Uber and Lyft Want To Evade New California Law By Creating Third Worker Category

The gig economy business model is premised on underpaying part time workers. Any category that does not address this issue is just window dressing. JL

Angela Chen reports in MIT Technology Review:

This week, California passed a bill that would make gig workers—including Uber and Lyft drivers—employees instead of independent contractors. It’s a big blow for ride-hailing firms.Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash have pledged to fund a campaign to let residents vote on whether these workers should have a new classification that is neither employee nor contractor. This “third category” has been implemented in other countries and the results are a cautionary tale. There’s no hard-and-fast rule for what third-category workers receive. "The devil is in the details."

Could Beer Brewed With Wind Power Save the Planet?

Tastes great, less harmful? JL

Stanley Reed reports in the New York Times:

Consumers and investors approve of green energy and burnishing a company’s environmental credentials helps attract employees. Locking up large supplies of power also provides a hedge against price increases. Deals in which big corporations purchase large blocks of power are becoming crucial to financing  new wind and solar farms. These contracts give the assurance of a stream of future revenue, lowering the risk. The costs of wind and solar have come down so drastically they are competitive with fossil fuels. Lower costs are drawing consumer businesses that want  to say that what they sell to eat and drink or wear is made in ways that aren’t damaging to the environment. “Its easier to pursue green initiatives when they save you money,”

Musicians Demand Ticketmaster Ban Facial Recognition At Concerts

If this movement catches on, it could have a viral, Hong Kong protest type effect on stopping facial recognition. JL 

Janus Rose reports in Vice:

Last year, the company announced it will begin deploying facial recognition at its live events, having customers walk past face-scanning cameras instead of presenting a ticket. Citing dangers to fans in the form of police harassment, misidentification, and discrimination at concerts, artists have joined activists to call for a ban on face surveillance at live events.“Facial recognition surveillance is dangerous. It doesn’t keep fans or artists safe, it just subjects them to invasive, racially biased monitoring that will inevitably lead to fans getting harassed, falsely arrested, deported, or worse."

Would the Internet Be Healthier and Happier Without Likes?

The data suggest that the answer is yes. Social media companies are nervous about what this might do to advertising revenues but it might actually increase positive engagement. JL

Paris Martineau reports in Wired:

Publicly measurable indicators—including views, retweets, or likes—are “one of the driving forces in radicalization.”A user can be radicalized by consuming content and a creator can be radicalized by users’ reactions to their content, as they tailor their behavior around what garners the most interest from their audience. The concerns are leading some companies to explore ways to promote “conversational health.” Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have moved to deemphasize key metrics in the name of promoting healthy user engagement. Users aren’t going to abandon (social media) just because it took away their favorite means of measuring who won the race to the bottom.Where would they even go?

How Secure Is DNA Testing?

Not very. JL

Chris Ip reports in Engadget:

Direct-to-consumer DNA testing is unregulated. A genetic test in the doctor's office is protected by HIPAA laws, which limit its sharing. These newer companies are bound primarily to their own privacy policies as well as committing to voluntary best practices by the Future of Privacy Forum.The problem is, according to a major study of 90 DNA testing companies, 39% of them had no written policy online about how they use genetic data.

Is Andrew Yang's Pledge To Protect People From Automation Starting To Hit Home?

Fears of automation are resonating because people in the workforce are starting to see and feel the impact. That the media has hyped the threat simply underscores the perception. JL


Khari Johnson reports in Venture Beat:

An average of popular polls puts him at 3%, making him the sixth-most popular Democratic presidential candidate. Surveys in 2017 and 2018 found a majority of U.S. adults are worried about automation taking jobs. A 2017 Pew Research poll also found that Democratic-leaning voters are nearly twice as likely (65% to 34%) to expect the government to step in and help people when computers and robots put them out of work. Yang’s position isn’t that automation is a menace on the horizon, it’s that automation is here and people need help now.

Why Consumers' Trust In Brands Has Fallen To A New Low

The tech brands through which consumers filter much of their interaction with the rest of the world are among those they trust the least,spreading negative brand equity everywhere. JL

Robert Klara reports in Ad Week:

 A large swath of the population believes not only that companies don’t do the right thing with their data, but don’t do the right thing, period. 59% of consumers now fear that their personal data is vulnerable to hackers, and well over half—54%—think that companies don’t operate with their customers’ best interests in mind.Asked to list brands they trusted in the order they trusted them, consumers stuck Facebook down at No. 200. Hardly faring much better, fellow data colossus Google sat at 130.“Millennials and Gen Z are more distrustful of brands than any generation before them,”

Will Artificial Intelligence Ruin Poker?

