Brave New World
Back to homepageSouth Africa Looks on While Brazil and India Face Off China and Russia
Johannesburg BRICS Summit (22-24 August 2023) Is the Johannesburg summit anything more than just a chatgroup meeting for importers and exporters? Wim Romeijn reports. A champion of moderation, and its own interests, India seems determined to thwart plans by Russia
Read MoreArgentina Looks to Eccentric Outlier For an Economic Fix
A far-Right libertarian candidate has burst from nowhere to claim centre stage in Argentina’s election race. Javier Milei, a 52-year-old, self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, wants to shutter Argentina’s inept central bank, replace the long-suffering peso with the US dollar, abolish all but
Read MoreBehold the New War: Same as the Old War, but it Comes with an App
On the battlefields of Ukraine, massive military kit is trumping technology, reports Wim Romeijn. On the undulating plains of eastern Ukraine, tech wizardry powers and shapes a lethal cat-and-mouse game. Here, loss of human life and the destruction of military
Read MoreOh Dear: The Sound of Your Keystrokes Could Leave You Wide-open to a Cyberattack
A simple video call could open your laptop to hackers, experts warn… University researchers have created an AI system to decipher words from the sound of typing — with more than 90 percent accuracy. That remarkable achievement comes with an
Read MoreTrusting AI in International Trade — the Road to Failure, or the Future?
Lord Waverley dons his techie hat and has a closer look at the potential applications of artificial intelligence… Generative AI is vital to national interest, regional prosperity, and tackling shared global challenges. It can help to grow economies, quickly and
Read MoreAI Set to Drive Nail in Coffin of Long Stagnation
From Excited to Ecstatic: Expectations of AI Drive Perception Recognised as one of the world’s most prestigious management consulting firms, though no stranger to controversy, McKinsey & Company is quite sanguine about the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) to the
Read MoreData-Sharing: Privacy Agreement to Limit Prying by US Intelligence
Europeans can now complain if they think intelligence services gathered their data — and it’s business as usual for tech firms. The EU Commission and the US are creating a data privacy framework to ease concerns over the sharing of
Read MoreVideo Gaming Firm Forced to Cut Staff — Despite Cult-like Following for a Franchise that Just Won’t Die
Q: How do get 1,000 Pikachu on an aeroplane? A: You Pokémon. Hal Williams reports on the enduring — or is it? — appeal of a video gaming phenomenon… Pokémon Go has been a mysterious and enduring phenomenon since its
Read MoreTechnology, Turtles, Subway Systems and Flying Men — Delivery is Moving on Apace
Pie-from-the-sky is the festival food delivery dream for 2023 by HAL WILLIAMS New technology always takes a bit of bedding-in before it’s accepted, adopted, and widely used. ‘Twas ever thus; back in 1964, when the facsimile machine was born, it
Read MoreAI: Lies, Surprises, and a Risk of our Own Extinction — With Some Interesting Attributes
The bots are here: ‘It’s as if aliens had landed, and nobody noticed because they are fluent in English…’ ChatGPT suffers from hallucinations, with hints of sociopathy. If stumped, the much-hyped chatbot will brazenly resort to lying and spit out
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