Snippings

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Bots are better and significantly faster than humans at cracking Captcha tests, according to a comprehensive new study that inspected the security system deployed in over 100 popular websites.

From Bots are better than humans at cracking ‘Are you a robot?’ Captcha tests, study finds | The Independent.

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In Britain, there is still no universally accepted way for users to prove their identity online. Whilst in the EU, the countdown to a true digital ID has already begun, with a universal Digital ID Wallet which operates across all member states expected to go live in 2024.

From A universal digital identity for the UK: Myth or soon-to-be reality?.

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Open Banking offers a potential solution in which ID verification process and KYC due diligence delivered by banks becomes truly portable and enables a step change in providers’ ability to offer genuinely frictionless onboarding.

Unfortunately, we’ve yet to see the delivery of ID verification services that unlock the potential of Open Banking.

From A universal digital identity for the UK: Myth or soon-to-be reality?.

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Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

From Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality by Fabrizio Dell’Acqua, Edward McFowland, Ethan R. Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon, Karim R. Lakhani :: SSRN.

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Consultants across the skills distribution benefited significantly from having AI augmentation, with those below the average performance threshold increasing by 43% and those above increasing by 17% compared to their own scores. For a task selected to be outside the frontier, however, consultants using AI were 19 percentage points less likely to produce correct solutions compared to those without AI. 

As I pointed out before, ChatGPT is a bullshitter. If you are a good consultant and know what the answer to a client’s problem is, then it makes you more productive. But if you don’t know what the answer is, it will lead you down the garden path.

Australia moves a step closer to establishing an economy wide Digital ID system with the Minister for Finance Katy Gallagher announcing the release of proposed legislation this week. Once legislated, business will be able to rely on Digital ID in more scenarios, reducing the need to provide copies of sensitive documents. The roadmap includes four phases:-

Phase 1 will legislate for Digital ID, establish the rules, the regulator and protections and continue expanding use across government and also the accreditation of public and private providers.

Phase 2 is to allow state and territory Digital IDs to be used to access a Commonwealth services. 

Phase 3 will be to allow myGovID to be used in the private sector; for example, myGovID could be used to open a new bank account with an Australian bank, or verify you when signing a telco contract or real estate lease.

Phase 4 will allow accredited private sector Digital IDs to verify you when accessing some government services.

As Michael Miebach, the Mastercard CEO, pointed out in the Harvard Business Review, ID verification can be used to increase privacy, not take it away. He illustrates the splint with the canonical example that if someone needed to confirm their age to buy alcohol, they wouldn’t need to share all the information on a typical driver’s license — name, age, address, photo. Using appropriate and well-designed digital identity infrastructure, confirmation would exist as a simple yes or no question — is this person older than 21 or not? And that’s the only information someone would need to share: not the data (a date of birth) but the relevant credential (IS-OVER-21).

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But it was the prospect of Gen AI for wealth management and financial planning that really captivated people’s attention. Over a third of consumers generally say they’re interested in Gen AI helping them to manage their finances, rising to more than 50% for those respondents under the age of 50.

From Marqeta: over half of people want Gen AI help with finances | FinTech Magazine.

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The new advances in AI therefore have real potential – not for a radical transformation of the payment sector which, being highly regulated, interoperable, and standardised, must comply with rigorous standards – but by offering us new levers for improvement that will make purchasing and payment even simpler and more secure, while optimising costs, efficiency, and quality of service for users.

From How will AI boost the business of payments players.

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Certainly the system is bad for Americans who don’t have points-earning cards. They pay higher prices on ordinary goods and services but don’t get the points, effectively subsidizing the perks of card users, who tend to be wealthier already.

From: Airlines Are Just Banks Now – The Atlantic.

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For the airlines, this is a great deal. They incur no costs from points until they are redeemed—or ever, if the points are forgotten. This setup has made loyalty programs highly lucrative. Consumers now charge nearly 1 percent of U.S. GDP to Delta’s American Express credit cards alone. A 2020 analysis by the Financial Times found that Wall Street lenders valued the major airlines’ mileage programs more highly than the airlines themselves. United’s MileagePlus program, for example, was valued at $22 billion, while the company’s market cap at the time was only $10.6 billion.

From: Airlines Are Just Banks Now – The Atlantic.

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