Category Archives: Ai
From railroads to AI: Why new tech is often demonised – The Indian Express
Technological advancements are polarizing. Its not a new phenomenon for innovations to be sneered at, criticized or even demonized. We find skepticism about technology even in the earliest written records that we have about technology theory, technology philosopher and historian Christian Vater told DW.
He said there were various reasons for this skepticism, including the complexity of technological inventions and the associated lack of knowledge or understanding, for example the fear of losing control or even emotionality.
But skepticism toward new technologies is not proof of a general fear of technology, according to Helmuth Trischler, head of research at Deutsches Museum in Munich. Behind this assumption is a limited perception its good that people examine things rationally, he said.
The difference between a rational assessment of possible consequences to technology and an irrational, uncontrolled defensiveness toward technology is also emphasized by Vater, who distinguishes between concern and panic. I consider concern to be very legitimate and extraordinarily necessary, especially if we want to actively, jointly shape a future shaped by technology in an informed democracy, he said. Panic, however, typically leads to uncontrolled running away.
The fact that technological inventions can inspire both concern and panic in equal measure can be seen in the example of the railroad.
Diabolical conveyance: The railroad
Some 200 years after its invention, the railroad is a completely ordinary form of transportation for people and goods around the world and a part of the fabric of modern society. But in its early days, some people perceived the railroad as the work of the devil.
The worlds first public railroad was inaugurated in England in 1825. After that, the steam locomotive made its fast, loud and smoky way across Europe and with it, the fear of trains and of what was known in Germany as Eisenbahnkrankheit or railway sickness. This was thought to be caused by the speed of up to 30 kilometers per hour (18.6 miles per hour) considered fast back then and the bone-rattling vibrations felt while sitting in the carriages.
Even as the railway network grew throughout Victorian England, the criticism of this mode of transportation remained strong, as evidenced by satirical caricatures and illustrated police reports.
Trischler said these reactions are completely understandable within the context of their time. Technological advancements require reorientation, which can spark fears to which people react with dire prognoses and apprehension. The new does, after all, arouse emotions. Technology is basically always associated with emotions, he explained.
Fear of the split atom
But not every technological invention inevitably evokes negative emotions. For instance, when nuclear energy was new, the attitude was different. The first German research reactor was built in Munich in 1957, and four years later, nuclear energy was fed into the countrys power grid for the first time. In the 1960s, atomic energy was seen as an inexpensive and clean alternative to oil and coal and encouraged hopes for a renewed industrial upswing.
The first critical voices grew loud in Germany in 1975, when the construction site of a planned nuclear plant was occupied by protesters. Critics in the southwestern German town of Wyhl warned of climate change, groundwater drawdown and possible security problems in connection with nuclear plants. The anti-nuclear movement gained momentum and incidents such as the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 in the United States or the meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986 further spread fear and worry among parts of the population. Nuclear energy was a subject of debate in Germany for decades, until the accident at Fukushima in Japan in 2011 finally led to the German government deciding to phase it out for good.
While in some parts of the world, nuclear energy is still seen as a good alternative to fossil fuels, in other countries it evokes almost existential angst. When we think about why people are concerned when it comes to nuclear energy, we can point to the question of nuclear waste, to Chernobyl or Fukushima. In other words, to man-made or nature-dependent situations with technological failures and unsolved technical problems, said Vater.
He and Trischler see a democratic success story in the debate over nuclear energy. Vater said that a society, if it does not want to become technocratic, but wants to remain a participatory democracy, is dependent on goodwill, understanding and support from its members. Trischler added that something can emerge from the debate about technology skepticism, and said that its about a societys struggle for co-determination and joint negotiation.
Man vs. machine?
How fine the line can become between goodwill and skepticism, support and rejection, is illustrated by the current debate over AI. The American computer and cognitive scientist John McCarthy coined the phrase artificial intelligence in 1956 to describe a discipline of computer science whose goal was to create machines with human-like intellectual capabilities.
