Digital Designers Are Creating 'Dark Patterns' To Mislead Consumers Into Buying

It's all part of the psychological power of 'choice architecture' increasingly driving digital behavior. JL

Brian Fung reports in the Washington Post:

“Choice architecture,” or the way in which choices are presented to consumers, can shape their subsequent behavior. “Dark patterns” (are) ways in which Web designers steer users toward completing transactions, such as signing up for an email newsletter, making a purchase or consenting to the collection or sharing of personal information.The rise of dark patterns reflects how tech companies have increasingly turned human psychology into a moneymaking tool  at the expense of consumers’ ability to make informed choices.

Which Online Fraud Type Is Growing the Fastest?

Frauds targeted at businesses, especially with regard to payments and funds transfers.

Because, as a famous bank robber once noted, 'that's where the money is." JL


Price Economics reports:

Online fraud is estimated at $32 billion per year. 40% of online fraud losses are the result of Email Compromise. This fraud targets businesses that regularly perform wire transfers. This involves sending fake invoices to companies with the hope they are erroneously paid. Tech support fraud has grown the fastest with a 90% growth rate. This involves hackers gaining access to a victim's computer or credentials by posing as a technical support service. Financial Services, being closest to the money, has the highest rate of occupational fraud

Who's Really Buying San Francisco's Residential Real Estate?

Most of them are from the software development ranks of recognizable tech firms.

But wait. The employees about to cash in on the eight unicorns about to go public havent even started buying yet. JL


Alexis Madrigal reports in The Atlantic:

51% of them work in software. They bought in specific, desirable neighborhoods closer to San Francisco’s tech companies, as well as the highways and train lines that lead south into Silicon Valley. They were concentrated in the older tech firms. The top five make sense: Google, Apple, Salesforce, Facebook, LinkedIn. What’s missing from the top of the list are all the soon-to-IPO San Francisco companies. His data show that their workers purchased only 37 homes in 2018 among all seven of the SF firms. By and large, their money is still on the sidelines of the real-estate market.

Amazon Is Making Its Delivery Drivers Take Selfies

Trust, but verify?

It might ostensibly be that selfies taken to be checked against facial recognition software might be for customer's safety, but more likely to protect the company's margins. JL

Shannon Liao reports in The Verge:

By asking drivers to take selfies, Amazon could be preventing multiple people from sharing the same account. These efforts could screen out anyone who is technically unauthorized from delivering packages, such as criminals who are attempting to use Amazon Flex as an excuse to lurk in front of people’s homes. In 2018, reports surfaced of transgender Uber drivers finding their accounts suspended after taking a selfie and having it not match up to previous photos on file, due to being in different points of a gender transition, proving that facial recognition isn’t a perfect solution for verifying identities.

The Reason You Can Now Buy Customized Shampoo - Or Anything Else

Because the data consumers are increasingly giving companies - or free - enables those enterprises to develop personalized products which they can then profitably sell through mass customization at higher margins. JL

Ellen Byron reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Thanks to new technology and the data it collects, companies are personalizing everyday items from sports drinks and vitamins to skin creams and shampoo. As more data become available on everything from sweat content to DNA, companies are customizing products to suit individual needs. The items are designed through in-depth questionnaires, doctor consultations, facial scans, DNA tests and wearable perspiration collectors. Shoppers’ expectations of how companies can cater to them have risen with enhanced data collection and manufacturing agility. “What are you trying to accomplish? It's all coming down to personalization."

Why Dunkin Donuts Rebranded To Become A Beverage First Company

Demographic and health trends led to noticeable impact on product sales.

The rebranding was a reflection of the reality its customers were already demanding with their pocket books. JL


Kristina Monllos reports in Ad Week

The coffee chain formerly known as Dunkin’ Donuts surprised consumers when it dropped ‘Donuts’ from its name, becoming simply Dunkin’. Though it’s Dunkin’s seventh redesign, it’s the first comprehensive name change since 1950. Its change garnered 3 billion impressions. Long-term food trends in “the cultural zeitgeist moved anti-carb, anti-sugar at unprecedented rates.” Adding the rebrand allowed Dunkin’ to diversify its menu. “The (previous) name limited them to a category. This allows them to grow the business.”

