Future

Related to the end of cities – yesterday’s blog – is the fascinating friction between employers and employees over where to work these days. Some believe you have to come back and work in the office whilst others protest and claim you can work from anywhere, even on the beach. Who is wrong, or are both…

I’ve blogged several times that, as people move to online everything, the retail main street stores and shopping malls are dying. In a similar fashion, bank branches are closing faster than ever and becoming restaurants or coffee houses So, inevitably the question has to come up: what about the post-pandemic City? Bloomberg reports that “oversized…

We’ve all seen the massive discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) lately. Can we regulate it? What does it mean? Will we all lose our jobs? How can it be used in way that helps humans and does not destroy them? It is a debate we had in financial markets for years. Back in the last…

Marc Andreesson of Andreesson Horowitz fame, the leading investor in fintech start-ups, published a long piece on how AI will save us the other day. It is well worth a read, but it is a long read (about 30 minutes) so, if you don’t have the time, here is a short summation of what he…

I recently presented at the DIFC’s first Dubai Fintech Summit on the past, present and future of banking, finance and technology. It was fun, but with only twenty minutes, it was fast. So, here is that presentation and transcript if you are interested … Slides:  Video: Transcript: Some of you may know me but,…

  After yesterday’s post, I felt inspired to write a poem about AI. Here goes:   Have we invented the technology to replace us? Have we thrown humanity under a bus? If technology can talk, what does it have to say? If technology can walk, how will it play? We have AI and robots today…

European Union and United States diplomats are meeting today, for the fourth time, to work out how to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). The EU Commission expects agreement in the European Union this year on the first AI law, in what some see as a global race to manage these new technologies. The key is how to…

2023 is proving to be a really weird year. On the back of a pandemic, we have a world where interest rates are rising, business is contracting, tax is going up and confidence is going down. I cannot see anywhere in the world that is stable or normal. We have war in Europe; China has…

I just shared a speech by Christopher J. Waller, member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, that started with this comment: “Climate change is real, but I do not believe it poses a serious risk to the safety and soundness of large banks or the financial stability of the United States.”…

I’ve had this thing about decentralised finance for some time. The reason? Libertarians say that we can now have money without government. From my side, I argue that’s wrong. You can’t have money without government. The question is: who is the government? You cannot have money without government, but the government can just as easily…