If you dabble every now and then in stocks and shares, you must have been wondering where to invest: AI related stocks are so expensive that you will be forgiven for thinking that the odds of a market correction are getting too high to ignore. And then there are your ‘investments’ where you don’t control […]
Are We All Addicted? Meta’s Payout and the Logic of Endless Feeds
Meta recently has agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion over a decade as part of a legal settlement over allegations that Facebook and Instagram were designed in ways that contributed to social media addiction among children and teenagers. Strong evidence exists that a subset of adolescents exhibit behaviours resembling addiction: compulsive use, inability to […]
The Great Summer Productivity Myth
Apparently the average British worker produces roughly 10–15% less economic output per hour than workers in the US, Germany, France and Switzerland. Now this has less to do with the people themselves, but more with the environment In which they toil. The level of investment in technology and infrastructure, the quality of management and regional […]
Where Am I Really Flying?
There’s a comforting assumption we all make about modern air travel: airlines may occasionally lose your luggage, charge you £4.50 for a bottle of water, or somehow board Group 7 before Group 2, but at the very least they know where you’re flying. Apparently, that assumption is wildly optimistic. On Sunday evening, ahead of my […]
AI ‘s Quest for Perfection
Most of us have become accustomed to using artificial intelligence in one way or another, be it for work or privately. And since the first LLM, GPT-1 was announced by OpenAI in 2018, the models have become ever more sophisticated (which doesn’t mean that they don’t make mistakes!). AI has evolved in leaps and bounds […]
FIFA World Cup: Business and Politics – with a little bit of Football thrown in
Did you watch or at least follow this year’s football World Cup? It offered plenty of drama on but also off the pitch. And it showed, once again who is and who isn’t influential in the world of football, or soccer as the Americans call it and to what extent commercial interests and politics are […]
The Rise of Polarised Politics
Political polarisation has become a global trend in the past 10–15 years, particularly in democracies. The local elections in the U.K. in early May have clearly shown that the political landscape in Britain is now getting more polarised as well, following in the footsteps of for example Germany, Spain and France to name but a […]
AI vs Human Advisors: The Future of Investment
Some 45 years ago I trained as a banker in Switzerland and quickly became interested in the stock markets, which led me to work for some two decades as a trader for a Swiss private bank in Geneva and London. What a glorious time this was! There weren’t nowhere near as many regulatory restraints as […]
The Risks of Capping Switzerland’s Population Growth
It‘s not very often that a country‘s population has a say on the maximum number of people which are allowed to call themselves its residents. But on 14 June in Switzerland 5.6 million citizens over the age of 18 out of currently 9.1 million inhabitants get the chance to have their say as to whether […]
Claude: From Famous Namesakes to Modern AI
Claude once upon a time used to be a popular first name, particularly in the French speaking parts of the world. Multiple sources analysing name popularity trends (e.g. Geneanet and similar demographic tools) show that Claude peaked mainly between the 1930s and 1970s, especially in France, Belgium, and Switzerland, and has declined sharply since then. […]
