Why Delivery Costs Are Killing Restaurants

The price of convenience may not be sustainable. JL

Heather Haddon reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Delivery services typically take a 25% cut of an order. Other fees and investments to set up delivery partnerships can further squeeze a restaurant’s margins. Restaurant executives say they were too quick to accept unfavorable terms from delivery companies, fearing they would otherwise meet the same fate as clothing stores and bookstores whose sales have been felled by online delivery. U.S. food-service delivery sales reached $34 billion last year, up 13% from 2017. But those sales often aren’t translating into profits for restaurants. “The economic model is not sustainable in the way it has been structured.”

No, Streaming Is Not Saving the Music Industry

Because it is miniscule compared to ostensibly legal piracy via YouTube and other sources. JL

The Trichordist reports:

A decade after losing half of it’s revenues due to piracy, record labels are now only getting back up to half of what the peak business was in 1999. Digital Downloads will account for less than 10% of recorded music revenues by the end of the yearThe fundamental problem remains that all that revenue falling out though the bottom leads to advertising funded piracy and YouTube. Many have suggested that YouTube is effectively the largest ad supported piracy platform.

How Ecommerce Sites Manipulate Shoppers Into Buying Stuff They Dont Want

Manipulation of consumers' desires has long been an element of ecommerce. But the scale and degree of the psychological influencing has begun to raise concerns. JL

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries reports in the New York Times:

Interest in the tools of online influence has intensified. An element of that discussion is the notion of consent: what users are agreeing to do and share online, and how far businesses can go in leading them to make decisions. Fake messages are an example of “dark patterns,” devious online techniques that manipulate users into doing things they might not otherwise choose to. They are the digital version of tactics used to influence consumer behavior.  Most sites used messages that indicated products were popular, that there were few items in stock or that products would only be available for a limited time. Some were demonstrably false. But even those based on actual site activity are an attempt to play on consumers’ known weaknesses

Malls Are Getting Mauled. Will Real Estate Ever Recover?

Actually, yes. The US is exponentially over-stored. A shake-out was overdue. The industry should be healthier going forward. JL

Larry Light reports in CIO Magazine:

After the number of US malls peaked at 1,500 in 2005, mall closures have whittled them to 1,100. A quarter of the nation’s malls will be shuttered in the next five years. The US simply has gone too far in opening stores, with 23.5 square feet of retail space per capita, while Britain and Canada have 4.6 square feet. “We have a massive over-supply” of retail space. (But) sales growth for retail is outpacing US gross domestic product as a whole. Room exists for good stores to do well. (And)owners are transforming vacant spaces, especially in defunct department stores, into (fulfillment centers), movie theaters, restaurants, and medical offices.

You No Longer Own Your Face

Because once-uploaded to the internet, images and data live forever. And anyone can use them. JL 

Sidney Fussell reports in The Atlantic:

If 20 people are in a coffee shop, there are at least 21 cameras: One embedded in each person’s phone and one tucked high in the corner. Every time a data set is accessed for a new project, the intention, scope, and potential for harm changes. The portability and pliability of data meet the speed of the internet, expanding the possibilities, and scaling the risk far beyond what any one can be held accountable for. You might reasonably expect being overheard in a coffee shop, but that’s different from suddenly becoming a research subject, part of a data set that can live forever.

Yes, It's A Big Deal. Apple, Jony Ive And the End of Genius

Ive mattered. But so did Steve  - and the company continued to flourish. It may just be that tech is moving beyond its Great Man era. And maybe the world will be better for that evolution. JL

 
Dieter Bohn reports in The Verge:

When I look at the design decisions Apple has been making in its hardware and software, the word that comes to mind is “uncompromising.” That’s a virtue when  a leader is paying attention to quality, but it can be a vice when it applies to products that need to be used by humans. We should stop thinking of Apple as the singular expression of one person’s genius. History has moved beyond the Great Man theory, and so too should our ideas about how Apple operates. Committees are not as mythic as a singular genius. But maybe what Apple design needs right now is a little less mythos and a little more compromise.

The Reason Ticket Fees Got So Bad And Wont Get Better

The question is why anyone is surprised. This is what monopolies do. JL


Kaitlyn Tiffany reports in Vox:

The average ticket fee is now 27% of the ticket’s face value.Ticketmaster is regularly referred to as one of the most-hated companies in America — it’s the largest online ticket seller by far and has been under monopoly scrutiny since its 2010 merger with Live Nation, the country’s largest promotion and venue company.Fees of this size are a common source of confusion and ire. Close to 7,000 people wrote to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) during an open-comment period about online ticket sales

Media Suffering 'Trump Slump' As Tweets And Shock Value Lose Impact

Attitude meets attention span. JL


Sara Fisher and Neal Rothschild report in Axios:

Digital demand for Trump-related content (number of article views compared to number of articles written) has dropped 29% between the first 6 months of the Trump presidency and the most recent 6 months. The shock factor around Trump's unplanned announcements, staff departures, taunting tweets and erratic behavior is wearing off, and media companies are scrambling to find their next big moneymaker. The Trump bump that supported the news industry is not sustainable, and media companies once reliant on politics coverage are going to have to pivot.

