Economics of Technology – Page 44

Collaborative Robots (Cobots) Fall in Price and Rise in Ease of Programming

(p. B4) Robots are moving off the assembly line.
Collaborative robots that work alongside humans–“cobots”–are getting cheaper and easier to program. That is encouraging businesses to put them to work at new tasks in bars, restaurants and clinics.
In the Netherlands, a cobot scales a 26-foot-high bar to tap bottles of homemade gin, whiskey and limoncello so that bartenders don’t need to climb ladders. In Japan, a cobot boxes takeout dumplings. In Singapore, robots give soft-tissue massages.
Cobots made up just 5% of the $14 billion industrial-robot market in 2017, according to research by Minneapolis-based venture-capital firm Loup Ventures. Loup estimates sales will jump to 27% of a $33 billion market by 2025 as demand for the robotic arms rises. About 20 manufacturers around the world have started selling such robots in the past decade.

For the full story, see:
Natasha Khan. “Robots Shift From Factories to New Jobs.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, June 11, 2018): B4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 9, 2018, and has the title “Your Next Robot Encounter: Dinner, Drinks and a Massage.”)

China Will Fail to Corner the Lithium Market

(p. B12) Since emerging as an industrial superpower in the 2000s, China has repeatedly tried to lock up essential resources like iron ore and so-called rare earths. The latest example is lithium, a key battery element: . . . .
. . .
The reality is more mundane.
. . .
. . . it will take just $13 billion in investment to satisfy annual lithium consumption as of 2030, against more $100 billion for nickel and copper.
Even if only a relatively small amount of mining capital spending migrates from mainstays like iron ore into lithium over the next decade, supply probably won’t be a huge problem.

For the full story, see:
Nathaniel Taplin. “China Won’t Be Able to Dominate Lithium Mining Forever.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, May 18, 2018): B12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 17, 2018, and has the title “China Won’t Dominate Lithium Forever.” The last sentence quoted above appeared in the online, but not in the print, version of the article.)

Assigning Property Rights to Internet Data Creators

(p. C3) Congress has stepped up talk of new privacy regulations in the wake of the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, which improperly gained access to the data of as many as 87 million Facebook users. Even Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testified that he thought new federal rules were “inevitable.” But to understand what regulation is appropriate, we need to understand the source of the problem: the absence of a real market in data, with true property rights for data creators. Once that market is in place, implementing privacy protections will be easy.
We often think of ourselves as consumers of Facebook, Google, Instagram and other internet services. In reality, we are also their suppliers–or more accurately, their workers. When we post and label photos on Facebook or Instagram, use Google maps while driving, chat in multiple languages on Skype or upload videos to YouTube, we are generating data about human behavior that the companies then feed into machine-learning programs.
These programs use our personal data to learn patterns that allow them to imitate human behavior and understanding. With that information, computers can recognize images, translate languages, help viewers choose among shows and offer the speediest route to the mall. Companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft (where one of us works) sell these tools to other companies. They also use our data to match advertisers with consumers.
Defenders of the current system often say that we don’t give away our personal data for free. Rather, we’re paid in the form of the services that we receive. But this exchange is bad for users, bad for society and probably not ideal even for the tech companies. In a real market, consumers would have far more power over the exchange: Here’s my data. What are you willing to pay for it?
An internet user today probably would earn only a few hundred dollars a year if companies paid for data. But that amount could grow substantially in the coming years. If the economic reach of AI systems continues to expand–into drafting legal contracts, diagnosing diseases, performing surgery, making investments, driving trucks, managing businesses–they will need vast amounts of data to function.
And if these systems displace human jobs, people will have plenty of time to supply that data. Tech executives fearful that AI will cause mass unemployment have advocated a universal basic income funded by increased taxes. But the pressure for such policies would abate if users were simply compensated for their data.

For the full commentary, see:
Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl. “Want Our Personal Data? Pay for It.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, April 21, 2018): C3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 20, 2018.)

