Fears of evil innovations are as wrong as they’ve always been February 22, 2018 Whenever an impressive new technology comes along, people rush to imagine the havoc it could wreak on society – and they overreact. In the sixteenth century, parliament banned mechanical gig mills, and the hosiers guild ran William Lee out of Britain for inventing a better knitting frame. In the early nineteenth century, Luddite stocking knitters [...]
NatWest has recruited a “digital human” called Cora to help customers February 21, 2018 NatWest has developed a new “digital human” prototype called Cora to have conversations with customers and help them out with some 200 banking queries. Since the start of last year, NatWest has been using a text-based chat bot which customers can use on its online help pages. Now though, the bank has drawn upon “advances [...]
StatusToday, a startup tracking employees with AI, backed by Brent Hoberman’s Firstminute Capital, Saul Klein’s LocalGlobe and Notion Capital February 21, 2018 A startup using artificial intelligence to track employees and improve their productivity has raised fresh cash from top investors, including lastminute.com entrepreneur Brent Hoberman. StatusToday has landed $3.9m (£2.8m) from the serial entrepreneur and investor’s newly launched venture capital firm Firstminute Capital, along with Transferwise and Citymapper backer LocalGlobe and Notion Capital. Read more: This [...]
A new fintech accelerator is launching in London as Investment Association plans VeloCity February 19, 2018 London is getting a new tech accelerator that will focus on fintech, in particular startups looking to shake up the asset management industry. VeloCity will be launched by the Investment Association later this year to bring innovation to the industry. Read more: Maybe it’s time we ditched fintech? Members of the group, which represents more [...]
What’s the difference between artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning? February 16, 2018 We are witnessing just the beginning of the artificial intelligence (AI) era. The computer program AlphaGo defeated the world’s top player in the complex Chinese board game of Go for the last time in May 2017. The program had run out of human competition. Instead, its developers designed AlphaGo Zero to simply play against itself [...]
Bank of England survey shows UK pay rises might finally be on the way February 14, 2018 A long-awaited pay rise for UK workers is finally here, according to a Bank of England survey of businesses. According to the February update, private sector business leaders are expecting an average pay settlement rate of 3.1 per cent in 2018, compared with 2.6 per cent last year. Only the construction sector is predicted to [...]
Stock markets in Europe and US remain in a volatile mood: Wall Street staged a recovery that spurred on Asian and European markets on Monday February 13, 2018 If you can make sense of what is going on in equities markets right now you’ll make a fortune. After falling 2,000 points earlier in the week, Wall Street staged a bit of a recovery on Friday. That spurred on Asian and then European markets on Monday, which in turn once again fed into Wall [...]
Can you make sense of what is going on in the equities markets? February 13, 2018 If you can make sense of what is going on in equities markets right now you’ll make a fortune. After falling 2,000 points earlier in the week, Wall Street staged a bit of a recovery on Friday. That spurred on Asian and then European markets on Monday, which in turn once again fed into Wall [...]
Forget embracing failure, startups deserve the best possible shot at success February 12, 2018 Last year in the UK, 70 new businesses were started every hour. In just three years’ time, up to 90 per cent of them will have failed. Business failure is often a personal tragedy, though inevitable in a dynamic market economy. However, not every failure is due to a lack of demand for a product [...]
Training AI to be unbiased must be a priority, not an afterthought February 9, 2018 When considering threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI), the focus usually rests on two. Some foresee a terrifying Skynet dystopia, with sentient computers identifying mankind as their greatest enemy and turning the world into a killbot hellscape. Others, slightly less alarmist, fear automation rendering vast swathes of the population literally redundant. But the most likely [...]