The implications for the use of data mined from our brains are becoming clear. Safety, productivity and performance can be improved. But can ethical and privacy concerns keep pace with technology? “What if the last bastion of freedom, your brain, is no longer so free after all?”
The FBI’s Inspection Division is launching an internal investigation into one of its own verified Twitter accounts, @FBIRecordsVault. The account, run by unknown personnel within the agency, released a trove of documents tangentially related to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump over the past week.
While tech luminaries like Elon Musk worry about artificial intelligence subduing the human race someday and creating a robopoclypse, these “dumb bots” are quietly changing how the world works. Anything that seems robotic can be robotized. Robots will serve alongside us, performing mundane tasks The age of robotics involves augmentation, not replacement.
Tech jobs are multiplying across America, attracting executives and entrepreneurs drawn to lower living costs and a slower pace of life. Places like Eugene, Ore., Manchester, N.H., and Huntsville, Ala., may have around 200,000 residents each, but they also have fledgling startup scenes, regional offices of large tech firms and major universities or research centers.
And all of them have home prices that are a fraction of those in Silicon Valley.
An objective, data-driven view can change the world. It can laugh at omens. It can spit in the face of curses. It can whistle past the graveyards of games past. It can beat Cy Young winners in the playoffs. It can get up off the mat after a 3–1 series deficit in the championship round, just like it once did after a 3–0 series deficit in the ALCS. It can overcome lucky bounces, and two-run wild pitches in Game 7 of the World Series.
Google and Facebook account for 85 percent of every new dollar spent on digital. Everyone else shrinking a collective 5 percent.
The people who struggle most in the gig economy are corporate workers whose skills are commoditized. Jobs like midlevel and low-level managers, or bookkeepers, are most likely to be automated, eliminated, contracted out, or outsourced to cheaper labor. Their incomes are stagnating, benefits are shrinking, and there is no job security. Formerly marginalized workers win because in the gig economy they can move from no job to some work.
CB Insights analyzed the company descriptions of thousands of startup companies receiving VC funding for the first time between 2010 and today, scanning for buzzwords that describe the companies' field of focus. While “app” is still the keyword that shows up in the most company descriptions, the share of startups working with apps has declined for three straight years. U.S. smartphone users spend 84 percent of their app time within their five favorite apps.
In the third quarter of 2016, Android captured a record 88% of the global market.Apple’s share slipped to 12.1%. Android’s success has a lot to do with the advantages of its hundreds of partners releasing new phones every year. (And) people who are moving from declining platforms are mostly moving toward Android. (It) had less than 5% of the market worldwide in 2010.
Web-based companies lend tens of thousands of dollars in a day or two on the basis of a borrower’s credit and income history (and) have a tougher job than banks or credit unions to screen customers, (given) the speed with which consumers get loan approvals. 4.5% of people who take an unsecured personal loan go back for seconds at other lenders later that day. Borrowers who take out a second loan within 15 days are four times as likely to be fraudsters.
Publishers are wondering about the effect so-called content ads may be having on their brands and readers. When you’re not maniacally obsessed with monetizing every single pixel, (and) if your readers’ trust and loyalty is No. 1 as the thing you care about most, you can’t have that on your page.
Traditionally, perceived and delivered experiences are monitored and measured by separate camps using completely separate tools. On the business side, data includes the “voice of the customer” Web analytics, mobile analytics, and behavioral analytics data. IT concentrates on system health and related issues. Consequently, no one sees the whole picture. (But) today, digital performance and business performance are one and the same.
Thinking that people stare at their smartphones because they’re interested in phones is like thinking that scientists study Drosophila genetics because they’re interested in fruit-flies. Artists have to learn the rules of their domains before they can break them, and their innovations must be accepted as valuable by experts in their fields. Creativity must be nourished and challenged, and it thrives because of cultures and technologies, not in spite of them.
Now there’s a standardized hardware system for building robots with interoperable parts.Think of the way cars work — interoperability in parts has democratized expertise in the industry. Mechanics understand the components and don’t necessarily rely on proprietary parts from the manufacturer to repair or soup up a car.
Despite the increasing realization that digital and print can easily coexist in the market, the question of whether the ebook will “kill” the print book continues to surface.The myth of the disappearing medium will continue to provide an appealing narrative about both the transformative power of technology and our aversion to change. Books have endured many technical revolutions and are in position to survive this one.
