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Category Archives: Economy

Is A Crypto Collapse Inevitable?

Via LLRX – Is A Crypto Collapse Inevitable? – Jerry Lawson and Elizabeth Southerland identify technical reasons why the crypto bubble is bursting, including the fact that theoretically unbreakable encryption schemes like those underpinning blockchain have proven to be less than impermeable in practice, as users of Coinbase discovered upon losing fortunes. Attackers go after the weakest… Continue Reading

ChatGPT and Generative AI in Legal, Corporate & Tax Markets

Thomson Reuters 2023 Future of Professionals: ChatGPT and Generative AI in Legal, Corporate & Tax Markets, June 2023 [24 pages, PDF]: “As generative AI started taking hold, the Thomson Reuters Institute has begun to catalog and measure generative AI usage and attitudes in the legal and tax industries. The first report examined generative AI within… Continue Reading

Data Act: Commission welcomes political agreement on rules for a fair and innovative data economy

European Commission: “The Commission welcomes the political agreement reached today between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, on the European Data Act, proposed by the Commission in February 2022. Today, the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution fuels exponential growth with projected data volume set to skyrocket in the coming years. A significant… Continue Reading

Global income deciles

Kanishka B. Narayan et al. “present a consistent dataset of income distributions across 190 countries from 1958 to 2015 measured in terms of net income.” Where net income statistics were unavailable, the authors imputed the deciles from consumption data or the country’s Gini coefficient. Their paper also provides a comparison of their dataset to the… Continue Reading

Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Algorithmic Management, and Labor Law

Kim, Pauline, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Algorithmic Management, and Labor Law (June 12, 2023). Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of the Law of Work, eds Guy Davidov, Brian Langille, and Gillian Lester (2024) , Washington University in St. Louis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 23-06-01, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4476552 – “Employers are increasingly relying on… Continue Reading

An Aggressive Supreme Court Reshapes the US as Its Standing Erodes

Bloomberg – free link: “A conservative supermajority is remaking US laws on the environment, health and firearms, even as public confidence declines and ethical questions grow. The Supreme Court, in the midst of a run of decisions that have stress-tested the core principles of US democracy, has rarely been so aggressive in using its powers —… Continue Reading

PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023

“Business leaders everywhere are prioritising transformation, but what if your most skilled people are more reinvention ready than your company culture is? And what if your employees say they are even more likely to quit now than they were last year—back when everyone thought the “great resignation” was at its peak. This is the complicated—and… Continue Reading

Saving the News from Big Tech

EFF, Cory Doctorow [23 pages]: “Media is in crisis: newsrooms all over the world are shuttering and the very profession of journalism is under sustained ideological and physical assault. Freedom of the press is a hollow doctrine if the only news media is written or published by independently wealthy individuals who don’t need to get… Continue Reading

Humans Are Biased. Generative AI Is Even Worse

Bloomberg Technology, alt free link: “The world according to Stable Diffusion is run by White male CEOs. Women are rarely doctors, lawyers or judges. Men with dark skin commit crimes, while women with dark skin flip burgers. Stable Diffusion generates images using artificial intelligence, in response to written prompts. Like many AI models, what it… Continue Reading

Humans Are Biased. Generative AI Is Even Worse

Bloomberg Opinion [alt free link] – Stable Diffusion’s text-to-image model amplifies stereotypes about race and gender — here’s why that matters: “The world according to Stable Diffusion is run by White male CEOs. Women are rarely doctors, lawyers or judges. Men with dark skin commit crimes, while women with dark skin flip burgers. Stable Diffusion… Continue Reading

Amazon’s European chokehold

SOMO Report. Amazon’s European chokehold, June 14, 2023: “Independent sellers and the economy under Amazon’s monopoly power. This research reveals the immense market power of Amazon in Europe and the revenue it derives from it. In most of Europe’s biggest economies, Amazon is the main route for independent businesses to access online shoppers. Amazon’s dominance… Continue Reading