The commentary quoted above, is based on:
Posner, Eric A., and E. Glen Weyl. Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Stornetta and Nakamoto Invented Bitcoin

(p. C18) In 1990, the physicist Scott Stornetta had a eureka moment while getting ice cream with his family at a Friendly’s restaurant in Morristown, N.J. He and his cryptographer colleague, Stuart Haber, had been thinking about the proliferation of digital files that accompanied the rise of personal computing and the ease with which files could be altered. They wondered how we might know for certain what was true about the past. What would prevent tampering with the historical record–and would it be possible to protect such information for future generations?
The sticking point was the need to trust a central authority. But at Friendly’s, an answer came to Dr. Stornetta: He realized that instead of a central record-keeper, the system could have many dispersed but interconnected copies of a shared ledger. The truth could never be typed over if there were too many linked ledgers to alter.
Drs. Haber and Stornetta were working at the time at Bellcore, a research center descended from the legendary Bell Labs. The pair set out to build a cryptographically secure archive–a way to verify records without revealing their contents.
. . .
. . . there is no mistaking their crucial contribution. When the founding document of bitcoin was published in 2008 under the name ” Satoshi Nakamoto “–a pseudonym for one or more scientists–it had just eight citations of previous works. Three of them were papers co-authored by Drs. Haber and Stornetta.
, , ,
The Nakamoto paper revolutionized the foundational work of Drs. Stornetta and Haber by adding the concept of “mining” cryptocurrencies. It created financial incentives for participation in retaining and verifying parts of the blockchain ledger.

For the full commentary, see:
Amy Whitaker. “The Eureka Moment That Made Bitcoin Possible; A key insight for the technology came to a physicist almost three decades ago at a Friendly’s restaurant in New Jersey.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, May 26, 2018): C18.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 25, 2018.)

“Infatuation with Deep Learning May Well Breed Myopia . . . Overinvestment . . . and Disillusionment”

(p. B1) For the past five years, the hottest thing in artificial intelligence has been a branch known as deep learning. The grandly named statistical technique, put simply, gives computers a way to learn by processing vast amounts of data.
. . .
But now some scientists are asking whether deep learning is really so deep after all.
In recent conversations, online comments and a few lengthy essays, a growing number of A.I. experts are warning that the infatuation with deep learning may well breed myopia and overinvestment now — and disillusionment later.
“There is no real intelligence there,” said Michael I. Jordan, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of an essay published in April intended to temper the lofty expectations surrounding A.I. “And I think that trusting these brute force algorithms too much is a faith misplaced.”
The danger, some experts warn, is (p. B4) that A.I. will run into a technical wall and eventually face a popular backlash — a familiar pattern in artificial intelligence since that term was coined in the 1950s. With deep learning in particular, researchers said, the concerns are being fueled by the technology’s limits.
Deep learning algorithms train on a batch of related data — like pictures of human faces — and are then fed more and more data, which steadily improve the software’s pattern-matching accuracy. Although the technique has spawned successes, the results are largely confined to fields where those huge data sets are available and the tasks are well defined, like labeling images or translating speech to text.
The technology struggles in the more open terrains of intelligence — that is, meaning, reasoning and common-sense knowledge. While deep learning software can instantly identify millions of words, it has no understanding of a concept like “justice,” “democracy” or “meddling.”
Researchers have shown that deep learning can be easily fooled. Scramble a relative handful of pixels, and the technology can mistake a turtle for a rifle or a parking sign for a refrigerator.
In a widely read article published early this year on arXiv.org, a site for scientific papers, Gary Marcus, a professor at New York University, posed the question: “Is deep learning approaching a wall?” He wrote, “As is so often the case, the patterns extracted by deep learning are more superficial than they initially appear.”

For the full story, see:
Steve Lohr. “Researchers Seek Smarter Paths to A.I.” The New York Times (Thursday, June 21, 2018): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 20, 2018, and has the title “Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So.” The June 21st date is the publication date in my copy of the National Edition.)

The essay by Jordan, mentioned above, is:
Jordan, Michael I. “Artificial Intelligence – the Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet.” Medium.com, April 18, 2018.

The manuscript by Marcus, mentioned above, is:

Marcus, Gary. “Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisal.” Jan. 2, 2018.