Buy Low Tops, Sell High Tops: The Emergence of A $1 Billion Sneaker Resale Market

In this digitally enabled global economy, where there's data, there's a market.  JL

Erin Griffith reports in the New York Times:

The hobby took off, and this year expects to move 10,000 pairs of shoes. (The) anticipated take is a 25% profit from over $1 million in sales. Iar he expects to move 10,000 pairs of shoes. His anticipated take is a 25 percent profit from over $1 million in sales. It hired a new chief executive to expand its business and garnered a fresh $110 million in financing that values it at more than $1 billion. The market for resale sneakers and streetwear in North America is projected to reach $6 billion by 2025 from $2 billion today,

The main website enabling Mr. Wilkins’s now full-time business? StockX, a site that treats coveted consumer goods like sneakers as tradable commodities.

Sneaker collecting and trading “just keeps growing,” said Mr. Wilkins, a 24-year-old San Francisco resident who recently hired a business partner to manage his shoe inventory at a warehouse in upstate New York. “It is absolutely wild.”

StockX is part of a burgeoning group of online marketplaces that have turned resales of sneakers into a kind of currency — and an increasingly big business. Other sites like GOAT Group, Stadium Goods and Bump, which also resell sneakers, streetwear and other goods, have raised more than $200 million in venture capital funding. On Wednesday, StockX said it had hired a new chief executive to expand its business and garnered a fresh $110 million in financing that values it at more than $1 billion.

The rise of these online marketplaces is now pushing sneaker retailers and brands to rethink the potential of resale sites — once deemed a quirky niche for enthusiasts — as serious distribution channels. In February, Foot Locker invested $100 million in GOAT Group and said the companies would “combine efforts across digital and physical retail platforms.” And the luxury site Farfetch acquired the LVMH-backed Stadium Goods for $250 million in December.

The fervor for sneakers has been fueled by “sneakerheads” and others who regard the shoes as investment assets. All told, the market for resale sneakers and streetwear in North America is projected to reach $6 billion by 2025 from $2 billion today, according to Cowen, an investment bank.

“The internet and eBay made reselling into a cottage industry,” said Matt Powell, an analyst at NPD Group. “Platforms like StockX made it into a business.”

For sneaker brands like Nike and Adidas, sites like StockX add a twist to the ecosystem around their most desired shoes, like Jordans and Yeezys. So far, the companies have taken a hands-off stance to the online marketplaces, with Nike’s chief financial officer saying in March that the company was not focused on reselling and had no partnership plans or business strategy for it.

But while the sneaker brands are not capturing any resale revenue, they benefit indirectly because that market generates buzz for them. So they carefully — and secretively — manage the supply of their hottest items, leading to wild spikes in resale prices, said John Kernan, a research analyst at Cowen.

“Keeping Jordans or Yeezys in cool markets, with demand far outstripping supply, is making them more relevant in the mass market,” Mr. Kernan said.

Nike teased the resale market last November when it released a pair of $160 Jordan 1s that bore a message: Their tongues said “WEAR ME,” their toeboxes said “PLEASE CREASE,” and their midsoles said “NOT FOR RESALE.” In a few cases, shop owners required buyers to wear the shoes out of the store, a move that damaged their resale potential since most of the resale sites sell unworn sneakers. But the attention only fueled demand: The Jordan 1s immediately appeared on StockX and have sold for prices as high as $1,000.

Nike declined to comment.

Scott Cutler, the new chief executive of StockX, said more brands would eventually have to pay attention to resellers. “Nike, Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Rolex, whatever it is, they’re certainly not ignoring marketplaces and are not naïve to the fact that their distribution channels are evolving,” he said.

StockX grew out of Campless, a website that Josh Luber, a former I.B.M. consultant, built in 2012 to track sneaker resale prices on eBay. After Mr. Luber delivered a popular TED Talk titled “Why sneakers are a great investment,” Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and a co-founder, Greg Schwartz, acquired Campless.

Campless eventually transformed itself into StockX, a marketplace to buy and sell sneakers. From the beginning, it also positioned itself as a “stock market of things.”

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On StockX, that played out with buyers bidding on items or purchasing them for the lowest asking price from sellers. Once a bid was accepted, sellers shipped their items to one of StockX’s four authentication centers, which make sure the shoes are not fake brands and then send them to the buyer. StockX makes money by charging sellers a transaction fee.

The company said its revenue had more than doubled in the last year, with gross product sales topping $100 million a month. It has expanded into streetwear and luxury goods like handbags and has more than 800 employees.