Star Power: How Internet Raters Have Become the Rated

Metrics begin to decline in value as soon as they're introduced because they are gamed by those who perceive a benefit in doing so - as soon as they're revealed.

Which means there may now be more value to be derived from understanding the raters than their ratings. JL

John Herrman reports in the New York Times:

Star ratings, meant to serve as a shorthand reviews, now require context to be comprehensible. Three stars for a restaurant might be excellent or middling, depending on the platform. On Uber, a 4.3-star average might mean a driver is at risk of getting booted from the system.As the starred review has become a more potent tool for companies, its usefulness for users has waned. Stars are fictions with meaning, tugged by forces over which they have little control, used and abused by systems in which they’re important until they’re not. They’re just like us!

How 5G Interference May Put Accurate Weather Reporting At Risk

At the intersection of convenience, speed and safety. JL

Dan Maloney reports in Hackaday:

Three-day outlooks are right 90% of the time. What made accuracy possible is super computers running weather modeling software. But models are only as good as the raw data they use as input, and increasingly that data comes from satellites with sensitive sensors detecting changes in winds and water vapor in real-time. People tasked with running these systems believe the quality of that data faces a threat from 5G cellular networks. Microwave radiometry can tell us what’s going on within a vertical column of  atmosphere. 23.8-GHz (is) in danger of picking up interference from 5G, which will use frequencies very close to that.

Mapping Gastronomic Borders In the US

At what geographical point do tacos outsell Chinese food? JL

Matt Daniels reports in The Pudding:

Google provided an anonymized dataset based on actual restaurant visits. The first thing to map was the popularity of individual cuisines around the US. What is the taco capital of the US? What is the exact longitude where Chinese food eclipses tacos? What about regional preferences, such as the South‘s affinity for BBQ? This led to a lengthy “wait but why” debate, specifically if the divide was a vestige of the eastern border of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

To Eliminate Airport Pickup Mayhem, Lyft Reverts To Taxi Line

How old solutions may provide the answer to new problems. JL

Lucas Matney reports in Tech Crunch:

Ridesharing companies and airports have always had a fractious relationship. Riders looking to catch an Uber or Lyft have to walk to parking garages, follow makeshift signage and find arbitrary pickup points. Instead of matching with a driver, riders nabbing a Lyft will hop in a line at the airport and match up with a driver irl. They won’t have to tell the address before the meter starts running, users will still enter everything in the app, but after doing so they will tell the driver a four-digit code that will sync the request with the driver and get moving. It’s a bit funny when companies try everything only to settle on the old ways,

How Videogame Joysticks Are Used To Recruit For Blue Collar Jobs

Applying extant skills and interests to the work that needs to be done. JL

Jayson Bailey reports in the New York Times:

Industry is trying to attract teenagers with realistic computer simulators of heavy machines, hoping to build a younger work force. To attract replacements who grew up playing Call of Duty, some construction companies, unions and schools have turned to simulators that replicate jobs done by heavy equipment, like pushing dirt or lifting steel. Each simulator cost $80,000. The excavator, which has three screens, can also be used with an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, which produces a 360-degree outdoor canvas.

Why Are Companies Buying Insurance That Doesnt Cover Cyber Attacks?

Because cyber policies as currently written usually do not provide coverage for the real risks - and are too expensive even for the limited liabilities they do cover. JL


Fred Kaplan reports in Slate:

“There’s a mad rush for insurance companies to write cyber policies." But even when cyberattacks are not offshoots of war, the coverage offered is thin. Policies cover direct costs of a breach—the interruption of business, unauthorized credit card charges. But the policies do not cover the much bigger losses of intellectual property, reputational damage, or theft of trade secrets. From the standpoint of insurers, the proliferation of attacks and the size have started to outgrow their ability to reimburse the damage such attacks inflict. If cyberinsurance is to become serious (for) insurance and cybersecurity, a total rethink is required.

