Merely eight years ago, I was lugging around a physical portfolio to various cities for my entrance exams. Each piece hand drawn, watercolored, printed, books bound and ideas covered in tape and glue, today my portfolio is a ‘.com’, built on a template that already existed. Still art, still a display of my work, still an expression, but now I spend more time on what I want to make rather than how I want to make it.

We have now reached the moment when technology no longer simply serves as a tool but fundamentally alters how we produce and engage with art.

Walter Benjamin once said: “The work of art has always been reproducible. Objects made by humans could always be copied by humans, but even the most excellent copies fall short of the distinctive quality of the original.” In the present day, we are surrounded by countless opportunities. The way we make and appreciate art has been completely changed by technology, upending our preconceived notions of what is genuine and unique.

The Greeks, with their bronze sculptures, never imagined the woodcut, a tool that revolutionized graphic art. Before the printing press changed the written word, woodcuts hinted at what was possible. The typewriter transformed documentation, followed by computers, making creation and sharing easier. Photography evolved from glass plates to smartphones, and music shifted from live performances to digital streaming. Today social media and digital creative tools make us wonder if any art can really be considered “original” when it can be endlessly replicated with a few clicks.

The truth is more complicated. Originality is changing, not dying. In ways that were previously unthinkable, artists of today are blending inspirations, styles, and media together. The term “original” is becoming more and more inclusive, embracing a diverse range of viewpoints and opinions. The art world is being enhanced by this change, which is making it more diverse and representative of our globalized society.

In all that said, as an artist and designer, I too remain afraid, trying not to overly romanticize the situation we are in. Does my work diminish, given that anyone can make it? That unique aura that Benjamin mentioned seems to be disappearing.

The comfort now lies in thinking instead of focusing on the originality of a piece, we should appreciate the process, intention, and impact behind it. That is the one thing I believe in more than anything, my portfolio from eight years ago brought me as much joy as my current .com portfolio because I know my process and intention. In a world dominated by artificial intelligence, there is power in emotional intelligence, which is the very foundation of creativity.

In the end, originality isn’t dead. It’s transforming, driven by the same technological advances that are reshaping our world, the art of the future might look different, but its value and significance remain strong. It’s a testament to our ability to innovate and find beauty in ever-changing ways.

The post Navigating the evolution of creativity: Will tech kill originality in art? appeared first on TechInformed.

Semiconductors – or microchips – are increasingly key to the global IT supply chain, making appearances in everything from smartphones, laptops, medical devices and military equipment – as well as powering important developing technologies such as AI and IoT.

Shortages of these chips – as witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic – have acted as a wake up call for many global leaders. This has prompted the US’s chip strategy and the EU’s European Chips Act with both investing tens of billions of dollars to ensure that, in the future, there are suppliers closer to home.

In the UK, however, nothing was announced in the usual Autumn statement. Or the previous budget. Or the one before that, meaning UK businesses have had to wait a little longer for the government’s response.

Meanwhile a House of Commons Committee report, released last autumn, noted that the UK was missing out on semiconductor investment due to the continued delay in action.

Rising sun

Fast forward to last week, when the bus analogy became true, with two announcements made in quick succession.

On Thursday the UK government announced a new partnership with this year’s G7 host Japan. The bilateral ties, which UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced in Tokyo this week, sees the two nations “pursue ambitious R&D cooperation and skills exchange” – with the UK committing £2m in early-stage research next year.

Japan – home to electronics giants such as Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba, used to make more than half the world’s chips in its consumer electronics heyday, and recently announced a slew of initiatives to start ramping up production again.

For now, though, its neighbours South Korea, China, and Taiwan (which owns 50% of the chip world market) dominate – but with rising political tensions between the latter two (Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province of China), an outbreak in hostilities could have a global economic impact.

The yet-to-be published semiconductor agreement between UK and Japan – called the Hiroshima Accord – hopes to manage such geopolitical risk.

Design-led approach

Only a day after the accord was announced came the second bus. The UK unveiled its own long-delayed National Semiconductor Strategy to the relief of many British businesses that had been urging for clarity on the issue amid complaints of missed investment opportunities.

Plans include investing £1bn over the next decade to improve access to infrastructure, power more research and development and facilitate greater international cooperation. Up to £200m of this money has been promised between now and 2025.

The UK’s focus, the government said, would be on semiconductor design, IP and research – rather than large scale chip manufacturing – which firms such as Cambridge-founded Arm Ltd have made billion-dollar businesses out of. The UK outlined plans to become leaders in the design of compound semiconductors, for instance.

“Compound semiconductors can do things silicon chips can’t, with use cases in evolving technologies, such as autonomous driving and future telecoms. Their creation requires expertise in advanced materials, an area of UK science leadership,” said the statement.

Crucial to this implementation, says the government, will be a UK Semiconductor Advisory Panel comprised of key figures from industry, government and academia.

Will it work?