The site does not carry user profiles and ratings, but includes detailed sales and pricing history for each item, making it more like a stock market than eBay. In total, StockX has raised $160 million, with its newest investors including General Atlantic, DST Global and GGV Capital.

One customer has been Usman Hasib, a 32-year-old in Houston. A sneaker collector since he was 13, Mr. Hasib has used StockX to amass 56 pairs of shoes worth around $25,000, according to StockX’s “portfolio” tracker. He rarely sells his purchases.

“I try to wear a different one every day,” he said.

When Mr. Hasib recently was unable to score Nike’s Off-White Jordan 1 sneakers in retail stores, he paid around $1,050 for a pair on StockX. Prices later surged to nearly $3,000 on the site. “It literally is like playing a stock market,” he said.

Mr. Cutler, who previously worked at eBay, StubHub and the New York Stock Exchange, became an adviser to StockX in 2016. That was when he read about the company’s plans to create a Big Board for commerce and products, modeled after marketplaces like eBay and StubHub. So he decided to offer his help.

“I immediately reached out and said, ‘Interestingly enough, I am the one person on the Earth that knows all of those companies intimately well,’” he said.

He said StockX planned to use the new $110 million in capital to expand internationally and push into selling newly released products.

Mr. Luber, StockX’s founder, said he was stepping down as chief executive but would continue to be the company’s public face. In a phone call from Paris, where StockX was involved in Fashion Week, he said he now had an even bigger vision than dropping new Jordans on StockX: He wants to replace static retail prices — an “antiquated concept,” he said — with a stock market style of shopping. In this setup, shoppers place bids on new items and prices are determined entirely by supply and demand.

Mr. Luber said he recognized the concept might initially be a stretch. “To tell all these brands that our idea is to get rid of retail prices is crazy, but that’s the slow, big idea behind it,” he said.

StockX is already moving ahead with the notion. In January, it held an “I.P.O.” — that’s initial product offering — for a limited run of slide sandals created by Ben Baller, a celebrity jewelry designer. The company used a complicated Dutch auction to determine which bidders got to buy the sandals and at what price. It resulted in an average price of $210 a pair — three times as much as they would have cost at retail, but lower than the majority of the bids.

After the release, other brands inquired about similar deals. StockX now has half a dozen such releases in the works with other designers, Mr. Luber said. “It’s not going to be an overnight thing, but it is absolutely logical,” he said.

In the meantime, StockX is expanding further into secondhand sales of luxury goods such as handbags and watches, an area currently topped by The RealReal, a San Francisco start-up that plans to go public this week.

Mr. Wilkins, the power seller of sneakers, said he didn’t plan to trade the shoes forever, but “right now it’s awesome income.”

There is one drawback, he acknowledged. Once his hobby became a business, he lost interest in getting the hottest shoes for himself. “The more and more you sell shoes, the more and more you dislike shoes,” he said.

Why Western Companies Are Leaving the Chinese Market

Western companies are increasingly deciding that the hassles just arent worth it.

And the Chinese government, having consistently thrown obstacles in their path in order to foster domestic company growth, may find that the unintended consequences include being left behind by a global market learning that it can live without China, with all that implies for economic growth in the future. JL


Julie Wernau reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Western companies, lured by a once surging Chinese economy, find the country brutally competitive and fraught with regulatory hurdles. McDonald’s , Hewlett-Packard and Uber are among those that have pulled back. The challenge to foreign companies has become especially intense in sectors that rely on delivery to meet Chinese expectations for speedy service. Brands such as Walmart have either partnered with one of China’s e-commerce giants or simply bowed out. Amazon sold its third-party online marketplace. Carrefour, one of Europe’s largest grocery retailers, is unloading most of its operations

Medium Shapes Message: How Smartphone Use Changes User-Generated Content:

Typing on a smartphone often looks like prayer, which, in a way, it is: personal, intense, emotional.


And that influences not just what we communicate, but how we do so, especially compared to how we communicate via computer, with implications for anyone relying on user-generated content. For anything. JL


Knowledge@Wharton interviews Professor Shiri Melumad:

80% of customers rely on some user-generated content to inform their purchase decisions. Consumers who write out their thoughts on smartphones tend to be more emotional than those who type on their personal computers. (Those) browsing on phones are more likely to click on Entertainment; on their computer, Politics or Science & Tech, more of a cognitive mindset. (The) findings have implications for marketers and consumers who rely on user-generated content to inform their decisions. Because of the smaller keyboard and screen available on our phone, we write less. And because we’re writing less on our phones, we focus on the gist of what we’re trying to convey rather than specific details

How Salesforce's AI Grasps Common Sense Reasoning

If human-machine-algorthmic interaction is the optimal model, understanding, trust, correct interpretation - and common sense will be essential. JL

Kyle Wiggers reports in Venture Beat:

It’s been  hard to capture commonsense knowledge in a form that algorithms can make useful. It turns out that language models that read text and try to predict the next word and make sense of the future to autocomplete sentences capture commonsense knowledge. When explanations consisted only of justifications, the best accuracy the model could reach was 53%, in contrast to the 85% hit by models trained on open-ended explanations. Adding questions boosted performance to 70%, and to 90% when provided at inference time. “The idea behind explainable AI is to have a model generate explanations for their decisions so users can interact with them and understand them.”

