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Some people knew the internet would NOT liberate us …

I just ran across an item from 1994 written by Carmen Hermosillo talking about cyberspace, the internet and the future. It is quite something but TL:DR, so here are a few highlights: Introducing Humdog: Pandora’s Vox Redux (1994) “When I went into cyberspace I went into it thinking that it was a place like any…

The rise and rise of ransomware

There’s a very interesting analysis of the cyber attacks on Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and Harrods on the BBC this week. If you have access to their iPlayer, then it’s well worth a watch: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002d2lh/inside-the-high-street-cyberattacks If you don’t, then here’s the summary as it illustrates our fragile digital world today. In April, Marks &…

#Klarna discovers that AI is not working and wants the humans back

After lots of discussions about how AI is transforming financial services as a new, foundational technology that has massive granularity of use cases, it doesn’t always work. In a very major public about face, Klarna says it doesn’t work. This is the company that saved millions by getting rid of two of five staff. Now,…

Moving from ML to LLM GPT in payments, #Stripe sets the standard

Just continuing the AI theme, it’s really interesting to see what Stripe – latest valuation over $90 billion – is doing with the technology. Effectively, it’s tried to create a GPT for payments. The reason they are pushing the envelope is after seeing great results in earlier developments using traditional machine learning models. These resulted…

Ethics, trust and the rise of AI in Financial Services

I’ve followed Clara Durodié’s Decoding AI for some time. Decoding AI is a digital publication dedicated to AI in financial services and, in her most recent update, she delves deep into Trust, Ethics and the Rise of AI in Financial Services, which is my specialist subject of the moment. I won’t repost the whole article…

What economy would machines create?

We talk a lot about AI these days or, as some call it, A1 or Al (yes, Betty, when you call me, you can call me Al) and we have now moved on to other terms including Generative AI, Agentic AI and AGI which stands for Artificial General Intelligence. The thing is that these terms…

As #Revolut and #N26 move into mobile, never say never

It is notable that a few challenger neobanks are expanding footprint into telecoms, namely Revolut and N26. N26 joins Revolut in disrupting the telecommunications market The interesting thing here is that there have been many telco’s trying to move into banking – think Orange – and vice versa, but it rarely works. Orange checks out…

The regulation versus innovation debate continues

I just attended two events – one fintech and one regulatory. The contrast could not have been more different. The fintech event was buzzing with activity and youth; the regulatory event was very serious and full of suits. It reminded me of my old days dodging between Money2020 and Sibos. The thing about the regulatory…

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