Two wars, a handful of “civil disturbances,” 50 elections, and rich-world bias: Here’s how some of the smarter people in the Western press think you should be thinking about 2023:

#1- Volatility will be the theme of the year, the New York Times writes, noting that economic uncertainty and armed conflict are set to run headlong into a list of elections spanning from Taiwan and India to the US of A.

Huge things that matter to business — in the region and beyond — are at stake: Who gets elected and how much power they have will affect decisions ranging from how artificial intelligence will be regulated to “factory subsidies, tax breaks, technology transfers, the development of artificial intelligence, regulatory controls, trade barriers, investments, debt relief, and the energy transition.”

#2- Greenwashing by corporations is a sideshow in emerging markets. What really matters is that “rich countries are using the green transition as an excuse to boost their own economies at the expense of developing ones.”

It’s not an activist speaking — but the head of the UN’s top trade body. “Many trade rules forbid policies that can be used by developing countries. And the developed countries have more fiscal space to subsidize in the areas that are good for ‘quote, unquote’, the environment,” UN Conference on Trade and Development Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan tells the Financial Times in a year-end interview.

Competition is going to be particularly fierce when it comes to job-creating (and economically important) investment in industry, where Grynspan notes that advanced economies are now trying to muscle-out the developing world to bring jobs and technology back home.

#3- It’s a year in which every business will have to come to grips with what artificial intelligence means to their business. Our friends at McKinsey think that 75% of the total business “use case” for AI will fall into just four buckets: Customer service and operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, and research and development.

And adoption has so far been slow: Younger people are playing with it, sorting out its strengths (cutting through deep stores of data) and weaknesses (so. much. hallucination). But only a third of managers around the world tell McKinsey they’re using generative AI for work. Nearly 70% have either tried it and decided not to use it — or have never touched it at all.

Your best starting points for AI: There are far more questions than answers. Folks with more exposure will want to look at Benedict Evans’ annual look ahead, which this year focuses almost entirely on gen AI. Newbies can start with the Economist.