Brands use data analytics to personalize customer service, leading customers to expect that level of customization when they call for help. A.I. can help even the busiest call centers create a more helpful customer experience. A.I. tools can automate real-time alerts when previous leads are visiting a business’s website. That information can then prompt a follow-up
Consumers between 25 and 34 years of age last year spent an average of $3,539 on groceries, about $1,000 less in inflation-adjusted dollars than people that age spent in 1990. The real drivers for grocery in terms of freshness and quality aren’t the key drivers for millennials.
It is being more predictive, which is where machine learning and data have been used to restructure the app to anticipate what you as a rider want. The app uses machine learning to better understand your routines. It now features “shortcuts” that will vary based on recognized travel patterns and where you are.
Brands spend more than $540bn worldwide on advertising. (Yet) Facebook and Google have become the biggest recipients of digital ad spending. They accounted for 75 per cent of all new online ad spending in 2015. In the US, 85 cents of every new dollar spent on digital went to the two companies in the first quarter of 2016. There’s no shortage of screens (or) of impressions. But there’s a shortage of high value connection points between brands and consumers
Among 18-to-29-year-olds, 74 percent said they cleared cookies and browser histories, 71 percent deleted or edited something they had posted, 49 percent configured their browsers to reject cookies, 42 percent decided not to use certain sites that demanded their real names, and 41 percent used temporary user names or email addresses. In each of those categories, the younger users surpassed their elders.
We’re a platform that enables other companies to create content or to have that content distributed. So, in a sense, our platform model, being ad supported, also impacts the type of content we can do. It doesn’t make sense for us to do it in the same way Netflix and Amazon are doing. We have YouTube stars that develop content. We’re taking those top stars and then we’re saying, “Well, how do you create content." That’s where we felt we could differentiate.
According to the OECD, out of 41 countries, the US is the only one that does not mandate any paid leave for new parents. Those policy choices have consequences. Only 69% of women return to work a year after giving birth, down from a peak of 74% in 1999.
The A.I. system is emblematic of something even more significant for the microelectronics industry as it inches closer to the physical limits of semiconductors made with silicon: It uses 1/32 of the memory and operates 58 times as fast as rival programs. Better algorithms and new kinds of hardware circuits could help scientists continue to make computers that can do more and at a lower cost.
Very little of the technology used to win Jeopardy! remains in Watson. The name has been coöpted for a wide range of AI techniques and related applications—everything from natural language processing to medicine, voice recognition, sentiment analysis, business analytics, and more. The roles Watson is taking on involve applying machine learning in a novel area.Watson may be a potent way for businesses to tap into advances in machine learning and AI.
China has a glorious past in scientific achievements. Yet they were never turn it into economic growth as the West did. Europe had competition which economists recognize as the competitive model. It isn’t just that China didn’t have an Industrial Revolution, it didn’t have a Galileo or a Newton because Europe was fragmented, and so when somebody said something novel and radical, if the government decides they are a heretic and threatens them, they cross the border. Europe created a competitive world that encouraged intellectual innovation.
The identity of the human being, because of technological progress, is undergoing a profound change. In the current context, all skills, all creative abilities, are commodities.We are in an era in the making, almost becoming a machine; but for now, we have no certainty about our future.
Cables go one way to have their copper recovered. Steel frames go another. Lithium-ion batteries go to dedicated lithium operations. Case fans might even be saved and reused. Any components that can be yanked off circuit boards are, and then it’s on to precious metals. Paints, labels, “soft-touch” coatings, and additives like flame retardants can render plastic difficult or even impossible to work with.
While 35% of freelancers live in cities (compared with 31% of U.S. workers), 47% live in the suburbs (versus 50% of the working population) and a not inconsiderable 18% live in rural areas (19% of non-freelancers do). Change of pace, a different attitude, and lower cost of living aren't the only reasons for freelancers choosing rural locales.
Scientists are beginning to understand why these ‘mini Wall Streets’ work so well at forecasting election results — and how they sometimes fail. Prediction markets need to deal with how to limit manipulation and overcome biases. (But) conventional polling is being jeopardized by mobile phones and online messaging. Because the accuracy of prediction markets is at least on par with polls, prediction markets (could) take over if polling declines
Contactless cards can approve transactions up to certain dollar value (typically less than $50) with a simple swipe against a wireless payment reader built into a checkout machine.(They) are expected to rise to 330 million units, or 55 percent of all new (US) credit and debit cards by the end of the decade. Yet the expected growth has raised concerns that fraud levels — potentially equivalent to millions of dollars of illegal transactions — will also soar
With one update to Windows, Microsoft will immediately leapfrog much of its VR competition. It's going to be the easiest, most affordable way to experience high-end VR and puts the company in a position to dominate the category. Opening (VR) up to a large portion of the Windows ecosystem with affordable headsets could give VR a major boost.
