IA1024 THE REDEFINITION OF TECHNOLOGY HARM

These briefings describe a confluence of events and trends that is redefining the fundamental terms of the relationship between technology and society — and with it, the liabilities faced by every company, in every sector, whether or not they consider themselves a technology business.

The confluence is driven simultaneously by political action across more than forty countries, court cases in the United States against social media and gambling companies around addiction, and a rapidly widening regulatory net that now encompasses AI-driven personalisation, financial products, food, and any technology designed to act on the behaviour of vulnerable customers. These are not separate stories. They are expressions of the same underlying shift: a global cultural moment in which societies are questioning what technology has been doing to them and beginning to act on the answer.

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The economic consequences will be significant and fast. New definitions of harm do not announce themselves with a single event — they coalesce across legal, regulatory, and public fronts simultaneously, and by the time the shocks are visible in markets, the positioning window for organisations that could have acted early has already closed.