Amateurs provide the bulk of the profits professionals glean from poker, both on and off line. But if  amateurs are beginning to sense they are being fleeced by online versions of the game, they may stop playing and deprive 'the industry' of much appreciated revenues. JL


Thomas Hale reports in FT Alphaville:

New research covers “the development of superhuman artificial intelligence beating professionals at poker”, which it says poses a risk to the online gaming ecosystem.Computers have already reached “superhuman” levels at limited version of the game, which limits the range and size of bets. Bots are already common on poker sites. If amateur players stop seeing poker as a game of skill, that poses a risk to the revenues they provide. Any business based around moving human behavior on to the internet stands to be impacted (for better or worse) by software that replicates that behavior.

Have We Hit Peak 'Tech' Company?

The word 'tech' no longer has such a positive ring. And that change is becoming evident due to its absence in everything from marketing to financial documents. JL


Rani Molla reports in Re/code:

Company documents referencing “tech” and “technology” peaked around August 2018. After years of slipping the word “tech” into business decks for companies that lease office space, prepare food, or drive people from place to place, public companies are using that word less often to describe themselves. It could mean people are avoiding the term as it becomes less useful, since its overuse has rendered it meaningless. When companies that hawk everything from shoes to salad call themselves “tech,” what does it even mean? (And)there has been a shift in public and politicians’ perception of tech. Changing what companies call themselves “deters attention away from robots, surveillance, antitrust and data collection.”

Why UK Government Has Ordered a Consent-Less Website Usage Data Collection Mandate

In the further weaponizing of global politics, the UK government appears to be collecting citizen usage data from websites in order to prepare to use it in the upcoming election.

While the maneuver's legality is being challenged, it signals yet another facet of the Russian-inspired evolution of diplomacy, political campaigning and warfare from armies of soldiers to armies of coders. JL


Natasha Lomas reports in Tech Crunch:

The UK prime minister has instructed government departments to share website usage data that’s collected via gov.uk websites with ministers on a cabinet committee tasked with preparing for a ‘no deal’ Brexit. It’s not clear how linking up citizens use of essential government portals could further ‘no deal’ prep. The suspicion is it’s a massive, consent-less voter data grab by party political forces preparing for a general election in which the current Tory PM plans to campaign on a pro-Brexit message.

Tech Giants Battle To Store Health Data In the Cloud. What Could Go Wrong?

The question is not if - but how - such information will be monetized by big tech. JL

Melanie Evans reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Hospitals have moved patient records to computers from paper, creating an explosion of data costly to store and cumbersome to use because (of) multiple software programs that don’t work together. Now, hospitals are seeking new ways to collect and organize that data, so it can be analyzed for new treatments or drug discovery. Hospital systems have invested in their own data storage but at a growing cost for increased capacity and improved cybersecurity. Hospitals can’t buy computer equipment as cheaply as tech giants, which also have more to invest in cybersecurity. (But) security remains a concern (due to) configuration vulnerability.

The Reason Microsoft Has Avoided the Big Tech Backlash. So Far.

The company is less in the forefront of consumer and regulatory focus. And it learned the hard way from its earlier battles. JL 

Steve Lohr reports in the New York Times:

Microsoft has positioned itself as the tech sector’s leading advocate on public policy matters like protecting consumer privacy and establishing ethical guidelines for artificial intelligence. Microsoft is seen in capitals around the world as the most government-friendly of the tech companies. Market shifts and the evolution of Microsoft’s business explain the transformation. It is less a consumer company than its peers.And while big, Microsoft no longer looms as the threatening bully it was in the personal computer era. (It) has had learned from past battles, arguing for closer cooperation between the tech sector and the government.

How Misinformation Spreads - And Why People Trust It

Misinformation spreads through fundamental,  profoundly influential human factors - and needs - such as social networks, trust, conformity, belief., all of which serve to make it contagious or viral.

