Capitalogix

The A.I. Revolution: Humans Need Not Apply?

We're in the midst of a revolution, and no, I don't mean a political one. 

Artificial Intelligence has been around since the 1950's.  But, we are at an inflection point.  It is no longer an "if" ... it is a "when".  And the answer is probably "Now!"

AI technologies are expanding into broad and diverse markets.

Artificial Intelligence is no longer seen as a massive R&D effort – it is becoming a core competency.

Here is a chart showing  AI adoption in various industries. (replace image with non-blurry one)

 

McKinsey Global Institute via Vox

While AI is promising on many fronts, this "revolution" elicits fear from many.

For example, Elon Musk told the National Governors Association that the risks posed by A.I. are so great that it needs to be proactively regulated before it's too late. 

What about you?  Are you afraid of Skynet turning on, becoming self-aware and setting out to destroy the human race.? Or, are you looking to benefit from the new capabilities and possibilities AI creates for us?

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - September 17th, 2017

Hillary is now on a book tour for her new book "What Happened" ... I haven't read it, but Politifact has. 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Hackers Have Already Started to Weaponize Artificial Intelligence. (Gizmodo)
• Your Future Sex Robot Could Be Hacked and Programmed to Murder You. (BGR)
• You Can Actually Be Allergic to Exercise. (Popular Science)
• Multivitamins a Waste of Money and Just Create 'Very Expensive Urine'. (TheGuardian)
• iPhone X Impressions: 'Striking' Display and 'Sensational-Looking' Design Make High Price Worth It. (MacRumors)

Trading Links:

• In China's Hinterlands, Workers Mine Bitcoin for a Digital Fortune. (New York Times)
• Janet Yellen Has Reached Breakfast-With-The-President's-Daughter Levels of Job Insecurity. (DealBreaker)
• Finance: How It Made Civilization Possible. (CFAInstitute)
• The Blockchain Will Do to Banks and Law Firms What the Internet Did to Media. (HBR)
• 16 Quotes from Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's Right-Hand Man. (BInsider)

An Elegant Use of Brute Force in Photography

Photographers do some crazy things to get the perfect shot.   

Nevertheless, this photographer's approach to getting water droplets behind his model was innovative (and pretty funny).

I call it "an elegant use of brute force."

 

via PetaPixel

It's hard to argue with results ... and sometimes the answer doesn't have to be creative (it just has to work).

It's the same with modern computing.  We can perform better and faster than ever before, and a lot of it is because of prettier code, and smarter tools, and more skilled employees.  But, sometimes, what it takes is an elegant use of brute force!

Onwards.

Cyber Security: A Human Weakness

Last year, I shared an e-mail my son sent me about security.

With the Equifax breach, I was reminded of something else he told me. 

"It's not whether or not you've been hacked ... because you have ... it's whether you've been targeted."

As data becomes more valuable, and IP more coveted, security concerns grow, but the biggest security concern isn't where you would expect it to be. 

When people think of hacking they often think of a Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attack or the media representation of people breaking into your system in a heist.

In reality, the greatest weakness is people, it's you ... the user.  It's the user that turns off automatic patch updating.  It's the user that uses thumb drives.  It's the user that reuses the same passwords.

 

via xkcd

Whether it's malicious or unintentional, humans are often the biggest security weakness. 

As proof, watch the first few minutes of the video below to watch a social engineer find out this man's email and gain access to his cell phone account. She locks him out of his account at the same time.

I started the video at the interesting part so you don't have to search for it.

 

 

As for passwords ... I recommend not knowing them.  You can't disclose what you don't know.  Consequently, I recommend a password manager like LastPass or 1Password.

How many cyber security measures you take comes down to two simple questions ... First, how much pain and hassle are you willing to deal with to protect your data? And, second, how much pain is a hacker willing to go through to get to your data?

It doesn't make sense to put all your data in a lockbox computer that never connects to a network ... nevertheless, it might be worth it to go to that extreme for pieces of your data.