After decades of developments in the field, debate over the topic has focused of late on, among other things, the chatbot ChatGPT, which was released in November 2022 and immediately sparked controversy. In March, Italy responded by becoming the first country to block the software, at least temporarily. Its now allowed again, but only after proof of the users age is presented.
Despite the many advantages AI promises for example improved health care or increased road safety there is also a great deal of criticism of the technology. The fears seem to run in two directions: Some worry about possible misuse, fakes or disinformation and about their professional future and intellectual property, while others are afraid of future technical developments that could gradually give AI more power and thus result in a loss of human control.
Trischler sees the fear of AI in general as rooted in the complexity of the technology. Worries arise especially with regard to large technical systems that seem anonymous, he said. According to Vater, questions about, for instance, what impact AI might actually have on ones profession are rational concerns as opposed to a blanket fear of the machine.
To predict that the spread of AI will make all human creative effort superfluous, and that machines will take over the world in the near future, that would be panic, he said.
Skepticism raises questions
So is a certain degree of skepticism toward new technologies a normal, understandable human reaction? Christian Vater and Helmuth Trischler think so.
In hindsight, we often see that these fears have not materialized, said Trischler, adding that they are understandable when seen in the context of their time.
The ability to make predictions is useful because it helps us to tune in to the next steps in development as a group, as a society, perhaps even as humanity, said Vater. Its actually the normal situation that things then dont turn out as we expected.
This article was originally written in German.
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From railroads to AI: Why new tech is often demonised - The Indian Express
WHO calls for safe and ethical AI for health – World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for caution to be exercised in using artificial intelligence (AI) generated large language model tools (LLMs) to protect and promote human well-being, human safety, and autonomy, and preserve public health.
LLMs include some of the most rapidly expanding platforms such as ChatGPT, Bard, Bert and many others that imitate understanding, processing, and producing human communication. Their meteoric public diffusion and growing experimental use for health-related purposes is generating significant excitement around the potential to support peoples health needs.
It is imperative that the risks be examined carefully when using LLMs to improve access to health information, as a decision-support tool, or even to enhance diagnostic capacity in under-resourced settings to protect peoples health and reduce inequity.
While WHO is enthusiastic about the appropriate use of technologies, including LLMs, to support health-care professionals, patients, researchers and scientists, there is concern that caution that would normally be exercised for any new technology is not being exercised consistently with LLMs. This includes widespread adherence to key values of transparency, inclusion, public engagement, expert supervision, and rigorous evaluation.
Precipitous adoption of untested systems could lead to errors by health-care workers, cause harm to patients, erode trust in AI and thereby undermine (or delay) the potential long-term benefits and uses of such technologies around the world.
Concerns that call for rigorous oversight needed for the technologies to be used in safe, effective, and ethical ways include:
WHO proposes that these concerns be addressed, and clear evidence of benefit be measured before their widespread use in routine health care and medicine whether by individuals, care providers or health system administrators and policy-makers.
WHO reiterates the importance of applying ethical principles and appropriate governance, as enumerated in the WHO guidance on the ethics and governance of AI for health, when designing, developing, and deploying AI for health. The 6 core principles identified by WHO are: (1) protect autonomy; (2) promote human well-being, human safety, and the public interest; (3) ensure transparency, explainability, and intelligibility; (4) foster responsibility and accountability; (5) ensure inclusiveness and equity; (6) promote AI that is responsive and sustainable.