What turns misinformation into disinformation is the purposeful manipulation of those factors. JL


Cailin O'Connor and James Weatherall report in Scientific American:

The mechanisms that spread fear have intensified and led to a profound public mistrust of basic societal institutions. The ways in which the social transmission of knowledge can fail us have come into sharp focus. What makes propaganda and disinformation so effective in an age of social media is that people exposed to it share it among peers who trust them. Social media transforms disinformation into misinformation. Contagion models explain how false beliefs spread on the internet. The urge to conform is a profound part of the human psyche. Networks (embracing) misleading evidence can steer an entire community wrong. (And) propagandists develop ever more sophisticated methods for manipulating public belief.

Google Report Assesses How AI Can Best Serve Humanity

The lack of good data remains a serious impediment to human-centered solutions, just as it does for profit-making, private sector initiatives. JL

Khari Johnson reports in Venture Beat:

Applicants in crisis response, economic empowerment, and equality and inclusion sectors were more likely to face a lack of meaningful data sets, while those working in health, environmental, education, and the public and social sectors were more likely to have access to necessary data. Google used AI to arrive at its conclusions about how human-centered organizations can better use AI — tapping natural language processing and clustering analysis techniques to review applications and internal assessment of applications. The AI analysis was supplemented by interviews with impact challenge applicants and recipients.

What If Intellectual Property Is Neither Intellectual Nor Property?

Many in tech, music, literature and other fields proudly proclaim that they are standing on the shoulders of giants - but are still apt to sue if they think someone had the temerity to even allude, let alone borrow - one of their ideas.

The issue is whether the entire construct of intellectual property has become a cudgel used primarily to stifle competitive innovation. JL


Mike Masnick reports in Tech Dirt:

One person’s use in no way diminishes the ability of others to use it. Excessive internalization is an impediment to the process of borrowing essential for creative works. While each artist may contribute new ideas to the cultural landscape, their contributions are based on the previous body of work. We all begin as consumers of ideas and then some of us create new ones. The claim that enjoying the fruits of one’s intellectual labor entitles you to stop competitors has no limiting principle, and thus can be extended into absurdity. As expressed by Thomas Jefferson, the “peculiar character [of an idea] is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.”

The Reason Netflix's Newest Rivals Aren't Really Trying To Take On Netflix

For most of Netflix's erstwhile competitors, streaming is a means to enhance their multifarious other businesses. For Netflix, there are no other businesses.

Which does not make these competitors any less dangerous. But perhaps, Netflix hopes, somewhat less focused - and far more easily distracted. JL
 
Kelsey Sutton reports in Ad Week:

For these companies there is one major consequential difference: Streaming video never was, and never will be, the be-all and end-all of their businesses. Many of Netflix’s most compelling peers in the space are betting streaming television will give them a way to shore up more vital businesses. Apple’s investment is designed to give consumers an incentive to buy more Apple hardware. Amazon's is intended to entice customers to stay in the Amazon ecosystem as Prime customers. Disney's will serve  fans to continue buying Disney-branded items, watching Disney-branded entertainment and attending Disney-branded vacations.

Apple's Biggest New Product Launch Surprise: No Price Increases

Apple tacitly acknowledges - finally? - that there is a limit to how much people can or will pay for smartphone. JL

Dan Gallagher reports in the Wall Street Journal:

A slimmer iPhone lineup with more configurations available for $600 and under is a distinct difference from the past couple of years, which saw Apple and other smartphone makers testing buyers’ limits with rising prices. The company needs to keep its current base of customers happy—and upgrading devices as much as possible. It also will bundle a free year of its soon-to-launch TV+ service with sales of new devices, which may add to their appeal. At least it isn’t pricing even more of its customers out of the game yet.

Pinduoduo: The Chinese Ecommerce Giant No One's Ever Heard Of

China continues to churn out tech and ecommerce giants even as western regulators start to rein their's in.

But the question is what it will take for these Chinese companies to be able to overcome what has been, so far, an inability to transfer domestic success to the global stage. JL


Kyle Mullin reports in Wired:

Shoppers (who are) price conscious and far from China’s big cities have made Pinduoduo China’s hottest ecommerce player. Its 366 million monthly active users trail only Alibaba, outranking JD.com. Its $40 billion market value exceeds eBay’s and places it among China’s five most valuable internet companies.Analysts attribute the company’s success to its rock-bottom bargains based on group buys that prod users to recruit friends, and a design that relies more on browsing than search.

