How to make big bucks in finance: These are the trading specialisms with the biggest bonuses and highest salaries April 15, 2016 We've surveyed banking salaries. We've surveyed lawyers' salaries. This week, we're focusing on those making the megabucks: traders. Salary benchmarking site Emolument.com has listed the trading roles with the biggest bonuses. And it turns out the more complex your role, the more you stand to bring in: those in commodities might think they stand to do [...]
Here’s CaptionBot, Microsoft’s latest artificial intelligence experiment April 14, 2016 Microsoft certainly hasn't been scared off doing further experiments with artificial intelligence after the whole racist bot debacle. The tech firm is back with an AI powered API that can identify (or at least try) what's in a picture. 1. Boat or wheel? 2. The shard clock 3. Unhappy Sir Martin Sorrell 4. Tech blind? 5. [...]
Chatbots and more: What to make of Facebook’s F8 reveals? April 14, 2016 Facebook’s announcements from its F8 developer conference push two of its key products into becoming full ecosystems in their own right. With large numbers of companies and users using them, as well as a number of different business models running on them, both Messenger and video have reached a scale where they are ready for this next step. [...]
One of the UK’s biggest tech venture capital investors Accel Partners now has $500m more to play with April 12, 2016 The venture capital firm which was an early backer of Facebook, bet on start startup Slack, and most recently invested in Deliveroo and Funding Circle in the UK, has raised $500m (£351m) for a new fund to invest in startups across Europe and Israel. “Entrepreneurship is flourishing everywhere across Europe and Israel; we’ve never seen so many great founders, both gritty and [...]
Industry 4.0: How disruptive technology can rescue British manufacturing April 7, 2016 Industry 4.0 is revolutionising the way international manufacturers and construction companies approach business, but the UK has a long way to go if its industry is to keep pace with its European rivals. This new world is based on digitisation, which blurs the line between the virtual and the physical. Connected products and “smart” machines [...]
Goldman Sachs just invested millions in an artificial intelligence startup April 5, 2016 The banking world, and now Goldman Sachs in particular, is getting on board with artificial intelligence. The investment bank has put millions into a US startup which uses machine learning for marketing. The $30m round for New York-based Persado also came from previous investors American Express Ventures and Citi Ventures, as well as Bain Capital Ventures and StarVest Partners. “We are [...]
Tay, Microsoft’s racist chatbot, made a tired and emotional return last night March 31, 2016 The robots are already turning against humanity – although for now, they're sticking to causing red faces. Tay, an artificial intelligence chatbot on Twitter which Microsoft was forced to shut down last week after it started, among other things, spouting racist diatribes and denying the holocaust, made an ignominious return last night. After a silence lasting almost a week, [...]
Technology is increasing inequality – and it’s nothing to do with artificial intelligence or robots March 23, 2016 Inequality is one of the major political topics of our times. Rather like a Shakespearean tragedy, the current splits in the high command of the Conservative Party have many themes. But an important one, and the ostensible reason for Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation, is the treatment of the working poor, a concept which until fairly recently [...]
BMW jumps on the SUV band wagon as it warns driverless cars are still some time away, boosting the German car makers share price almost four per cent March 16, 2016 On the same day that chancellor George Osborne is expected to announce driverless cars could begin trials on UK roads as soon as next year, luxury German car giant BMW has said it doesn't expect the tech to go much further than tests this decade. “We believe that, at the moment, the technical and social challenges involved [...]
AlphaGo fourth Go game result: Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence just made a mistake and lost to human player Lee Sedol March 13, 2016 The machines this week triumphed over man, as Google DeepMind's artificial intelligence (AI) took on the top – and very human – player in the ancient chess-like Chinese game of Go, winning three of their matches. However, the fourth bout between them has reversed the tables and resulted in Lee Sedol triumphing over AlphaGo for the first time. The technology "pressured AlphaGo into a [...]