One billion pounds over a ten-year period pales in comparison to US ($52bn) and European (43bn Euros) investment in chip production, and it wouldn’t be enough to build one onshore chip factory (or fab, as they are known). By comparison, Intel has announced plans to build a fab in Germany, costing around £17 billion.

So, the government’s intent is clearly to invest in key areas where the UK already has a track record, rather than trying to compete in the capital-intensive semiconductor supply chain.

This is perhaps a wise move given the disastrous attempts at trying and to get gigafactory Britishvolt off the ground in the North of England last year.

But while the plan may seem like a sensible one, the question arises: why hasn’t this been done before? Why are there so few other successful companies like Arm in the UK – even before the world woke up to the geopolitical importance of the silicon chip?

For the plan to work, and grow dozens of Arm-style start ups, the UK would need to be able to hold onto these firms and their IP and create an investment ecosystem that sees them supported when they reach scale-up size and require larger amounts of cash.

It’s at this stage that most UK scale-ups go West of East, as the view still holds that  there’s not enough capital in the UK or even among the European markets, although the UK  government and regulators are currently working on a raft of initiatives to try to turn this around.

Arm, however, didn’t have this support and was bought by Softbank – ironically a Japanese investor –  in 2016. The chip design firm recently chose the New York Stock Exchange to list on over London, which doesn’t say much about the tech industry’s current confidence in the UK as a place to do business.

The second thing to note about this strategy is that it resigns the UK to relying on overseas manufacturers. Whether these are countres that are politically aligned to the UK or not, it doesn’t necessarily resolve the UK’s supply chain issues when the chips are down.

And during a worldwide shortage, the nearer you are to the supply the more you get to call the shots – just look at India’s ban on Covid-19 vaccine exports despite its agreement to supply the UK.

And then there’s the additional hurdle of Brexit, and soured relations with the EU which may not endear member countries to partner on production.

While Russ Shaw – founder of Tech London Advocates and Global Tech Advocates – welcomed the government’s clear plan of action to further develop research and commercialisation, he clearly recognised the need to use the strategy “as a basis to strike up other key international partnerships and areas of collaboration with like minded economies”.

He added: “This will not only strengthen the domestic tech sector, but also bolster the development of British industry broadly and drive wider economic growth.”

The post When the chips are down… appeared first on TechInformed.

The “TechSprint”, led by the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN), among 13 other international regulators including the FCA, hopes to develop a tool or solution that can help regulators and the industry tackle the issue of false sustainability reporting and greenwashing in finance.

As it stands, sustainability reporting in the financial industry is primarily aligned with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data. However, this method is proving controversial as corporations cut corners to tick boxes such as passing the blame for their emissions onto other companies and publicising only their green initiatives.

As clients and end consumers receive a product or a service, there’s a growing expectation for it to come from a company that is acting sustainably. Yet, some firms have been accused of spending more time and effort into appearing to be sustainable, without actually doing anything to cut emissions.

The reasons for a business investing more in a green image rather than taking any actionable efforts to reduce its carbon footprint often boils down to factors such as cost and time.

The head of the United Nation’s environment programme finance initiative Eric Usher admitted that becoming sustainable in the finance industry requires a complete redesign of their business model.

“Traditional risk (in the financial sector) looks at what failed in the past,” wrote Usher in a blog post by UNEP. “With climate change that doesn’t work. Now it’s about forecasting the future, which isn’t easy.”

A Google Cloud study on greenwashing and enterprises found that firms are often blaming their missed sustainability goals on macroeconomic factors and too much pressure on external parties, although this is arguable.

Most are not ignorant of these green tricks and workarounds within their own industries. For instance, in Google Cloud’s study, over 70% of executives believe that most organisations in their industry would be guilty of greenwashing if investigated thoroughly, and almost 60% admitted to exaggerating their own sustainability activities.

In the technology sector alone, a recent iResearch report found that 91% of its professionals believe some, if not all, companies within the industry are guilty of greenwashing.

Just this week, environmental thinktank Carbon Tracker Initiative found that people who have gone out of their way to invest their pensions into funds that are meant to claim green credentials are actually backing the world’s largest oil and gas companies. The thinktank found more than 160 funds with a green label held $4.6 billion in 15 companies including gas companies ExxonMobil, Chevron, and TotalEnergies.

Plus, in the past several years, many major banks including JP Morgan, Citibank and Bank of America have issued new green investment opportunities, but have since been discovered by the Rainforest Action Network to still be lending enormous sums to fossil fuels and deforestation.

Fossil fuel giants are, by no surprise, also culprits of greenwashing, particularly through marketing. Over the years, it has made notable public sustainability shows by renaming itself Beyond Petroleum, and making a point of broadcasting its addition of solar panels on its petrol stations. It also mainly focuses on advertising its low-carbon energy products, but still, almost double the amount of its spending on green energy will be spent on oil and gas this year according to its annual report.

Digital technologies, even those offering sustainable solutions, do have a tough balancing act between collecting data to provide such advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, while also letting that load burn away significant amounts of energy in data centres.

