Lifeboat Foundation

Pagaya, an AI-driven institutional asset manager that focuses on fixed income and consumer credit markets, today announced it raised $102 million in equity financing. CEO Gal Krubiner said the infusion will enable Pagaya to grow its data science team, accelerate R&D, and continue its pursuit of new asset classes including real estate, auto loans, mortgages, and corporate credit.

Pagaya applies machine intelligence to securitization — the conversion of an asset (usually a loan) into marketable securities (e.g., mortgage-backed securities) that are sold to other investors — and loan collateralization. It eschews the traditional method of securitizing pools of previously assembled asset-backed securities (ABS) for a more bespoke approach, employing algorithms to compile discretionary funds for institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, and banks. Pagaya selects and buys individual loans by analyzing emerging alternative asset classes, after which it assesses their risk and draws on “millions” of signals to predict their returns.

Pagaya’s data scientists can build algorithms to track activities, such as auto loans made to residents in cities and even specific neighborhoods, for instance. The company is only limited by the amount of data publicly available; on average, Pagaya looks at decades of information on borrowers and evaluates thousands of variables.

Now that the world is in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic, governments are quickly deploying their own cocktails of tracking methods. These include device-based contact tracing, wearables, thermal scanning, drones, and facial recognition technology. It’s important to understand how those tools and technologies work and how governments are using them to track not just the spread of the coronavirus, but the movements of their citizens.

Contact tracing is one of the fastest-growing means of viral tracking. Although the term entered the common lexicon with the novel coronavirus, it’s not a new practice. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says contact tracing is “a core disease control measure employed by local and state health department personnel for decades.”

Traditionally, contact tracing involves a trained public health professional interviewing an ill patient about everyone they’ve been in contact with and then contacting those people to provide education and support, all without revealing the identity of the original patient. But in a global pandemic, that careful manual method cannot keep pace, so a more automated system is needed.

Amazon is jumping deeper into the market for autonomous driving with the purchase of Zoox, which was valued at over $3 billion in 2018.

But as millions of animals continue to be used in biomedical research each year, and new legislation calls on federal agencies to reduce and justify their animal use, some have begun to argue that it’s time to replace the three Rs themselves. “It was an important advance in animal research ethics, but it’s no longer enough,” Tom Beauchamp told attendees last week at a lab animal conference.

Science talks with two experts in animal ethics who want to go beyond the three Rs.

Nobody can predict what will happen in the future, but there are a few who are trying to help make sense of what is coming. Known as futurists, these “future” experts study the future and make predictions based on current trends. Here are a few futurist podcasts to help you make sense of where we are headed.

Future Thinkers

Created by Mike Gilliland and Euvie Ivanova, this podcast is focused on the evolution of society, technology and consciousness. Episodes include interviews with company founders, psychologists and philosophers. Recent episodes include “James Ehrlich — Regenerative Villages,” “Donald Hoffman — Do We See Reality As It Is?” and “Jamie Wheal Q&A.”

NASA combined 10 years of solar observations into a single, gorgeous time-lapse video.

Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk called Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos “a copy cat” on Twitter after the online retailer announced it is acquiring self-driving startup Zoox Inc.

.@JeffBezos is a copy 🐈 haha

Amazon acquires self-driving start-up Zoox for over $1.2bn https://t.co/76W80p2RTJ— Financial Times (@FT) June 26, 2020

Continue reading “Elon Musk calls Jeff Bezos a copy cat after Amazon buys self-driving startup” »

The microchips can be used as a key fob, a time card, a credit account for the cafeteria or vending machines, or even as a way for employers to track employee productivity.

“With the way technology has increased over the years and as it continues to grow, it’s important Michigan job providers balance the interests of the company with their employees’ expectations of privacy,” said the bill’s sponsor Michigan State Rep. Bronna Kahle. “While these miniature devices are on the rise, so are the calls of workers to have their privacy protected.”

The bill will be introduced to the State Senate where, if it passes, Governor Gretchen Whitmer will be able to sign the legislation into Michigan law.

Continue reading “Michigan House passes bill to make employee microchips voluntary” »

In wartime, Chinese submarines might slip through the Sunda Strait or Lombok Strait. These pass between the chain of Indonesian that separate the Pacific and Indian Oceans. One advantage over the Malacca Strait, which runs past Singapore, is that it would deliver the submarines to the deep water of the eastern Indian Ocean. From there they could take less obvious routes to their targets.

The Sunda Strait would be the shortest route, but it is very shallow at its eastern end so the deeper Lombok Strait might be preferred. There a submerged passage is likely considered feasible to the Chinese Navy.

Once through into the Indian Ocean, the submarines could get rearmed or resupplied without having to return to China. The Chinese Navy has already built a base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. Even if the submarines themselves did not call in to the port, which would be closely monitored, vessels could operate from there to carry out at-sea replenishment.