CategoryBusiness and Finance
Jay Richards Talks Business with Bill Walton
Richards's book, "Money, Greed, and God" is newly reissued in a 10th anniversary edition
Confirmed: DeepMind’s Deepest Mind Is on Leave
The chess champ computer system just never made money
What Others Are Saying About the New Google Insider’s Revelations
The documents' authenticity is not in dispute. What to do about them is another matter
Is Google a Cult? Or Does It Just Act That Way?
Project Veritas announces that a new rebel Googler has sent nearly 1000 documents on algorithm bias to the DOJWhile we prepare a news story on Zach Vorhies' revelations, it may be worth asking why one of the world’s largest companies has developed what appears to be the atmosphere of a political cult.
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A Silicon Valley Insider Asks the Awkward Questions
Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, speaking at COSM in October, has a history of challenging Valley orthodoxiesHis question, “How can Google use the rhetoric of ‘borderless’ benefits to justify working with the country whose ‘Great Firewall’ has imposed a border on the internet itself?”, is timely. China’s government uses high tech for, among other things, sophisticated racial profiling.
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The Paradox of Luck and Skill
Why did Shane Lowry win the British Open golf championship? Because someone had toIn any competition including academic tests, athletic events, and company management where there is an element of luck that causes performances to be an imperfect measure of ability, there is an important difference between competitions among people with high ability and competitions among people of lesser ability.
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Why Was IBM Watson a Flop in Medicine?
Robert J. Marks and Gary S. Smith discuss how the AI couldn’t identify which information in the tsunami of medical literature actually MATTEREDLast year, the IBM Health Initiative laid off a number of people, seemingly due to market disillusionment with the product.
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Why Is DeepMind In Deep Water Financially?
Market analysts are wondering if the money is as smart as the machineIn an all-out botwar with the other tech Bigs, DeepMind could simply be paying top minds not to work for the competition while readying AI tools that pay better than winning at board games. Maybe.
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Self-driving Cars: Following the Money up a Cooling Trail
The market for lithium for electric car batteries is slowingOne way we can assess entrepreneurs’ claims (think Elon Musk) is to ask, what physical components does the product require and how is the market responding?
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Even Elon Musk Can’t Get a Robotaxi These Days
His recent earnings call makes clear that few think his promised million-taxi fleet is real-world
George Gilder on the Real-Life Prospects — and Limits — of AI
Gilder, who is organizing the COSM conference in Bellevue, Washington, in October, clears the fog about “the cloud”The “cloud” of cloud computing, that Gilder predicted, is things, not ideas. Thus it is subject to the limits of things, as opposed to the limits of ideas. It’s reasonable to ask where that limit is. It is probably both a question and an answer that we can understand.
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Even Uber didn’t believe in Uber’s self-driving taxis
We found that out after Google’s Waymo sued the companyOptimism is not driving the recent collaboration and corporate consolidation in the self-driving car industry. Rather, their retrenchment is protection against an uncertain future.
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You Think You Have Nothing To Hide?
Then why are Big Tech moguls making billions from what you and others tell them?The bottom line is this: if you think you don’t have anything to hide, then you don’t understand how the modern data economy really works, nor the impact of being caught in a riptide of public opinion.
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Will Money Be “Real” in an Information Society?
Now that Facebook is proposing Libra, a cryptocurrency, this might be a good time to askMany of us know cryptocurrencies only from passing headline news. Yet thoughtful people argue that such currencies will help shape an information society. Why?
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Could Huge Chunks of Asteroid Gold Wreck Our Economy?
16 Psyche’s gold illustrates how AI affects jobs. Not the way many think…“By lowering the price of gold, it would create new, currently nonexistent, markets for other uses of gold,” says Jay Richards. In the same way, AI creates new, currently nonexistent, markets for human time and creativity.
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Elon Musk: You Are Liable for My Malfunctioning Code!
He hopes to put the blame for self-driving mishaps in parking lots on customersAt Mind Matters News, we have criticized his approach on numerous grounds. One problem that keeps getting left out is, who assumes moral responsibility and legal liability for self-driving vehicles?
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COSM: George Gilder Hosts Top Tech Guys, To Ask, Where Is All This Going?
Are machines replacing or helping us and how will we know the difference?The October 23-25 conference is aimed at CEOs, CTOs, and CIOs, investors, researchers, technologists, and anyone for whom the $950 Early Adopter Rate (before July 23) would be a good investment in their future.
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Facebook “Likes” Cryptocurrency
We asked Jonathan Bartlett, what the new coin, Libra, means for Facebook? For crypto?Avoiding having to judge between currencies "solves a political problem for Facebook, but I don't see that it solves problems for anyone else," Bartlett says.
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Haiti Calling … Reaching Out, Touching the World
Baylor Engineering prof Brian Thomas has been helping Haitians establish businesses to recharge cell phones, using solar panelsIn Haiti, 40% of the population (eleven million) still depends on subsistence agriculture. But cell phones allow them to leapfrog many traditional stages of technological development.
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