Nevertheless, it will be these digital technologies that the FCA is looking for and according to Accenture’s Sustainable Finance Report, “having the right tools and services in place is critical to capturing and measuring ESG activities accurately and reducing greenwashing.”

While many companies are remaining guarded on the issue of their carbon emissions, many could be given the benefit of the doubt by simply not even knowing.

The second top reason for greenwashing is lacking the tools to measure it accurately, and with digital technologies, companies could have a much more transparent view that would in the long run offer financial gain for attracting more quality talent who cares about sustainability, and customers too.

Likely technologies for helping sustainable reporting include AI, which can provide data in real-time data relating to a firm’s carbon emissions as well as predicting its future footprint, based on data modelling – solving the challenge Usher pointed out with forecasting the future.

IoT devices such as sensors can also help keep track of emissions in office buildings, plus a variety of workplaces, and can send data on how much energy electronics such as the lights and machinery in the building are using too.

Plus, blockchain can offer an accurate and immutable tool that can monitor emissions by looking at the use of fuel, travel, and within their value chains.

With news from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) that global temperatures have a 66% chance of temporarily hitting 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by 2027, big banks need to walk the talk and start reporting too.

With the anticipation of the help of digital tools submitted to the TechSprint, carbon reporting within this sector, as well as many others, will hopefully be more transparent and not only push the big banks to help the environment but allow their customers to know who to use for their own sustainability morals as well.

To read more on how digital technologies can help firms become more sustainable, click here for TechInformed’s Green Enterprise Technology Report.

The post Can technology help tackle greenwashing? appeared first on TechInformed.

For me, my most expensive purchase was my home. And despite paying what feels like far too much some days (hey, that’s London for you!) I still get a sense of gratification every time I unlock my door, because I enter something that is mine.

For Elon Musk, his acquisition of Twitter cost more money than most people can even imagine spending – even in London, $44 billion would buy you a lot of homes! But based on the Tesla magnate’s interview with the BBC this week, he has yet to take much pleasure from his blowout.

It has been six months since Musk carried a kitchen sink over the threshold of Twitter HQ, and the self-appointed chief Twit took the opportunity to sit down with the BBC’s James Clayton to discuss the rollercoaster ride that the social media company has been on since.

He says the takeover “hasn’t been some kind of party” and explained that the decision to lay off 6000 staff, around 80% of Twitter’s workforce, as “not fun at all”. For the second richest man in the world, the pain level of the whole experience has been “extremely high,” he said.

Despite the challenges Twitter has faced, which has ranged from plummeting value (Musk delisted Twitter after the takeover but a memo from the boss suggests it is worth less than half of what he paid), redundancies, and several severe outages, Musk was surprisingly upbeat during the interview. Was that a nervous laugh or was he just pleased to be there?

Well, no. In fact, Musk even admitted he wasn’t at all pleased to be at the helm of the social media platform. As reported by TechInformed last year, Musk was desperate to get out of the Twitter purchase (he claims the former Twitter management had given false active user numbers, leading him to over value the company – something they deny).

During the BBC interview Musk confirmed something the world already suspected – Musk only went through with the deal because he expected a judge would have forced him to close it.

He has even taken to sleeping on a sofa in a library somewhere in Twitter HQ, such is the stressful life of running the social media giant (though he is no longer CEO – he claims now to have given that job title to his dog, Floki!)

He downplayed a lot of the criticism that has been directed his way. Asked about Twitter’s performance in the face of a reduced staff base, he acknowledged the company had reduced its compute capability from three data centres to two but argued they have now overcome those speed bumps.

He also pushed back against claims that disinformation and hate speech has grown on the site, challenging Clayton to provide him with evidence. Musk’s stance on Twitter took pure delight when Clayton failed to offer and solid examples, with the Musk himself accusing the BBC man of lying.

The problem is, Clayton only had 20 minutes notice for the interview (surely a power move by Elon). With even the slightest bit of digging, examples are easy to find. According to research by the Anti-Defamation League and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, for example, there has been a general spike in hate speech on Twitter in the period since Musk’s takeover.

What’s next?

With six months at the helm, more than two thirds of staff gone, and the company now “breaking about even” according to Musk, the question is, what next?

He himself didn’t offer any great insight into where he sees Twitter going. When he first took the reins, Musk suggested it would move away from the advertising revenue model that had funded Twitter’s growth, but he sounded almost relieved when claiming all the firm’s advertisers had returned after initial boycotts over changes Musk implemented.

Musk said: “We could be profitable, or to be more precise, cash flow positive this quarter if things keep going well. I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back.”

Does that mean the future is bright for Twitter? Musk certainly will hope so, but he isn’t set to shy away from the controversial battles and decisions that have dominated his tenure in charge.

Just next week, the billionaire will remove legacy verification (or blue ticks) from accounts that have not signed up to the Twitter Blue. Last time Musk adjusted the verification process, it led to a raft of fake accounts mimicking verified businesses by signing up to the service.

