19 must-read stories for the weekend

1. Top 10 emerging technologies of 2015. From zero-emission cars to next generation robotics, innovations that will change industries and lives.

2. “Success doesn’t just come from movement and activity. It comes from focus.”

3. Tomorrow’s artificial intelligence won’t just play chess. It will learn how to get better at chess.

4. The ethics of emerging technology. Are we heading for utopia or dystopia?

5. “There’s a quiet and invisible revolution happening inside robots.” They’re becoming more sensitive.

6. Circuit boards, cables, toys. So many plastics were consigned to landfill, but a new breakthrough promises to transform recycling.

7. The economics of Africa’s wildlife. Asia’s booming wealth has prompted a 9,000% increase in rhino poaching. How can we protect the continent’s natural assets?

8. In this week’s podcast, a closer look at how our list of 10 emerging technologies will change your world.

9. The greatest imbalance of all. The world’s economic gains have helped eradicate poverty but within nations, inequality is worsening, writes Professor Donald Brean, citing our Global Risks Report. (Forbes India)

10. “Do you want to be a hero, or do you want to be a villain?”Microbiologist Peter Piot reflects on how meetings in Davos gave him the chance to sit down with big pharma and broker deals to get HIV drugs to sufferers in developing countries. (BBC Radio 4)

11. China is warming up to lower growth rates. As long as its people are employed and earning more, as Premier Li indicated in Davos. (Bloomberg)

12. Equal pay benefits men, too. Here are four reasons why, backed up by our Global Gender Gap Report. (Reuters)

13. Infrastructure is no laughing matter. Comedian John Oliver cites the Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report in his roasting of America’s failure to maintain its “roads, bridges, dams … basically anything that can be destroyed in an action movie.” (Last Week Tonight)

14. What are the robots doing? Not taking the jobs created by the global recovery, argues Mike Konczal. However, the role of technology in the economic malaise of the past 30 years should not be overlooked.

15. To fight inequality, tax land. Introducing a land value tax in the US is economically efficient and could be used to reduce other taxes. Most of all, it would narrow the gap between rich and poor.

16. Crime and the Great Recession. Economic downturns usually lead to an increase in youth unemployment, but could they also be the making of career criminals?

17. The original corporate raiders. The lessons of the brutal 100-year history of the East India Company have never been more relevant.

18. Japan’s richest families typically lose their wealth within three generations. Piketty’s main assertion – that a leading driver of inequality is the accumulation of wealth by those who are already wealthy – takes on unique characteristics when applied to Japan, writes the country’s former defence minister.

19. MIT’s influence on economics. The school has produced a remarkable number of policy-influencing economists. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who studied there in the 1970s, interviews himself to find out why.

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Author: Adrian Monck is Managing Director and head of Public Engagement at the World Economic Forum.

Image: Three women are seen through a giant kaleidoscope as they look inside at the Museum Centre in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, February 4, 2015. REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin