A Global Reopening

Two years after the US went into its first lockdown, the country is getting nearer to a pre-pandemic existence. But what about the rest of the world?

When California issued a statewide stay-at-home order on 19 March 2020, most people thought that life would return to normal relatively quickly.

A full 24 months later, people are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, with restrictions being eased in the US and several other countries.

But with some places experiencing record numbers of cases yet again, it's clear that the pandemic isn't ready to let go its grip just yet.

We asked our correspondents in the UK, Hong Kong, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Peru and the US to give us a snapshot.

A very light touch - England
Nick Triggle, London


England's last remaining Covid restriction - the legal requirement to isolate after a positive test - was lifted at the end of February.

It came a month after the government lifted the requirement to wear masks in places such as shops and on public transport and the advice to work from home where possible.

But the truth is England has had a pretty light-touch approach to regulations compared to many places since the summer.

The masks mandate and working from home advice was only reintroduced in late 2021 as the Omicron variant took off.

The approach is based on the fact that vaccines are providing great protection and England has seen very good uptake among those groups most at risk - 95% of over-60s have had a booster jab.

It has meant that despite the surge in infections caused by the Omicron variant, the number of people dying has been similar to what would normally be seen during a normal winter.

There are signs infections may be starting to climb again, but it is causing little concern at the moment.  

TO READ MORE ABOUT COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD, CLICK HERE...

Artificial Intelligence LEADER will rule the WORLD

A couple of years ago,Vladimir Putin warned Russians that the country that led in technologies using artificial intelligence will dominate the globe. He was right to be worried. Russia is now a minor player, and the race seems now to be mainly between the United States and China. But don’t count out the European Union just yet; the EU is still a fifth of the world economy, and it has underappreciated strengths. Technological leadership will require big digital investments, rapid business process innovation, and efficient tax and transfer systems. China appears to have the edge in the first, the U.S. in the second, and Western Europe in the third. One out of three won’t do, and even two out three will not be enough; whoever does all three best will dominate the rest.

We are on the cusp of colossal changes. But you don’t have to take Mr. Putin’s word for it, nor mine. This is what Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and a serious student of the effects of digital technologies, says:  “This is a moment of choice and opportunity. It could be the best 10 years ahead of us that we have ever had in human history or one of the worst, because we have more power than we have ever had before.”

To understand why this is a special time, we need to know how this wave of technologies is different from the ones that came before and how it is the same. We need to know what these technologies mean for people and businesses. And we need to know what governments can do and what they’ve been doing. With my colleagues Wolfgang Fengler, Kenan Karakülah, and Ravtosh Bal, I have been trying to whittle the research of scholars such as David Autor, Erik Brynjolfsson, and Diego Comin down to its lessons for laymen. This blog utilizes the work to forecast trends during the next decade.

4 WAVES, 3 FACTS
It is useful to think of technical change as having come in four waves since the 1800s, brought about by a sequence of “general purpose technologies” (GPTs). GPTs are best described by economists as “changes that transform both household life and the ways in which firms conduct business.” The four most important GPTs of the last two centuries were the steam engine, electric power, information technology (IT), and artificial intelligence (AI).

All these GPTs inspired complementary innovations and changes in business processes. The robust and most relevant facts about technological progress have to do with its pace, prerequisites, and problems:

• Technological change has been getting quicker. While the pace of invention may not have accelerated, the time between invention and implementation has been shrinking. While average implementation lags are difficult to measure precisely, it would not be a gross oversimplification to say that they have been cut in half with each GPT wave. Based on the evidence, the time between invention and widespread use was cut from about 80 years for the steam engine to 40 years for electricity, and then to about 20 years for IT (Figure 1). There are reasons to believe that the implementation lag for AI-related technologies will be about 10 years. With technological change speeding up and first-mover advantages as big as they have always been, the need for large and coordinated investments is growing.  READ MORE..

Artificial Intelligence Trends 2020 to 2030

Dublin, June 04, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) 

The "Artificial Intelligence Global Market Report 2020-30: COVID-19 Growth and Change" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report provides the strategists, marketers and senior management with the critical information they need to assess the global artificial intelligence market.

