new Workforce. As GenAI masters an expanding set of tasks, companies will need to calibrate their strategic workforce planning to hire and train for skills that promote effective LLM use and supervision. Autonomous agents raise the prospect of automation of entire workflows, rather than discrete tasks. This means that entire functional and business unit teams will need to be reconfigured, with the potential to significantly reduce labor requirements and costs in future. To gauge their preparedness, companies should stress test their workforce planning using scenarios with increasing end-to-end workflow automation. — Fortune, 7h ago

new ARK’s investment process initially examines from the top-down how the world is changing and where it is headed. ARK employs an open research strategy to gather information, both helping to define and refine its internal research process. Inputs include theme developers who are thought leaders in their fields, social media interactions, and crowd-sourced insights as people respond to ARK’s public research. Using this information in an iterative fashion, ARK’s research and investment team work to “size” and “re-size” the opportunities. As a result of extensive and iterative research steps, ARK anticipates and quantifies multi-year value-chain transformations and market opportunities. Through this process, specific companies percolate to the top as best positioned to benefit from the identified investment premise, at which point ARK begins its bottom-up process. ARK scores potential investments based on key metrics, inputting the values into a proprietary scoring system to quantify the companies in the context of the opportunity. Finally, as the CIO and Portfolio Manager, Catherine Wood has the final accountability for the selection of investments and approval for all investment decisions. — Ark Invest, 7h ago

new Change is never easy, particularly large organisational shifts like the ones that can be expected through the adoption of generative AI. The nature of some roles may change, along with established methods that many employees will have become accustomed to over the years. However, with the proper learning and development initiatives in place, such as group coaching, the collaborative mindset can be continued long term and steps can be taken to break down organisational silos. — The European Business Review, 15h ago

new To successfully secure the necessary capital for their startups, entrepreneurs should research and pursue alternative funding sources such as angel investors, crowdfunding platforms, government grants, and strategic partnerships. These non-traditional financing options offer greater flexibility in terms of funding amounts and repayment terms, allowing business owners to maintain more control over their enterprises and potentially accumulate greater wealth over time. Moreover, leveraging these diverse financing channels can provide startups with access to a broader range of industry expertise and support networks, which can prove invaluable to the growth and success of their businesses. — Grit Daily News, 1d ago

new But even as PublicSquare presents itself as a safe haven to customers, it’s not clear that businesses have to necessarily do much to join the platform. According to The Washington Post, to qualify, a company must be a small or medium-size business that “affirms” the platform’s five core values. (The company also “prioritizes” business with products made in America, but it’s unclear how.) Many of those values seem to impose few, if any, burdens on the ways companies conduct themselves. Instead, they are merely vague statements like, “We believe in the greatness of this Nation and will always fight to defend it.” The most pointed one, which hints at gender traditionalism and anti-abortion stances, goes: “We will always protect the family unit and celebrate the sanctity of every life.” But it’s unclear whether there’s any enforcement mechanism other than consumer backlash against companies on PublicSquare that embrace anything that can be spun as “woke.”... — MSNBC.com, 1d ago

new With regard to data, hospitals should make strides in better structuring and standardizing data annotation to provide less biased medical treatments and recommendations. Hospitals, AI developers, and the government should work closely to ensure safe and responsible technology is used. If the government establishes an AI oversight committee, medical AI tools can be better regulated—especially in cases where algorithms are updated (thus requiring new regulatory policies). — Montreal AI Ethics Institute, 1d ago

new Policymakers are increasingly considering risk-based assessments of AI systems, such as the EU AI Act. We believe that in this context, AI systems with the potential for deception should be classified at least as “high-risk.” This classification would naturally lead to a set of regulatory requirements, including risk assessment and mitigation, comprehensive documentation, and record-keeping of harmful incidents. Second, we suggest passing ‘bot-or-not’ laws similar to the one in California. These laws require AI-generated content to be accompanied by a clear notice informing users that the content was generated by an AI. This would give people context about the content they are viewing and mitigate the risk of AI deception. — Montreal AI Ethics Institute, 1d ago

new Cover the entire AI lifecycle in your AI policy: Your AI policy should not simply focus on how AI models are developed or how they are used. Instead, create a comprehensive policy that covers everything from data preparation and training to model creation and development, model deployment, model monitoring, and model fine-tuning. — eWEEK, 1d ago

new The worth benefits of web3 have caught the eye of huge tech firms, and it may additionally result in a significant shift within the technological panorama. Due to this fact, you will need to study safety in web3 with consciousness of web3 safety dangers and instruments for Internet 3.0 safety. The web3 software ecosystem consists of a number of interoperable protocols, that are primarily based on good contracts. With the continual progress of the web3 ecosystem, you will need to give attention to adaptability of safety options to the tempo of innovation. Allow us to be taught extra in regards to the know-how stack required for internet 3.0 safety throughout totally different layers of web3. — BlaQue Crypto News, 1d ago

