1) How AI is shaping new fintech
Data science is
increasingly being used to speed up processes, compare products, find deals,
and produce answers customised to an individual’s circumstances.
Using natural
language processing, chatbots are designed to cope with the huge variety of
unstructured responses that people may type or speak into their devices. As
they become more sophisticated, chatbots learn from each encounter, so they can
pick up on more subtle or idiosyncratic phrasing and better identify ways to
help users. This includes “sentiment analysis”, where the bot detects tension
or upset in a user’s tone of voice, and quickly switches over to a human
operative to resolve the issue.
2) Inverted yield curve explained using a sports
analogy
The financial world
has been atwitter about the inversion of the yield curve. It is a phenomenon in
the bond market in which longer-term interest rates fall below shorter-term
interest rates, and has historically been a warning sign that a recession could
be on the way.
This all seems
obvious to people who are steeped in bond market math and the workings of
fixed-income markets, and can be completely perplexing to those who are not.
Maybe a sports gambling analogy will make the intuition clearer.
3) How deepfakes on social media is getting stronger
as the technology to catch it as well
Misinformation has
long been a popular tool of geopolitical sabotage, but social media has
injected rocket fuel into the spread of fake news. When fake video footage is
as easy to make as fake news articles, it is a virtual guarantee that it will
be weaponized. Want to sway an election, ruin the career and reputation of an
enemy, or spark ethnic violence? It’s hard to imagine a more effective vehicle
than a clip that looks authentic, spreading like wildfire through
Facebook, WhatsApp, or Twitter, faster than people can figure out they’ve been
duped.
As a pioneer of
digital fakery, Li worries that deepfakes are only the beginning. Despite
having helped usher in an era when our eyes cannot always be trusted, he wants
to use his skills to do something about the looming problem of ubiquitous,
near-perfect video deception.
4) A city grows based on the commute time
From ancient Rome to
modern Atlanta, the shape of cities has been defined by the technologies that
allow commuters to get to work in about 30 minutes. Even if there is a vast
amount of land available in the country, that land has no value in an urban context,
unless transportation makes it quickly accessible to the urban core. And that
pattern has repeated itself, again and again, as new mobility modes have
appeared. This means that the physical size of cities is a function of the
speed of the transportation technologies that are available. And, as speed
increases, cities can occupy more land, bringing down the price of land, and
therefore of housing, in newly accessed territory.
5) McDonalds is experimenting with a new futuristic
store layout
The fast-food giant
is known for its quick drive-thru service, but now it’s taking things a step
further with a new to-go location that only serves food with no seating.
With its takeout
location, McDonald’s is leveraging new technology and touchscreen ordering.
McDonald’s creative solution makes the technology an integral part of its
business operations, which could prove incredibly successful.
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