Elena Yunusov

For a long time, the only way to measure "Ease of Use" was to run UX tests. Now, in token-based governance, we can draw from Social Choice Theory and apply axiomatic proofs. It's a new route to validate voting designs and similar token-based mechanisms, and make sure participants know how to best achieve their goals. Read GovXS' latest article "Measuring Simplicity for Voters in Retro Funding" on how we approach UX by applying Social Choice theory. https://lnkd.in/eaaicf6s If you are interested in learning more, get in touch - and follow our work on Mirror!

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great Post from Dr. Benjamin DELSOL: #StrategicThursday 🚀 Is the future of digital payments hidden in Hashtag #QuantumAlgorithms? As an #IPStrategist and Quantum #Physicist, I've seen countless innovations, but the latest breakthrough from Sofia Priazhkina and her team at the Bank of Canada is nothing short of revolutionary. Imagine using #QuantumComputing to untangle the complexities of #DigitalCurrency adoption among firms! Intrigued? Let’s dive in. 💡 Traditional computing falls short when modelling strategic behaviours in vast networks, but quantum computing, with its mind-bending capabilities, offers a tantalizing solution. This paper isn’t just theory - it's practical magic, demonstrating empirical feasibility using real data from the Canadian economy. 📊 For those navigating the world of digital currencies and firm networks, here’s the game-changer: the study uncovers how firms, driven by diverse preferences and costs, make cooperative decisions about digital payment adoption. It reveals a paradox where higher usage might lead to lower adoption rates, a nuance critical for strategists and policymakers. 🔍 The researchers brilliantly simulate these dynamics using quantum algorithmic, highlighting inefficiencies and suggesting that without coordination, we’re looking at a potential 10% under-adoption rate. And there’s more, the empirical simulations show how quantum computing can decode these intricate networks, offering predictive power we couldn’t dream of before. 🌐 As we stand on the brink of a quantum revolution, this study is a beacon. It showcases the transformative potential of quantum technologies in solving real-world problems, from payment networks to beyond. 👏 Hats off to the innovators at Multiverse Computing and the forward-thinkers at the #BankofCanada. This collaboration is proof that with the right tools, we can redefine the landscape of digital payments and firm networks. 🌟 Quantum computing is not just a buzzword; it's the key to unlocking future efficiencies and innovations. Dive into this groundbreaking research and witness the quantum leap in digital payments. ✨Quote of the Day: “From bits to qubits, the future’s bright, quantum algorithms will lead the flight!” by Dr. Benjamin DELSOL😉👍😎🚀 A special "Thank you" to Bob Dameron for sharing this great paper with me!

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Does the idea of falling in love with an AI sound crazy? The reality shown through this article is that AI can be an incredibly powerful tool for many people who struggle quietly with social anxiety, loneliness, depression, neurodivergence and more. These challenges are becoming more common and people who suffer often have no where to turn and nobody to turn to. Enter AI companions and a whole new world of machine and human interaction. I encourage you to read this fascinating and courageous article about the power and complexity of AI as a personal companion before you judge the idea of AI for companionship and love. The reality is that companionship may end up becoming one of AI's primary uses, and there is data out there showing this may already be the reality, with Character AI being the second most visited AI website and the AI tool that people spend the most time interacting with. Rather than judging the idea of falling in love with an AI and/or AI for companionship, I think we ought to ask ouselves about the world we live in that is causing so many people to stuggle with challenges such as social anxiety, depression and everything else that so many humans stuggle with. When it comes to AI companionship and love, I think its important not to hate the players .. or characters, but instead to hate the game or society we live in that makes people feel alone and depressed. While I don't use AI for companionship, I do use it as a personal thinking assistant, second set of eyes, devils advocate and work colleage and it's incredibly useful to me in these ways. Huge props to Carl Clarke for writing this informative article and bringing this powerful story to the forefront. What do you think? Does the idea of falling in love with an AI sound crazy? Can AI be an effective companion? Do you use AI as a trusted colleague at work? It's a brave new world out there and I think we should all have an open mind!

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More startups are betting on AI. Of the record 1,623 startups that exhibited at Collision, a Toronto-based startup conference earlier in June, 20 percent are building AI products. This excludes other Collision startups with AI components in their business, reported the Wall Street Journal. Venture firms are throwing money at generative AI startups. In 2023, investors put $21.8 billion into generative AI deals -- five times more than they did in 2022, according to CB Insights. The average round size for those deals was $51 million, over six times larger than the industry average, CB Insights found. 