What Is a Tech Company?

The fundamentals have less to do with the technology than the economics. JL

Ben Thompson reports in Stratechery:

Tech companies are characterized by a zero marginal cost component that allows for uncapped returns on investment.Software is used by all companies, but transforms tech companies and reshapes their long-term upside. Tech companies are organized around constant improvements and constant revenue streams. Scale not only pays the bills, it improves the service as expenditures are leveraged across more customers.(But) being a tech company does not guarantee success: the curse of tech companies is that while they generate massive value, capturing that value is extremely difficult.

Why the Four Biggest Tech Companies Are (Finally) Being Targeted By Regulators

Every dominant industry eventually abuses its power - and then gets cut down. Railroads, steel, telecom, electricity - and now tech - have confronted similar opposition.

No one familiar with the history of anti-trust should be surprised that companies which have grown as powerful as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google would eventually face determined government resistance. The only question in this case is why it took so long. JL

Jack Nicas and colleagues report in the New York Times:

In Washington, Brussels and beyond, regulators and lawmakers are investigating whether the four technology companies have used their size and wealth to quash competition and expand their dominance. Recent scrutiny of Amazon  centers on whether the company improperly favors its own products. Apple relies on people opting for them over rivals. Facebook's acquisitions were a violation of acts foundational in federal antitrust prosecutions. Google is dominant in several markets like search and advertising.Their business models differ, as do the antitrust arguments against them. But those grievances have one thing in common: fear that too much power is in the hands of too few companies.

What Does Ethical AI Mean? There's A New Global Consensus. Sort Of

The major positive is that there is agreement that ethical implications need to be considered.  

But given the extant cultural, economic, demographic, geographic, political and sociological differences between the various nations and societies considering the issues - and affected by them - reaching agreement on terms like transparency, fairness and responsibility may take a while. JL


Shelly Fan reports in Singularity Hub:

An unbiased search of regularity guidelines found a nearly similar amount between the public and private sectors. In other words, regardless of motive, everyone involved in AI is considering its ethical implications. Two conclusions emerged.One, there’s a strong global convergence towards five ethical principles, including transparency, justice and fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility, and privacy. Two, people can’t really agree on what any of those words mean when it comes to policy.

As 2020 Election Nears, Twitter Bots Getting Better At Seeming Human

They are learning and co-evolving. JL

Patrick Kulp reports in Ad Week:

The posting habits of  bots, which overwhelmingly support Donald Trump, grew more similar to their human counterparts as bots learned to rein in high-volume spam, better engage with replies and conduct polls."There is an arms race between bots and detection algorithms.” In 2016, a bot was more likely to share identical text multiples times, while in 2018, the text was tweeted one time by multiple accounts. "Distributed activity of bots can elicit the illusion of a consensus and, possibly, to avoid detection." Bots tended to reply to other posts with sentiment (and) shifted sharing from retweeting to promoting Twitter polls of issues or candidates.

For the First Time, Most New Working Age Hires Are People of Color

Meet the new boss: probably not the same as the old boss. JL

Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam report in the Washington Post:

Women are predominantly driving this trend.Minority women began to pour into the labor market in 2015, and they have begun to reshape the demographics of the U.S. workforce, especially because many white baby boomers have been retiring. There are 5.2 million more people in the United States with jobs than at the end of 2016, and 4.5 million of them are minorities.

Amazon Has 30,000 Permanent Job Openings, More Than Half In Tech. Right Now

It may be a sign of the still strong economy. But the company's reputation as a tough place to work might also be a disadvantage. JL

Karen Weise reports in The New York Times:

Amazon has 30,000 open positions in the United States. The vacancies are permanent jobs and do not include seasonal positions the company hires around Christmas. More than half the jobs are tech oriented, and a quarter are for warehouse work. The openings are the latest sign of how the company’s ambitions are colliding with strong labor markets. Amazon raised the minimum wage at its warehouses to $15 an hour. It said it would spend $700 million to retrain a third of its American workers to perform tasks that required advanced skills  to improve the technical expertise of corporate and tech-focused employees.