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WHO calls for safe and ethical AI for health - World Health Organization
Azeem on AI: Where Will the Jobs Come from After AI? – HBR.org Daily
AZEEM AZHAR: Hi there, Im Azeem Azhar. For the past decade, Ive studied exponential technologies, their emergence, rapid uptake, and the opportunities they create. I wrote a book about this in 2021. Its called The Exponential Age. Even with my expertise, I sometimes find it challenging to keep up with the fast pace of change in the field of artificial intelligence, and thats why Im excited to share a series of weekly insights with you, where we can delve into some of the most intriguing questions about AI. In todays reflection, I look at an insightful research note from Goldman Sachs, titled The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth, in which the authors explore the labor markets future. The study posits that global productivity could see an impressive uptick, ultimately boosting global GDP by 7%. And I wonder, where will the jobs come from after AI? Lets dig in.
The headline finding was that productivity globally could eventually rise, and you could see a rise in global GDP by 7%, which is no slouch. There were also models that showed that US economic growth could jump from that one to one and a half percent anemic level, up to two and a half, three percent, the sorts of levels that were enjoyed during those halcyon period of the 1950s, which is all pretty exciting. But what I thought was quite interesting was how the researchers dug into the impact on the workforce from all of these productivity changes. So they found some quite interesting findings. I suspect if youve been reading the newsletter thinking about these things, you wouldnt be too surprised by them. But lets just go through them because theyre numerical and theyre quite useful.
So, they found that about two thirds of US occupations were exposed to some degree of automation by AI, and a significant share of those had quite a substantial part share of their workload that could be replaced. So running from healthcare supports down the bottom end to health practices, computer and IT sales and management, finance, legal and office admin, you saw that between on average 25% of tasks to 46% of tasks in the case of office admin could be automated with a much larger impact in general in developed markets than in emerging markets. Its pretty interesting because the researchers suggest, and I think this is a kind of reasonable assertion, that if a job would find about 50% or more of its tasks being automated, it would lend itself to being replaced. Whereas jobs that might have 10 to about 49% of their tasks automated lend themselves to using AI as a sort of complement to the human worker.
Ive looked at this question over the last several years, youve probably read a number of those things, and the question is, what might that actually mean as it plays out? So what we found historically is that when new technologies come around, the firms that make use of them tend to be able to grow their headcount, they grow their employment levels, and its the firms that dont use those technologies that tend to lose out. I talk about this in my book. I have the parable of the two men, Indrek and Fred, who are walking in the Canadian wilds and they stop to take a break. They take their shoes off and a grizzly bear approaches them and one of them pops his shoes on and the other says, Why are you putting your shoes on? Youll never outrun the grizzly bear. And his friend says, I dont need to outrun the grizzly bear, I just need to outrun you.
And that of course, is a competitive dynamic. The firms that are well managed, that can manage these new technologies, that make the investment will perform better, as better performing firms always have, and theyll grow, and in the competitive space that will come at the cost to the underperforming firms. So that should create the kind of incentive for companies to invest in these technology. But they wont do evenly. So we will see some winners and well see some losers.
Wed also expect to see widespread downward wage pressure because these jobs are essentially being able to be done more efficiently. So, a smaller number of people potentially could be required. The other thing to wonder is the extent to which this would necessarily lead to job cuts. And you could say, Look, firms wont do this. These are well paid workers, 80k, 100k, 150k or more a year. And they will be protected in some sense for a certain period of time. But even the most protective firms come to really think about their workforces have gone into cost-cutting mode in the last few months, like McKinsey and Google. And its hard to imagine economy-wide that in this type of economy, the opportunity to streamline and be efficient wont be quite tempting for management.
So, the question is, where might those cuts fall in the firm? I have a hunch, and its no more than that, that if you are a manager in a largish, medium size, or even a sort of bigger end of the small firm, it will be quite appealing to look at the middle of your employment base. Because what you have there is you have people who are quite well paid but are not your top leadership. And the temptation will be to go in and thin those ranks, not so far that you deplete all the tacit knowledge and all the sort of socialized information in the firm, the stuff that isnt codified, but enough to cut costs on the basis that AI-enabled juniors working with a small number of well-trained, experienced, more senior professionals will be able to fill in the gaps. And I suspect that will be a kind of tempting strategy for companies as we move on. And that in a sense is a kind of extension of the delayering of firms that we saw when it started to get rolled out in the 1980s and 1990s.