The Key To Loving Your Job In the Age of Burnout

Meaning can rarely be found solely through work, even as technology makes it more omnipresent in people's lives.

Motivation can best be nurtured within oneself. JL

Cassie Werber reports in Quartz:

Surveys find that the majority of people globally feel unfulfilled by their work. (But) meaning isn’t something to be found, and it can’t be uncovered by heartfelt commitment, long hours, and self-sacrifice. Meaning is something we make. Some of us get a lot of fulfillment out of what we do for a living. In many jobs, however, the connection between our work and the meaning we derive from it is much less obvious. “There are lots and lots of different ways of organizing your life which don’t rely on one full-time job."

A Robot Has Figured Out How To Use Tools - And Why It Matters

Learning to use tools could be an important determinant in programming robots to self-improve - just as it was for humans. JL

Will Knight reports in MIT Technology Review:

Learning to use tools played a crucial role in the evolution of human intelligence. It may yet prove vital to the emergence of smarter, more capable robots, too. By observing and experimenting, the robot develops a simple model of cause and effect  but it builds a more complex model of the physical world The work hints at how robots might someday learn to perform sophisticated manipulations, and solve abstract problems, for themselves. “It’s exciting because it means the robot can figure out what to do with a tool in situations it hasn’t seen before,”

Why the Video Game 'Assassin's Creed' Could Help Rebuild Notre Dame

Life follows art - again. JL

Amanda Woods reports in the New York Post:

The 2014 game ‘Assassin’s Creed Unity,’ set in Paris during the French Revolution, features a realistic 3D model of the historic house of worship. An artist for the game spent two years perfecting the model of the cathedral that appears on gamers’ screens. She studied the structure brick by brick — as well as the exact paintings that hung on the walls. She even added the cathedral’s spires, which were not yet there at the time the game is set.  French publisher Ubisoft still holds the original 3D models, as well as images that could prove crucial in the reconstruction.

Is AI On the Brink of A Darwinian Disaster?

Lack of diversity in Darwinian terms creates suboptimal outcomes which almost certainly means eventual extinction - of the technology, if not the species...JL 

Rachel England reports in Engadget:

Due to an overwhelming proportion of white males in the field, the technology is at risk of perpetuating historical biases and power imbalances.The consequences of this issue are well documented, from hate speech-spewing chatbots to racial bias in facial recognition. The report says that these failings -- attributed to a lack of diversity within the AI sector -- have created a "moment of reckoning."

The Reason Sound May Be Augmented Reality's New Frontier

The more senses the technology can stimulate, the more attentive, engaged - and monetizable - the audience. JL

Marty Swant reports in Ad Week:

A new wave of tech could dramatically change how we hear a digitally augmented world. Augmented reality audio—also known as spatial audio—makes these experiences possible by using a smartphone’s accelerometer, gyroscope and compass to navigate sounds that are sometimes digitally pinned to geolocation. AR audio experiences are giving creators and brands another platform to reach consumers, while others work to find more practical opportunities for hospitals, restaurants and even workout routines.

How the NY Times Built A Legal Facial Recognition System For $60 - And Used It

So, you can imagine what people, companies - or governments -  with really sophisticated systems can do. JL

Sahil Chinoy reports in the New York Times:

We collected public images of people who worked near Bryant Park (available on their employers’ websites, for the most part) and ran one day of footage through Amazon’s commercial facial recognition service. Our system detected 2,750 faces from a nine-hour period (not necessarily unique people, since a person could be captured in multiple frames). It returned several possible identifications with an 89% similarity score. The total cost: about $60. In the United States, there are no federal laws that restrict the use of facial recognition. Most states don’t have regulations, nor does New York City.