The (Logical) Reason Uber Laid Off 8 Percent Of Its Workforce

Layoffs are almost never good news. They are a sign of trouble, of strategic misdirection and managerial failings. They also generate bad publicity and can cause even those the company wants to stay, to leave.

But in the case of Uber, an enterprise infamous for its nasty, rule breaking culture - which has also suffered the embarrassment of seeing its stock price crater in what was supposed to be a triumphant post IPO era, this may be a signal that the company is moving to make itself more competitive, forward-looking - and maybe even profitable. Some day. JL


Heather Landy reports in Quartz:

Uber is trimming 8% of its engineering and product groups, on top of 400 laid off  from global marketing. It’s tempting to view the news as righteous comeuppance for a company (whose) pursuit of growth encouraged flouting the rules, and of tolerating a toxic culture that's now a risk to its business. You could fault management for the rapid hiring and decentralized decision-making. Or you could give Khosrowshahi credit for encouraging his leadership team to question the status quo. That Uber has moved organizational structure suggests (it) has shifted out of of putting out fires to lighting new ones under management. 

Can AI Help Leaders Make HR More Effective?

HR is not finance and it's not marketing.

Because organizational leaders are dealing with individuals, the benefits of scale that AI offers in other disciplines is lacking in HR. And as human capital becomes a more essential element in the business optimization equation, the efficiency trade-offs may not as pronounced while the potential pitfalls may be greater. JL


Knowledge@Wharton interviews Peter Capelli and Sonny Tambe:

The language of data science is a language of optimization. If we figure out what the goal is and what is associated with that goal, we can apply this to decisions. The language of human resources is coded in law: fairness and optimization don’t often go together. When you are building an AI-based system, you need to know what the right answer is, what a good employee looks like (but) defining that in HR is difficult. In advertising you have  lots of people viewing ads. Finance, you’ve got trades all day. But for HR data, you’ve got one data point per employee. Data in organizations is messy. Data (creates) a prediction, and it’s hard to figure out how you got there. "The outcome is inherently uncertain."

In Smartphone Era, Britain's Red Phone Boxes Are Being Repurposed

A melding of ingenuity and the timelessness of good design. JL

Stephen Moss reports in The Guardian:

It was designed in 1924. In 2015 the red phone box was voted the greatest British design of all time, ahead of  the Spitfire, the union jack and Concorde. Since 2008 BT has allowed local councils to repurpose them under its adopt-a-kiosk scheme. More than 5,000 have been adopted. Many now contain defibrillators. Book-swap points that double as miniature libraries are popular. Art galleries in old phone boxes are also. Phone repair company Lovefone has a kiosk. A coffee stall (runs) in a kiosk in Hampstead. "Next year I plan to give my Hamlet in a kiosk on the Royal Mile."

'Everything As A Service' Is Coming: But We're Not Quite There Yet

Just another way to lock customers further in - and pocket some additional revenue. JL

Rob Pegoraro reports in ars technica:

Today's leading edge IT pushes toward automated deployment of everything from bare-metal servers to "containerized" workloads, juggling the networking and storage and system-management support and cloud providers have started to drop their infrastructure into their customers' data centers. Even the definition of "cloud" versus "on-premises" has gotten foggy, thanks to private cloud options. One Web portal makes everything just a service that can be managed like cloud instances. Cloud providers and IT vendors are starting to shape this vision

How Skateboarding Was Changed By Tony Hawk's Video Games

It dramatically expanded the global  market while extending the potential economic benefits to include clothing, music and other ancillary products. JL

Bijan Stephen reports in The Verge:

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater debuted two decades ago. The game has made $1.4 billion. “It put skateboarding on the map as a genre of video games. It brought a new audience to skateboarding and not just people trying it, but people who appreciate it from a fan’s perspective.” It also inspired a generation of successful skaters, and influenced popular and skate culture. Tyshawn Jones, one of the best skaters on Earth right now, recently told The New York Times he’d learned about the sport from video games.

The Battle of Hong Kong Being Fought With Apps, Live Stream, Crowd-Sourced Maps

A preview of what cyberwar in the future will be like. JL

Benjamin Haas reports in MIT Technology Review and :

People have educated themselves on end-to-end encryption, single-use transit cards, and surveillance. Journalists and activists live-stream everything. A forum limited to local ISPs, exchange memes, protest schedules, and tactics. Online polls dictate the location of the next flash mob. Teams publish dozens of maps during demonstrations, updating positions to show the location of police, “thugs,” and protesters, plus icons to signify first aid and rest stations. Volunteers draw the information out on a blank map on iPads, and send it to an “integrator” who compares the data with live streams and television before putting it together and sending it out over Telegram or Apple’s AirDrop. During one rally, 600,000 people downloaded maps. 