A Fire Destroyed Thousands Of Master Recordings. Artists Are Suing For Intellectual Property Rights

Universal lied about the extent of the fire damage, collected the insurance but decided not to tell the musicians. Now they - or their estates - know and they want their share of the money. JL

Mike Masnick reports in Tech Dirt:

A massive fire at Universal Studios wiped out hundreds of thousands of master recordings by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Bo Diddley, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, the Kingsmen's 'Louie, Louie,' Bill Haley, Tupac, Tom Petty, etc. 500K song titles were lost. UMG successfully pursued litigation and insurance claims valued at $150 million to recoup the value of the Master Recordings. UMG concealed its recovery from Plaintiffs, hoping it could keep it all. The master recording is like the difference between a painting and a photograph of that painting.

How Machine Learning Is Weaponizing Fact Checking To Identify More Specific Claims

The more accuracy, and the more specific it is, the better. JL

Kalev Leetaru comments in Forbes:

An article with a single false or misleading claim will be flagged in its entirety at the URL level, while a Website with a history of falsehoods will be flagged at the domain level, blacklisting even accurate content. Could natural language processing help transform the way in which fact checking results are applied, flagging the individual sentences within articles that are false or misleading, rather than blacklisting entire Websites? Algorithms could identify the individual claim, separating them from the rest of the verbiage unrelated to the dispute. External links to disputed content could be dynamically rewritten to highlight problematic passages. Information science describes this as “mobilizing” information.

Why States Are Fighting To Stop Data Brokers From Selling Citizens' Secrets

Digital dumpster diving.

People may be less concerned about privacy than about their lack of influence over who and what has access to their information. And the issue of eventual compensation for access and use is omnipresent. JL

Douglas MacMillan reports in the Washington Post:

Lawmakers in (Vermont) are at the forefront of a national movement aiming to shine a light on data brokers that buy and sell the personal information of millions of Americans with whom they have no direct relationship. A state law passed last year required all businesses that trade data on Vermont’s residents to register publicly and share basic information about how they operate.A California law will allow residents to opt out of having their data sold. Maine passed a law barring Internet service providers from selling broadband customers’ information. New York, Maryland and Massachusetts are considering giving residents more control over data.

Walmart, Ellen DeGeneres And the Big Business Of Pride

What started as a defining socio-political issue, no longer is as much. A change which marketers and advertisers are analyzing to determine not just why that changed, but what elements of that appeal can be transferred to other products and categories. JL 

Ben Steverman and Matthew Boyle report in Bloomberg:

That the largest U.S. retailer finds value in aligning itself with a 61-year-old lesbian is a testament to how Americans have accepted LGBTQ rights. Two-thirds of Americans support same-sex marriage. DeGeneres soon became a coveted corporate sponsor. American Express Co. hired. Then came a J.C. Penney Co. Today DeGeneres has a lifestyle brand. What started as a home decor line has expanded into clothing, accessories, and pet products. Macy’s, Nordstrom, PetSmart, and Bed, Bath & Beyond carry the line, which has an annual revenue in the nine figures.

Kleenex: What Happens When A Brand Name Becomes Generic

Some genericized brands refer only to products - like Kleenex. But some cover entire companies - like Xerox or Google.

While there are reputational advantages to having a name popularly cover an entire category, the brand value diminishes and provides economic advantage to lots of other, less well known products. JL


Whitson Gordon reports in the New York Times:

You may be aware of Kleenex, Velcro and ChapStick, but what about escalator? Or dumpster? Linoleum, zipper, trampoline, band-aid? All of these are (or were) trademarks whose products were so successful that they came to represent an entire category. “Some of the names that are made-up words are susceptible to being genericized, because there is no other way to describe it. They became so famous, people associate that name with the action.” It’s possible for a company to recapture a trademark if it can get consumers to associate the brand name with its specific product rather than the product category .

Google's Smart City: Toronto Tech Utopia Or Overbearing Big Brother?

Predictable concerns about the intrusiveness of digital everything are less telling than Google's cluelessness in demonstrating that pilot projects are less attractive than going right to scale, citizens' rights, cities' manifold other priorities be damned.

Which is precisely why the big tech companies are facing more insistent global calls for regulation. JL


Vipal Monga reports in the Wall Street Journal:

A unit of Alphabet Inc. said its proposed “smart city” in a Toronto neighborhood would create thousands of jobs and cut greenhouse-gas emissions, but met resistance from the project’s government sponsor over the scope. Initially billed as a neighborhood built “from the internet up,” the project calls for using sensors embedded in traffic lights and garbage bins to track residents and respond to their needs. Sidewalk’s bid was limited to a 12-acre parcel of land on the waterfront. The company acted prematurely by proposing that the city look beyond that  to create a 190-acre district.

