I spoke last week at a conference in Cardiff on the future of work. It was organised by the law firm Dawson Gray. You can't talk about the the future of work without thinking about the future city, since the shape and structure of work is bound up more or less completely with the shape and structure of cities. Edward Glaeser's book The Triumph of the City (2012) gets a lot of love in these conversations. It's hard to find people who have a bad word to say about it. Cities are the absence of physical space between people and companies.

PLEASE NOTE: This is the first generated blog and each new run of the code will be different. This should not be taken as the ground truth. The mining industry has been globalised for many years, with companies operating in multiple countries to maximise production and profits. However, this has led to a number of challenges, including the need to operate in different regulatory environments, manage different labour forces, and navigate different tax systems. Additionally, the volatility of commodity prices has also led to challenges for the industry. Despite these challenges, the mining industry remains a key driver of globalisation, and offers a number of opportunities for companies looking to expand into new markets.

What is the contribution that the arts and humanities can make to our engagement with the increasingly pervasive technology of artificial intelligence? My aim in this short article is to sketch some of these potential contributions. Perhaps the most fundamental contribution of the arts and humanities is to make vivid the fact that the development of AI is not a matter of destiny, but instead involves successive waves of highly consequential human choices. It's important to identify the choices, to frame them in the right way, and to raise the question: who gets to make them and how? This is important because AI, and digital technology generally, has become the latest focus of the historicist myth that social evolution is preordained, that our social world is determined by independent variables over which we, as individuals or societies, are able to exert little control. So we either go with the flow, or go under.

We live in a world where increasingly globalisation is under threat. The biggest threat comes from trade wars, started by Mr Trump, that could significantly harm the world economy. Last year already, the International Monetary Fund warned that Trump's trade war could cost the global economy $430 billion in 2020. As the IMF's report states, all countries will suffer, but the USA the most. Trade wars are bad for the global economy as, in the interconnected world that we live in, it will affect everyone; from small business to large conglomerates.

The future of work is in hot debate all over the world. The World Economic Forum, the ILO, the International Confederation of Trade Unions, consulting firms, and universities like MIT have task forces asking what work will look like in the years ahead. There are two problems with much of these debates. The first is an over-fixation with technology. The second is the view that technology has a trajectory all its own as if there is some iron law of physics that will determine its shape and effects. I challenge both of these premises: technology will of course be important; it is one of the big "megatrends" that will influence work of the future.

The biggest problem, or opportunity, for the current and many successive governments, is, and would be this - how to provide gainful employment to the millions of Indians entering the labour market every month? That one question has several corollaries to it. What role would automation play in all of this? What kind of jobs would be the first victims of automation? Is it wrong to expect manufacturing sector to provide jobs at a large scale now?

One in five jobs in British cities is likely to be displaced by 2030 because of automation and globalisation, a new report predicts. Retail, customer service and warehouse jobs are among those most at threat of being lost, said Centre for Cities. The think tank said struggling cities in the North and Midlands were more exposed to job losses than wealthier cities in the South, compounding the North/South divide. Cities including Mansfield, Sunderland and Wakefield could see two out of five jobs lost, while Oxford and Cambridge face losing 13%, the study found. The report said the changes would lead to jobs being created as well as lost, but in Northern and Midlands' cities they would largely be in low-skilled occupations.

Cognisess is a predictive people analytics company that supports companies in selecting, recruiting and managing employees by eliminating bias and making the recruitment process fairer, more efficient and more accurate. Global recruitment faces two disruptive challenges in the next decade. Globalisation will become even more complex and the speed of technological change will become more rapid. Globalisation is entering a new period of tension and competition as geo-politics such as the Trump administration and Brexit re-cast the old order of world trade towards a new operating system for the global economy. Meanwhile disruptive technologies are cleaving into long standing business sectors that have enjoyed many decades of certainty and, in some cases, hegemony.

Inequality goes back to the Stone Age. Thirty thousand years ago, bands of hunter-gatherers in Russia buried some members in sumptuous graves replete with thousands of ivory beads, bracelets, jewels and art objects, while other members had to settle for a bare hole in the ground. Nevertheless, ancient hunter-gatherer groups were still more egalitarian than any subsequent human society, because they had very little property. Property is a pre-requisite for long-term inequality. Following the agricultural revolution, property multiplied and with it inequality.

The European Union must take a more robust position in defence of free trade. A shift has occurred in the trade policy of the United States and protectionism is on the rise worldwide. This transformed situation allows greater room for the European Union and permits it an enhanced role in international trade and in influencing the future direction of trade. On Wednesday the European Commission published its Reflection Paper on Globalisation. In Finland, exports play a key role as a growth driver and an engine for the country's economy.