Texting And Walking May Annoy You, But It Probably Won't Kill You

Unless you bump into another pedestrian much bigger than you who has an anger management problem. JL

Michael Gold reports in the New York Times:

Texting while walking will most likely not get you killed. Deaths approached a three-decade high last year, when 6,227 pedestrians were killed. But phone use was not a contributing factor. In fatal crash reports from 2014 to 2017, it found two cases where devices were involved. The study found “little concrete evidence that device-induced distracted walking contributes significantly to pedestrian fatalities and injuries.” In a review of national data, local reports and public health studies, cars pose more of a fatal threat to pedestrians than chatty group texts.

The Reason Brands Aren't Embracing Google's Augmented Reality Insert

After the customary breathless hype, augmented reality rather quickly was labeled not ready for prime time. It was associated with expensive hardware add-ons - which sometimes gave people motion sickness - and did not seem that technologically important compared to artificial intelligence.

It is now being adapted for smartphone screens in a way that makes it an enhancement, not the story itself, which should improve adoption. But overcoming the initial blast of negativity will, as usually happens in tech, take a while. JL


Mike Cadoux reports in Venture Beat:

It lets you showcase any product on a website with a 3D model (which) allows both Apple  and Android  augmented reality models to be inserted into a website via a single line of code. The user clicks, and it opens to QuickLook for Apple users and Model Viewer for Android users. The AR wrapper also comes with a native 3D viewer. Before we thought users would have to recognize an unknown icon to know that the thumbnail on the site is AR enabled. Now the experience just spins in front of them, like a beautiful lure.

Why GM Has Turned To Google For In-Car Apps And Voice Commands

Customers like having all of their systems across platforms look and feel familiar.

GM likes having a high quality solution that is plug and play and which permits it to allocate scarce resources away from technologies with which it is, at best, an also-ran and thus less expensive to source. JL


Mike Colias reports in the Wall Street Journal:

GM plans to offer Google Maps, as well as its voice-activated assistant and Google Play app store, as a built-in multimedia app, so drivers can access them on their dashboard displays without having to pull out their smartphones. Customers have told GM they want a similar look and feel to what they experience on their smartphones and other mobile devices. The deal with GM, the U.S.’s largest auto maker by sales, is a win for Google (which) wants to broaden its services to flow seamlessly among its customers’ devices, from laptop to smartphone to a vehicle. “They like an embedded solution that’s similar digital ecosystems they carry all day."

How An AI Startup Designed A Drug In Just 46 Days

Using data and technology to reduce the time and expense traditionally required for screening the multiple options. JL


Edd Gent reports in Singularity Hub:

The drug discovery process involves tests on enormous libraries of molecules, and even with the help of robotics it’s arduous. Recent advances in deep learning  have reignited hopes. Pharma companies tying up with AI-powered drug discovery startups used AI to design a molecule that targets a protein in just 46 days. The part of the process the platform tackles represents a fraction of the total cost of drug development. (But) the research is an advance for virtual screening technology and an important marker of the potential of AI for designing new medicines. They’ve since adapted the platform to go after harder drug targets with less data.

The Reason Algorithms Have Made Courts Less - Rather Than More - Fair

Designers of the algorithms failed to take into account how humans would interpret the data and recommendations. They also neglected to set aside any funds for training judges on how to use the information, all of which led to predictable biases in judgements. JL

Tom Simonite reports in Wired:

Many states and counties calculate “risk scores” for criminal defendants that estimate the chance a person will reoffend before trial; some use similar tools in sentencing. They are supposed to help judges make fairer decisions and cut the number of people in jail. (But) judges were more likely to overrule the recommendation if the defendants were black. More attention is needed to how humans interpret algorithms’ predictions. “We should put as much effort into how we train people to use predictions as we do the predictions.” When they weren’t given a risk score, judges were tougher on affluent defendants. Adding the algorithm (meant) richer defendants had a 44% chance of doing time but poorer ones 61%.