The Only Way Manufacturers Can Survive

The answer is not just technological. It is definitely not plug and play.

As every manufacturer is now a tech business competing in a global economy, what is required is a holistic transformation of processes, people, outlook, strategy - and goals. JL


Vijay Govindarajan and Jeffrey Immelt report in MIT Sloan Management Review:

A digital transformation isn’t the same as the digitalization of an existing business. It isn’t about creating websites, mobile apps, social media campaigns, and online sales channels. It isn’t about infusing information technology into the organization — which may improve efficiency but will not fundamentally alter strategy. A digital transformation entails reimagining products and services as digitally enabled assets; generating new value from the interconnection of physical and digital assets through data; and creating ecosystems to make that possible. It results in a fundamental change in organizational activities, processes, competencies, and business models.

How Scientists Made A 3D-Printed Heart From Human Tissue

And can brains be far behind? JL

Daniel Van Boom reports in CNET:

The team successfully 3D-printed a heart using human tissue and vessels. The heart isn't full-sized -- it's about as big as a rabbit's heart. "This is the first time anyone has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers." The Tel Aviv team extracted fatty tissue from patients and used this as the "ink" for the 3D printing, a blueprint with which to create tissue models. While they still have some kinks to work out -- the heart can contract but not pump out blood -- they plan to eventually test out 3D-printed hearts in animal models.

Why Behind Every AI 'Robot' Is A Human

Because AI is not yet as smart - and more importantly - effective as its promoters would like potential users to believe. JL

Sidney Fussell reports in The Atlantic:

Alexa-enabled speakers interpret speech, but Amazon relies on human guidance to help the software understand accents, recognize names, and respond to commands. Many artificial intelligence–enabled products are prototypes. They can only approximate their functions while humans help with “the paradox of automation’s last mile.” Human workers manually tag footage uploaded from Amazon’s surveillance cameras. Facebook’s content-moderation AI relies on thousands of people teaching software what is objectionable.  Humans flag content, AI gets better at detecting it and AI gets smarter as more content is flagged.

Walmart Is Rolling Out Robots To Manage Store Activities In Battle With Amazon

This is, for now, more about operational efficiency and competitiveness than cost cutting. Though once whatever gains are to be had have been established, that is sure to follow. JL


Sarah Nassauer and Chip Cutter report in the Wall Street Journal:

Walmart is spending to battle Amazon and serve more shoppers buying online. Walmart has hired 40,000 store workers to pick groceries from shelves to fulfill online orders. The company is also raising wages, adding worker training, and buying e-commerce startups. “None of the customers we’re working with are using our machines to reduce their labor costs; they’re using them to allow their teams, their janitorial teams, to perform higher-value tasks.”

Why Apple and Qualcomm Settled - As Do Most Big Intellectual Property Disputes

Because the historical and legal underpinnings of most intellectual property lawsuits are factually murky, operationally complicated and legally expensive.

Once the trade off between ego and financial impact is dispassionately analyzed, common sense and profitability almost always prevail. JL


Timothy Lee reports in ars technica:

The news sent Qualcomm stock soaring 20%. Apple stock saw little change. Apple and Qualcomm had been locked in a global, years-long legal battle over patent royalties. Qualcomm demands that companies license its patent portfolio before they can buy the company's chips.Now, Apple and Qualcomm are burying the hatchet with "an agreement to dismiss all litigation between the two companies worldwide." Apple will pay Qualcomm a sum in exchange for a a six-year license agreement. Qualcomm will continue supplying Apple with chips.

Can Negative Online Ratings Be Trusted?

Negative reviews may create an inaccurate bias against a product, service or business.