Musk rolled out the $8 subscription service at the end of the last year, But the new service swiftly fell victim to impostors – with users parodying everyone from Pope Francis to George W Bush. The pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co was forced to apologise after an impostor account tweeted that insulin was free. Nintendo, Lockheed Martin, Musk’s own Tesla and SpaceX were also impersonated as well as the accounts of various professional sports figures.

His only option is to double down on his investment – with Musk promising to plough money into powerful computing hardware updates. He also said Twitter will explore generative artificial intelligence at a time when ChatGPT has been dominating tech headlines.

Will it work? As ever with Musk, you cannot rule him out – he built Tesla from what was effectively a small start-up into the most valuable car company in the world, and he has also transformed the space industry through SpaceX. In the coming months, Musk can finally start to enjoy his takeover of Twitter.

The post Musk’s BBC interview: What we learned appeared first on TechInformed.

Three months after its release, Microsoft, a long-time investor in ChatGPT, announced that the chatbot – which provides human-like answers to questions – would be integrated into its search engine and released as an API for enterprises to innovate with. In response, Google released its, also not-quite-ready large language bot, Bard.

Early mistakes by both offerings have been well documented. A factual error by Bard wiped $100bn worth of shares off Google parent Alphabet’s share price. ChatGPT’s blagging qualities have also been uncovered – it’s been found to confidently present falsehoods as facts while offering up seemingly plausible citations.

All this comes as no surprise to those who work in the field who appreciate the challenges of trying to develop large language models at scale.

Tech companies will likely spin early mistakes like this as learning opportunities. Meanwhile we, the users, are testing the tech for free. It’s a bold approach that Open AI has taken to create a buzz, but it’s not a careful one and in the rush to innovate tech companies could be inadvertently discriminating.

Training data

ChatGPT was initially trained on 570GB of data obtained from books, webtexts, Wikipedia, articles and other pieces of writing on the internet.

Algorithms are only as good as the data they are trained on, and all data contains bias. Sometimes it’s what’s omitted rather than included. The field of medical research for instance, is dominated by men and there is subsequently far more data on male specific conditions than female conditions such as endometriosis.

Historic data also contains biases that have resulted in blatant discrimination – remember Microsoft’s faulty facial verification software that discriminated against Uber drivers of colour? Or Amazon’s recruitment software that taught itself – based on 10 years’ worth of CVs – to only select male applicants for tech jobs?

Will the chatbots of the future now repeat the algorithmic sins of the past?

As Ivana Bartoletti, a data privacy officer at WiPro warns in her book An Artificial Revolution – On Power, Politics and AI:  “If society, as it is today, is the only model we use to train algorithms that are going to affect us tomorrow then we risk hard coding injustices and prejudices into societies of the future.”

And yet, in the race to produce an all-singing all-dancing chatbot, it feels that we’re at risk of hardcoding these prejudices into what may soon become trusted digital gatekeepers, ones that also power a myriad of enterprise-based products and services.

One of the datasets powering ChatGPT is Wikipedia – a site on which 80% of content is generated by men. Jimmy Wales, founder of the world’s fifth most visited site, admits that systemic biases are often reflected in its content curation. A 2021 study found that, in one month 41% of the online encyclopedia’s biographies nominated for deletion were of women despite only 17% of published biographies being of or about women.

Toxic labels

According to Bartoletti, bias can emerge from any point of the AI life cycle from the training data to representation and evaluation.  “Who are the people labelling the data? Where do they come from? Are they diverse enough?” she asks.

Unfortunately, the very act of protecting vulnerable groups online can sometimes lead to the harm of others. The laborious labelling of datasets is often outsourced to workers in developing countries, for instance, for very little pay.

ChatGPT is no exception. In January Time magazine reported that OpenAI used Kenyan workers earning less than $2 per hour to label toxic content so that it could build a safety system against harmful material,  which was eventually deployed in the bot we’re all currently experimenting with.

Workers there describe being exposed to thousands of images of sexual abuse, hate speech, suicide and violence as “torture” and Sama, the Silicon-Valley based outsourcing contractor reportedly cancelled its work with Open AI last February, eight months earlier than planned.

While not deliberately ill-intentioned, in their rush to win the AI arms race, technology companies risk taking shortcuts at the expense of women and other minority groups in the name of ‘innovation’.

AI products will continue to be released before they’re ready and not all biases addressed. Many, in fact, may be repeated. Given these circumstances, it feels unrealistic to rely on commercially-driven technology companies to self-regulate.

Universal digital rights

As the world moves towards a new version of the internet, Web 3.0 and the metaverse, it feels as though there’s an opportunity to flush out biases of the past and create a safer space for women and other minority groups.

It’s a belief that’s motivated several women leaders in AI, including Bartoletti, to form an alliance calling for a global set of rules to be brought in to regulate the internet and digital technology.