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Here is how AI can cut out the middleman between practitioners and solution providers. What do you think of this AI experiment? It dawned on me that AI's ability to instantly provide humans with the information we need, why not let it tell me which solution provider I should engage to solve the very specific and immediate challenges I am facing as a practitioner? Think of it like letting "your fingers do the walking through the yellow pages." (Some of you will get this, others won't). After all, if you consider the following, this is an immediate pathway to scalability of success - right? 💡 80% of all generational ProcureTech initiatives fail to deliver the expected results, e.g., ERP, SaaS, digital transformation, AI, data democratization et al. 💡 Talking with any solution provider, including reading their "detailed" case studies, websites, and press releases, AI is the answer, so why not use it to select one of these providers? In today's post, I asked AI - specifically ChatGPT, to tell me which of the following solution providers can help the LCBO if there is a rail strike and how they would do it. The five suppliers are TealBook Expana SAP Ariba Trust Your Supplier (TYS) and Helios. Now, to kick back, enjoy my morning coffee, and let AI do the walking for me toward ultimate success. Thoughts? David Loseby MCIOB Chtr'd FAPM FCMI FCIPS Chtr'd FRSA MIoD MICW Dr. Thierry Fausten Dr Tony Bridger Sarah Scudder - ITAM Nerd in Training Kelly Barner Canda Rozier, Procurement Evangelist Joselina Peralta Lisa Fenton Michael Lamoureux Jennifer Cameron Stephany Lapierre Roger Blumberg Bill Michels Dr. Paul Stanley FRSA FIoD AFRIN David Shillingford Ulf Venne Jason Busch Dr. Marcell Vollmer Howard Richman Yash Thula Claude Egli Arpit Choudhury Meir Vatagsky Marion Van Espen Bertrand Maltaverne Alun Rafique MCIPS CEng, MIMechE Gregor Stühler Sai Nidamarty Michelle Armstrong Debra Yorkman Shiv Shankar Bill Foudy Nick Nanos Luis Lima https://lnkd.in/gy4MH2vQ

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There are lots of complex questions around AI, but Big Tech is grappling with a relatively simple one: Are the tools they're building with AI useful? Alistair Barr has another report on an exec that was less-than-impressed with AI tools. It's becoming a growing trend, as the usefulness of AI tools is coming into question. More on Business Insider #ai #tech #bigtech #artificialintelligence

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The tech industry made a lot of big promises about the wonderful future generative AI would enable. But all they really delivered was a bubble that’s about to burst. I’m on CBC’s Front Burner podcast today to talk about the AI bubble. #techindustry #generativeai #ai #artificialintelligence #openai

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So many important ideas in this week's Low Down on Low-Code podcast! Himanshu Arora of Rhino.ai takes on how to enable core application modernization with low-code (vs. the long tail of apps). Don't start with a blank screen. Enlist "problem finders" and AI to discover how your core apps really work. Capture and present in visual form the semantics of core apps to expand IT-business collaboration. Reform, improve, and rationalize your core apps. Himanshu has the credibility of a man working to automate out of existence his prior role in IT services. Inspiring stuff. Rob Koplowitz Analysis.tech

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I wrote about the new version of ChatGPT's voice assistant, GPT-4o, which can talk, laugh, interpret emotions and even sing. It's clearly modeled on Samantha from "Her," and it means that we are leaving the era of the dry, impersonal AI helper, and entering into much stranger territory. How will society change when AI voices can convince us they're human? Will we fall for our AI assistants, as Theodore does for Samantha? Or will other companies' more detached, less emotional chatbots carry the day? I wrote about the possibilities in The New York Times.

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Here we go again. AI powered misinformation and disinformation impacting the elections. We've covered AI's role in politics since 2016, with each election cycle expanding the scope and raising the stakes. A newsletter and podcast episode for November 5. You'll learn about the AI foot soldiers of misinformation -- bots, cyborgs, deepfakes, shallow fakes, sock puppets. Then comes the interesting part, which is a dive into the neuroscience and craft for getting people to believe BS. https://lnkd.in/gHBZk4jZ

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Posing a question to ChatGPT consumes nearly 10 times as much electricity as a Google search. Can tech companies pursue the growth opportunity of generative AI and still meet their climate goals? My colleagues Igor Tishin, PhD, and Michael Purtill, CFA, discuss in our latest video.