What Happens When AI Takes All the Menial Tasks?

The remaining ones will be harder, more stressful and constantly scrutinized for performance improvement - but not necessarily better paid. JL

Fred Benenson reports in The Atlantic:

When machines start picking off all the easy work, many white-collar jobs are going to get harder. When people talk about the effects of automation and artificial intelligence, they fixate on will robots take our jobs? (But) the quality of employment—the replacement of middle-class occupations with lower-skill, lower-wage ones; the elimination of human discretion as algorithms order around workers will (decline). AI will transform higher-skill positions in ways that demand more human judgment. As AI gets better at performing  routine tasks, only the hardest ones will be left. But wrestling with only difficult decisions is stressful and unpleasant.

Deep Fake App Places Users' Likenesses in Movies, TV Series

But the offer is a come-on:  the real aim is to get users to send in their facial likenesses so the company can use the data to train its AI for better facial recognition and ad targeting. JL

Jon Porter reports in The Verge:

Zao, a free deepfake face-swapping app that’s able to place your likeness into scenes from hundreds of movies and TV shows after uploading just a single photograph, has gone viral. It demonstrates how quickly the underlying technology has evolved: what once required hundreds of images to create a rather convincing deepfake video now requires just a single image with better results. People are increasingly aware of how important their facial imagery data is.Whenever a service is free, a company is inevitably profiting from your data. Sometimes it’s for better ad targeting, sometimes it’s to train their AI for better facial recognition.

Study: When AI Profs Leave For Tech's Big Bucks, Left-Behind Students' Prospects Decline

Not that anyone expects the tech companies or professors to lose any sleep over the suffering of others, but the universities that are training, nurturing and, in some cases, funding these academics, may need to become equally hard-nosed about extracting compensation for the poaching.

Given the shortage of AI expertise, universities hold the key to the industry's future - and should be in a position to demand on-going collaboration - and/or payment. JL

Cade Metz reports in the New York Times:

The talent shift accelerated the development of artificial intelligence inside tech giants. But at the universities the professors left, graduating students were less likely to create new A.I. companies. When they did, they attracted smaller amounts of funding. The effect was most pronounced in “deep learning. ” The brain drain from academia could hamper innovation and growth across the economy. “The knowledge transfer is lost."

Lloyds and Aon Poised To Profit From Cryptocurrency Hacker Insurance

Where there are fungible assets, there are threats to them. And people willing to charge for the mitigation of risk. Unlike most other markets, the looming question is not how to assess the risk - which is becoming increasingly apparent - but how to value the asset. JL

Jeff Kauflin reports in Forbes:

Over the past three years, cryptocurrencies’ market value has risen 25-fold, near $300 billion today. Theft of crypto assets by hackers continues unabated, reaching $480 million in the first half of 2019. With $300 billion in crypto assets on the planet and less than $1 billion in available insurance coverage, there’s a huge imbalance between supply and demand. “I see this market as the next cyber. It will grow to a multibillion-dollar premium market within the next five to ten years.”.Some insurance companies are leaping at the opportunity.

Why Big Tech's Hands-Off Era Is Over

As people become more skilled at using digital devices and online sources, their expectations about the performance of those machines and services rises.  

The problem for tech platforms is that they have promoted the notion that they are 'just' market makers with no responsibility for the quality of whatever is being sold on their sites. The behavioral economics challenge is that customers increasingly perceive them to be standing behind the stuff being flogged since that is where they, the user, found it. This puts big tech in a double bind: to meet consumers' enhanced expectations, they have to increase investment in security and quality control - which those customers believe is the platform's financial and legal obligation, not the buyers - and if they dont both improve performance and keep prices low, the consumers will do what market participants do: take their business elsewhere. Jl


Laura Forman and Dan Gallagher report in the Wall Street Journal:

The “we are just a tech platform” excuse is no longer cutting it.The problem is one of expectations. Online consumers  expect to find goods and services that are both safe and as advertised—much as they would at big-box retailers. And they don’t just expect it of the largest companies. Consumers believe they’re entitled to the same at smaller players focused on categories such as dating, travel and childcare. Investments in security have been borne by the platform companies.(But) customers could get stuck with some of the bill. (And) more stringent quality control could deprive customers of bargains, driving them back to traditional retailers.

