Surveilled - Issue 37
Surveilled
Issue 37
A weekly summary of what I’ve found interesting at the intersection of economics, finance and technology.
Headlines
Robots Are Not Replacing Us but Managing Us — Increasingly, in warehouses, call centres, and other sectors conducive to exact measurement and optimisation, AI algorithms and machines are managing humans, and the results are not pretty: they increase injuries, burnout and stress. Read
Data Tracking Companies Look at Schools as an Attractive Market — CNET reports a story on a data tracking company that uses sensors to accurately track individuals in closed spaces (e.g. offices or, er, prisons), and how they are looking to expand to schools. Ostensibly for childrens’ “protection,” and playing on obvious fears like school shootings, but it’s hard to see how they technology would help with that. What is easy to see is the spate of privacy and even behavioural issues that this sort of tracking would bring with it. Read
Scientists Discover Powerful New Antibiotic Using AI — The description of the process is fascinating, and the results seem very promising, so it looks like this opens an interesting new avenue in pharmaceutical research. Sadly, useful examples of AI like this are vastly outnumbered by the downright dangerous ones… Read
E-Commerce Platform Shopify Joins Facebook’s Cryptocurrency Libra Association — Bucking the trend. Read
Context
Ex-Google ethicist Tristan Harris appeals to the EU to regulate Facebook, Google etc. as “attention utilities.” Interesting ideas here. Read ($)
Recent books
I mainly link to articles, some longer than others, and as such tend to omit books, whereas they are obviously the foremost medium to provoke thought. So from now on I’ll start including a regular overview of the most interesting books I’ve read over the past few months.
The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society, by Binyamin Appelbaum — Excellent overview of the rise of economics into the governing discipline to evaluate public policy. Appelbaum casts a very critical eye towards neoliberals, and paints a vivid picture of the ill effects of their markets dogma. Above all, the book is a great reminder that our economy does not follow immutable laws of nature like physics, but is the result of choices that we made as a society. If we don’t like the outcome, we can change it by making different choices.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by John Carreyrou — The blurbs at the back use the word “riveting” a lot, and that is not a lie. An eminently readable tale of hubris and deception, destined to be part of the canon of business books like “Barbarians at the Gates”, “Liar’s Poker” etc. The courage and resolve that the principals, e.g. the writer and his sources, in this story had to muster to uncover the scam defies belief and is inspiring.
That’s it for this week’s edition. As always, thanks for reading and please forward this to anyone who you think might be interested, it would be much appreciated.