new INFRASTRUCTURE opportunities centered on increasing access to composting/food scrap hauling services. Increasing the number of free drop off locations located at farmers markets, gardens, churches, public parks, and schools was mentioned numerous times possibly indicating a belief that this might be the easiest or quickest approach to the adoption of composting if “ drop-off sites [were] in every neighborhood .” More gardens could also host on-site community composting if they had money available to pay stewards. Increasing municipal collection ( "Bins for All!") and community composting efforts and expanding options for home composting and for renters were all mentioned as options to increase access as was the development of a compost (service) directory. Regardless of how access to composting services was increased it should be affordable as “[you] shouldn't have to pay to do right thing.” Opportunities to utilize more appropriate technology abound including using AI for sorting to reduce contamination, developing rat-proof bins (for collection and home composting), using biodigesters, and perhaps creating a new type of facility to handle (plastic-based) ‘compostable’ (biodegradable) serve-ware. To support the development of infrastructure opportunities incentives such as "raising landfill tipping fees [or creating a] methane tax on private LF owners" and funding such as the "potential to pursue Federal funding to pilot creative programs" are critical. Increasing collaboration and coordination is also an opportunity to develop infrastructure with at least one participant wondering, “ Where is regional planning org? (e.g. CMAP)” and now is the time to increase collaboration because "passion exists among food producers in the region who need soil!!" Rather than looking to individual households for new sources of materials to make compost, restaurants, breweries, and landscapers and other large food waste generators could be better engaged and plugged in to composting perhaps driving or at least raising awareness of the issue for individual households. Attendees also mentioned as opportunities new places to process and acquire compost or new ways to handle food waste that included empty warehouses and factories, vacant lots, big box stores offering pickup of compost and drop off of scraps and sending food waste from large institutions to hog farms 4 . A list of comments on Opportunities in Infrastructure are displayed in Table 8, Appendix 1. POLICY opportunities included creating mandates for large generators (such as grocery stores, food processors, schools and universities) to compost and for public projects (roads, landscaping, buildings) to use finished compost. These two policy changes have the power to directly increase demand and may work to create a consistent end market for finished compost. There may exist a scalar mismatch in the region for compost— demand by individual consumers may be too small to justify the amount of effort it takes to create the compost so there needs to be "more emphasis on getting more finished compost to market." Other opportunities to increase demand for the finished product and access to services include passing Right to Compost legislation “so that building managers and landlords don't stand in the way" of their residents using compost pick up services; instituting bans and creating incentives and/or disincentives such as increasing landfill tipping fees ; and incentivizing compost usage by farmers and public works. Creating consistent, stable, and expanded end markets for finished compost and the support for processing infrastructure is extremely important when implementing policies that would increase the amount of feedstock available to create compost. Policy opportunities that did not require a large lift included creating new or expanding existing programs as "many municipalities already accept leaves & lawn clippings. Expanding to collecting food waste scraps is low- hanging fruit" and ensuring that funding is sufficient especially for creating technical assistance positions to support compost collection and processing. Also identified as an opportunity is to increase regional coordination... — extension.org, 2d ago

new In 2022, over £1.2 billion was stolen through fraud in the UK. Yet, organisations increasingly recognise that fraud is a security issue rather than a cost of doing business. Many UK players, especially in the financial services industry, will be looking to adopt end-to-end online fraud prevention solutions, counting on multi-layered tools and technologies. One key development to watch within these ‘layers of defence’ is the addition of so-called risk signals. Leading digital identity experts have already started to incorporate more behavioural biometrics, such as typing patterns or mouse movements. These patterns from historic interactions with users will start to impact fraud prevention positively, with device signals or template signals of fraudulent ID documents making it much harder for fraudsters to get away with their crimes. — Financial IT, 2d ago

new In response to increasing regulatory burdens and the risk of civil litigation, successful companies in 2024 will lean into enhancements in their compliance operations. They will actively collect and test evidence of security control effectiveness, linking these controls directly to their risks, across all critical assets or systems. This approach ensures companies are confident in accurately describing how well they manage their risk portfolio, including in SEC filings. The automation of compliance operations enables security and audit professionals to spend more time doing the parts of their jobs that they love. Furthermore, as supply chain risks intensify scrutiny of B2B transactions, companies will efficiently repurpose many of their controls and control evidence. This strategy not only allows companies to secure additional attestations or certifications such as ISO or SOC 2 without increasing their workforce, but it also provides a significant competitive business advantage. — Thinkers360 | World’s First Open Platform For Thought Leaders, 2d ago