How 202 Election Campaigns Remain Vulnerable To Hacking

Still fighting the last war. JL

Uri Friedman reports in The Atlantic:

Only four of the 13 presidential candidates polling at 1 percent or above have implemented a policy that would prevent emails spoofing their campaign-site domains from reaching the inboxes of voters, donors, reporters, or other recipients. Among those who haven’t: the campaigns of  Trump, Bernie Sanders, Harris, and Buttigieg. Election-security efforts have not focused on protecting the personal accounts of campaign staffers and family members, which contain more damaging content than work accounts and offer hackers a means of accessing those professional accounts.  The threat has evolved to include “identity deception” and social engineering.

Whether To Protect the Powerful Underscores AI Funding Debates At Stanford, MIT

Tech, generally, and AI specifically, are beginning to wrestle with the ethical implications of their work - who funds it - and why. What is most interesting is that this is being driven not by any new sense of responsibility, but by the younger generation of technologists actually doing the work and who are demanding an accounting. JL 

Khari Johnson reports in Venture Beat:

This week was filled with tough ethical debates at two of the top AI institutions in the United States.The common thread between petitions circulating at MIT and Stanford is the protection of people in power in elitist environments and the struggles between generations of tech workers to know and do the right thing. In these debates over power, ethics, policy, and AI, even if you don’t agree with those speaking out, understanding perspectives that exist inside influential institutions is valuable.

The Unintended Consequences Of Tracking Loved Ones' Phones

Is the enhanced sense of certainty - or control - worth the creepiness and loss of trust? JL

Joanna Stern reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Welcome to the world of location-sharing apps. These services, like Apple’s or Google Maps, plot your phone’s real-time whereabouts on a map visible to whomever you choose. Creepy? Sure is! Yet also comforting, at least sometimes. Each legitimate, socially rewarding reason to use them is met with a privacy or anxiety-inducing worry. We’re giving up our sense of personal privacy for slight peace of mind. “This is about trust, when you are allowing someone that level of information, it takes away individual agency. “We attribute causality to everything. We make up a narrative because that’s how we navigate the world.”

What A Disappointing Expensive Car Auction Says About the Economy

If the 1% are pulling in their bullish horns, given what they pay for the best information, it suggests others may want to consider doing so, as well. JL


Cyrus Sanati reports in Fortune:

The top 1% is pumping the brakes. From 2008 to 2018, classic car values jumped 288%, making it the fastest growing collectable market for the rich. Classic cars values grew five times faster than the fine art market (and) also bested watches, jewelry, fine wine and rare coins. Despite a record number of cars hitting the auction block this year, the total value raised came in at a 34% decrease from the previous year. (But) the rich are curbing their spending for nearly everything. Fine arts auctions are down 20%. Housing prices in London fell 4.4%. Prices for high-end Manhattan real-estate fell 5%

The Reason Organizations' Digital IQs Keep Declining

They are struggling to keep up with the pace of technological change, both in hiring and training people in the latest developments and in making the necessary financial investments. JL 

Bernard Marr reports in Forbes:

Digital IQs—a measurement of an organization’s abilities to harness and profit from technology—of most companies are getting lower. 52% of businesses rate their Digital IQ as strong in 2017; which is down from 67% in 2016. How can  companies invest in digital assets, training and strategies, but their Digital IQ is falling? The issue is the pace of digital innovation that makes companies struggle to keep up.While organizations are focused on getting their arms around one aspect of technology, next-generation technologies require time, attention and resources. The problems and opportunities have become more complex and robust.

Why It's Important To Build An AI People Can Trust

Without greater trust in AI systems ability to make intelligent and fair decisions, their application will be restricted by people - and governments - unwilling to risk their potential mistakes. JL

Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis comment in the New York Times:

Artificial intelligence has a trust problem. We are relying on A.I.more, but it hasn’t earned our confidence. We need to stop building computer systems that get better at detecting statistical patterns in data sets and start building computer systems that  grasp time, space and causality, without (which) common sense is impossible. Dystopian speculation arises from thinking about today’s mindless A.I. systems and extrapolating from them. We can stick with today’s approach and restrict what machines are allowed to do. Or we can develop machines that have a rich enough conceptual understanding of the world that we need not fear their operation.