What Can 4 Year Olds Do That AI Can't?

Turns out their learning systems are very sophisticated. So machine learning algorithms are being trained on them. JL


Thomas Hornigold reports in Singularity Hub:

How sophisticated are children as learners? Where are children still outperforming the best algorithms, and how do they do it? Children have “abstract generative models” that explain how the world works. In other words, children have imagination: they can ask themselves abstract questions like “If I touch this sharp pin, what will happen?” And then, from very small datasets and experiences, they can anticipate the solution.  Children favor exploration over exploitation.  Children are social learners: as well as interacting with their environment, they learn from others. These concepts are being imitated in machine learning algorithms.

Adobe AI System Recognizes Deep Fakes And Photoshopping

Set a thief to catch a thief. JL

Annie Palmer reports in MSN:

The tool is able to detect edits to images, such as those that would potentially go unnoticed to the naked eye, especially in doctored deepfake videos. In addition to being more accurate than humans, researchers found that the AI system could  also 'revert' the manipulated image back to its original state The AI was built to detect the use of a Photoshop tool called Face Aware Liquify, which warps elements of a person's face. Humans were able to correctly spot an altered image 53% of the time, whereas the AI system achieved a success rate of 99%. 

Chinese Drone Maker DJI Moves Some Production To US, Insists No Data Sent To China

DJI, the largest global drone maker does not want to become the next Huawei.

Whether these moves will allay suspicions or raise new ones remains to be seen.  JL


Yingzhi Yang reports in the South China Morning Post:

DJI plans to move some manufacturing lines to the US.“as part of our commitment to America that began in 2015 with R&D in Palo Alto, we are opening a new facility in California. This will create US jobs, and strengthen the US drone economy.” DJI said it has developed security measures, such as embedding password and data encryption, and if American users choose to share their data, it will only upload to US cloud servers. The company will also launch a DJI Government Edition drone, which cannot access the internet and only stores information locally. DJI’s letter comes amid rising trade tensions between the US and China.

The Problem With HR

It has become perceived - too often, correctly - not as a force for decency, but as a tool management uses to cut costs, justify its actions and defend itself from employee complaints.

To optimize its value, that needs to change. JL


Caitlin Flanagan reports in The Atlantic:

HR is seen as the division that slows things down, generates memos, meddles in employees’ personal business, holds compulsory “trainings,” and ruins any fun employees come up with. Why are annual performance appraisals so useless? Why is HR a henchman for the chief financial officer, finding ways to cut benefits and payroll? And why does HR insist on sameness as a proxy for equity? In a strong job market, HR is the soul of generosity. But should the economy change, HR can become an assassin. At solving problems, HR is not great. At creating protocols of “compliance” to defend a company against lawsuits? It has been a smashing success.

The Reason Apple Just Bought A Self-Driving Car Company

An inexpensive acquisition of promising assets and talent from a company about to file for bankruptcy, which keeps Apple in the game without forcing a major commitment of resources. JL

Andrew Hawkins and Sean Hollister report in The Verge:

Drive.ai appeared to be one of the more promising startups working on autonomous cars. The company made a name for itself using deep learning to recognize and avoid objects. Drive.ai sparked headlines when it conducted fixed-route tests with its autonomous vehicles without human drivers on public roads. But it wasn’t enough to survive in an environment of consolidation and lowered expectations. Investors have poured billions of dollars into autonomous vehicle startups, which have scaled back their timelines. Apple purchased the company’s assets, including its cars, but chose to hire engineers from Drive.ai directly.

To Compete With Amazon, FedEx Slashes Shipping Prices

UPS may be the extant competition, but Amazon has made its intentions clear.

This is what happens when your biggest customer becomes your biggest competitor. JL


Paul Ziobro reports in the Wall Street Journal:

FedEx is ending an air-shipping contract with Amazon, is offering discounts to woo online merchants to its network as it seeks to refashion a delivery system ill-equipped for the rise of e-commerce. Online shopping will double  packages shipped in the U.S by 2026. For customers ordering online, it is more important to deliver shipments by a particular day rather than a particular time. E-commerce has put distribution centers closer to where people live, reducing the need for cross-country flights. FedEx expects delivery distances will shrink. “The vast majority of growth will be fulfilled and delivered in the same metropolitan area.”

Why A Robot May Not Take Your Job But Could Become Your Boss

Leaders lead, managers manage. But using computers and algorithms to monitor behavior and prompt improvement may become the rule due to their ability to provide continuous - ostensibly unbiased - feedback.

The question is whether this is just a modern version of the Hawthorne experiments in which short term performance improves but fades over the long term as the systems are gamed.