But what about this 7% productivity growth? So, thats got to be doing something. The economy is going to be growing much faster than it was before, and its going to create new opportunities and new needs. Theres a great survey that the Goldman Sachs authors quote from David Orta. He is this amazing economist, and he points out that 85% of employment growth in the US in the last 80 years has been in jobs that didnt exist in 1940 when the period started. So, we know effectively that the economy creates new work, new classes of work very well, although over an 80-year period. And the thing is that if these technologies are going to be rolled out overnight to millions of workers, the impact will be felt quite fast.
I mean, just take a look at lawyers. Therere somewhere between 700,000 lawyers in the US, if you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, or 1.3 million, if you look at the American Bar Association data. Sorry, I dont know the real number. But based on Goldmans estimates, about 40% of those jobs could be up for being replaced. So thats between 250 and 500,000 people. So, the question is not will new jobs be ultimately created. Its when do they get created in the sort of short time that is available? And we can imagine that new sorts of roles emerge that are complementary to the AI tools that get layered in, ones that are syncretic across the specialist expertise of being a particular type of admin or being a particular type of legal profession, and what is now required to make these technologies work. So, that would be one area.
The second is that the growing economy is going to raise the demand in complementary services, which is what you would expect from economic growth. And of course, there are these new sectors like the bioeconomy and the green economy that are developing rapidly and are being stimulated by things like, in the US, the Inflation Reduction Act, and similar sorts of things in the EU and UK, which should create a demand for new types of private sector jobs.
But its a really hard conundrum because how do you re-skill people? How do you ensure that they actually want to make the move? How do you make sure that they have the resources and the emotional psychological capabilities to make the move? And how do you make sure the jobs that are created are in the places where the people actually live? And I say all of this because I know that is material that weve heard before, but I dont get a sense that I see really strong and solid [inaudible 00:08:14] and interventions, and these are the types of things that need to come from government to tackle what could well be a very sharp transition as these productivity enhancing tools start to get rolled out.
Well, thanks for tuning in. If you want to truly grasp the ins and outs of AI, visit http://www.exponentialview.co, where I share expert insights with hundreds of thousands of leaders each week.
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Azeem on AI: Where Will the Jobs Come from After AI? - HBR.org Daily
Prompt Injection: An AI-Targeted Attack – Hackaday
For a brief window of time in the mid-2010s, a fairly common joke was to send voice commands to Alexa or other assistant devices over video. Late-night hosts and others would purposefully attempt to activate voice assistants like these en masse and get them to do ridiculous things. This isnt quite as common of a gag anymore and was relatively harmless unless the voice assistant was set up to do something like automatically place Amazon orders, but now that much more powerful AI tools are coming online were seeing that joke taken to its logical conclusion: prompt-injection attacks.
Prompt injection attacks, as the name suggests, involve maliciously inserting prompts or requests in interactive systems to manipulate or deceive users, potentially leading to unintended actions or disclosure of sensitive information. Its similar to something like an SQL injection attack in that a command is embedded in something that seems like a normal input at the start. Using an AI like GPT comes with an inherent risk of attacks like this when using it to automate tasks, as commands to the AI can be hidden where a user might not expect to see them, like in this demonstration where hidden prompts for a ChatGPT plugin are hidden in YouTube video transcripts to attempt to get ChatGPT to perform actions outside of those the original user would have asked for.
While this specific attack is more of a proof-of-concept, its foreseeable that as these tools become more sophisticated and interconnected in our lives, the risks of a malicious attacker causing harm start to rise. Restricting how much access we give networked computerized systems is certainly one option, similar to sandboxing or containerizing websites so they cant all share cookies amongst themselves, but we should start seeing some thought given to these attacks by the developers of AI tools in much the same way that we hope developers are sanitizing SQL inputs.
