Snippings

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is proposing to bring in some strict rules to cover social media “influencers” who promote financial services (or ‘finfluencers’ as they are now labelled, although not by me). As it happens, I have some concrete evidence that I am just such a person, I will look forward to seeing the new guidelines and will of course do my best to follow them. Now, I am not a lawyer, but it sounds to me that promoting cryptocurrencies might get you into trouble. Therefore you can imagine my surprise when I started getting messages from friends asking me why I was advising them to buy some obscure cryptocurrency that I’d never heard of!

The fact that a social media following translates into influence over the purchase of financial products is clear. If celebrities did not have any such influence then they would not have been paid millions and millions of dollars to shill picture of chimpanzees wearing sunglasses (for example) as the pop star Madonna did. The famous American football player and part owner of a famous English football club (Birmingham City, if you are curious) Tom Brady appeared in commercials for the now infamous FTX and the celebrity Kim Kardashian promoted EMAX tokens on Instagram. Now they and many others are facing lawsuits from “investors” who lost their shirts in crypto-speculation.

Now that it turns out that I am a influencer, I will have to be careful. You may be quite rightly wondering why I am so certain that I am indeed a finfluencer. Well, a few months ago, 

 

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The bank blocked a number of transactions, it spoke to James on the phone to warn him and even called him into a branch to speak to him face-to-face.

However, the scammer’s hold over James was so strong after being indoctrinated to this supposed plight, he insisted the payments went through.

From: Fraud victim gets surprise £153,000 refund despite rules – BBC News.

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Increasingly, the best place to create a false identity and use it to identify, target and groom potential victims is on social media, via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission says 27 per cent of all reported fraud is initiated this way, declaring social media to be “a gold mine for scammers”.

From The UK’s weak digital bill will fail to deliver knockout blow to online fraudsters:

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The FCA cited research from consultancy MRM which found that almost three quarters of young people say they trust information provided by social media influencers. A 2021 survey by the watchdog found that almost 60 per cent of under-40s who had invested in high-risk products said they based their decisions on social media posts and the news.

From: UK watchdog proposes tougher rules on ‘finfluencers’ | Financial Times.

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The UK’s financial regulator has proposed new guidance governing how financial products can be marketed on social media platforms to limit what it described as “significant consumer harm” from unsuitable and illegal promotions.

In a consultation that began on Monday, the Financial Conduct Authority said its new consumer duty — which requires banks, insurers and other financial companies to provide good outcomes for customers — will be applied to social media posts.

From: UK watchdog proposes tougher rules on ‘finfluencers’ | Financial Times.

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The pilot program was supported by the city and tourism body Explore Charleston, and included 30 businesses in the downtown area. They used Intellicheck’s ID verification app to perform more than 100,000 ID scans, identifying roughly 3,400 fake or invalid ID documents over the course of the trial.
Intellicheck’s ID verification is used by the Charleston Police Department and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, and delivers 99 percent ID authentication accuracy in less than a second with the mobile devices or point-of-sale scanners already in use.

From: ID scanning for age verification deployed by Intellicheck in Charleston, launched by Au10tix | Biometric Update.

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Automation has historically displaced human workers in factories (e.g., automotive manufacturing) or in performing routine computational tasks. Will generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT disrupt the labor market by making educated professionals obsolete, or will these tools complement their skills and enhance productivity? Noy and Zhang examined this issue in an experiment that recruited college-educated professionals to complete incentivized writing tasks. Participants assigned to use ChatGPT were more productive, efficient, and enjoyed the tasks more. Participants with weaker skills benefited the most from ChatGPT, which carries policy implications for efforts to reduce productivity inequality through AI.

From: Experimental evidence on the productivity effects of generative artificial intelligence | Science.

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What do workers and employers think about AI in the workplace?

In 2022, the OECD gathered data on the impact of AI on people and their workplaces, in the manufacturing and finance sectors of seven countries. The findings show that AI use at work can lead to positive outcomes for workers around job satisfaction, health and wages. Yet there are also risks around privacy, work intensity and bias. The survey revealed a clear divide between what workers think about AI use in their jobs today and their fears for the future. The results highlight the urgent need for policy action now, to ensure that no one is left behind.

From: OECD Employment Outlook.

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Other companies also offer virtual co-working arrangements via a subscription. Flow Club charges between $33 and $40 a month for access to over 100 daily body-doubling sessions that are capped at 10 people and end with a celebratory burst of confetti on the screen.

From: The New Trick to Getting Work Done: Have a Stranger Watch You – WSJ.

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Key Facts:

In the study, participants correctly identified ChatGPT’s healthcare-related responses 65.5% of the time and human healthcare provider responses 65.1% of the time.
Trust in ChatGPT’s responses overall averaged a 3.4 out of 5 score, with higher trust for logistical questions and preventative care, but less for diagnostic and treatment advice.
The researchers suggest that chatbots could assist in patient-provider communication, particularly with administrative tasks and chronic disease management.
Source: NYU

ChatGPT’s responses to people’s healthcare-related queries are nearly indistinguishable from those provided by humans, a new study from NYU Tandon School of Engineering and Grossman School of Medicine reveals, suggesting the potential for chatbots to be effective allies to healthcare providers’ communications with patients.

From: Can You Spot the Bot? Study Finds ChatGPT Almost Undetectable in Medical Advice – Neuroscience News.

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Jeff Dean, a senior Google executive, has observed, while there are now “dozens of examples of emergent abilities, there are currently few compelling explanations for why these capabilities emerge”.

It’s increasingly difficult for insiders to track exactly what is going on, let alone those on the outside.

From: We must avoid the evils of social media with AI | Financial Times.

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Last month Tristan Harris, along with his colleague Aza Raskin, gave a presentation about artificial intelligence to the Aspen Ideas Institute that was probably the most lucid and chilling AI tutorial that I have ever seen.

They frame the threat posed by AI as an extension of the dangers of social media. Specifically, Harris cites the metaphor of sci-fi movies to suggest that, “You can think of social media as really first contact between humanity and AI.” When AI was used for curation, “Humanity lost.”

Now, the “second contact” is occurring, as large machine-learning models such as ChatGPT not only curate content but create it. What makes this phase so scary, Harris argues, is that AI tools are proliferating faster than anything seen before, and “learning” from data how to acquire “emergent” skills that the AI researchers themselves did not expect. Machines have recently done things without being taught, as this magazine reported extensively back in April. As Jeff Dean, a senior Google executive, has observed, while there are now “dozens of examples of emergent abilities, there are currently few compelling explanations for why these capabilities emerge”.

From: We must avoid the evils of social media with AI | Financial Times.

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“Because it’s the bank that goes to multifactor authentication or pushes the consumer through multifactor authentication, we have a very high degree of certainty that we know who is behind that device,” explained Gonthier. “And the consumer gets protected by law. Paying in the U.S. with a bank account entitles users to zero liability for 60 days. They can even go to their bank and ask for their money back.”

From: An Online Payments Pioneer on What It Will Take to Scale Pay by Bank in the US.

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