Led by former Greenpeace campaigner and activist Emma Gibson, Alliance for Universal Digital Rights recognises that technology has no borders. It wants to take a similar approach to the agreements that have been brought in to tackle climate change.

“AI is reshaping the world right now,” says Gibson. “If you’re going to regulate for this, you need a globally-agreed set of rules and we think that the only way to empower women is if these rules are rooted in a human rights-based, feminist and intersectional approach,” she says.

Serendipitously, the alliance has found an ally in outgoing UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, whose last project before retiring will be to create a common set of global standards to protect citizens online, and to get those who are digitally excluded, connected.

The UN’s Global Digital Compact has appointed a tech envoy and two representatives (from Sweden and Rwanda) whose mission will be to get countries around the world to reach an agreement that will take the form of several core principles by 2024.

The alliance is hopeful that ‘equality by design’ will be one of these principles – which looks at how algorithms are designed and how algorithmic impact and equality impact assessments can be carried out.

“The compact is not a legally binding treaty but an agreement based on a set of shared principles that will inform the laws that are put in place,” Gibson explains.

Data reflects the society we live in, which is still not sadly equal. This data is then fed into machines like ChatGPT, which provides the answers we are looking for and informs our views. That’s why AI needs to be governed by external forces and not left to Big Tech.

As Bartoletti argues in her book: “Like nuclear power, AI can bring enormous opportunities, but to do so requires a form of authority enshrined in global governance to avoid its terrifying downsides.”

The post IWD2023: How can we prevent gender bias in next gen chatbots? appeared first on TechInformed.

Part 2: How hackers find their way in

Part 3: You’ve been hacked – so what’s the plan?

Part 4: How to protect your firm from ransomware

Inflation, geopolitical turmoil and an increase in supply chain issues are creating a turbulent environment which has seen cyber crime thrive.

We hate to sound like a blatant advert for the burgeoning number of cyber security firms out there – which provide a  valuable service – but it’s true that if there’s one thing for certain in uncertain times it’s that your business is more likely than not to become target of a ransomware attack.

TechInformed can’t claim to produce a report that prevents this from happening, but we can introduce you, through conversations with over 50 cyber security specialists, to your enemy, the ransomware attacker, which may help you make more informed decisions about which technologies and strategies to deploy.

This week, we’ve published reports dissecting four key aspects of a ransomware attack starting with the ransomware marketplace itself; looking at common attack surfaces; response and negotiation in the event of an attack and strategies to prevent an attack from happening.

We finish with an examination of future threats with some key predictions on how the ransomware landscape will evolve over the next couple of years.

To read TechInformed’s deepdive into ransomware, click on the links at the top of the page, starting with Part 1.

In order to create this report, TechInformed reached out across the industry for key insights into ransomware, and the response was overwhelming. We’d like to thank all of those who contributed, whether quotes were used directly or as part of our research. Please see a list of organisations that contributed below – and thanks to them for their input.

Akamai, Adarma, BlueVoyant, Canon, Censornet, Central Networks, CheckPoint, Cyberproof, Cybersmart, Cyber Risk, CYFOR, DigitalXRAID, Drawbridge, eSentire, Enpass Technologies, Exiger, Forcepoint, Forescout Security, Hamilton Barnes, Intercity, KnowBe4, KPMG, Kroll, Netacea, Noname Security, NormCyber, Nozomi Networks, Nozomi, Otka, Open Systems, Privacy Compliance Hub, Psybersafe, Qualys, Quostar, Searchlight, Secure Age, Splunk, SureCloud, S-RM, Trend Micro, Threat Quotient, Thales, Trelix, University of Nottingham IEEE group, Vectra, VIPRE, Yubico

The post Report: Ransomware and what you can do about it appeared first on TechInformed.

It is as much as the climate budget proposed by US President Joe Biden ($44.9bn) and more than seven times the $6 billion one Elon Musk said he’d give to the UN to help end world hunger, if they managed to provide a detailed plan (they did, he didn’t).

It would be the biggest takeover in history as recently as 1996 (when Bell Atlantic bought NYNEX for $52 billion) if we ignore inflationary values.

Yet for Musk, it is just another investment, it seems, a purchase made on a whim – as the Tesla billionaire finally reached an agreement with the Twitter Board of Directors to take over the social media giant this week.

To fund the acquisition Musk has agreed to invest $21 billion of his own money while taking on significant financing – raising $22.5 billion in debt, including a margin loan of $12.5 billion against his shares in Tesla. This means he’ll be on the hook for 70% of equity unless he brings in other financiers.

Even though the deal has yet to be ratified by Twitter’s shareholders, the impact is being seen elsewhere. Concern over the possibility that Musk will have to sell off some of his Tesla shares has seen $126bn (£100bn) off the carmaker’s value – a 12.2% drop which is the equivalent of a $21 billion drop in Musk’s own stake in the company.

Twitter’s shares also slid on Tuesday, falling 3.9% to close at $49.68, even though Musk agreed to buy it on Monday for $54.20 a share in cash.

