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Archive for the ‘business’ category: Page 27

Dec 2, 2023

The first results from the world’s biggest basic income experiment

Posted by in categories: business, economics, education, finance

One of the big questions GiveDirectly is trying to answer is how to direct cash to low-income households. “Just give cash” is a fun thing to say, but it elides some important operational details. It matters whether someone gets $20 a month for two years or $480 all at once. Those add up to the same amount of money; this isn’t a Side Hustle King situation. But how you get the money still matters. A certain $20 every month can help you budget and take care of regular expenses, while $480 all at once can give you enough capital to start a business or another big project.

The latest research on the GiveDirectly pilot, done by MIT economists Tavneet Suri and Nobel Prize winner Abhijit Banerjee, compares three groups: short-term basic income recipients (who got the $20 payments for two years), long-term basic income recipients (who get the money for the full 12 years), and lump sum recipients, who got $500 all at once, or roughly the same amount as the short-term basic income group. The paper is still being finalized, but Suri and Banerjee shared some results on a call with reporters this week.

By almost every financial metric, the lump sum group did better than the monthly payment group. Suri and Banerjee found that the lump sum group earned more, started more businesses, and spent more on education than the monthly group. “You end up seeing a doubling of net revenues” — or profits from small businesses — in the lump sum group, Suri said. The effects were about half that for the short-term $20-a-month group.

Dec 2, 2023

‘The great wealth transfer’ is here: Billionaires set to give trillions to their kids

Posted by in category: business

In recent months, the world’s new billionaires made more of their fortunes from inheritance than from entrepreneurship, according to the UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report.

It marked the first time in the nine-year history of the report that newly minted billionaires accumulated more wealth from inheritance than starting a business.

Fifty-three heirs inherited a total of $150.8 billion in the 12 months ending in April, exceeding the total of $140.7 billion accumulated by 84 new self-made billionaires, according to the Swiss bank’s report. The shift is likely to continue: The report said more than 1,000 billionaires are expected to pass $5.2 trillion to their children over the next 20 or 30 years.

Dec 2, 2023

Amazon taps SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to help launch Kuiper satellites

Posted by in categories: business, Elon Musk, internet, satellites

Dec 1 (Reuters) — Amazon (AMZN.O) on Friday said it booked three Falcon 9 launches with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to help deploy the ecommerce giant’s Project Kuiper satellite network, tapping a rival in the satellite internet business for its multi-billion dollar launch campaign.

Amazon aims to build Kuiper as a constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit to beam broadband internet globally and compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network, which already has some 5,000 satellites providing nearly global coverage.

Amazon, which vowed in 2019 to invest $10 billion into the project, will put an unspecified number of Kuiper satellites on three Falcon 9 rockets from SpaceX beginning in mid-2025, the company said Friday.

Dec 1, 2023

Procurement in the age of AI

Posted by in categories: business, robotics/AI

Procurement professionals face challenges more daunting than ever. Recent years’ supply chain disruptions and rising costs, deeply familiar to consumers, have had an outsize impact on business buying. At the same time, procurement teams are under increasing pressure to supply their businesses while also contributing to business growth and profitability.

Deloitte’s 2023 Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey reveals that procurement teams are now being called upon to address a broader range of enterprise priorities. These range from driving operational efficiency (74% of respondents) and enhancing corporate social responsibility (72%) to improving margins via cost reduction (71%).

Nov 30, 2023

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

Posted by in categories: business, quantum physics, robotics/AI

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Reuters’ reported earlier this week that Alibaba “cut a quantum computing laboratory and team from its research arm, donating both the lab and related experimental equipment to Zhejiang University.”

Alibaba was a relatively early entrant among giant e-commerce/cloud providers into quantum computing research, placing the effort in its Alibaba’s DAMO Academy research organization. There are reports it had invested on the order of $15 billion in the effort. According to the Reuters report, about 30 employees are being released with and effort under way to find positions for them at Zhejiang.

Rather than being tied to specific issues with the quantum research, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the quantum work was caught in the larger turmoil surrounding Alibaba and its ongoing reorganization. The company said its DAMO organization will deepen its work on AI and machining learning research which may be able to have a nearer-term impact on Alibaba’s business.

Nov 30, 2023

Nvidia CEO says he wakes up every morning worried his company might fail

Posted by in categories: business, computing

“I think when you build a company from the ground up, and you’ve experienced real adversity, and you really experienced nearly going out of business several times, that feeling stays with you,” Huang said.

The fear of his chip empire tanking, Huang admitted, is a feeling he grapples with every morning when he wakes up.

“I don’t wake up proud and confident. I wake up worried and concerned,” Huang said as the audience laughed politely in response. “It just depends on which side of the bed you get out on.”

Nov 29, 2023

Amazon’s Q AI assistant lets users ask questions about their company’s data

Posted by in categories: business, robotics/AI

Amazon Q, currently available for contact centers, will be integrated to other AWS services soon.

Amazon’s cloud business AWS launched a chat tool called Amazon Q, where businesses can ask questions specific to their companies.


Amazon Q can work with any of the models found on Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s repository of AI models, which includes Meta’s Llama 2 and Anthropic’s Claude 2. The company said customers who use Q often choose which model works best for them; connect to the Bedrock API for the model; use that to learn their data, policies, and workflow; and then deploy Amazon Q.

Continue reading “Amazon’s Q AI assistant lets users ask questions about their company’s data” »

Nov 29, 2023

Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami isn’t worried AI will kill the web

Posted by in categories: business, internet, robotics/AI

The co-founder of website builder Wix is embracing generative AI, and he’s not too worried that it might destroy the business models of the web.


Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami is embracing generative AI and thinks the business models of the web can survive it.

Nov 29, 2023

IonQ Named to Fast Company’s Third Annual List of the Next Big Things in Tech

Posted by in categories: business, quantum physics, robotics/AI, security

IonQ earns spot in the prestigious list of 119 innovative companies for innovation in quantum computing

COLLEGE PARK, Md., November 28, 2023 —(BUSINESS WIRE)— IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), an industry leader in quantum computing, today announced that it has been named to Fast Company’s third annual Next Big Things in Tech list, honoring technology breakthroughs that promise to shape the future of industries—from healthcare and security to artificial intelligence and data. This is IonQ’s first time appearing on the list.

“This recognition is not only a tremendous honor but a testament to the transformative impact and potential of our technology,” said Peter Chapman, President and CEO of IonQ. “IonQ is committed to advancing quantum computing capabilities to drive technological breakthroughs and solve complex business problems across industries. This award fuels our drive to continue pushing boundaries and breaking barriers.”

Nov 28, 2023

ChatGPT mania may be cooling, but a serious new industry is taking shape

Posted by in categories: business, robotics/AI

Three forces will shape the business of generative AI.

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