This report focuses on the artificial intelligence market which is experiencing strong growth. the report gives a guide to the artificial intelligence market which will be shaping and changing our lives over the next ten years and beyond, including the markets response to the challenge of the global pandemic.

The global artificial intelligence market is expected to grow from $28.42 billion in 2019 to $40.74 billion in 2020 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 43.39%. The growth is mainly due to the COVID-19 health emergency across the globe that has led to a new wave of transformative technologies including the revolutionary artificial intelligence technology (for example - smart machines and robots) emerging as a possible solution to contain the epidemic. The market is then expected to recover and reach $99.94 billion in 2023 at CAGR of 34.86%.

Reasons to Purchase

• Gain a truly global perspective with the most comprehensive report available on this market covering 12+ geographies.
• Understand how the market is being affected by the coronavirus and how it is likely to emerge and grow as the impact of the virus abates.
• Create regional and country strategies on the basis of local data and analysis.
• Identify growth segments for investment.
• Outperform competitors using forecast data and the drivers and trends shaping the market.
• Understand customers based on the latest market research findings.
• Benchmark performance against key competitors.
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• Suitable for supporting your internal and external presentations with reliable high quality data and analysis

The report covers market characteristics, size and growth, segmentation, regional and country breakdowns, competitive landscape, market shares, trends and strategies for this market. it traces the market's historic and forecast market growth by geography. it places the market within the context of the wider artificial intelligence market, and compares it with other markets.

• the market characteristics section of the report defines and explains the market.
• the market size section gives the market size ($b) covering both the historic growth of the market, the influence of the COVID-19 virus and forecasting its growth.
• Market segmentations break down market into sub markets.
• the regional and country breakdowns section gives an analysis of the market in each geography and the size of the market by geography and compares their historic and forecast growth. it covers the growth trajectory of COVID-19 for all regions, key developed countries and major emerging markets.
• Competitive landscape gives a description of the competitive nature of the market, market shares, and a description of the leading companies. Key financial deals which have shaped the market in recent years are identified.
• the trends and strategies section analyses the shape of the market as it emerges from the crisis and suggests how companies can grow as the market recovers.
• the artificial intelligence market section of the report gives context. it compares the artificial intelligence market with other segments of the artificial intelligence market by size and growth, historic and forecast. it analyses GDP proportion, expenditure per capita, artificial intelligence indicators comparison.

The artificial intelligence market consists of sales of the artificial intelligence software and related services. Artificial Intelligence (AI) sometimes referred to as machine intelligence. Artificial intelligence is a wide-ranging branch of computer science related with building smart machines that can perform tasks that require human intelligence.  READ MORE...

Getting In Touch With Women Technologists

Dropboxers love a lot of things: posting pictures of their pets, bonding over coffee, helping each other protect their mental health, solving complicated tech puzzles, and everything in between. 

But one of the things they love most is showing up, making connections, and even recruiting new Dropboxers at tech conferences across the U.S. — or more recently, virtually from their homes!

One of the biggest conferences we attend each year is the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC for short) — the world’s largest gathering of women technologists, where women from around the world learn, network, and celebrate their achievements. 

During the four-day event, attendees have nearly limitless opportunities to connect with one another.

One standout part of the conference is the Career Fair, during which attendees can swing by the virtual booths of various companies to meet employees and explore job opportunities. 

During the course of the conference, we had over 800 individuals “check in” at our Dropbox booth! We never had less than 10 people present at our virtual booth at a time, getting to know each other through chat messages or video.  READ MORE...

Unless You Are Wealthy

Did you inherit a Trust Fund worth millions?

Are you a movie star?

Are you a professional athlete?

Are you a singer or musicians?

Are you a writer?

Are you an artist?

Are you an investment banker?

Do you own your own company?

Are you a CEO?

Are you a Politician?

Are you in the top 10% of incomes?

THEN YOU, MY FRIENDS, ARE LIKE THE 90% REMAINING, AND ARE NOT WEALTHY NOR WILL WE EVER BE IN A POSITION TO BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT WE ARE TODAY...

Maybe 1-2% of you will always live in poverty no matter what the government does to help because any increases you get will be obliterated by cost of living increases, so you will never be any better off than you are now.

