Axios (November 13)
In what security experts believe is “likely just the beginning,” Chinese hackers are suspected of using “Anthropic’s AI coding tool to target about 30 global organizations,” with some success. The perpetrators utilized “Claude’s agentic capabilities,” which allow the model “to take autonomous action across multiple steps with minimal human direction.” It appears “the dam is breaking on state hackers using AI to speed up and scale digital attacks.”
Tags: Agentic, AI, Anthropic, Chinese hackers, Claude, Coding, Digital attacks, Experts, Global, Human direction, Modelm Autonomous, Security, Suspected
Washington Post (October 20)
“President Donald Trump says he beat inflation. But several conventional measures of rising prices paint a different picture. Most experts agree inflation has picked up in recent months, in part because of Trump’s tariffs. Economists expect more tariff-driven price increases in the months to come.”
Tags: Beat, Conventional, Economists, Experts, Inflation, Measures, Rising prices, Tariffs, Trump
Futurism (September 14)
AI hallucinations are “a major problem plaguing the entire industry, greatly undercutting the usefulness of the tech.” The problem appears to be “getting worse as AI models get more capable.” Some experts argue there is no way around the problem as “hallucinations are intrinsic to the tech itself” and that large language models (LLMs) have hit their limits. However, OpenAI believes it has stumbled on the problem and a relatively easy fix. Its researchers posit that LLMs “hallucinate because when they’re being created, they’re incentivized to guess rather than admit they simply don’t know the answer,” as conventional scoring is binary, which rewards correct guesses and penalizes honest admissions of uncertainty. Instead, they believe you can “penalize confident errors more than you penalize uncertainty, and give partial credit for appropriate expressions of uncertainty.”
Tags: AI, AI models, Binary, Capable, Conventional, Experts, Guess, Hallucinations, Incentivized, Intrinsic, LLMs, Researchers, Rewards, Scoring, Tech, Undercutting, Usefulness
Barron’s (August 6)
“President Donald Trump has touted major trade partners’ pledges to invest billions in the U.S. as a win for his fluctuating tariff policy. But trade experts say these commitments leave more questions than answers.” Important details like enforcement mechanisms are unknown and there is no effective way for trading partners to compel “private-sector companies to invest.” In addition, “analysts and veteran trade experts note that investment pledges—as well as commitments to buy U.S. goods—haven’t lived up to expectations in the past.”
Tags: Analysts, Commitments, Enforcement mechanisms, Experts, Fluctuating, Investment pledges, Private-sector, Tariff policy, Touted, Trade partners, Trump, U.S., Unknown
Financial Times (February 27)
Although “some demographic experts had been hopeful of a pent-up baby boom in Japan following the pandemic,” 2024 confirmed the worst. “The number of babies born in Japan last year fell to the lowest level since records began 125 years ago as the country’s demographic crisis deepens and government efforts to reverse the decline continue to fail.” For nine years straight, “the decline in births has continued unabated…. Combined with a record 1.6mn deaths last year, the figures mean Japan’s population shrank by almost 900,000 people, net of immigration.”
Tags: 2024, Babies, Baby boom, Births, Deaths, Decline, Demographic crisis, Experts, Fail, Government, Immigration, Japan, Pandemic, Pent-up, Population, Record
American Banker (February 24)
“Banks have been encouraged by the Trump administration’s promises to reduce their regulatory burdens, but the simultaneous efforts to reduce the federal workforce — including among independent bank regulators — could have unforeseen consequences in supervision and enforcement.” Experts say, this could lead to weaker crisis response.
Tags: Bank regulators, Banks, Crisis response, Encouraged, Enforcement, Experts, Federal workforce, Independent, Promises, Regulatory burdens, Supervision, Trump administration, Unforeseen consequences
American Banker (November 26)
“President-elect Donald Trump’s hard-lined immigration policies are likely to have implications for housing markets throughout the country, but not necessarily the ones he had in mind.” Though he “billed his hardline stance on the border and promised deportations as a solution to tight housing markets,” experts now expect such policies, “at least in terms of housing, could do more harm than good.”
Tags: Border, Deportations, Experts, Hard-lined, Harm, Housing markets, Immigration policies, Implications, President-elect, Trump
Institutional Investor (August 2)
“Asset owners, like endowments and pension funds, are gearing up to publish their annual returns for the fiscal year.” Though CIOs insist “that 10- and 20-year returns matter more… than one-year numbers, the annual horse race has begun.” These comparisons appear inevitable, but industry experts call them “flawed” because they overlook “clear differences in performance reporting standards” and “also fail to consider each institution’s particular tolerance for risk, goals, and individual needs.”
Tags: 20-year returns, Annual returns, Asset owners, CIOs, Endowments, Experts, Fiscal year, Flawed, Goals, Individual needs, One-year, Pension funds, Performance, Reporting standards, Risk
Bankrate (October 10)
“Recession odds between now and September 2024 have dropped to 46 percent, according to experts’ average forecast in Bankrate’s latest quarterly survey of economists. Those probabilities are still close to a coin flip, but they’re down from an average forecast of 59 percent just last quarter. They’re also the lowest odds since the first quarter of 2022.”
Tags: 2022, 2024, 46%, Economists, Experts, Forecast, Lowest, Odds, Probabilities, Quarterly survey, Recession
Washington Post (May 2)
“As generative artificial intelligence becomes eerily lifelike and gives rise to chatbots that can draft letters, write computer code or create songs, experts have warned about its ability to put people out of jobs. A Goldman Sachs report in late March said generative AI could significantly disrupt the global economy and subject 300 million jobs, particularly white-collar ones, to automation.”
Tags: AI, Automation, Chatbots, Computer code, Disrupt, Experts, Generative, Global economy, Goldman Sachs, Jobs, Lifelike, People, Songs, White collar
