Could robots make us better humans?
By: John Harris March 5, 2019 As Marcus du Sautoy greets me at the entrance to New College, Oxford, his appearance is a quiet riot of colour. His clothes rather suggest someone who ran into White Stuff or Fat Face and frantically grabbed anything he could find – in this case, a salmon zip-up top, […]
Revealed: Facebook’s global lobbying against data privacy laws
By: Carole Cadwalladr and Duncan Campbell March 2, 2017 Facebook has targeted politicians around the world – including the former UK chancellor, George Osborne – promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook’s behalf against data privacy legislation, an explosive new leak of internal Facebook documents has revealed. The documents, […]
Y Combinator CEO: AI Will Replace Jobs, But Life Will be Awesome
By: Victor Tangermann February 28, 2019 What will artificial intelligence mean for the job market? That’s a question that’s been met with a lot of pessimism — from predictions of a collapse of the global economy to soaring mass unemployment. But Silicon Valley start-up incubator Y Combinator president Sam Altman has a far more positive […]
Are you being scanned? How facial recognition technology follows you, even as you shop
By: Eden Gillespie February 24, 2019 As digital billboards record customers’ reactions to advertisements tailored to them, just who is safeguarding Australians’ privacy? According to experts, FRT is now more accurate than humans at identifying faces. Photograph: Jochen Tack/Alamy If you shop at Westfield, you’ve probably been scanned and recorded by dozens of hidden cameras […]
The Retraining Paradox
By: Ruth Graham Feb 23, 2017 When Nathan Kecy graduated from Plymouth State University in New Hampshire a decade ago with a bachelor’s degree in communications, he found himself with about $10,000 in debt and few clear career options. He first found work as a door-to-door salesman (“a pyramid scheme,” he recalls) and then in […]
No global digital tax by end-2020 would mean chaos: France
By: Reuters feb 23, 2020 Failure to reach a global deal on where and how much to tax digital giants such as Google (GOOGL.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) or Meta (META.O) would result in many digital tax regimes emerging all over the world, France’s Finance Minister said on Sunday. It would also likely trigger U.S. retaliatory tariffs, […]
Deadline delay for UK tax havens register “not acceptable”
By: Danny McCance February 21, 2019 The publication of registers of beneficial ownership in British overseas territories could be pushed back to 2023, despite the risks posed to national security. They would set out all of the businesses registered within these jurisdictions in a bid to improve tax transparency. They would set out all of […]
Why private equity appeals
By: Buttonwood February 21, 2019 JOHN MCGAHERN’S novel, “That They May Face the Rising Sun”, is set in a remote corner of Ireland. There is a lake, a church, two bars and not much else. Gossip is prized but in short supply. Much of it is concerns John Quinn, a womaniser who has buried two […]
‘Do the right thing’: ads on Facebook and Google seek big tech whistleblowers
By: SamTLevin February 19, 2019 Silicon Valley activists have launched a whistleblower campaign to help workers organize against “unethical tech”, including ads on social media platforms targeting the employees of those companies. Fight for the Future, a not-for-profit digital advocacy group, unveiled an initiative Tuesday to provide support for tech employees seeking to blow the […]