While that could be viewed as an opportunity to find a superior offering at a lower price, the data suggest that once poorly reviewed, the subject frequently has trouble recovering due to declines in ratings inherent in online ranking systems, meaning that such ratings carry undue weight that may cause economic inefficiency. JL 

Roberta Kwok reports in Yale School of Management Insights:

Products or businesses that initially receive poor reviews are likely to get fewer ratings in the future. Since the rest of the “crowd” doesn’t weigh in, the item may be stuck with an unfairly low score. (And) review sites often order options from highest to lowest scores. If your business is poorly reviewed, “you go to the bottom.”  If an item’s score increased by one star, it received reviews16% faster on Amazon and 14% faster on Yelp. Having 10 times more reviews was linked to a score 0.35 stars higher. (But) it “might never be corrected. If there are few reviews, the score is not only inaccurate but is biased in a systematic way.”

AI And the Future of Choice

Choice has nurtured the grandest of human aspirations: freedom, prosperity and safety. But the current hypothesis appears to be that choice no longer possesses the same value to shoppers as it once did. And that convenience and curation will prevail over serendipity and selection.

Choice may just be too deeply inculcated in the human spirit to be severely curtailed or eliminated. But given the forces pushing commerce in the direction of limitation, it may well be that the only way humanity, in its roles as consumer and citizen, will find that out is when choice’s absence is experienced. JL

Jonathan Low comments in WWD:

The enterprises that dominate what customers see, and buy, have discovered reducing choice improves sales and enhances margins. The reason is the data that every transaction or searchable click, throws off provides insight as to what might inspire the consumer to buy rather than view. To optimize the monetization of those insights, reducing complexity, time and cost becomes essential. The keys to increases in productivity and possibility are machine-learning and artificial intelligence. The seller is able to “curate” options in order to present only products or services the data suggest will stimulate sales. And these efforts appear quaint compared to empowering the algorithm to make purchases without the owner’s explicit command.

AI-Designed Chair Looks Pretty Comfortable

Especially compared to those human-designed chairs many people spent years of their school and work life suffering in. JL

Tristan Greene reports in The Next Web:

The goal of the AI project was to create a chair as the result of communication between a machine learning system and human designers.  After a bit of back and forth the human and computer mash-up settled on a final design and produced the completed products using a manufacturing process called injection molding. AI presented the final specifications. According to the humans responsible for the project, the chairs are within the standards for sturdiness and quality to be sold as furniture.

The Reason NYC's Attempt To Record Drivers Using Facial Recognition Failed

It is still early enough in the development of facial recognition to obtain accurate tracking of fully visible faces, let alone those of drivers behind their windshields moving quickly. JL


Paul Berger reports in the Wall Street Journal:

The “initial period for the proof of concept testing for facial recognition has been completed and failed with no faces (0%) being detected within acceptable parameters.” There are significant technical challenges and privacy concerns related to capturing the faces of drivers through their windshield as they pass by at speed. "There is a difference between using facial recognition as an investigative tool and as a ”pervasive, real-time surveillance of everyone passing by. Coupled with the MTA’s collection of license plate information at tolls, facial recognition “represents a sea change in government’s ability to track us.”

Internet and AI Regulation Are On the Rise

The question is whether it can - or will - be implemented. JL

Jamie Condliffe reports in the New York Times:

There’s a growing pipeline of  internet regulation, along with existing laws like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.“We’re entering a new phase of hyper regulation.” Much of the material they would police is abhorrent, and social media’s rapid rise has caught lawmakers off guard; now the public wants something done. But many proposed regulations lack plans for implementation. A new set of A.I. ethics guidelines from the European Commission contain requirements that A.I. systems should meet to be deemed trustworthy. They join ethical principles to recommendations companies will adopt and test, so that they can be improved.

The Notre Dame Fire, Digital Technology and the Future of History

Laser scanning and digital mapping of the cathedral's structure completed over the past six years may now help make its restoration truer to form. JL

Adam Rogers reports in Wired:

Some of the wood that burned in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris on Monday was put in place in the year 1160. (But) because it survived intact into the digital era, Notre Dame lives on in the virtual world, and that may make its restoration all the more complete. For the last half-decade or so, an architectural historian worked with laser scanners to capture the entirety of the cathedral’s interior and exterior in 3D point clouds. His billion points of light revealed a living structure. "Every time a cathedral needs restoration, do you make it Disneyland, or do you let it decay? In this case, the cathedral will have some of its original structure left."