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I for one am not particularly celebrating this decision. First I don’t really think it’s true that Google is a ‘monopoly’ the way telephone companies or rail systems are natural monopolies. Google is my 4-5th choice after Duckduckgo, and various AI engines such as Perplexity (which uses Bing), or just OpenAI (which uses Bing) or Anthropic. I think there are strong competitors in the area of search and Google’s market position has never been more vulnerable. Secondly I question why Canada is picking on Google, a foreign company, instead of looking VERY HARD at its own ingrown monopolistic industries. It also seems to me that this is bound to be an impotent and meaningless decision, which will not actually change anything. Google can take a little abuse (and that’s what this is). But it’s just politics, not a meaningful thing to go about destructively attacking foreign companies of our allies this way.

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Today's Peak Tech newsletter has some good stuff packed inside: 💰 RBCx gave us a look at early data from what may be the first report analyzing how Canada's venture capitalists have raised their money. It paints a picture of an ecosystem that matured quickly and is currently at the bottom of a boom-bust cycle — but the only way to go is up, right? 💻 Have you experienced consent-shame, click fatigue, or preselection? These are examples of "dark patterns" websites and apps use to manipulate people into signing up for things, buying stuff, or turning over personal information. And so many well-known brands use them that they've started to feel normal. https://lnkd.in/gUw-JUt9

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I set out to write up my predictions for GPT-5, and wound up deconstructing the path to transcendent AI. AI today is simultaneously a hype machine (a la blockchain); a genuinely important technology in the making (a la the Internet); and the seed crystal for something that will eventually shake the Universe (a la... nothing we've seen before). It can be hard to keep the threads straight. Which ones will GPT-5 advance? I present some things to look for.

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Interesting how chat preservation continues to come up in the context of government investigations. This time #TikTok is in the crosshairs, with 22 state attorneys general asking a Tennessee court to order the company to preserve and produce relevant evidence in a multi-state investigation into harm to youth mental health. The states say TikTok destroyed internal messages and chat logs, as well as communications records from the enterprise collaboration platform Lark (developed by TiktTok parent ByteDance). 💡 Lark is the "primary method by which TikTok employees communicate internally about substantive business topics related to the platform and its features, including matters related to the states' consumer protection investigation," the AGs' filing says. 🚩 The Lark chats are a "critical window into the candid thought processes, intentions, and observations of those responsible for designing, managing, and operating the features on TikTok's platform, which cause the mental health harm to our children and teens that are the focus of this investigation." 💡 The AGs believe that evidence related to the Lark chats were "purposely lost" and that "substantive communications were made on Lark that the States will never see, to the detriment of their investigations and any further necessary action." Read the filing here: https://lnkd.in/g6ArSefi Law.com

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Great news for vets and pets! Scribenote's software captures audio of vet-client conversations and uses AI to automatically generate medical records. More time for care, less time on paperwork. The startup has secured $8.2 million to further develop its platform and expand in the U.S. and Canada. On a personal note: Alina Pavel and Ryan Gallagher were the first startup founders I interviewed for an article I was writing about new and promising Velocity startups. They had just joined Velocity as full-time founders and I remember being taken in by their enthusiasm and determination to solve the problem of burnout among veterinarians - and to do so with tech innovation. It's amazing to see how fast founders can go with access to startup resources, network and advisory 👏

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Re-reading some of my AI reporting from 10 years ago and feeling both nostalgic and fascinated by how far this field has come. Here's an excerpt from an article I published in December 2014: "[Demis Hassabis] explained that although they’re currently working on some smaller AI activities like searching for ways to apply DeepMind techniques to existing Google products such as Search and YouTube recommendations, his plans for the future are bigger than a better search engine. He dreams of creating artificially intelligent 'scientists' that could develop and test their own hypotheses in the lab. He mentioned that there’s also a future for DeepMind’s software in robotics." Today, we're seeing this vision come to life with AI being used widely for scientific discovery—from biology to material science—and LLMs unlocking new potential in robotics. When I first started writing about AI a decade ago, I had a lot of freedom to cover whatever tech topics interested me. I started writing about AI—including many issues dominating the landscape today like bias in AI models and where companies were getting their training data—because I was simply fascinated by the research coming out and what the technology could mean for the future of computing and society at large. Needless to say that today, I'm more interested than ever and excited to be covering such a fast-moving technology with so much impact. Thanks for joining me on this little trip down memory lane :)

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