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AI at warp speed: disruption, innovation, and whats at stake – Economic Times
Synopsis
12 mins read, May 21, 2023, 06:00 AM IST
Conversations on tech these days are dominated by generative artificial intelligence and what it means for the worlds future. ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, MidJourney and Google Bard arae rapidly changing the way we live, work and engage with each other. Those platforms are themselves evolving at an exponential rate based on what they learn from users. The costs involved are enormous, as are the stakes.On a clear morning in early May, Alphabet CEO
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AI at warp speed: disruption, innovation, and whats at stake - Economic Times
How a family is using AI to plan a trip around the world – Business Insider
"We are going into uncharted territory," Motamedi told Insider. "Because we are literally giving our lives into AI's hands we're kind of a guinea pig for the world." Courtesy of Michael Motamedi
Travel influencers Michael Motamedi and Vanessa Salas typically spend days, if not weeks, researching travel plans for them and their 18-month-old daughter.
But on Wednesday, the family used an AI chatbot to decide on their next destination in under an hour: They were heading to Morocco.
For the next six months, the digital nomad family is relinquishing control of their itinerary to artificial intelligence an experiment that will be the basis of a new web series called "No Fixed Address."
"I cannot explain to you the nerves that I have going into this," Motamedi said in an interview with Insider. "It's nerve-racking when you're not making the decisions. It's kind of a strange, out-of-body experience."
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Motamedi is partnering with GuideGeek, a free AI travel assistant owned by the Matador Network that uses ChatGPT technology, to produce the show. The newly released chatbot will plan nearly every step of the family's journey, from picking out different cities for them visit to deciding where to eat each day. GuideGeek declined to disclose the financial terms of the partnership.
After living in a new country for a month, Motamedi will ask GuideGeek where they should travel to next based on their general interests, such as nice beaches, interesting architecture, and good food. The family will handle real-time logistics like booking flights and finding living accommodations, he said.
"We're going to pick the next place when we're in Morocco," he told Insider. "That's the crazy part about this whole journey I don't know where I'm going to end up in July."
Motamedi and Salas tested the technology out in April while using the chatbot to plan a date night in Mexico City. GuideGeek provided speakeasy and drink recommendations as well as local history facts.
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While its recommendations resulted in a "fantastic night," Motamedi insists the new technology should be used as a helpful tool rather than a substitution for human interaction or online videos or articles based on personal experiences.
"Will I utilize AI as a tool? Of course," he said. "Do I care if the AI had a good time having tea? Not really because it doesn't know how to taste tea."
Despite his confidence in the nascent technology, Motamedi said he (and his mother) are "terrified" to let a robot plan out his family's life for the next six months.
Artificial intelligence chatbots based on large language models like ChatGPT are known to "hallucinate," or make up false information which can have real-life impacts when relying on the bots to make important travel decisions. Motamedi experienced this first-hand when he asked GuideGeek to provide the history of pastry shops in Mexico City, which he realized was inaccurate after talking to a local business owner.
Knowing the chatbot is bound to make mistakes, Motamedi said he does not plan on following its advice blindly and will occasionally fact-check its results.
"My family comes first," he said."Just because Google Maps is telling me to go left and I see a lake in front of me, doesn't mean I'm gonna go into that lake."
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How a family is using AI to plan a trip around the world - Business Insider
Beijing calls on cloud providers to support AI firms – TechCrunch
Image Credits: Photo by Bu Xiangdong/Qianlong.com/VCG / Getty Images (Image has been modified)
As large language models from Western tech firms show the potential to disrupt everything from marketing to teaching to coding, China is rushing to cultivate its home-grown AI pioneers by stepping up state support.
Beijing is now seeking public opinion on a draft policy aimed at developing artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a category of AI that can theoretically carry out all human tasks. The policys goal, in short, is to buttress AI firms by beefing up support from cloud providers and data companies.