Free Speech

Though the figures involved may raise eyebrows, there are other questions around the takeover, such as why Musk – the world’s richest man – wants to buy a company that recorded a $221 million loss last year.

Fortunately, the South African entrepreneur has been very vocal (through his own, popular Twitter account) as to why he is seeking to enter the world of social media. Firstly, he clearly enjoys using the platform. He has over 83 million followers and he tweets prolifically, albeit sometimes controversially.

Despite his love for using it, he is also a vocal critic of both how Twitter is run and some of the functionality of the platform, such as a lack of edit button. Since he became the largest shareholder earlier this month, Musk has been even more critical, suggesting changes he would make should he buy it.

Musk has said he wants Twitter to fulfil its “extraordinary potential,” but Twitter responded to his takeover flirtations by going on the defensive, deploying a “poison pill” strategy which prevented anybody from owning more than 15% of its shares while Musk circled. The board U-turned after he revealed a strategy for a hostile takeover.

Another key interest Musk has discussed is “free speech” and his desire to preserve it on the platform. Musk has been critical of Twitter’s decision to moderate politicians and media outlets who have breached its rules.

Announcing the takeover, he said: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.

“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

Tweeting, of course, he added that: “By “free speech,” I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

But his acquisition comes at a time when regulators are assessing the role of social media giants in society, and how free speech fits in a world dominated by Facebook, Google and others.

There has already been a backlash on Twitter, with some accounts threatening to leave the platform should Musk complete his takeover. Some are concerned it will allow misinformation, disinformation, abuse and hate speech to flourish on the website more than it already does.

Australian lobby group Digital Rights Watch, for example, has expressed concern that while Musk claims the takeover is about free speech, it’s about power.

“While free speech is important, you have to account for asymmetries of power and other barriers that stop people from speaking freely,” chair Lizzie O’Shea said.

“Musk’s style of free speech absolutism will tilt the scales in favour of the rich and powerful who can silence or bully critics. What Musk really seems to want is freedom from accountability.

“Musk’s proposed approach to content moderation will likely make Twitter a less safe place for many people to speak freely while allowing powerful disinformation and propaganda campaigns to spread unchecked.”

Comment from Mike Rhodes, CEO of ConsultMyApp, was dismissive of Musk’s bid: “What started out as an interesting move for both Elon Musk and Twitter with the subsequent joining and not joining of the board, his attempt now to buy Twitter outright turns what was an interesting proposal, into an utterly ridiculous and empty attention-grabbing statement.

“As Donald Trump Sr & Jr are both finding out in their own cash-heavy ways, you cannot buy success or stake in the app industry.

“It would be plain ridiculous for Twitter to accept this offer and place itself in the hands of someone who has demonstrated his sporadic nature in the past two weeks.

“Twitter is a fantastic example of an independently run and managed app that brings together the best parts of tech, social media and culture all in one. This is something that Elon will quickly learn, cannot be bought.”

Expensive edit

So, what will happen? For now, it looks likely that Musk will become the new owner of Twitter. The board have approved the deal, and the shareholders are likely to follow. He doesn’t own any competing assets, so regulatory approval should come swiftly – unless EU regulators opt to intervene, which seems unlikely.

Then, Musk will have the keys to the castle. He has already proven with Tesla and SpaceX that he knows how to take a big idea and turn it into a reality but making Twitter profitable – especially if he plans to use its profits to service the debt, he will accrue to buy it – could be Musk’s biggest challenge yet.

It could go down the advertising route – already Twitter’s largest revenue service – or start offering premium services, as it does with Twitter Blue in the US and Australia. Or Musk might introduce subscription service, although this would not necessarily fit with his free speech absolutism.

There is also talk about putting Twitter’s algorithms out into the public through open sourcing, which he claims will help the platform with his aim to “increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”

Musk hasn’t outlined specific plans to follow the requirements of an open-source license and while transparency is welcomed, there is a reason the likes of Google and Reddit do not disclose how their systems work: fear of exploitation from spammers and other bad actors.

Old faces could return to the platform, with Republicans in the US saying they support Musk’s takeover in the hope he will lift the ban against former President Donald Trump. Trump, for his part, has said he will not return, focussing instead on his own social media platform, Truth Social.

Finally, Twitter users might get that long awaited edit button – one of Musk’s own demands for the service. I don’t know about you, but $44 billion seems an awful lot of money to pay just to get an edit button.

The post Musk buys Twitter: The $44bn edit button appeared first on TechInformed.

As companies adapt new business models there is pressing need for scalability. New roles like Chief Data Officer, Chief Security Officer are being created to manage this transformation.

There are a few key ways in which CIO’s can sharpen the edge,

1. A seat at the table

The biggest issue for most techies in the workplace is that they work more as behind the scenes staff. In other words, they are not as much involved in the main meetings and only get their marching orders from someone who was.

The problem with this model is that it limits how much the IT department can contribute to the strategies helping to shape the growth of the company. Furthermore, it limits the techie in what they can do since they can now only work with instructions passed down to them as an interpretation of what the team lead understands it to be.