How AI and Robots Could Eliminate 1.3 Million Wall Street Jobs In Next 10 Years

Finance is among the best paying industries. Which is why AI and other technologies are being introduced, in order to reduce costs and improve profits for those who will remain employed. JL


Allana Ahktar reports in Business Insider:

Jobs in banking are some of the most expensive. Starting analysts make $91,000 in base pay, while managing directors can earn $1 million after bonuses. The industry could add $512 billion in global revenue by 2020 with the use of intelligent automation. Job losses or reassignments will impact 1.3 million bank workers in the US alone by 2030. Banks’ investment into automation is well under way. A detailed 2018 report noted that banks are already using AI to mimic bank employees, automate processes, and preempt problems.

Why Netflix Should Feel Threatened By Disney's New Streaming Service

Disney is arguably the only other brand besides Netflix that consumers - especially those with children - may believe they 'have' to have. 

But Disney has greater financial resources - as well as its additional parks and ancillary product revenue streams - meaning it can out-suffer Netflix in a price-cutting war of attrition. JL


Daniel Cooper reports in Engadget:

Disney+ will be the biggest competition Netflix has seen since Amazon Prime. Disney's strategy (is to) catch Netflix in a pincer. Disney+ will hosts family-friendly and educational content parents will love, while Hulu will become Disney's repository for material it doesn't want its name on. Disney is hoping (for) 90 million subscribers by 2024, a conservative target given Netflix has 139 million. The promise of cord-cutting has (become) a pile-on of services craving a chunk of your wallet. Disney told investors it is committed to losing money on Disney+ until 2024. Netflix does not have the financial muscle to fight Disney in a war of attrition.

AI Algorithm Predicts Who Is Most Likely To Die in Game of Thrones Final Season

Answers below. Don't read if you don't want to know...JL

Rachel Kraus reports in Mashable:

Computer science students developed an algorithm that predicts who will live and who will die in Game of Thrones. Using data extracted from the show and book wikis, the students created an algorithm that weighs factors like gender, age, and house to determine the Potential Likelihood of Death (PLOD). The project (was) modeled after survival-rate algorithms used in medicine. Factors considered are house, lovers, marriage, major/minor character, gender, popularity, page rank (on wiki), number of relatives, age, culture, region of house, allegiances, books the character was part of, episodes the character was part of, locations, and titles.

How Robotic Process Automation Has Become the Hot AI Business Trend

It's practical, immediately deployable - and the financial/operational gains are achievable in the short term. JL

Venture Beat reports:

RPA traditionally referred to automating discrete tasks, such as book-keeping, data entry, inventory management, invoice and contract management, software deployment, and so on. But now AI is being infused, allowing not only automation but intelligent decision-making on top, thus the new moniker: “Intelligent” RPA. When routine tasks are fully automated, costs are slashed from 50 to 75%, employees are set free to work on the strategic tasks that matter and that includes working alongside AI to make even smarter decisions. RPA software adoption will ratchet up to 40% by 2020, with spending reaching $1 billion.

Can You Pay People To Be More Creative?

Yes - sometimes, in performing structured tasks. JL


Cassie Werber reports in Quartz, photo by Mohammed Abd El Ghany in Reuters:

Workplaces try to stimulate creativity, in hopes that inspiration results in lucrative innovation. But creativity is a trait associated with freedom, spontaneity, and enthusiasm, raising the question of whether it’s possible to incentivize it at the office. Is money the answer? Research has suggested paying people to make them more creative is counterproductive, because it can “crowd out” intrinsic drive. (But new research results) suggest that, when the goal is “free” creativity, paying people doesn’t help, but in tasks where creative thinking is necessary but the parameters are well-defined, it might make a difference.

