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I had an interesting experience in Lebanon recently, where the accepted currency is the Lebanese pound or the US dollar. In fact, the US dollar is preferred as, since the civil war in the country, the Lebanese pound has been tied to the US dollar at 1500 Lebanese pounds per dollar.  Everywhere around the country…

I was trying to find someone who was optimistic about the future age after robots. Most are pessimists, and I’ve referred to them a few times now. They think the world is coming to an end and that mankind will have nothing to do when the robots do everything. Can the robots do everything? Certainly…

There are lots of reports of robots taking jobs from humans, and our fear for the future world of no work.  One paper from researchers at Oxford University predicts that 47% of American jobs are at “high risk” of computerisation over the next two decades.  Another research report issued in 2015 by McKinsey Global Institute found that…

The Turing test, developed by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Although there had been numerous claims that Eugene Goostman passed the Turing test, that simply is not true. Let us just say that he cheated the test in a lot of ways (further reading). …

This week’s main blog headlines are … Is FOMO driving you MADD? A long time ago, a man would go to work whilst the woman would stay at home. Thanks to a generation of change, women and men now work and no one has to stay at home. A long time ago, work was a…

A long time ago, a man would go to work whilst the woman would stay at home. Thanks to a generation of change, women and men now work and no one has to stay at home. A long time ago, work was a place you went to and home was a place you rested.  Thanks…

I was struck by some commentary with John Cryan, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, over on Bloomberg. The article is talking about the wild ride he has had since taking over the helm of the bank which had formerly been run by two CEOs (Juergen Fitschen and Anshu Jain). He knew when he took over…

I recently appeared on an interview with Salesforce’s LeadingEdge webcast. Afterwards, they picked out 12 statements I made that they thought particularly noteworthy, so thought I would repost them here: 12 Noteworthy Quotes on the Future of Banking The digital revolution is fundamentally impacting every industry across the board, and banking is no exception — in…

I really enjoyed a recent article on CGAP (the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor). If you don’t know them, CGAP is a global partnership of over 30 leading organizations that seek to advance financial inclusion. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP’s mission is to improve the lives of poor people by spurring innovations and…

There are a few exchanges I use for trading cryptocurrencies such as Kraken and Coinbase, so I was interested to receive this email from Coinbase last Friday: Dear Coinbase Customer, We are contacting you to make you aware of recent developments in a number of proposals for technical changes to Bitcoin. All BTC stored on…