Its not uncommon to see the capital city spearheading policymaking in emerging industries. Beijing, for example, was the first in letting driverless robotaxis ferry passengers on open roads under certain restrictions.
The AGI blueprint lays out action plans around three main areas: computing power, training data and applications.
The first strategy calls for closer collaboration between cloud providers, the sources of computing power and universities and companies, which consume large amounts of processing power to train large language models, multimodal learning and other AI. The policy proposes a state-backed, centralized platform that allocates public cloud resources to users based on demand.
Alibaba accounted for over a third of Chinas cloud infrastructure services spending last year, coming in first, according to market research firm Canalys. Huawei, Tencent and Baidu trailed behind.
The second strategy acknowledges the lack of quality Chinese-language data and encourages the compliant cleansing of such datasets, which includes data anonymization, likely an effort to meet Chinas new, stringent privacy law. The process will no doubt be time-consuming and labor-intensive, as weve seen how OpenAI relies on Kenyan workers to manually label training data and remove toxic text.
Beijings big data exchange, launched by the government in 2021 to facilitate data trading across facets of society, will aid the process of data sourcing.
Lastly, the policy lays out a list of potential pilot applications of AI, ranging from using AI in medical diagnosis, drug making, financial risk control and transportation to urban management.
The proposed policy also touches on the importance of software and hardware infrastructure for AI training. Amid an escalating U.S.-China competition, the latter is striving to shore up innovation in key technologies such as semiconductors.
The U.S. already restricts the export of Nvidias powerful AI chip H100 to China. In response, Nvidia came up with a less powerful processor for China to circumvent export controls. Domestic companies, such as tech giant Huawei and startup Biren, are also working on Nvidia alternatives.
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Beijing calls on cloud providers to support AI firms - TechCrunch
Amazon is focusing on using A.I. to get stuff delivered to you faster – CNBC
Amazon is increasingly using robotics in its fulfilment centers to carry out repetitive tasks such as lifting heavy packages.
Nathan Stirk | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Amazon is focusing on using artificial intelligence to speed up deliveries by minimizing the distance between its products and customers, a top executive told CNBC.
Stefano Perego, vice president of customer fulfilment and global ops services for North America and Europe at Amazon, outlined how the company is using AI when it comes to logistics.
One area is in transportation, such as mapping and planning routes, taking into account variables like the weather, Perego said.
Another area is when customers search from products on Amazon to help them find the right goods.
But a key focus right now for Amazon is using AI to figure out where to place its inventory.
"I think one area that we consider key in order to lower cost to serve is on inventory placement," Perego said.
"So now, I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the vast selection we offer to our customers. Imagine how complex is the problem of deciding where to place that unit of inventory. And to place it in a way that we reduce distance to fulfill to customers, and we increase speed of delivery."
Amazon has been focusing on a so-called "regionalization" effort to ship products to customers from warehouses closest to them rather than from another part of the country.
But doing so requires technology that is capable of analyzing data and patterns in order to predict what products will be in demand and where.
That's where AI comes in. If a product is nearer to customers, Amazon will be able to make same-day or next-day deliveries, like what its Prime subscription service offers.
Perego said the efforts are progressing well. In the United States, more than 76% of the products customers order are now from fulfilment centers within their region, according to Amazon.
Amazon is also using robotics in its fulfilment centers to help with repetitive tasks such as lifting heavy packages.
The company said that 75% of Amazon customer orders are handled in part by robotics.
There's a debate over how robotics and artificial intelligence such as the ChatGPT AI chatbot developed by startup OpenAI will affect jobs. A Goldman Sachs report earlier this year suggested there could be "significant disruption" to the global labor market, with automation affecting 300 million jobs.
Perego described automation as "collaborative robotics," underlining how Amazon sees humans and technology working together.
"I think that what is happening is really a transformation of the type of jobs," Perego said.
The executive said that when automation and AI become more widespread, they will change, rather than eliminate, the jobs that workers perform.
