Snippings

Andrew Griffith MP is Economic Secretary to the Treasury

There are respectable arguments for the anonymity of cash as an ultimate backstop protection from an overmighty state, but we should not be naïve about the extent to which cash also facilitates a “shadow economy”. Although hard to quantify, some estimates put this at around 10% of UK GDP. Better collection of taxes here could mean a greater ability to cut taxes elsewhere. The ability to work “cash in hand” has been cited as one pull factor for migrants leaving safe countries on mainland Europe to illegally cross The English Channel.

From The right to access cash will soon be enshrined in law:

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State economic activity can easily crowd out the private kind. Alibaba investors should therefore be wary of China’s enthusiasm for the digital renminbi. This central bank digital currency poses a threat to Alipay, the payments business of Alibaba affiliate Ant Group.

From Ant: digital renminbi poses big risk to payments business | Financial Times:

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Also, AI bots can’t be sued, which means complications when determining liability and compensation.

From For the first time in history, an AI bot will reportedly defend a human in court | Business Insider India:

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My Own Voice is impressively quick. Unlike other services, which often require hours of reference audio to create a realistic-sounding clone, My Own Voice’s AI can spin up an astonishingly good synthetic after hearing just 50 short sentences, or roughly around 3 minutes of recorded audio.

From This AI cloned my voice using just 3 minutes of audio | Digital Trends:

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In fact, models such as Galactica and ChatGPT are great at generating authoritative-sounding text in any requested style: legalese, bureaucratese, wiki pages, academic papers, lecture notes, and even answers for Q&A forums. One side effect is that we can no longer rely on the form of a text to gauge trustworthiness and legitimacy.

From ChatGPT is a bullshit generator. But it can still be amazingly useful:

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The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that is intended to persuade without regard for the truth. By this measure, OpenAI’s new chatbot ChatGPT is the greatest bullshitter ever. Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained to produce plausible text, not true statements. ChatGPT is shockingly good at sounding convincing on any conceivable topic.

From ChatGPT is a bullshit generator. But it can still be amazingly useful:

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A popular strategy to create hype around a new token has been to float a small fraction of the total supply on the open market, create buying demand through aggressive marketing, and appease insiders who got in early with the new implied market cap. This works great in early days. If 94% of a token’s supply is held by financiers or insiders, its market cap can be inflated to egregious numbers.

From Kathleen Breitman of Tezos on 5 crypto trends that need to die—and 1 big reason for optimism | Fortune:

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Global Payments Manager at Ingka Group (IKEA Retail) Anna Pulante pointed to a number of initiatives underway at the world’s largest furniture retailer to use digital payments — specifically mobile — to breathe new life into its model.

“We’ve recently introduced a new way of shopping at IKEA, and that’s being able to shop and go within your app,” she said. “This has certainly changed the way that our customers shop at IKEA.”

That effort is turning the smartphone-app combination into “a shopping companion,” she said, “being able to create your shopping list in your app, and then ultimately being able to just check out and pay. It creates a more empowered shopping experience within IKEA.”

Saying there’s no “one-size-fits-all” solution, Pulante explained certain payment types, like cryptocurrency, are not currently relevant to IKEA or the customer profile drawn to the brand.

That’s not a condemnation of all exotic, new payment methods, as she expressed interest in the future of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

“I think what’s more interesting is talking about digital currency,” she said. “We have the digital euro that’s been in talks. That’s where we see things are headed in this sense.”

From Payments Are ‘Sexy’ Again at IKEA | PYMNTS.com:

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Microsoft could soon get a return on its $1 billion investment in OpenAI, creator of the ChatGPT chatbot, which gives humanlike text answers to questions.

Microsoft is preparing to launch a version of its Bing search engine that uses the artificial intelligence behind ChatGPT to answer some search queries rather than just showing a list of links, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plans. Microsoft hopes the new feature, which could launch before the end of March, will help it outflank Google, its much bigger search rival.

From Microsoft and OpenAI Working on ChatGPT-Powered Bing in Challenge to Google — The Information.

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A recently granted patent covering identity document authentication envisions service providers requesting identity verification directly from Apple when opening a banking account, applying for a loan or for completing online age verification (e.g. buying alcohol using a gig delivery service). And, Apple filed a patent at the end of 2022 to provide user trustworthiness scores, inclusive of user and device identifiers, to banking providers — resembling the fraud and risk scores that IDV providers generate. These filings follow reports that Apple will oversee its own credit checks, risk management and lending decisions for Apple Pay Later.

From Is Apple the Next Identity Verification Juggernaut? | by Jelena Hoffart | Jan, 2023 | Medium.

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