Technology is optimal as an enabler not a final decision maker. JL 


Kevin Roose reports in the New York Times:

Talking too fast? The program flashes an icon of a speedometer, indicating slow down. Not empathetic enough? A heart icon pops up. People have fearfully imagined armies of hyper-efficient robots gobbling up jobs once done by humans. But in the worry about artificial intelligence replacing workers, we have overlooked the possibility it will replace bosses. The goal of automation has always been efficiency, but A.I. sees humanity as the thing to be optimized. Algorithms track worker productivity and can fire workers who don’t meet targets. IBM has used Watson, during employee reviews to predict future performance and claims 96% accuracy. “There is variability in human performance.”

What Does the Rise of AI Art Mean For Human Creativity?

The creative possibilities for human-machine-algorithmic collaboration outnumber the threats. JL

Raya Bidshahri reports in Singularity Hub:

Works of art are a glimpse into the breadth of the creative works being generated by algorithms and machines. We have to ask what our role will be where machines are able to perform what complex, abstract, creative tasks. The implications on the future of work, education, and human societies are profound. AI artists may not represent a threat to human artists, but an opportunity to push creative boundaries. The most exciting artistic creations involve collaborations between humans and machines. Machines are working as an extension of our minds. We could use machines to expand on our creativity and push the boundaries of art.

What Does An AI Ethicist Do?

They are moderators and evangelists. Interpreters and advocates. And their primary function is to raise questions about how and why technology - AI especially - is being used internally and externally within the organizations that employ them and what the consequences of those sources and uses may be.

All with the goal of reducing bias, conflict and inappropriate influences which, from a business standpoint, lessen the optimal influence of the technology. JL

Tom Davenport reports in MIT Sloan Management Review:

AI was the “spark that lit ethics in tech,” including analytics, the internet of things, and virtual and augmented reality, as well as AI. Many solutions in the real world are hybrids of these technologies and (there is a) need to consider the ethical, social, and political aspects of the technology. There are many questions on which concrete policies remain to be developed. For example, mistakes made by AI systems and legal remediation for harm from AI.

Walmart and Amazon Want To See Inside Your House. Permanently.

They get to keep the video recording of authorized inside-the-home deliveries. And no, they are not willing to promise that information will never be used for other purposes. JL

Sam Dean reports in the Los Angeles Times:

The war for the e-commerce shopper is fought on the battlefield of convenience. There’s no pain point so small someone won’t pay to do away with it. The two largest retailers in the U.S., are now offering to send delivery people inside your house to safely deposit your packages indoors and your groceries inside your fridge. Both companies are promising to let you watch the deliveries happen live on video. There’s one catch: Amazon and Walmart get to hang on to that video. It would be very difficult to resist the temptation of ‘Look, we have all this video inside people’s houses. Let’s use it to train AI to recognize specific products we can recommend.” Google last year filed a patent application (for) a system that would do that.

Wait, Where Did Our New Hire Go?

A full employment economy has exacerbated the problem, but in an age where 'ghosting' is considered acceptable behavior, no hire is for sure until they show up. More than once. JL

Sue Shellenbarger reports in the Wall Street Journal:

More than one in four workers say they’ve backed out after accepting a new job.It’s most common among those with two to six years’ experience. “This is the generation that breaks up by text message, so in a professional context, to have to let someone down or give bad news was terrifying.” (But) “feelings get hurt. People at take this extremely personally." Word of such reversals can spread fast among employers and recruiters. “I kind of burned a bridge.”

How Supermodel Gigi Hadid Is Using Instagram To Overturn Copyright Law

In the age of social media, personal brands, borrowing song elements and other expressions of creativity, who is to say what's original.

And if you think the answer is clear cut, remember how many multi-billion tech intellectual property lawsuits have been settled rather than litigated. JL


Ashley Carmen reports in The Verge:

Model Gigi Hadid believes she should be able to post paparazzi pictures on her Instagram account because her participation in their photos — from posing to choosing her outfit — invalidates a photographer’s ownership claims. A copyright infringement lawsuit claims Hadid posted (an) image to Instagram, which it claims violates the company’s copyright. In a motion to dismiss, Hadid’s legal team asserts that her posting the image constituted fair use because she contributed to the photo in the form of a smile and her outfit. The memorandum says Hadid didn’t infringe on any copyright “because Ms. Hadid posed for the camera and thus contributed many of the elements that the copyright law seeks to protect.”

What Happens When Amazon's Domination Is Complete? A Hint.

As long as Amazon is making a sale, it does not care about ownership, authenticity, quality, intellectual property or fraud.

Who needs the dark web when Amazon can enable any behavior from which it profits? And no one, as yet, has had the courage to challenge it. JL


David Streitfeld reports in the New York Times:

“Being a tech monopoly means you don’t have to care about quality.”This is not negligence. It is the company’s business model. Problems arise from Amazon’s domination. The company sells more than half of the books in the United States, new and used as well as digital and audio. Amazon is also a platform for third-party sellers, a publisher, a printer, a self-publisher, a reviewer, a textbook supplier and a distributor that now runs its own chain of stores. But Amazon takes a hands-off approach, never checking the authenticity, much less the quality, of what it sells. The real author may get cheated but Amazon still makes a sale.