But with a seat at the table, all that will change.  On top of quality inputs and real-time debates for the approval of projects that will transform the company digitally, there will also be a better grasp of information to enable the provision of solutions in line with the company’s unique needs.

2. Customer-centric approach

No matter what image a brand is trying to portray of themselves, or what plans they are making, one thing is certain – the end consumer decides if all that effort was worth it. Afterall, they are the focus of every campaign or new strategy that might have been discussed in the board meetings.

Thus, the customer should be the first consideration in making a digital transformation.

CIOs should work with teams that will monitor, collect, analyse and apply feedback obtained from the customers to ensure the betterment of services on the digital front. That will ensure efforts are not just all over the place but tailored to the needs of the target audience.

Likewise, this guarantees a good return on all marketing spends, boosts the business’ goodwill and improves its presence – which in turn translates to a growing revenue scale.

3. Change the narrative

Why it becomes hard for many CIOs to sell executives on the idea of a full-blown digital transformation boils down to how they approach it in the first place.

A business is established to make maximum profits while incurring the least possible costs. Any other thing which doesn’t fit into that model will most likely not hold any water with the powers that be.

Getting out of this bind is as simple as presenting tech as an investment, not expense. With your position, you should be able to shed the light on how much the company’s income will be boosted when funds are pumped into the digitisation sector.

Note that income, in this area, might not be limited to just the money realised, but the prospects the company is able to court too.

With such a logical argument on ground, there is almost nothing stopping the other decision-making executives from throwing all their weight behind such a project.

4. Embrace data collection

It has already been said that the customer should be given the wheel in this digital transformation process. However, that will not happen on its own. To that end, dedicating resources to collecting data and running quality analytics on them is inexcusable.

Beyond knowing your customers, data analytics will also help you analyse trends that will allow you improve your services to meet the maturity of the customer at different levels of their buying process. In fact, you get to create new products and services which the customer would need – but didn’t know was missing for them till you made such available.

This will always put you a step ahead of the market, helping you craft a niche for yourself while keeping a maximum customer retaining percentage.

5. Talent Investment

The company’s digital transformation is only as good as the people in charge of it. Even though you have the dream and plan for the process in your head, it will not go as planned if the right hands are not there to handle it.

This makes it very important to invest in talent across the IT board for effective dispatch of these services.

Talent investment does not just entail hiring the right hands for the job. It spirals into supporting the right employees, mentoring them and furnishing them with adequate training towards the goal at hand.

Conclusion

With digital transformation evolving, there are more opportunities for IT leaders to upgrade their roles within the organisation. The benefit that companies stands to gain here are higher revenue and lower costs, better efficiency & productivity. That being said, it’s high time companies make the digital shifts to enable IT professionals participate in a more strategic and consultative manner.

The post How CIOs can internally drive the shift to digital transformation? appeared first on TechInformed.

Want to build a house in the metaverse? Hire a ‘metaverse construction company’ that can build the virtual home of your dreams, minted to the blockchain. How about decking yourself with a handbag, freshly marked on the same chain to verify the unique ownership? Don’t worry, a finance-hungry dev group is ready to sell you a fashion show of accessories for your every whim and context.

I have seen all of these projects shoot into my inbox, such as one where you can celebrate Valentines’ Day with your own unique NFT that can be used in the metaverse. All of them are tapping into the growing understanding and conversations around spatial computing, with products and services that espouse their deep and intimate connection with the trend. The only problem is that the metaverse doesn’t actually exist yet, and the metaverse is capitalising on perceptions rather than facts.

When I talk about the metaverse, I primarily talk about a wider ‘macro-metaverse’ where it is interoperable with multiple worlds. If the handbag I previously mentioned can be used in a Fortnite concert, or while skiing down the Alps with Mario at your side, then the metaverse is truly here. That transfer of ownership, that works across a wider net, is one of the signatory elements of the metaverse.

Nothing we have today matches that definition. At best we have a range of micro-metaverses, where all of the virtual worlds are as closed off to each other as the Earth is from Andromeda. No items and assets can pass between one another, as transactions and items are blocked from each other and communities can only grow inside their high walls. Cryptocurrency professionals serve items that can work in these micro-metaverses, but ownership cannot be moved between these worlds at all. The handbag is locked within locations like VRChat, without being seen by people that relax in Decentraland.

Worse, the purchase of an asset linked to the blockchain, such as an NFT, only really signify the true owner of said item. In theory, anyone can download it for themselves, unless the virtual world is so embedded with a blockchain network that it can block users from using items that they do not own. Such systems are rare, and can lock the users even deeper into their own world and, in tandem, bring them deeper in their systems. Cryptocurrency professionals would respond that a signage on the blockchain represents ‘true’ ownership, a higher echelon of exclusivity to be proud of. But the sense of status is a fabrication locked within a singular group, a self-perception that reinforced itself via group conversations with little substantiation.