"Eventually, the type of job that an employee will be called to do in a fulfillment center will be increasingly a high judgment type of job," Perego said. "And the heavy lifting and repetitive tasks will be done through robotics. That's fine. It's a transformation rather than a substitution."
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Amazon is focusing on using A.I. to get stuff delivered to you faster - CNBC
AI is in a ‘baby bubble.’ Here’s what could burst it. – Markets Insider
Paper Boat Creative/Getty Images
Artificial intelligence is this year's investment craze and experts say the profit potential is huge, but this period could be transformed by a messy pop la the dot-com bust if the Federal Reserve makes one particular mistake, says Bank of America.
AI is in a "baby bubble" for now, Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America Global Research, wrote on Friday.
Excitement over AI prospects is palpable in the markets, ignited by the popularity of ChatGPT, OpenAI's open-language chatbot. Among high-flyers, shares of Meta Platforms and microchip maker Nvidia have more than doubled this year. AI tools bolstering advertising at Facebook's parent company are catching attention. Billionaire investors are making big AI bets, including Bill Ackman's push of $1 billion into Google parent Alphabet.
Bubbles, whether they're in the "right things" such as the internet or the "wrong things" like housing, are always started by easy money and are ended by rate hikes, Hartnett said.
The Fed may be on the way to pausing its run of rate hikes at its June 14 gathering. This month, it bumped up its benchmark rate for the 10th consecutive time to beat down inflationary pressures.
But a pause would be a policy error, and the Fed attempting to fix it by restarting rate hikes could burst the AI bubble, Hartnett said, recalling similar conditions in the dot-com era.
The Fed mistakenly pausing in 2023 would be communicated to investors by US bond yields rising above 4%.
"[And] if so we most certainly ain't seen the last Fed rate hike of the cycle," Hartnett said in BofA's Flow Show note.The 10-year Treasury yield was at 3.67% on Friday.
If the Fed were to pause, it would do so as the Consumer Price Index and other inflation gauges have come off peak levels, but as they still sit much higher than the Fed's 2% target rate. The CPI rose 4.9% in April.
With credit conditions tightening, the "policy rate may not need to rise as much as it would have otherwise to achieve our goals," Powell said at a Friday conference in Washington in conversation with former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke. The Fed funds rate was raised to 5%-5.25% in March.
Dot-com bomb
BofA's investment strategy team recalled the frenzy surrounding internet stocks in 1999 that drove the Nasdaq Composite up to new highs at 5,000.
The speculative surge in internet stocks alongside a bubbling US economy forced the Fed under Alan Greenspan to restart monetary tightening, it said. The dot-com bubble popped nine months later.
"AI = internet," wrote Hartnett. The Nasdaq sank 78% from its March 2000 peak until early October 2002. It would take nearly another 15 years for the index to reclaim the 5,000 mark.
Markets for now seem not to be putting much stock in the bubble talk, and hype in the sector is still strong.
AI technology's potential to boost productivity could lead to an increase of 30% or more in S&P 500 profits over the next decade, Goldman Sachs senior strategist Ben Snider told CNBC recently, and AI exposure among large-cap tech companies has helped propel the Nasdaq Composite up 21% so far in 2023 following last year's tumble of 33%.
Fundstrat this week said that investors are right to be optimistic about AI but mega-cap tech stocks currently look overbought.
Traders in the fed funds futures market as of Friday saw an 80% chance that the central bank will halt its run of rate hikes in June.
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AI is in a 'baby bubble.' Here's what could burst it. - Markets Insider
Rise of the machines: how long before AI steals my job? – Mexico News Daily
Last week, I headed to the Registro Civil with finally! all of my divorce paperwork ready to be processed. After three long years, it was happening, and, oh boy, have I been ready to officially, legally move on!