Why Quantum Computing Supremacy Could Happen This Year

The rate of growth - described as 'doubly exponential' - is significantly more powerful than that of Moore's Law. And it does appear to be happening now. JL

Kevin Hartnett reports in Quanta:

Neven’s law,” (is) a new kind of rule to describe how quickly quantum computers are gaining on classical ones. Quantum computers have an intrinsic exponential advantage over classical ones. This would be true even if quantum technology never improved.The second exponential factor comes from the rapid improvement of quantum processors. Quantum computers are gaining computational power relative to classical ones at a “doubly exponential” rate.With double exponential growth, “it looks like nothing is happening, nothing is happening, and then, suddenly you’re in a different world. That’s what we’re experiencing.”

The World's Best Supercomputers Are Being Updated To Run AI Software Faster

This falls under the heading of background engineering but without which, AI might not achieve its full potential as quickly or comprehensively. JL

Martin Giles reports in MIT Technology Review:

Many AI programs run on banks of less powerful machines linked together in the computing cloud. But if supercomputers can be better adapted for AI tasks, they should power even more advances in the field.Japan’s fastest supercomputer, ABCI, has turned to software “containers” (which) bundle an application with digital libraries and other software needed to run it. Using these containers has enabled the machine to run deep- learning models far faster. Cray unveiled new software that makes it much easier to run AI programs that learn from geospatial data. A new deep-learning plug-in will reduce the time needed to train models.

Bipartisan US Senators Want Big Tech To Put A Price On Personal Data

How 'free' is free - and to what degree are users benefiting more than providers? JL


Cat Zakrzewski reports in the Washington Post:

Their bipartisan bill would require companies to regularly disclose the ways consumers’ data is being used, as well as file an annual report on the total value of the data they’ve collected. Their proposal will help consumers make more informed choices when they sign up for "free" services online that make money through ad targeting and data collection rather than payments from consumers. Putting a price on data could make it easier for antitrust enforcers to identify unfair transactions or anticompetitive practices, especially in social media where services are free and regulators can't rely on prices of the service to measure whether the companies' practices are harming consumers.

Gender Stereotypes Banned From British Ads. Will It Make a Difference?

To the extent that advertising communicates societal expectations - but also reflects them - attempts to change the narrative will almost certainly have some influence. JL

Kaitlyn Tiffany reports in Vox:
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Advertising helps us as consumers and citizens understand the social world and our place within it. The phrase "always a bridesmaid, never a bride" originates from a 1920s Listerine ad. “Advertisements must not include gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm, or widespread offense.” The rule also bans ads that “connect physical features with success in the romantic or social spheres.” The fears for women in the 20th century were based on being a good wife and mother. Society’s model for masculinity was a good provider. The advertising industry tapped into these fears and provided products that could ameliorate the(m).

The Reason Expertise At Work Is Falling Out Of Favor

Automation and the demand for greater efficiency and productivity is leading to a devaluation of expertise, skills - and even knowledge - as flexibility, agility and adaptability become the more prized elements of human capital in this economic environment. JL

Jerry Useem reports in The Atlantic:

It would be ironic if the knowledge economy had the effect of devaluing knowledge. But, "the half-life of skills is getting shorter,” Ten years from now, 70 to 90% of workers will be in hybrid jobs or superjobs combining tasks once performed by people in two or more traditional roles. By 2020, "one-third of the core skill sets of most occupations” will not have been seen as crucial (today).“Fluid, learning-intensive environments are going to (value) ability to learn quickly from mistakes, trial and error, and comfort with ambiguity. Employers are looking less at what you know and more at potential to learn new things. In these environments, expertise can become an obstacle.

Digital Disappointment: Why Technology Is Never Enough To Change the World

Plug and play will not make anyone a better manager or their organization a better enterprise.

The emphasis on speed and convenience has blinded investors, leaders and consumer/citizens to the necessity of investing, working and enduring discomfort to effect the change that technology promises.

The abundant data on the socio-economic impact of technological change reveals that it will remain muted as long as the effort, sacrifice and disruption required is sublimated by those promoting the new, new thing to their own advantage, while the costs of true optimization are de-emphasized. JL


Greg Satell reports in Digital Tonto:

It’s a conceit of digital denizens that their businesses are nobler than other industries. The reality is that the measurable impact has been relatively meager. In 1900 investments in infrastructure and education combined with technology to produce prosperity. Today there is no comparable effort to invest in education and healthcare for those who cannot afford it, to limit the effects of climate change, or to reduce debt. The digital revolution has been a disappointment because we expected the technology to do the work for us. We are awash in nifty gadgets, but in many ways are no better off than we were 30 years ago.

