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$35.8 billion
Global card fraud forecast for 2024 which equates to 6.5 cents per $100 spent on cards and double the 2014 total

From: Payment Fraud Statistics, Trends & Forecasts (2024).

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As reported in Popular Mechanics, the creation uses an ultra-sensitive sensor called the superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD). The system, co-developed by NASA and MIT, can trace a single photon to an accuracy of 13 picoseconds (13 trillionths of a second). It can also see through fog and smoke and could have many applications including security, monitoring and remote sensing.

From: New LiDAR system can ID a face a kilometer away | Biometric Update.

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The Bitcoin advantage also has to do with fungibility. Not all gold bars are equal and different venues have different size specifications, requiring a costly smelting process and adding further friction to delivery. As if that wasn’t complicated enough, not all gold bars have the same purity standard – for instance, “Good Delivery” standards set by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) require 24-carat gold, while older bars stored in the same vault are more likely to be 22-carat.

From: The gold market is inefficient – by Noelle Acheson.

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Peter Scarfe and colleagues submitted AI-written answers to an online exam for a psychology course at a major British university. They found that 94% of the AI-written answers went undetected, and that the AI-written answers were awarded grades half a grade-boundary higher than those written by human students.

From: Yes, you’re going to be replaced – Aporia.

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John Cairns, 61, of Huddersfield lost £3,250 after seeing a Facebook video purporting to be Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, advising people to invest in a new AI trading platform.

From: Grieving son is scammed out of his father’s inheritance in elaborate deep fake plot by AI fraudsters posing as world’s richest man Elon Musk | Daily Mail Online.

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But while much of the discussion so far has been about getting work out of AI, some writers are wondering how they can get their work into AI — in the hopes of influencing what it has to say.

Take a post on LinkedIn by Ken Mandel, a marketing executive at transport and payments app Grab, that made the rounds last week:

“For over a century, advertising has been about human attention,” he wrote. But that changes if AIs, not humans, make purchasing decisions. If an AI agent is the one picking out your groceries for you, who does a marketer need to convince?

“In a world where agents (not humans) interact with brands, the game shifts from advertising to AI influence and optimisation,” Mandel mused. “Brands must ‘train’ AI agents to prefer their products in natural decision-making.”

From: Do Marketers Need To Be Writing for AI? – Bloomberg.

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The shipments are also the result of higher prices on the futures exchange in New York than in the cash market in London. The unusual arbitrage opportunity has incentivised traders to send the metal across the Atlantic.

From: Gold stockpiling in New York leads to London shortage.

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resident Donald Trump announced Sunday that he has instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt the production of pennies, citing the high cost of producing one cent.

From: Trump instructs Treasury to halt penny production | CNN Business.

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The wait to withdraw bullion stored in the Bank of England’s vaults has risen from a few days to between four and eight weeks, according to people familiar with the process, as the central bank struggles to keep up with demand.

From: Gold stockpiling in New York leads to London shortage.

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Gold can’t go directly to the US from the London Bank of England vaults, because the bars stored there are usually 400-ounce, whereas NY delivery needs to be in 100-ounce or kilobars. So, London bullion is melted down and recast, often in Switzerland, and then loaded onto planes for the US. Gold exports from Switzerland to the US jumped in January to the highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The need to recast the bars is not the only friction. There are also insurance limits on how much gold can be carried per flight.

From: The gold market is inefficient – by Noelle Acheson.

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