Brexit, ad fraud and #MeToo – what does the future year hold for the marketing industry? January 7, 2019 We are out of the cold December of 2018, and have now entered the, well, even colder January of 2019. Last year was a momentous one for the marketing industry – there was the fall and rise again of adland stalwart Martin Sorrell; the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) finally came into force; [...]
Britain needs to step up to win the global AI healthcare race January 7, 2019 At this time of year, the news is invariably gearing up for a season full of stories about a crisis in hospital care. But away from the headlines, Britain is on the brink of a real global health success story – one we must capitalise on in 2019. It’s no stretch to say that the UK [...]
CES 2019: Tech firms set to chase Vegas lights for gadget bonanza January 6, 2019 This week marks the dawn of CES 2019, an annual trade show held in Las Vegas where startups and tech giants alike debut some of the world’s hottest new gadgets. Following on from last year’s most popular trend, voice assistants and artificially intelligent products are expected to take centre stage. Samsung is thought to be [...]
Alexa: Tell me why I can’t have a flying car like in Blade Runner January 4, 2019 Bad news: it’s 2019, and that means we are now living through the year in which the original Blade Runner film was set. Released in 1982, Blade Runner has some interesting ideas about 2019. Yes, it’s a post-apocalyptic dystopian hellscape where sentient bioengineered robots (“replicants”) must be hunted down against a backdrop of a dying [...]
Plans for tiny robot workers to fix Britain’s underground pipes get £7m government backing January 3, 2019 Tiny robots the size of a human fingernail will one day swim and crawl along Britain’s vast network of underground pipes, working in teams to carry out repairs in place of people. The government is to plough £7m into the creation of the micro robots, which it hopes will one day perform infrastructure maintenance work on pipes, [...]
Drones, cybercrime, AR, and robots – the tech trends to watch out for in 2019 January 3, 2019 It is finally 2019, and I can’t wait to see what surprises the technology industry has in store for us. What should we keep our eyes peeled for over the next 12 months? To whet your appetite about the future, I asked the experts for their predictions for the top tech trends of this year. Devious [...]
Resilience, risk, and regulatory changes: What lies ahead for the UK finance sector January 3, 2019 As we look ahead to 2019, the banking industry could be excused for trying to catch its breath. A decade on from the financial crisis, the path forward still remains fraught with difficulties. Return on equity remains stubbornly low across the board, while cost-income ratios remain high. This year will clearly be defined through the [...]
Back to the future: UK scientists complete testing of AI-powered autonomous Mars robot January 2, 2019 To boldly go where no other robot has gone before, the UK Space Agency have finished testing a Mars rover that will be able to make its own decisions on where to explore, enabling it to travel much further than existing robots. The Martian robot will use artificial intelligence (AI) software, developed by researchers at King's College London [...]
DEBATE: As the year draws to a close, do we still have reasons to be cheerful? December 21, 2018 As the year draws to a close, do we still have reasons to be cheerful? Viscount Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, says YES. Yes, we do. A lot went wrong in 2018 for a lot of people; but a lot more went right. Levels of absolute poverty, rates of infant mortality, age-adjusted death rates [...]
The UK’s ‘Brexit-proof’ tech startups land Christmas number one for European funding December 20, 2018 British tech firms brought in more funding from venture capital firms than any other country in Europe in 2018, as well as achieving the highest amount of exits. Startups in the UK attracted £6.3bn in venture backing this year, according to new figures released today by Tech Nation and Dealroom. In the same period, the [...]