How Alibaba's AI 'City Brain' System Controls Hangzhou, China's Traffic

The AI can detect every car in the city, making adjustments to traffic lights and other signals as its machine-learning updated data prescribes.

It may be too Orwellian for some societies but that may change as urban congestion worsens. JL

Abigail Beall reports in Wired:

Alibaba’s City Brain project, which started out in the city of Hangzhou is soon to expand to Kuala Lumpur. The aim is to create a cloud-based system where information about a city, and as a result everyone in it, is stored and used to control the city. City Brain works by letting artificial intelligence (AI) control large amounts of data (which) are gathered, processed by algorithms in supercomputers, then feed it back into systems around the city. Alibaba was given control of 104 traffic light junctions. As a result, speed was increased by 15% during the first year of operation. Alibaba provides the software, but the city owns the data.

Could Gene Editing Resurrect Dead Species?

Yes. JL

Jackson Ryan reports in CNET:

Editing DNA - that "de-extinction" process of bringing extinct species back from the dead - is on the table. Science has already unraveled the DNA code of long-dead species such as the woolly mammoth, the passenger pigeon and Australia's Tasmanian tiger -- and researchers are using CRISPR to remake modern-day descendants in the image of their ancient counterparts. Could we transform an Asian elephant into a woolly mammoth? The absolute reality is human beings have become the caretakers of the genetic frontier. With our power over the genome increasing, the question is no longer "can we resurrect the dead?" but "should we?"

Building Mansions For Billionaires Turns Out To Be A Bad Business

There are only so many foreign oligarchs who dont care about price.

While the garden-variety tech billionaire may actually have an opinion - about a lot of  things - like design. JL


Josh Barro reports in New York Magazine:

The struggles of spec mansion developers mirror the disappointing recent sales in supertall, ultraluxury condo towers in Manhattan. The Manhattan developers have aimed to sell to absentee foreign oligarchs who rarely use their condos and mostly want them as status symbols–slash–offshore financial assets. The problem is this market is not very deep, and you eventually have to start selling to garden-variety superrich people who are more exacting about both price and design, since they actually intend to use their apartments.

Why Smart Speakers Could Spot Someone Having A Heart Attack

Breathing patterns, automatically reported if consistent with machine learning based on the history of calls to emergency services. JL

Jon Fingas reports in Engadget:

AI can detect the audio cues of cardiac arrest and respond. The system is trained on 911 call samples to listen for the telltale sounds of agonal breathing that come with cardiac arrest. It  asks for help from people nearby to provide CPR, but will call 911 if there's no response. The training was varied to avoid as many false positives as possible. The AI only misidentified breathing 0.22 percent of the time, but it had flawless detection when it listened for events at least 10 seconds apart. The scientists have created a spinout company to commercialize the tech.

The Reason Airport Retail Is Now Outperforming Department Stores

Airport traffic, unlike malls, is mandatory for travelers. And it is expected to double in the next 20 years. JL

Rob Stott reports in Dealerscope:

Foot traffic is never going to be a problem in this space, while traffic in malls is declining. And that has led brands across all retail channels to place a greater emphasis on airport retail. Luxury brands are now, for the first time, realizing more success in the airport than they are in the department store. “Very few channels have guaranteed traffic.” Global sales of duty-free and other travel-retail channels rose 9% in 2018, double the $43 billion the channel generated in 2010.

Millions Of Business Listings On Google Maps Are Fake: How It Profits From Them

Just as Apple now needs what were once considered ancillary services, so Google now needs its hold on maps to generate additional ad revenue as Amazon cuts into its margins.

The result is that it is unwilling to do anything to damage the revenue flow from that franchise. JL

Rob Copeland and Katherine Bindley report in the Wall Street Journal:

Google shapes what’s real and what isn’t for more than two billion monthly users. Yet Google Maps is overrun with millions of false business addresses and fake names.Google handles 90% of the world’s online search, fueling $116 billion in advertising.  It has extended that dominance to local search queries. Despite its powerful algorithms and software engineers, the company struggles to protect against deceit on Google Maps.Once considered a sleepy, low-margin business, Google Maps has packed more ads onto its search queries. It is central to Google's hope to recharge a cresting digital-advertising operation.

Should Insurance Companies Pay Ransomware Demands?

No.

The two biggest problems with insurance companies paying ransomware demands is that it encourages and enables further cyberattacks and it gives government authorities little incentive to invest in cyber defenses. JL

Josephine Wolf reports in Slate:

Buying insurance to replace infected computers or notify breach victims or pay lawyers in the event of a security incident is a very different thing from buying insurance to pay off criminals directly. The latter option may be cheaper than ignoring the ransomers’ demands and insisting on restoring a system the hard way. But it makes insurance companies and their customers complicit in supporting criminals and insures the stability of those criminals’ profits for years to come.