Headlines this week - Jun 19, 2022
Tech Platforms in crisis? Is "conscious AI" coming? The crypto collapse
The post-pandemic economy
People go back to the shops, and e-commerce decelerates…
Pandemic dividend fades into a distant memory for ecommerce - Online shoppers have been more than happy to get back to the stores (FT)
… but work-from-home still looks quite resilient, and may be here to stay
Japan’s NTT to Make Home Primary Work Place in Rule Change: NHK (Bloomberg)
Platform trends
Big Tech suddenly looking like a mature industry
Tech job cuts: flawed revenue model is albatross around sector’s neck - Soaring operating costs have led to significant redundancies because expected economies of scale proved illusory (FT)
Amazon in crisis? Did they over-invest during the pandemic? Or is this a long-term bet?
Andy Jassy’s First Year at Amazon: Undoing Bezos-Led Overexpansion - Amid one of the worst stretches for financial performance in Amazon’s history, the new CEO is working to cut back the excesses of an e-commerce operation the company expanded at breakneck pace during much of the Covid-19 pandemic (WSJ)
Amazon Could Use a Little Less Help From Its Friends - Wall Street still heavily favors the battered stock, but analyst projections look high considering its turnaround effort (WSJ)
Some “platform startups” (with massive marketing costs) are revealing their lack of scalability. Basic economics still work
Farewell to the servant economy - ‘On-demand’ services might have made people feel wealthy, but now the model is in jeopardy (FT)
TikTok may have a competitive weakness, after all
YouTube Says It Is Gaining on TikTok in Short-Video Race - Alphabet’s Google discloses Shorts monthly viewership for first time amid heightened competition from TikTok and Instagram Reels (WSJ)
Social apps under pressure for kids’ mental health risks. Instagram releases new controls
No Instagram After Bedtime: Meta’s New Parental Controls - For parents who wish Instagram had a closing time, the app’s parental controls now let them set off-limits hours for their teens. Supervision for Quest VR headsets is also here (WSJ)
Apple on the way to become a content champion, including sport broadcast rights
Apple, Major League Soccer Strike 10-Year Streaming Deal for All MLS Games - Deal underscores iPhone maker’s streaming ambitions and battle for sports programming (WSJ)
Digital building blocks
Artificial Intelligence
A big debate about “Conscious AI”, triggered by Google’s new toy (“LaMDA”)
Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person - Tech company dismisses the employee’s claims about its LaMDA artificial-intelligence chatbot technology (WSJ)(FT)
Five Things Google’s AI Bot Wrote That Convinced Engineer It Was Sentient (Bloomberg)
Blake Lemoine Says Google's LaMDA AI Faces 'Bigotry' - In an interview with WIRED, the engineer and priest elaborated on his belief that the program is a person—and not Google's property (Steven Levy @Wired)
Is AI conscious? Maybe the real problem is that most of us wouldn’t be able to tell…
What my robot mop taught me about the future of artificial intelligence - As the ‘sentience’ debate over Google’s AI shows, we can’t decide whether robots are too clever or too stupid (Gillian Tett @FT)
The actual risk today is not so much “hostility from super intelligent systems”, but a set of more basic issues
Google Debate Over ‘Sentient’ Bots Overshadows Deeper AI Issues - Researchers point out that artificial intelligence still has human shortcomings like bias (Bloomberg)
Don’t worry about AI sentience. Do worry about what the machines are doing - The fuss around Google’s LaMDA obscures glaring flaws which can lead to abuse (FT)
Connectivity
Telecom regulators struggling to make high speed broadband massive
Why Rural Americans Keep Waiting for Fast Internet, Despite Billions Spent - Flaws in government programs have left some residents behind (WSJ)
Logistics
Amazon (and others) promised us drone deliveries, and now we’re disappointed
Where Are the Delivery Drones? - The technology is hard and the economics of mass deliveries may never make sense (NYTimes)
Cloud
The Chinese government is altering the competitive dynamics in the local Cloud industry
Alibaba and Tencent’s darkening clouds - Chinese tech giants lag behind pace of US rivals as Beijing favours state vendors (FT)
Tech finance trends
M&A / Deals
Elon Musk’s offer for Twitter as a double-edged opportunity for hedge funds
Musk’s $44bn Twitter deal is an M&A arb dream — or nightmare - Most arbs seem to think that discretion is the better part of valour (FT)
Crypto
Crypto is falling. And regulators now seem determined to change the industry forever
After a Crazy Week in Crypto, Investors Wonder What’s Next - ‘It sucks right now’: Crypto prices tumbled and companies announced layoffs (WSJ)