new The nation’s housing crunch has many officials blaming short-term rentals for taking shelter off the market. A 2016 article in the Harvard Law & Policy Review suggested that short-term rentals “[reduce] the affordable housing supply” by removing long-term rentals from the housing market and keeping local residents from moving in.Dozens of localities throughout the United States have regulated short-term rentals.But none has gone as far as New York City.“The law and rules effectively ban short-term rentals in New York City and are a stark contrast to cities around the world that have enacted fair and balanced short-term rental rules,” wrote Theo Yedinsky, Airbnb’s global policy director, in a June letter on the company’s website.Airbnb says it worked for years to find a compromise.“These rules are an outlier and stand in contrast to the approach of other cities around the country, going as far as to prohibit New Yorkers from sharing their homes when they are away for work or travel, hosting more than two guests at the same time, and requiring that they must certify they understand numerous lengthy and complicated city codes,” the company wrote in a prepared statement in response to Stateline.González said policies to regulate the short-term rental market in both domestic and international cities have varied, from capping the length of a rental stay to restricting the number of guests to requiring the host to be on the premises.“If New York City’s policy is successful, it could embolden other cities to follow suit and use this as a way to not only rein in this industry, but possibly address these long-term rental housing crises,” said González. “I think there will be a lot learned in the next few weeks and months on whether this is an effective policy measure.”One of the consequences of the city’s crackdown on Airbnb listings is already taking shape. More than 90% of the city’s current Airbnb rental stock of nearly 40,000 units — of which 3,746 are short-term rentals — is unlicensed, according to Inside Airbnb, a housing activist group that tracks the platform’s data.The fear of rising hotel prices and the dearth of legal rentals are prompting some tourists to turn to short-term rentals listed on Craigslist, part of a burgeoning alternative market of unregistered, unlicensed short-term rentals in the wake of the city’s restrictions.For travelers such as Dustin Smith and his fiancée, Carly Barnes, it’s worth the risk when they visit New York City for the first time on Dec. 21 for a two-week stay.“New York is already stretching our budget just to eat and sightsee, so if we can get a good deal on the internet, without paying an arm and a leg for a hotel, we’ll take that chance,” Smith, who lives in Louisiana, told Stateline.Christian Klossner, executive director of New York City’s Office of Special Enforcement, told Stateline that his office will monitor the short-term rental industry as a whole, including those spaces advertised on Craigslist and other sites. Hosts who violate the ordinance face a possible fine of $5,000, and platforms could face penalties up to $1,500. — GovTech, 2d ago

new KAREN HAO: In general, including the OpenAI-Anthropic split there have emerged kind of two major camps but also some sub-camps: So we'll review all of them, but the, but there's kind of two philosophies that exist within OpenAI and also the general AI community around how do you actually build beneficial AGI, and one of those camps is sort of in the most extreme version is the techno-optimist camp of we get to beneficial AGI by releasing things quickly, by releasing them iteratively so people become more familiar with the technology so institutions can evolve and adapt instead of, you know, withholding it until suddenly capabilities become extremely dramatic and then releasing it onto the world. And also that we build it more beneficially by commercializing it so that we have the money to continue doing safety research, what's called safety research. The other major camp is basically sort of like the, the existential-risk camp again, kind of the extreme version of this camp, which basically says we, in order to get to beneficial AGI, we don't want to release it until we know for sure that we've like done all of the possible testing. We've like tweaked it and tuned it and tried to foresee as much as possible how this model is going to affect the world. And only then do we maybe start releasing it and making sure that it it it only produces positive outcomes. I think both of these, these are both very, very extreme in the sense that they've almost become quasi-religious ideologies around the development of AGI and like how to actually approach it. And there's sort of many, you, you could say that each camp over the years has sort of cherry-picked examples to support why they are correct in their argument. But when the OpenAI-Anthropic split happened, it was exactly this disagreement. So Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, they were very much, we need to continue releasing and get people used to it, get more money in so that we can continue doing this research. And Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela Amodei who was also at OpenAI, they were very much at the camp of no we should, we should be doing as much as possible to try and tweak and tune this model before it goes out into the world. And that that was ultimately sort of the clash that happened then and has continued to happen ever since. — Big Think, 2d ago

new Programs like the one at York could also help with Canada’s tech labour shortage. According to Equinix’s Global Tech Trends Survey, 70 per cent of Canadian information technology companies view a shortage of personnel with IT skills as a main threat to their businesses. The university worked with senior technology experts from 15 businesses, companies, public sector organizations and industry associations who advised on a set of “occupational standards” to determine what an “ideal graduate” would look like, said Dr. Hornsey. The businesses include homegrown unicorn Shopify, Toronto-based data solutions company Cinchy, and American and international subsidiaries such as EY Canada, General Motors Canada and IBM Canada. “[The group’s] direct influence on the coursework is not very high,” said Dr. Hornsey. “[They] were more focused on the goals of the program.”... — University Affairs, 2d ago

new Cons: Although the space leverages UC&C technologies in order to allow for remote participation, the focus nevertheless remains on the physical space. The in-room experience tends to take precedence because it’s more natural to teach to people who are physically sharing the same space. Likewise, digital equity becomes an issue when remote participants are not offered the same experience that those present in the classroom are offered. Often, for effective synchronous learning, an additional teaching assistant, who can monitor chat and far-end participation, is required. Finally, although the support needs over time are lower, integrated systems have a higher initial cost of entry. The additional equipment, the need for infrastructure, the facilities assistance, and the labor for integration and commissioning the system can be cost prohibitive for smaller institutions and at scale. — Commercial Integrator, 2d ago