Latest news with #digital age
Washington Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
An online hustler faces his sins in the e-commerce thriller ‘Cloud'
A sneaky tale of savagery in the dehumanizing digital age, writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 'Cloud' is as bleak a warning as you'll find in theaters this year, cautioning against the corrosive combination of late capitalism, the internet and human nature. Its protagonist, an unscrupulous e-tailer paying a violent price for his own ruthlessness, is so unapologetic that one could debate whether he's the villain or the victim, but genre maven Kurosawa knows that a redemption arc would be far too trite for a scammer like this.
The Guardian
03-08-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
What will the AI revolution mean for the global south?
I come from Trinidad and Tobago. As a country that was once colonized by the British, I am wary of the ways that inequalities between the global north and global south risk being perpetuated in the digital age. When we consider the lack of inclusion of the global south in discussions about artificial intelligence (AI), I think about how this translates to an eventual lack of economic leverage and geopolitical engagement in this technology that has captivated academics within the industrialised country I reside, the United States. As a scientist, I experienced an early rite of passage into the world of Silicon Valley, the land of techno-utopianism, and the promise of AI as a net positive for all. But, as an academic attending my first academic AI conference in 2019, I began to notice inconsistencies in the audience to whom the promise of AI was directed. AI researchers can often identify consistent choices for locations where such conferences are hosted, and where they are not. NeurIPS, one of the top AI conferences, has highlighted annual issues for obtaining visas for academic attendees and citizens from the African continent. Attending such a prestigious conference in the field grants one the opportunity to gain access to peers in the field, new collaborations and feedback on one's work. I often hear the word 'democratisation' within the AI community, an implication of equity in access, opportunity and merit for contribution regardless of one's country of origin. Associate professor of economics Fadhel Kaboub talks about how 'a lack of vision for oneself results in being a part of someone else's vision', reflecting on how systematically lacking an access to infrastructure results in local trade deficits in economies. As in the time of Nafta's promise of 'free trade', promises of 'AI democratisation' today still exist and benefit mainly countries with access to tech hubs not located in the global south. While the United States and other industrialized countries dominate in access to computational power and research activity, much of the low-paid manual labour involved in labelling data and the global underclass in artificial intelligence still exists in the global south. Much like coffee, cocoa, bauxite and sugar cane are produced in the global south, exported cheaply and sold at a premium in more industrialized countries, over the past few years we have seen influence in AI inextricably tied to energy consumption. Countries that can afford to consume more energy have more leverage in reinforcing power to shape the future direction of AI and what is considered valuable within the AI academic community. In 2019, Mary L Gray and Siddharth Suri published Ghost Work, which exposed the invisible labour of technology today, and at the beginning of my tenure at graduate school, the heavily cited paper Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence was published. It has been five years since these seminal works. What would an AI community inspired by the Brics organisation, which united major emerging economies to advocate for themselves in a system dominated by western countries, look like for the global south? I often ask myself how AI has contributed to our legacy, and whose stories it won't tell. Has AI mitigated issues of mistrust and corruption in less-resourced countries? Has it benefited our civic communities or narrowed educational gaps between less-resourced regions? How will it make society better, and whose society will it make better? Who will be included in that future? A historical mistrust can impede adoption by developing countries. Furthermore, many developing countries have weak institutional infrastructures, poor or nonexistent laws and regulatory frameworks for data projection and cybersecurity. Therefore, even with an improved information infrastructure, they are likely to function at a disadvantage in the global information marketplace. A currency is only as good as its perceived global trust. When thinking about the democratization in AI and a vision of what it could be in years to come, AI's survival requires including more perspectives from regions such as the global south. Countries from the global south should work together to build their own markets and have a model of sovereignty for their data and data labour. Economic models often consider a definition of development that includes a measure of improvement in the quality of life of the most marginalized of its people. It is my hope that in the future that will extend to our evaluation of AI. Krystal Maughan is a PhD student at the University of Vermont studying differential privacy and machine learning
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
3 Ways Crypto Can Change How You Get Approved for Your Next Home
In the digital age, there are lots of factors to consider when buying a house, with one of them being relatively new and uncharted: cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and other crypto have become highly popular over the last few years, as well as proven themselves to be highly volatile at the same time. So, if you have a significant amount of your finances invested in crypto and want to buy a house, how will it change your chances of getting approved? Check Out: Learn More: GOBankingRates asked several experts to weigh in on ways crypto can change approval odds for your next home. Here's what they had to say: 'This directive creates the rails for mainstream financial acceptance of crypto assets,' said Jess Houlgrave, CEO of digital wallet infrastructure provider Reown. 'For the first time, your bitcoin or stablecoin holdings could help you qualify for a mortgage — that's not just validation, it's infrastructure becoming reality. But the real impact goes beyond individual mortgages.' Houlgrave went on to explain that when government-sponsored enterprises start factoring crypto into lending decisions, it forces every part of the mortgage ecosystem to build the tools and processes needed to evaluate digital assets. I Asked ChatGPT To Explain Crypto Like I'm 12: When it comes to how crypto can be assessed within the scope of applying for a mortgage, the dos and don'ts are still unclear — as are laws, regulations and oversight due to the currency still being relatively new to so many lenders and buyers. 'We still don't know what the guidelines on this will be,' shared Jennifer Beeston, mortgage lender and housing/real estate expert. 'Will they treat all crypto coins the same? We don't know what the rules are going to be yet, so it's hard to understand risk. That's what Fannie and Feddie are doing. They are trying to figure out how to do this in a safe way while helping people get homes.' While there still remains a lot to be seen with how cryptocurrencies will operate in the future, they have opened pathways to homeownership that previously did not exist for a number of potential single-family mortgages, according to Joe Lackner, the founder of Coin Interest Rate. 'About 21% of U.S. adults — roughly 55 million people — own crypto, and around 10% of them hold over $100,000,' Lackner explained. 'Until now, these assets often had to be cashed out, often at the wrong time and with significant tax consequences, to count toward a mortgage application.' 'Stablecoins like USDC and USDT may be the ideal asset here,' Lackner went on to say. 'Unlike bitcoin or ethereum, there's significantly less volatility. That makes them more practical as proof-of-reserves when applying for a mortgage — borrowers aren't at risk of losing loan eligibility because of a sudden price drop.' More From GOBankingRates 3 Luxury SUVs That Will Have Massive Price Drops in Summer 2025 The New Retirement Problem Boomers Are Facing The 10 Most Reliable SUVs of 2025 This article originally appeared on 3 Ways Crypto Can Change How You Get Approved for Your Next Home