As Streaming Services Raise Prices, Cord-Cutters' Cost Savings Are Shrinking

The strategic question is whether streaming has become so secure that it can withstand the resentment generated by increased prices - or - especially given the fragmentation presented now presented by Netflix, Disney, YouTube, Warner, et al - this gives cable providers a new opening to regain share? JL

Drew FitzGerald reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Online television bundles are getting bigger and prices keep rising, edging closer to the cable bundles they were to replace. The latest price increases come ahead of the introduction of new streaming services from Walt Disney Co. and AT&T plus new entrants such as Apple. That could further fracture online TV and make it harder for consumers to assemble a replacement to cable.Cord-cutters still need a high-speed internet connection that often comes from cable providers, complicating the equation. "YouTube were supposed to disrupt big cable but are instead becoming more like it."

The Reason Insurers Want To Track How Many Steps You Took Today

The better to rate you - and adjust your premiums accordingly. JL

Sarah Jeong reports in the New York Times:

The life insurance company John Hancock began to offer its customers the option to wear a fitness tracker that can collect information about how active you are, how many calories you burn, and how much you sleep. The idea is that your Fitbit or Apple Watch can tell whether or not you’re living the good, healthy life — and if you are, your insurance premium will go down. This is the cutting edge of the insurance industry, adjusting premiums and policies based on new forms of surveillance. It will affect your life insurance, your car insurance and your homeowner’s insurance — if it hasn’t already.

Lost At C: Why Executive Titles Matter

Global scale and corporate concentration have helped drive growth but have also fostered sometimes unwieldy organizations.

One response has been to expand the 'C-Suite' of senior executives, both to manage the myriad, disparate and rampant - often overlapping - skills, opportunities, silos and responsibilities; but also to keep high performing leaders from leaving.

While this may solve some problems, it may also create confusion and resentment. Successful companies recognize that despite exponential growth and frequent change, keeping lines of authority and responsibility clear is crucial to attain optimal results. JL


Jeffrey Sonnenfeld reports in Yale School of Management Insights:

Given that we now have chairman/CEOs, executive chairs, non-executive chairs, president/CEOs, and chairman/president/CEOs, it’s not surprising that lead directors, managing directors, presiding directors, investors, regulators, customers, and employees wonder just who is in charge of the place. Layer on top the myriad CFOs, COOs, CMOs, CIOs, CTOs, CHROs, CLOs, CAOs, CISOs, and CSOs and the question arises: are there are simply too many chiefs? Beware the incentives of professional associations to mystify functions and Watch for dilution that makes titles meaningless.

Generation AI: What Happens When Your Child's Best Friend Is An AI That Talks

Germany banned the doll at right because it captured and stored what children said to it.

But it probably wont be the last. And what rules govern how it is used, how it affects children (perhaps subliminally urging them to demand that their parents buy them things) and who gets to hear, let alone own the information they generate? JL


Kay Firth-Butterfield reports in World Economic Forum:

A new wave of artificial intelligence (AI) toys “befriend” children. Manufacturers claim they are educational, enhancing play and helping develop social skills. But like other “things” we connect to the internet, they might put security and privacy at risk. Who is the arbiter of these conversations? Who coded the algorithms? Do the values the child is being exposed to align with those of the parents? Will parents be able to choose the values the toy is coded with? If the toy is educational, is the algorithm checked by someone who is qualified to teach? If data is being collected, what will the company do with that information?

The Reason So Many More Couples Are Now Being Married By A Friend

As institutional and family ties fade or fray, commitment to and by friends has become an important social statement, signifying the rise of the individual. JL

Rainesford Stauffer reports in The Atlantic:

In 2009, 29% of survey respondents used a friend officiant, and by 2015, that number jumped to 40%. Individualized wedding rituals come along with a collective shrugging off of traditions, including religious ceremonies. “The expectations for marriage have shifted, and sociologists refer to this as kind of a ‘deinstitutionalization’ of marriage, meaning the social norms that guided marriage have become more negotiable, flexible, and individualized.” A wedding has become a public statement about who you are as a couple. What better way to personalize that statement than to have it made by someone who knows you both well?