50% of you will earn more than you will ever need to live, spending that extra money on large house, cars, clothes, second homes, and vacations and well off you will be but you will never be WEALTHY and to tell the truth, NONE OF YOU GIVE A DAMN...

20% of you will have the money but you will struggle financially because of all the debt you carry and the fact that mentally you can not stop you spending habits...  you are addicted to the spending of money and either do not see it or do not want to see it.

The remaining 18% will live modestly from a modest income but your lack of education, determination, and discipline keeps you in the socio-economic level in which you find yourself now...  and, really do not want to see beyond because that is something that you have never been trained to do.

INTERESTINGLY,

the wealthy know all of this too well...  expecting you to be the sheep that you are and not rock the boat.  But, if you think that rocking the boat means getting your federal government to collect more in taxes so that they can give more to you, then you are sadly mistaken...

Collecting more taxes as the federal government wants to do will not be accomplished as easy as all that because the WEALTHY will shelter their monies in tax exempt offshore bank accounts...  and the easiest way to explain this is that the WEALTHY ARE NOT STUPID WITH STUPID TAX LAWYERS AND ACCOUNTANTS.

AND,

what is even more interesting than this, is the fact that all the other emerging nations because of our buying habits are getting wealthier and wealthier and now have the buying power in their countries that you have here in the USA...

So...  what does this mean?

It means that THEIR DEMAND for goods and services will pull those scarce resources away from you...  all you have to do is a little internet research and make sure your sources of information are reliable because many sites on the internet lie to people, especially Americans since they are so gullible.

THIS NEXT DECADE ENDING IN 2030 WILL RESULT IN A GLOBAL, ECONOMIC, AND FINANCIAL TURNING POINT...  AND, THE LOSERS WILL BE MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS...

CHINA DENIES

POWER... WEALTH... INFLUENCE

IN MOST COUNTRIES...  the freedoms that Americans take-for-granted do not exist in other countries...  and for that, we should consider ourselves lucky...  but, therein lies the problem because most Americans make no considerations at all in this regard; instead, they are controlled and ultimately influenced by those who have POWER and/or WEALTH.

• 20% of Americans are wealthy
• 60% of Americans are average
• 20% of Americans are poor

Then we have,
1% of the whole are extremely wealthy
while
1% of the whole are extremely poor

STATISTICALLY, we have a perfect bell-shaped curve...

On the far left-hand side of our diagram are the 1% wealthy whereas the 1% poor are on the far right-hand side.  On either side of the middle "-2 to +2" we will find the 60%.  From the center to the right, wealth gradually increases and to the right, wealth gradually decreases.

From the model, we can also conclude that WEALTH, POWER, INFLUENCE gradually increase from the center out to the left and gradually decrease from the center out to the right.

ALL AMERICANS BELIEVE VERY STRONGLY...  that they have free will and make their own choices...  but, that is simply not true...  If you don't have wealth and power, then your free will and choices are influenced and controlled by those who do have wealth and power.

However...  and, this is your right, you may not believe this to be true, especially since everyone makes choices all the time some of which influence one's life and one's life direction substantially; but, those choices are still influenced indirectly by wealth and power whether you realize it or not.

You drive the speed limit when there is a cop in sight...  that is power
You pay your taxes each year...  that is power
You receive a salary from your employer...  that is wealth and power
You are regulated by medicine...  that is wealth and power
You do what your supervisor tells you to do...  that is power
You obey the lifeguard at the beach...  that is power
You are quiet in Church...  that is power
You make monthly debt payments...  that is wealth and power
You control the choices your children make...  that is power

WHAT'S UP???

Well...  it would appear that all news outlets like:  FOX, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC are reporting nothing but COVID-19 stuff...  and personally, I think that is wonderful to keep us informed on what is going on but NOT ALL DAY LONG...  there is other shit going on in the world beside COVID-19 and what we are doing...

BUT, if we are going to talk about the disease then we should talk about what we are going to do to CHINA for getting the world into this mess...

They are the culprits here...

And, they should be punished...

The WORLD should retaliate...  not just the USA...

It really PISSES ME OFF that countries like CHINA do not have the same health guidelines that we have here in the USA...

Isn't it time for the rest of the world to take care of their citizens...   We are all human beings...