Bright future

While current use-cases border on absurdity and group-think, a bright future may come. As the metaverse develops, we need a system to verify ownership of digital items, as a basic principle to ensure the economics of the virtual world can function. A decentralised blockchain to verify the ownership of, say, a sofa, ensures that the item has value and people can pay for them. If enough micro-metaverses subscribe to the same system, then there can be a place where items can transfer between worlds and can work in many ways. If you really want to use the sofa to skip down with Mario, then you can.

Until the hypothetical scenario arrives, however, the will continue to see rampant fraud in the NFT space. The most compelling element of NFTs is that sense of exclusivity of being part of a club or project, and the largest projects – such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club – can transcend social media and hit mainstream mania. A fully-formed macro-metaverse with the same principles will be powerful. But until then, the promises of NFT ownership rarely matches its true value in reality.

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After watching Guillermo del Toro’s stylish noir thriller Nightmare Alley – which tells the tale of carnival grifters in depression-era America, it struck me that Bradley Cooper’s charismatic, sociopathic, fake spiritualist would have thrived in Silicon Valley.

While still learning the tricks of the trade from two old-time clairvoyants in the film, an ingénue Cooper is taught how to read people and hook them into believing the medium’s fake insights.

“Think out things most people are afraid of and hit them right where they live,” they advise him. “They’re afraid of ill health, of poverty, of boredom, of failure. Fear is the key to human nature.”

Back in the real world, the year started with the conviction of fallen unicorn founder Elizabeth Holmes, who was found guilty of defrauding investors after it was revealed the technology produced through her multi-billion dollar valued firm Theranos, tested for a range of diseases with just a pinprick of blood, was little more than 21st-century snake oil.

It’s interesting that one of the best-known frauds of this century was focused on both health and technology – ill health being age-old anxiety which has since become acerbated by the pandemic; and technology which is fast replacing religious belief as a panacea for all life’s ills.

Even outside health tech circles seductive medical-based jargon and metaphors are seeping their way into technology marketing. I raised an eyebrow the other week when the VP of sales at one cyber security firm recently referred to the technology he was pitching as being “like a vaccine, like a shot of Pfizer”.

Another cyber security firm Darktrace – a UK firm founded by a glamourous cabal of mathematicians, former spies from GCHQ and AI experts – has also come under fire for its marketing narrative.

Following a dramatic fall in its share price, some analysts began speculating last month over whether one of the reasons for its decline in value could be attributed to the fact that many of its resources (60% of all staff) were focused on sales and marketing – causing it to appear to be promising more than it could deliver.

As The Guardian reported last month: “Its security products are pitched as the digital equivalent of the human body’s ability to fight off illness They can “self-learn and self-heal”, operate as an “enterprise immune system” and have an “autonomous response capability” to tackle threats without instruction as they are detected.”

To be fair, this rhetoric builds on a basic level of cyber security language that is littered with health references. People’s password ‘hygiene’ for example, is often found to be lacking, which can make the average person feel very grubby about using their mother’s maiden name or the name of their first pet for the twentieth time that month.

Perhaps clever and relatable use of language is needed to hammer home the importance of cyber security for all businesses to all staff, whether they are working in tech roles or not. But how can investors or those with buying power avoid the danger of falling for subpar solutions that don’t fit the needs of their business?

Even canny operators like Rupert Murdoch were blinded by the charms of Theranos.

Science and technology reporting can involve treading a fine line between tech idealism and tech scepticism and it’s sometimes hard to nail. It’s all too easy to get carried away with a buzzy tech or a company that you know will draw readers in.

For every Elizabeth Holmes, there are probably more Sarah Gilberts (the woman who helped design the Oxford Vaccine) – but flashy sales demos and pitches need to be followed up a string of questions as well as a common sense check.

For instance, how does this tech benefit businesses and what applications does it carry out that current systems don’t offer? Is this a technology for technology’s sake? (I could mention some NFT ideas here…).

If it is a software or cloud-based product is the data easily accessible and shared with the customer? Does it come with in-built cyber security (or is that responsibility passed on to the customer)? Is it a platform that accounts for both current and future requirements?

Facilities serving enterprises now need to be able to support IoT technologies, machine learning and AI which requires systems to have open access and work with multiple vendors – so can the tech be integrated easily into other platforms?

It’s also always worth asking more about the history of the company selling the product. Who are the key people involved in the business (the founders rather than any high-profile backers)? Do they have any other affiliations? If they have rebranded recently (which appears to be happening all the time in tech at the moment), then why?

This list of questions feels inexhaustible sometimes, and the above questions are quite generic. Each business has its own individual needs and stakeholders and must identify the best technologies necessary to maintain the mission-critical systems that serve them and work for their own business goals.

But by doing this due diligence and looking at their businesses’ overall objectives, the risk of being scammed for twentieth-century snake oil decreases. Because while we all love the tale of a grifter, the only place we should really be seeing them is on the big screen.

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