It is now within the capability of hackers to literally scan the entire internet, looking for vulnerable servers with open ports. And every hacked computer adds another recruit to the search effort, shortening the time required geometrically. Anyone hooking up an IP device to the internet can expect to see that gizmo hacked within a week, if not sooner. You can run a scan across that entire space in hours. The scans for vulnerability are continuous.
Serverless computing refers to infrastructure offered by a cloud provider, in which developers run applications on the cloud provider’s services instead of on their own servers. As a result, they can focus only on writing code, eliminat(ing) the need for customers to buy, manage or maintain any virtual or physical servers. It’s particularly useful when running applications for internet-connected devices, because the apps require massive requests of short duration.
Myriad companies employ machines equipped with vast numbers of graphics processing units, or GPUs. And they’re all looking at a new breed of chip that could accelerate AI from inside smartphones and other devices. They can train more neural nets with less hardware. Any choice these companies make matters, because their online operations are so vast. They buy and operate far more computer hardware than anyone else on Earth, a gap that will only widen.
An as-yet-unpublished study shows that (the chatbot) is more effective at getting someone to click on a link when the agent applies its conversational strategies. That kind of human-to-machine relationship-building may be a sign of things to come. Amazon is investigating ways of making Alexa, the virtual assistant in its Echo device, more attuned to users’ emotional states as expressed through their tone and manner of speech
Currently there are companies, primarily tech, looking for about 4 million square feet of office space in a city with 77 million square feet and a vacancy rate that still remains about half of what it was four years ago. (As of September) new construction on 1.5 million square feet was completed, the most since 2008. Amazingly, 96 percent of that new office space was leased by the time it was opened. Another 3 million square feet of office space will open next year.
A leader’s ability to affect change across the organization depends on their ability to affect change within themselves. When it comes to decision making, coordination, and conflict management, teams (with) low self-awareness are less than half as effective as teams that are self-aware. In a survey about enterprise transformation efforts, McKinsey discovered the failure rate to be higher than 60%, while Harvard Business Review suggested more than 70% of transformation efforts fail.
Sure, drones have their upsides, like reduced risk and cost. But the fact is that in spite of all their capabilities, (the Air Force brass) are just not comfortable enough with the operational realities of these things. “The death of manned combat aircraft has been well oversold.”
The South dominates: the region is not only home to the highest rates of defrauded individuals, but the highest rates of fraudsters. Every southern state lands within the top 20.
There are several notable outliers: Delaware—a tax haven where over one million businesses are registered—ranks first. Nevada, home to the country’s largest gambling circuit, ranks fourth. As for cities, the Bronx ranks above the rest.
Bite-back hurts growth in two ways: it makes the original innovation less useful. Second, fixing bite-back consumes scarce resources. The opioid epidemic costs nearly $80 billion a year in lost productivity and treatment. Companies world-wide spent $78 billion on cybersecurity last year. That is rising 8% per year while overall technology spending rises just 1%. Like physical locks and security guards, cybersecurity adds to GDP but it doesn’t raise our standard of living.
“The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common ‘platform’ is to our minds faintly ridiculous,” the judges said. “Drivers do not and cannot negotiate with passengers … They are offered and accept trips strictly on Uber’s terms.” The effect of this judgment is that those kinds of business may owe a lot more to their workers, such as paid holiday and minimum wage, than they had bargained for.
Combine this power of saving people time with the power of saving people money, and you’ve got a contender. Combine these two powers with the power of service, and you’ve got a winner.
Productivity per hour declines sharply when the workweek exceeds 50 hours, and productivity drops off so much after 55 hours that there’s no point in working any more. People who work as much as 70 hours (or more) per week actually get the same amount done as people who work 55 hours. Successful people know the importance of shifting gears on the weekend to relaxing and rejuvenating activities.
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As a Partner and Co-Founder of Predictiv and PredictivAsia, Jon specializes in management performance and organizational effectiveness for both domestic and international clients. He is an editor and author whose works include Invisible Advantage: How Intangilbles are Driving Business Performance.
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