Month: August 2020

The Impact of AI on Workspaces

The Impact of AI on Workspaces

Big buildings move slowly It is a truth universally acknowledged that artificial intelligence will change everything. In the next few decades, the world will become intelligible, and in many ways, intelligent. But insiders suggest that the world of big office real estate will get there more slowly - at least in the world’s major cities. The real estate industry in London, New York, Hong Kong and other world cities moves in cycles of 10 or 15 years. This is the period of the lease. After a tense renewal negotiation, and perhaps a big row, landlord and tenant are generally happy...
The Impact of AI on Journalism

The Impact of AI on Journalism

Automated writing Back in 2014, the Los Angeles Times published a report about an earthquake three minutes after it happened. This feat was possible because a staffer had developed a bot (a software robot) called Quakebot to write automated articles based on data generated by the US Geological Survey. Today, AIs write hundreds of thousands of the articles that are published by mainstream media outlets every week. At first, most of the Natural Language Generation (NLG) tools producing these articles were provided by software companies like Narrative Science. Today, many media organisations have developed in-house versions. The BBC has Juicer,...
Book review: “The Price Of Tomorrow” by Jeff Booth

Book review: “The Price Of Tomorrow” by Jeff Booth

Two big themes Jeff Booth is a successful Canadian entrepreneur. His book “The Price of Tomorrow” is a warning about two dangerous trends which he thinks are not receiving enough attention. The first is that technology and price deflation will cause lasting widespread unemployment. The second is that the global economy is underpinned by an unstable mountain of debt. These are obviously serious concerns, and at least on technological unemployment I think he is largely correct – particularly with regard to his proposed solution. Successful entrepreneur In 1999, Booth co-founded BuildDirect, a technology company designed to simplify the building industry....
The Impact Of AI On Call Centres

The Impact Of AI On Call Centres

The pandemic and business continuity planning The pandemic is a severe stress test for the business continuity plans of global corporations. The operators of call centres are playing an important role in meeting that challenge, and it has not been easy. In normal times, if an earthquake hits Bangalore, you can switch capacity to your call centre in Manila. But what do you do when all the call centres around the world that serve your customers are hit – all at the same time? The big outsourcing call centre companies which serve corporate giants have hundreds of thousands of employees,...