Alas, when I arrived, there was a problem: my foreign birth certificate (a document which only recently has been required for divorce, Im told) had not been apostilled and officially translated that is, it hadnt been translated by a perito traductor, literally a translation specialist, who is authorized to translate and guarantee the faithful translation of official documents.
I cried, kind of hard.
When I got married at that same Registro Civil, after all, back when I was just barely starting to call myself a translator, the officials were accommodating.
Oh, you can just translate your birth certificate for us yourself, its fine! the lady told me.
I did and felt immediately proud to have had my translation accepted by an official government entity, however informally. Motivated, I decided Id try to become a perito traductor myself.
The path to that coveted position, however, ended before it began: on the call for applications that a friend sent me, the first item on the list of requirements to apply was to be a Mexican citizen.
Honestly, it was their loss; Im awesome.
I was disappointed but didnt let it stop me. Since then, Ive become an official translator for some great media organizations, a handful of very low-paid translation agencies (not my fave) and lots and lots of Spanish-language TV shows for the major streaming services.
I have no idea who the English-speaking (and apparently non-Spanish-speaking) audience is for Colombian soap operas, but apparently its a big enough group to warrant English subtitles for all of them.
I really love translating. Let me count the ways!
It takes a lot of logic and linguistic know-how, of course, but its also creative, like trying to recreate the final product from a recipe without any of the original ingredients. It needs to taste the same, smell the same and feel the same, but it must be produced with completely different elements than the original.
And theres a lot that needs to be addressed when translating: First and foremost, whats the purpose of the translation? If its to entertain, then more creative license can be taken, a fun spot where ones writing skills enter the picture as well. (Literary translation is where I find great satisfaction in that area, and I would point you in the direction of some really fun material if it werent for NDAs.)
If its to give instructions, then it needs to be straightforward and simplified: no flowery language wanted that might confuse the reader. For legal or medical purposes, there are often two steps: firstly, figuring out exactly what the message is in the original language, and secondly, finding the equivalent jargon in the target language.
It requires a delicate and careful sensibility as anything off could trigger serious consequences.
There are plenty of other questions to consider as well: What if the original writing isnot good? If its filled with mistakes (which definitely happens), do you replicate the sloppy style or clean it up for the translated version? (I personally clean them up; I just cant send in work thats not grammatically sound or is full of mistakes.)
There can be varying levels of extremes on this question. I was recently asked to translate from an unedited audio transcription, for example, and it was a literal nightmare void of even a tiny bit of punctuation that might give clues as to the meaning of what was being said.
In such a case, you dont want the English version to sound like an essay (that is, if you figure out what theyre trying to say in the first place) but rather conversational. But to what degree do you insert all the repeated words, the stutters, the skipping around of narrative?
Depending on the purpose of the translation itself, you may get a little room to play, or it could entail parameters of a nearly military nature. But however its ultimately done, its so, so, satisfying: looking at ones perfect translation is like putting the final piece of a puzzle into its place. Ahh.
But for all this love I have for my craft part science, part art Im nervous. Machine translation is getting better. Its not human-quality better, but might that only be a matter of time?
Google Translate 10 years ago was comically terrible. Nowadays, it does a pretty decent job with most things, though the original text still needs to be perfect in order for Google to spit out something of any kind of quality.
Artificial Intelligence (which I believe is badly-named; it should be called Collective Intelligence since it uses all the human material weve managed to preserve so far) seems poised to at least eventually render my work as a writer and translator unnecessary in fields that are already precarious career-wise: full-time salaried positions in these areas are essentially nonexistent, and most people who do them are freelancers or else contract workers who are called freelancers.
Will peritos traductores eventually be replaced by AI programs as well? Will we all feel comfortable with so much content void of the human touch?
For now, Im still safe. AI doesnt have a human brain, and it reduces the quality of pretty much any translation. Will people care, though, if translations are bad but basically understandable?
Im betting that they will, at least for important things.
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com
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Rise of the machines: how long before AI steals my job? - Mexico News Daily