1 Tech disruption pain to last long, says Jack Ma
(Straits Times) Alibaba Group Holding chairman Jack Ma said society should
prepare for decades of pain as the Internet disrupts the economy. The world
must change education systems and establish how to work with robots to help
soften the blow caused by automation and the Internet economy, Ma said.
"In the next 30 years, the world will see much
more pain than happiness," Ma said of job disruptions caused by the
Internet. "Social conflicts in the next three decades will have an impact
on all sorts of industries and walks of life."
Ma made the comments as Alibaba, China's largest
e-commerce operator, spends billions of dollars to move into new businesses
from film production and video streaming to cloud computing. Ma, 52, also hit
out at the traditional banking industry, saying that lending must be available
to more members of society.
Alibaba shares have outperformed this year on
expectations it can withstand efforts by rivals such as Tencent Holdings Ltd.
to capture digital ad spending and muscle in on its turf. The company is moving
into untapped rural markets and investing in new sources of income, such as
online media and cloud computing - one of its fastest-growing businesses in
2016.
Ma also called for traditional industries to stop
complaining about the Internet's effects on the economy. He said Alibaba critics
ignore that Taobao has created millions of jobs. He also warned that longer
lifespans and better artificial intelligence were likely to lead to both aging
labor forces and fewer jobs.
2 'We are a long way from the boom time of 2007' (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) The IMF meeting of the past few days was
supposed to be about how the global economy has at last emerged into the light
from its long dark tunnel. Christine Lagarde, the fund’s managing director,
radiated optimism.
For a change growth forecasts were revised up. The
impression was given that everything is back under control. The reality is
somewhat different. There will be no return to the world as it was in the
spring of 2007 for many years, if ever. It was a moment when many trends
peaked.
Firstly, it represented peak America. The years
leading up to 2007 had been dominated by a particular view of the world. Some
called it the Washington consensus. Some called it the advent of a unipolar
world, in which the US emerged victorious after its cold war struggle with the
Soviet Union. Francis Fukuyama called it the end of history.
The US remains an economic and military superpower,
but it was the Chinese and not the American economy that hauled the world out
of recession in 2008-09. American attempts to prevent China setting up an Asian
infrastructure bank failed. When Donald Trump wanted to get tough with North
Korea he had to drop plans to brand China a currency manipulator. The period
between 1990 and 2007 when the US was unchallenged is over.
Secondly, 2007 was peak growth. It is now apparent
that the period of rapid expansion in the early 2000s was only possible because
the financial system was out of control and households were taking on record
amounts of debt.
Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist and head of
emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, noted “In 2007, at
the peak of the pre-crisis boom, the economies of 65 countries grew at annual
rates of 7% or more. Today, just six economies are growing at that rate, and
most of those are in small countries such as Côte d’Ivoire and Laos.”
Thirdly, the sub-prime crisis marked peak
globalisation. From that moment, there was never any realistic chance of
concluding the multilateral trade talks begun in Doha in 2001. Moreover, while
publicly opposing protectionism, rich and poor countries alike have been
putting up barriers to trade.
But it is not just trade. Free movement of capital
was a key component of globalisation in the 1990s and early 2000s, but these
peaked at the time of the recession and have fallen back sharply as a
percentage of world GDP.
3 Google home assistant recognizes voices (San
Francisco Chronicle) Google's voice-activated assistant can now recognize who's
talking to it on Google's Home speaker. An update enables Home's built-in
assistant to learn the different voices of up to six people, although they
can't all be talking to the internet-connected speaker at the same time.
Distinguishing voices will allow Home to be more
personal in some of its responses, depending on who triggers the assistant with
the phrase, "OK Google" or "Hey Google."
For instance, once Home is trained to recognize a
user named Joe, the assistant will automatically be able to tell him what
traffic is like on his commute, list events on his daily calendar or even play
his favorite songs. Then another user named Jane could get similar information
from Home, but customized for her.
The ability to distinguish voices may help Home
siphon sales from Amazon.com's Echo, a competing product that features its own
voice-activated assistant, Alexa. The Echo doesn't yet recognize different
voices. Instead, it has a feature that allows Alexa to switch to a different
account when told to do so. The Echo can only handle two personal accounts.
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