Posted in education, finance, robotics/AI
The worldâs richest people have seen their share of the globeâs total wealth increase from 42.5% at the height of the 2008 financial crisis to 50.1% in 2017, or $140tn (ÂŁ106tn), according to Credit Suisseâs global wealth report published on Tuesday.
At the other end of the spectrum, the worldâs 3.5 billion poorest adults each have assets of less than $10,000 (ÂŁ7,600). Collectively these people, who account for 70% of the worldâs working age population, account for just 2.7% of global wealth.
Credit Suisse report highlights increasing gap between the super-rich and the remainder of the globeâs population.
Posted in finance, law, robotics/AI
Artificial intelligence beats over 100 London lawyers in predicting case outcome:
In a contest that took place last month. It pitched over 100 lawyers from many of Londonâs ritziest firms against an artificial intelligence program called Case Cruncher Alpha.
Both the humans and the AI were given the basic facts of hundreds of PPI (payment protection insurance) mis-selling cases and asked to predict whether the Financial Ombudsman would allow a claim.
In what promises to be one small step for space travel, and one giant leap for the next generation of manufacturing, an Israeli startup is planning to land a vehicle on the moon that has crucial parts made using 3D printing technology.
SpaceIL is among five teams vying for Googleâs $30 million in prize money to get a spacecraft to the moon by the end of March. One of the startupâs suppliers, Zurich-based RUAG Space, advised turning to 3D printing to manufacture the legs of its unmanned lunar lander. With financial stakes high and a tight deadline, SpaceIL engineers were at first deeply skeptical, according to RUAG executive Franck Mouriaux. They finally acquiesced after a lot of convincing.
You could drive past and never see the only farm in San Carlos, California. The tiny city of 30,000 that sits between San Francisco and Silicon Valley has all the charms of suburbiaâsprawling office parks and single-story homesâbut doesnât seem a likely suspect for agriculture.
The farm, run by startup Iron Ox, is nestled between three stonemasons and a plumber in a nondescript office park building; thereâs no greenhouse, no rows of freshly-tilled soil, or tractor parked outside. Only peeking in the large bay door reveals the buildingâs tenants: a few hundred plants and two brightly-colored robot farmers.
Iron Ox looks a lot like a tech company. One of its co-founder is an ex-Google engineer and it raised $1.5 million in pre-seed venture capital from Y Combinator, Pathbreaker, and Cherubic Ventures in April 2016. Instead of fake food, or plant-based meat meals, or even a food delivery service tethered to an app, Iron Ox is reinventing farming, raising real, not faux, food. Think hydroponically raised lettuce and basil, like what youâd get at an ordinary farmers market.
These are a tiny fraction of the examples of how our economy differs from the 20th century industrial economy. Similar changes are under way in the developing world, as labor gives way to robotics and basic goods become affordable and accessible to the planetâs billions. Given those changes, why would 20th century models of prices and rates and money supply work as they used to work?
We like to believe that there are âlaws of economicsâ and past patterns to guide us, but, as Yellen indicated, there is now âconsiderable uncertainty.â It may feel safer to trust that past patterns will reassert themselves. But maybe policymakers should weigh more heavily the chance that the patterns have changed.
The Federal Reserve takes a 20th-century approach to managing a 21st-century economy.
Jim Mellon and Al Chalabi are back with another successful venture into the world of science investment. Following their acclaimed 2012 book âCracking the codeâ, whose spotlight was on the life sciences industry, Juvenescence takes us on a compelling journey through the dawning market of longevity and rejuvenation biotechnology, which the authors predict will be the biggest âmoney fountainâ to hit the financial world in the coming years.
Juvenescence is a visionary book, debunking the sometimes questionable past of longevity research and steering us towards a âbrave new worldâ in which advances in medicine are already leading to clinical trials whose aim is to extend human lifespan to unprecedented levels.
Mellon and Chalabi come across as eloquent devotees of cold, hard science, and for a book targeted primarily at investors, biologists and experts will be hard-pressed to find inaccuracies in the many heavily technical sections. The authors explain the science of aging in an engaging and accessible manner, bridging the gap between the lab and the public with ease and tact. They employ elegant metaphors to explain complex processes as well as some light-hearted ones, including the âDeadly Quintetâ, which reads more like the title of a long-lost Tarantino film, or the âActuarial Escape Velocityâ, a reference to the controversial âLongevity Escape Velocityâ promoted by Aubrey de Grey. Mellon and Chalabi use state-of-the-art research whenever possible, with recent, fresh-from-the-lab studies making up the majority of sources.
Only two years ago, when I launched my advocacy website Rejuvenaction, I didnât think I would read a book like Juvenescence so soon; yet, the topic of rejuvenation biotechnologies has already become mainstream enough to lead investors of the calibre of Jim Mellon and Al Chalabi to devote a whole book to it.
As Juvenescence is a book aimed at potential new investors in rejuvenation biotechnologies, I expected it to be an extremely technical and detailed account of things I donât understand, such as finance, markets, and funds. To my delight, this was not the case. Rather, the details Juvenescence dives into are primarily those of the emerging field of rejuvenation science (alas, still something whose details I donât fully understand).
The book explains the paradigm shift that is currently taking place and changing the way science sees agingâno longer as an inevitable fact of life but rather as a disease to be eradicated like any otherâand goes through a biology 101 crash course for the benefit of readers who might be not too well versed in the science of life.