We Underestimate How Entrepreneurial the Americans Were in the 1800s

(p. C6) Jim DeFelice’s “West Like Lightning,” a history of the Pony Express, begins with an anxious young rider waiting to take the news to California that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president. The delivery service lasted only about 18 months, but its revolutionary speed left an indelible mark on the country. Many, including Mark Twain, marveled at riders’ courage and the spectacle of their switching horses every 10 miles or so for a fresh burst of speed.
. . .
In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?
Historians, God bless them, they do a lot of debunking of legends. They can sometimes come off as schoolmarms. The reality is, those legends are fun. They’re the exciting part. I separate fact and fiction, but I love those stories — and underneath them, there’s a much deeper truth. There’s a reason we value these 19- and 20-year-old kids pushing themselves against the elements.
I knew there would be some debunking involved. What I didn’t know was how true a lot of those stories turned out to be. If I were a Pony Express rider, I’d be bragging about how fast I made it. These guys didn’t brag about that — they bragged about how far they went. They were bragging about endurance and dealing with the elements. That impressed me, the resilience.
I also think sometimes we underestimate — and I’m guilty of this — just how entrepreneurial and into technology people were in the past. We think we’re cool because we can fly somewhere and be there tomorrow. But for these guys, 10 days was huge. If you gave them something in downtown New York, it would be in San Francisco two weeks later. At the time, that would be like going from dial-up to the fastest speeds we have today.

For the full interview, see:
John Williams, interviewer, ” Making Good Time and Even Better Tales.” The New York Times (Monday, May 21, 2018): C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date May 20, 2018, and has the title “Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: Making Good Time With the Pony Express.” The first paragraph and the bold question are John Williams. The paragraphs following the bold question, are Jim DeFelice’s answer.)

The book discussed in the interview quoted above, is:
DeFelice, Jim. West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express. New York: William Morrow, 2018.

Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists “Fantasize about Relocating” to “Detroit and South Bend”

(p. B1) It was pitched as a kind of Rust Belt safari — a chance for Silicon Valley investors to meet local officials and look for promising start-ups in overlooked areas of the country.
But a funny thing happened: By the end of the tour, the coastal elites had caught the heartland bug. Several used Zillow, the real estate app, to gawk at the availability of cheap homes in cities like Detroit and South Bend and fantasize about relocating there. They marveled at how even old-line manufacturing cities now offer a convincing simulacrum of coastal life, complete with artisanal soap stores and farm-to-table restaurants.
. . .
(p. B4) Mr. McKenna, who owns a house in Miami in addition to his home in San Francisco, told me that his travels outside the Bay Area had opened his eyes to a world beyond the tech bubble.
“Every single person in San Francisco is talking about the same things, whether it’s ‘I hate Trump’ or ‘I’m going to do blockchain and Bitcoin,'” he said. “It’s the worst part of the social network.”
. . .
Recently, Peter Thiel, the President Trump-supporting billionaire investor and Facebook board member, became Silicon Valley’s highest-profile defector when he reportedly told people close to him that he was moving to Los Angeles full-time, and relocating his personal investment funds there. (Founders Fund and Mithril Capital, two other firms started by Mr. Thiel, will remain in the Bay Area.) Mr. Thiel reportedly considered San Francisco’s progressive culture “toxic,” and sought out a city with more intellectual diversity.
Mr. Thiel’s criticisms were echoed by Michael Moritz, the billionaire founder of Sequoia Capital. In a recent Financial Times op-ed, Mr. Moritz argued that Silicon Valley had become slow and spoiled by its success, and that “soul-sapping discussions” about politics and social injustice had distracted tech companies from the work of innovation.
Complaints about Silicon Valley insularity are as old as the Valley itself. Jim Clark, the co-founder of Netscape, famously decamped for Florida during the first dot-com era, complaining about high taxes and expensive real estate. Steve Case, the founder of AOL, has pledged to invest mostly in start-ups outside the Bay Area, saying that “we’ve probably hit peak Silicon Valley.”
. . .
This isn’t a full-blown exodus yet. But in the last three months of 2017, San Francisco lost more residents to outward migration than any other city in the country, according to data from Redfin, the real estate website. A recent survey by Edelman, the public relations firm, found that 49 percent of Bay Area residents, and 58 percent of Bay Area millennials, were considering moving away. And a sharp increase in people moving out of the Bay Area has led to a shortage of moving vans. (According to local news reports, renting a U-Haul for a one-way trip from San Jose to Las Vegas now costs roughly $2,000, compared with just $100 for a truck going the other direction.)

For the full commentary, see:
Kevin Roose. “THE SHIFT; Silicon Valley Toured the Heartland and Fell in Love.” The New York Times (Monday, March 5, 2018): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 4, 2018, and has the title “THE SHIFT; Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley.”)