Think about what the data is worth to you, or someone else, and protect it accordingly.

What Do You Need To Know About Equifax's 143 Million Consumer Hack?

You probably heard that one of the biggest credit-reporting bureaus got hacked recently.  It was pretty bad.

Equifax, TransUnion and Experian are the big three providers of credit scores (and other data, including: social security numbers, full names, addresses, birth dates, and even drivers licenses and credit card numbers for some) to potential lenders and consumers. 

Hackers have had access to this information between May and July, and it's taken five weeks for the company to disclose the breach.

Equifax claims that they responded immediately, but three Equifax executives sold shares of their company before they publically announced the breach on Thursday.

Since the breach became public, Equifax's (EFX) stock is down over 13 percent.

 

via MarketWatch

How is Equifax responding to the risk? 

Equifax has made public statements that the leak has been fixed ... but that does not protect or remedy the data that already leaked. 

As a result of the breach, Equifax created a website for you to determine if you've been affected.

Regardless of whether or not you were affected, they are offering "Trusted ID Premier" monitoring free for a year as an extra layer of protection.  But, beware, TechCrunch has pointed out that agreeing to their ToS seems to waive your right to sue Equifax.

Situations like this are reminders to pay even more attention to your own online security.

Related articles

Fraud Expert Offers Advice In Wake Of Equifax Breach

ScamSafe: Equifax Data Breach - 3 Steps To Protect Yourself

Swarm Intelligence: The Power of Ants in Hurricane Harvey

Houston, Texas is currently recovering from Hurricane Harvey (which dropped an average of 30 inches of rain, and up to 51.88 inches in Cedar Bayou). 

To put it in perspective, if they weren't evacuating, residents were told to write their name and social security numbers in sharpie on their arms. 

Nature is the great equalizer, and in a disaster like this you the fight is for survival and escape ... and not just by humans. 

Check out this "raft" of ants banding together to survive the storm.

 

NBCNews via Youtube

An ant is pretty cool. It can lift more than 50 times its weight and handle pressures up to 5000 times its weight. 

But, what makes ants interesting is what they do when there's a colony (or swarm) of them. 

An ant can only be "so" smart - their heads are tiny - but a colony of ants is a superorganism whose collective intelligence is much greater than the sum of its parts. 

Ants release pheromones from glands all over their bodies that can tell their colony an array of things. It can tell them how many ants they need to accomplish a task, it can tell them where there's food or danger, and it can even be used to relocate their whole colony to a new geography.

Clearly, it can also be used to communicate that the best way to survive danger is to create a mass of each other and allow the most possible to survive ... there's no fear or greed, only what's best for the colony. 

In a very real sense, this is where technology and trading are starting to move.  I say starting, but swarm intelligence has been an area of research in technology since the late 80's.

There are many simple applications of swarm intelligence in creating CGI crowds, telecommunication networks and more, but technological advances are drastically increasing the power and uses of swarms. 

Using the communication of various systems in order to gain real-time data from their actions and interactions will create hidden opportunities that we couldn't capitalize on previously.

We're in a golden age of innovation ... How cool is that?

 

 

NFL - Boom or Bust

Are you ready for some Football?

This chart may explain why my foreign friends prefer a different form of "football" ... It shows how many Super Bowl Championships each region has.

 

 

The regular season is about to start, and the buzz is building ... but, not all of it is good. 

Violence ... drugs ... concussions ... There has been a lot of bad press surrounding the NFL lately.

The Cowboys, alone, have somewhere between  4 to 7 players (depending on appeals) subject to miss games due to league suspensions for misconduct.  

 

The Teflon League:  NFL Revenues and Viewership Are Up.

 

Currently, the NFL is the 11th most important private company in the USA according to Fortune, and has the highest revenue of any sports league worldwide. 

via howmuch

While critics contend that something needs to be done about the various issues surrounding the NFL, it's hard to conclude that those issues affect viewership.  The NFL currently dominates attendance per game, viewership, and revenue.