Regulation Lies in Bitcoin’s Future, Clouding Its Current Value - Crypto’s latest downturn may be more serious than past ones as Washington signals it intends to become more involved (WSJ)
Crypto’s turbulence teaches hard, but not new, lessons - Regulating stablecoins should be a first step to taming a borderless industry (FT)
Themes for the future
Is remote collaboration the key to unlock a new productivity wave? A really optimistic view…
How to escape innovation’s Great Stagnation - Ideas have been getting more expensive to find, but accelerating remote collaboration will boost productivity (FT)
Metaverse
After Facebook / Meta, other Big Tech companies look at the Metaverse as a new wave of growth (but this will probably take time…)
Tech Giants Start Getting Real on Augmented Reality - Companies rethink AR hardware—HoloLens anyone?—as software, games suggest more direct path to profits (WSJ)
Electric Vehicles
Traditional car companies are talking about a radically different industry in just a few years…
What does the future of the car look like? - In an interview at the FT’s Future of the Car summit, Volvo Cars’ CEO Jim Rowan explained how the next wave of technology will transform personal mobility (FT)
… but this won’t be possible unless the supporting infrastructure is there. And deployments are not going too fast
Biden Plan for EV Chargers on Highways Meets Skepticism in Rural West - The U.S. wants fast EV chargers on the interstate, but Colorado, New Mexico and other states with miles of remote highway say putting chargers everywhere doesn’t make sense (WSJ)
Autonomous Vehicles
Autonomous trucks, working exclusively on long-distance routes may be the “low hanging fruit” for the industry
Self-Driving Big Rigs Are Coming. Is America Ready? - Autonomous trucks that mostly stick to highways could make sense, both technologically and economically, in ways robotaxis have not. The goal is better-than-human, but not perfect, autonomous driving; jobs are probably on the line (Christopher Mims @WSJ)
The model for “robotaxis” seems much less clear, even if initiatives keep happening
The peculiar economics of autonomous cabs - A reality check for Lyft’s over-ambitious, ever-decreasing, ETA-free plans for robot taxis (FT)
Cruise’s San Francisco robotaxis seize initiative in race for autonomy - GM-backed start-up wins approval to charge customers and bring in the driverless age (FT)
Space
This is exciting (if we do believe it…) Will there be a “Three-Body Problem” effect?
China Says It May Have Detected Signals From Alien Civilizations (Bloomberg)
Energy
Carbon capture could be a much-needed complement to renewables, but it needs political support
Can Carbon Capture Be Part of the Climate Solution? - Jennifer Wilcox, who has a leading role in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, says yes, though there are significant challenges (NYTimes)
Biotechnology
After COVID, BioNTech is fully focused on cancer (much more challenging)
What BioNTech did next: the plan for a revolution in cancer care - The German company is ploughing Covid vaccine profits into oncology but its technology is still largely unproven (FT)
The politics of the digital economy
Antitrust
Policy (almost everywhere) seen as a key component in current Big Tech deceleration
The Hands-Off Tech Era Is Over - More government intervention will slow tech down. Is that good or bad? (NYTimes)
Facebook’s Greater Threat Is the Law, Not Lawsuits - A flurry of legal challenges in the US won’t fundamentally change the company in the same way that new European laws will (Bloomberg)
Apple faces German antitrust probe over app tracking rules - Federal Cartel Office raises concerns that company’s restrictions could harm competition (FT)
Safety / Privacy
Europe: The debate on a potential update of GDPR
EU’s Once-Hyped Privacy Law Faces ‘Crunch Time’ for Revamp Commissioner calls for change to data protection enforcement. Speech comes as tensions over GDPR enforcement built up (Bloomberg)
Social Apps starting to adapt to new online safety rules in Europe…
Facebook, Twitter Agree to New European Rules on Online Posts - EU’s new code of practice on disinformation aims to prevent advertising from appearing alongside posts deemed to be intentionally false or misleading (WSJ)
… and concerns on these issues keep growing
The high price society pays for social media - Does social media cause depression and anxiety? (FT)
Are anonymous accounts a good thing, after all?
In Defense of Online Anonymity - Lack of transparency on the internet may help fuel toxic dialogue, but it also encourages honest feedback and protects people against discrimination (WSJ)
The Tech Cold War
Cybersecurity skills / tools as a key geo-strategic asset
U.S., EU Plan Joint Foreign Aid for Cybersecurity to Counter China - Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows the importance of supporting countries vulnerable to nation-state cyberattacks, officials say (WSJ)