although there have been past warnings of the threat that respiratory targeting viruses pose,1 the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread at an unprecedented rate and it is devastating our health and economy globally. We urgently need multiple approaches to tackle this crisis.
On March 11, 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake triggered a powerful tsunami, generating waves higher than 125 feet that ravaged the coast of Japan, particularly the Tohoku region of Honshu, the largest and most populous island in the country.nnNearly 16,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, and millions left without electricity and water. Railways and roads were destroyed, and 383,000 buildings damaged—including a nuclear power plant that suffered a meltdown of three reactors, prompting widespread evacuations.nnIn lessons for today’s businesses deeply hit by pandemic and seismic culture shifts, it’s important to recognize that many of the Japanese companies in the Tohoku region continue to operate today, despite facing serious financial setbacks from the disaster. How did these businesses manage not only to survive, but thrive?nnOne reason, says Harvard Business School professor Hirotaka Takeuchi, was their dedication to responding to the needs of employees and the community first, all with the moral purpose of serving the common good. Less important for these companies, he says, was pursuing layoffs and other cost-cutting measures in the face of a crippled economy.nn
As demonstrated after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japanese businesses have a unique capability for long-term survival. Hirotaka Takeuchi explains their strategy of investing in community over profits during turbulent times.
Oftentimes, many argue that NASA’s Space Launch System is a waste of money because it is being delayed over and over again despite having such a large budget. In this video, I will examine whether this is the case or not.
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Worries about America’s tech stars have swirled for years. It’s clear now that this isn’t going away. In world capitals, courtrooms and among the public, we are wrestling with what it means for tech giants to have enormous influence on our lives, elections, economy and minds.
The congressional antitrust hearing showed that concerns about the tech stars aren’t going away.