In an experience economy, the NFL puts out an extraordinary product.

Long term may prove to be a different story, however.  Each year there are less high-school football players and more competition. 

I guess we'll see.

Regardless ... "How About Them Cowboys!"

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - August 20th, 2017

Change is the only constant.

 

  

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• AI Beats the World's Best Gamers after Just Two Weeks of Learning. (NewAtlas)
• Russia-linked Hackers Targeted Hotel Guests across Europe: Security Firm. (Reuters)
• One Year after Rio: What's Left behind after the Flame Goes Out. (ESPN)
• Humans and Robots are on the Cusp of a Sexual Intimacy We May Never Reverse. (Quartz)
• Elon Musk Just Shared His 4-Step Plan for Mars - Colonists Should Be "Prepared to Die". (ScienceAlert)

 

Trading Links:

• Ray Dalio Urges Investors to Hedge Against Possible North Korea War. (FN)
• There Has Never, Ever, Been this Many Trades Betting on VIX. (ZH)
• Amazon Could Start Selling Event Tickets in the U.S. (TechCrunch)
• South Korea Introduces World's First Robot Tax. (ZeroHedge)
• The Number of Cash Payments Dipped 11 Per Cent Last Year - But It's Still the Most Used Payment Method. (CityAM)

Who Can You Trust? Ranking Your News Sources

Fake news this ... phony sources that ...

It is harder than ever to know what to trust.

"Noise Reduction" is important in this volatile geo-political climate.

The chart, below,  lists the least and most trusted news sources.

 

via RJI

As someone who reads a lot, this was interesting.

As a side note,  I was a little surprised to see the "Internet" on the list as source itself.  Darwin would be somewhat comforted to see that people don't trust everything they see on the internet. 

The following chart is a bit outdated (it's from 2014), but it's a good study with diverse leanings.  It presents the trust levels of various news sources by ideological group.   

 

via Journalism

Which of your news sources do you follow? Were they as trusted as you expected?

Another question worth asking yourself is "Am I getting an idea of what the other side is thinking?"  In trading, I always want to understand what the other side sees.

Finally, let me know if there are resources you think I should look at.  

You are either growing or dying.

Tick ... Tock ... The Doomsday Clock Is Ticking

With North Korea flexing their nuclear muscles and threatening to strike Guam, and Donald Trump threatening to unleash "Fire and Fury" in retaliation, alarm towards the possibility of military conflict becomes more prevalent.

Could there be a second Cold War? Or, is there really a chance someone pushes the button?

Regardless, it's just another green tick mark on the doomsday clock according to the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" who post a yearly update to our doomsday clock (and have for 70 years). 

The Doomsday Clock is a globally-recognized model of our planet's health and safety - but who knew it was an actual thing based off of a range of factors?

Now - they want you to donate, and so there's a level of fearmongering, but they do provide some solid data on nuclear stockpiles, global temperature differences and more.

 

via The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

 

You can see their full article on this year's prediction here.

And if you're actually worried about North Korea - even if they now have the ability to hit the U.S., I think we need to be asking if they have a real desire to do so?

North Korea thrives off of the status quo - keeping people placated with propaganda and love for their glorious leader. 

Despite how it may seem sometimes - It's unlikely Kim Jong Un is trying to start a war with America. It just isn't smart.

But, we know that emotion is not often based on logic. 

Which brings us to the Markets.  For the first time ever, the S&P 500 Index has moved less than 0.3% for 13 consecutive days. 

Meaning, despite all the fervor in the media, and fear/elation surrounding the presidency, not much is happening.

Traders are essentially paralyzed with indecision ... a Cold War of sorts  -- or the calm before the storm?

Related articles

Trump just said the scariest thing of his presidency and this has gotten totally out of control

Report: North Korea is Seriously Considering Attacking Guam, Where 6,000 US Troops Are Stationed

Guam's residents 'unnerved' as island wakes up to North Korea's threats