New York Wants To Assure Its AI and Algorithms Aren't Biased. Which Is Very Difficult

Most of the systems used by governments are owned and operated by private companies like Microsoft who consider their methodologies to be trade secrets which they are not obligated to disclose - under current rules. JL


Shirin Ghaffary reports in Re/code:

Algorithms, including AI , help cities make decisions about everything from where kids should go to school to which neighborhoods should have more fire stations. These systems help government be more efficient by processing large volumes of information rapidly. But if these systems are implemented poorly, they can introduce bias across racial, gender, and class lines to exacerbate societal inequalities. Sven when a government regulates new technology, the implementation can prove too complicated. Many of the algorithms are owned by private companies - Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM - and how they’re baked can be trade secrets.

Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang To Use 3D Holograms At Remote Rallies

It worked for Tupac at Coachella, although he was, admittedly, already famous - and dead.

Voters may even find the hologram preferable to the real Yang. JL

AJ Dellinger reports in Engadget:

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang (said) he's planning to use a 3D hologram to hold campaign rallies in multiple cities at the same time. (He) received positive feedback for the concept, suggesting there might be an audience for Yang's ideas, even if they are presented via hologram. Yang plans to use the hologram, broadcast from the back of a truck, to deliver a recorded version of his stump speech to crowds in battleground states and remotely beam to answer questions live and in real-time after the speech. The technique could save Yang travel costs while helping to rally supporters and generate interest in key areas.

How Big Business Is Hedging Against the Apocalypse

There is an inherent contradiction in the assessment and management of risk; long term bets may eventually pay off with huge rewards, but compensation is almost always based on short term performance.

The result is a systemic failure to make optimal resource allocation decisions and attendant public policies. JL

Jesse Baron reports in the New York Times:

Wall Street prides itself on its ability to price risk for the whole economy, to determine companies’ values based on their likelihood of generating earnings. But traders are compensated on their quarterly performance, not their distant foresight. Tax-supported renewables in Texas take coal plants offline, but they support oil extraction. Technology advances, but not the system underneath. Faced with this volatile and chaotic situation, the system does what it does best: It searches out profits in the short term. Texas produces more wind power than every other state in the country, four times as much as California.

US Intelligence: Disinformation Spread By Americans 'Hardest Challenge We Have'

'We have met the enemy - and he is us.'

A parody by cartoonist Walt Kelly, creator of the Pogo series, based on US Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's message ' We have met the enemy and he is ours,' following his defeat of a British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813. JL


Cat Zakrzewski reports in the Washington Post :

The government's hardest challenge isn't combating disinformation spread by Russia or other foreign actors ahead of the 2020 elections. It's the fake news and information generated and spread by Americans. The government wields broader authorities when foreign adversaries are trying to sow discord on social media. But when Americans are manufacturing the falsehoods, the government has to be mindful about how it even flags it to the tech industry.

Big Brother At the Mall: Internet Surveillance Goes Retail

As ecommerce and retail converge, the types of surveillance, tracking and marketing interjections on individuals' devices is becoming more widespread.

Aside from the annoyance or creepiness factor, the concern is that these systems expose identity and other forms of personal information which can then be used in more intrusive and potential abusive ways. JL


John McKinnon reports in the Wall Street Journal:

“Technology is erasing any differences between how people can be tracked online and in a physical space.” Stores say they’ve been forced to adopt high-tech data collection tools like beacons as consumers do more shopping online.Bluetooth and other beacons used in conjunction with a smartphone app can identify customers or their accounts individually and offer to charge them for items they select from shelves. But in-store beacons haven’t been as impactful as hoped, often sending promo messages only to customers who have the store app open. So  there’s strong interest among retailers in moving to facial recognition.