Blockchain May Enable “Consent-Based Ad Models”

(p. A13) Internet advertising started simply, but over time organically evolved a mess of middle players and congealed into a surveillance economy. Today, between end users, publishers and advertisers stand a throng of agencies, trading desks, demand side platforms, network exchanges and yield optimizers. Intermediaries track users in an attempt to improve revenue.
It’s an inevitable consequence of such a system that users end up treated as a resource to be exploited. When you visit the celebrity website TMZ, for instance, you face as many as 124 trackers, according to a Crownpeak test. Your data is stored and profiled to retarget promotions that shadow you around the Internet. You become the product. Some claim your data is not “sold,” but access is certainly rented out.
. . .
For a solution, look to blockchain technology. More than a word peppering earnings calls, it can deliver the change brands, publishers and users need. Put simply, it’s an immutable database that records transactions and produces trustworthy data.
In advertising, blockchain’s reliable data can radically shrink the ad-tech blob and provide the foundation for consent-based ad models. Improved blockchain reporting and transparency would obviate much of the need for companies focused on measurement, verification and even some data suppliers. Companies like Brave are using blockchain to build software that allows for more-direct relationships between advertisers and publishers, as it was before the blob. (Earlier this month Brave announced a partnership with Dow Jones Media Group, a division of this newspaper’s parent company.) Anonymous data on the blockchain or on a device can even replace the need for the mining of individual user data. Users should be compensated for their attention and seen as customers again.
The internet need not be characterized by predation and parasitism. It can once again be a place of infinite possibility. Innovation got us into this situation; it can get us out.

For the full commentary, see:
Brendan Eichand and Brian Brown. “The Internet’s ‘Original Sin’ Endangers More Than Privacy.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, April 28, 2018): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 27, 2018.)

Jeff Bezos Is “Exploring Strange New Worlds”

(p. A15) Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest person. Amazon is on a tear–sales grew 43% last quarter–and may soon pass Apple as the world’s most valuable company. Amazon has ruptured retail, floated in the cloud, and even made superhero TV shows like “The Tick.” But what makes Mr. Bezos tick?
. . .
. . . , Mr. Bezos is now channeling pioneers, be they Columbus or James T. Kirk, exploring strange new worlds. His strategy is that he doesn’t let business models get in his way while exploring on the edge.
. . .
I’m convinced the real secret to Mr. Bezos’s success is that he hates PowerPoint slides. He insists instead on six-page narratives at meetings. Stories codify exploration. Here’s one: Put Alexa in every doctor’s office to listen and correctly fill in medical records automatically from the transcripts, freeing doctors to actually care for patients! Business model to come (but pretty obvious).

For the full commentary, see:
Andy Kessler. ” INSIDE VIEW; Columbus Discovers the Amazon.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, May 7, 2018): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 6, 2018.)

Paying Consumers for Their Data

(p. B4) WASHINGTON–For every link you click, every photo you post, every word you search, somebody markets the data to advertisers seeking to target you. Consumer data is a valuable commodity, and that is one reason Google, Facebook and others let you use their platforms at no cost.
An Australian app maker called Unlockd thinks it has a better idea: The consumer should get a cut of this mobile-data business, in the form of rewards or other incentives. Other newcomers and smaller firms are taking a similar tack. Should this approach take off, some see it becoming a viable alternative to the ad model driving big platforms like Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

For the full story, see:
McKinnon, John D. “Startup Wants to Reward Your Clicking.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, May 10, 2018): B4.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 9, 2018, and has the title “Startup Takes on Google With a New Approach: Rewards for Users.”)

China’s “Double Whammy for Prospective Entrepreneurs”

(p. B12) China’s past attempts to stoke indigenous innovation have a checkered history. A flood of cheap capital and high, state-set solar power rates in the mid-2000s secured China’s place as the world’s number one solar cell manufacturer. But it also led to enormous overcapacity, which sank prices and pushed debt burdens higher, making investment in real R&D more difficult. For investors, China’s solar champions have been a losing proposition–American depositary receipts of top firms such as JinkoSolar are worth less than half of their peak in 2010. Robotics, a key element of Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” plan to dominate high-tech manufacturing, is exhibiting similar tendencies.
The state-centric nature of China’s financial system–and its weak intellectual property protection–represents a double whammy for prospective entrepreneurs. Small private-sector firms often only have access to capital through expensive shadow banking channels, and face the risk that some better connected, state-backed firm will make off with their designs–with very little recourse.

For the full story, see:
Nour Malas and Paul Overberg. “‘Chinese Innovation Won’t Come Easily Without U.S. Tech.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, March 23, 2018): B12.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 22, 2018, and has the title “Can China’s Red Capital Really Innovate?”)