Tuesday, February 07, 2017

IBM Gives Watson a New Challenge: Your Tax Return

If you thought last year was crazy, put on your seat belts for 2017. Here are three predictions for the year ahead… and a few sporting hopes.

2016 was about the 3 P’s – Protectionism, Prejudice and Patriotism. It was also the Year of the 4th P… The Populist… and a 5th… Putin. Enough with the P words!  

2017 will be a year of fairness, reason and generosity. A year where moderates and optimists regroup. (This is frankly more a wish than a prediction but we live in Hope).
 #1 - Britain Won’t Brexit KRC - Kevin Roberts Connect

The Super Bowl is coming up, try to stay out of jail. [Versus Texas]

And “Who decided that the Super Bowl audience was a good demographic fit to advertise The Handmaid’s Tale?”
Update: The Wyoming Minnesota Police Department wins Twitter on Super Bowl Sunday:


New York Times, IBM Gives Watson a New Challenge: Your Tax Return:
In its first steps toward commercialization, IBM’s Watson took on grand, science-laden challenges like helping doctors diagnose cancer. But that is changing as IBM strives to build its artificial intelligence technology into a multibillion-dollar business.

Thomas (2017)Kathleen Delaney Thomas (North Carolina) presents Taxing the Gig Economy at Duke today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Lawrence Zelenak




Four Myths ME ME MEdia Dragon Generation Exposed: An 85 page report by Mizuho Securities shines a light on four millennial ‘Assumed Facts’.

1. Myth Millennials have migrated in droves to on-line shopping and live on Amazon


Some Reasons 2016 Rocked (from a cool list of attributed news story facts published by political economist Angus Hervey on ‘99 Reasons 2016 Was a Good Year gathered by the intrepid team at Future Crunch.)

Hayden Wilson is an Aussie, based in Melbourne, who has created an influential network of personal trainers and business owners dedicated to fitness. He says that “because the world needs more nice” he created the “be nice” movement – and fittingly, he sent me a nice note inviting me to be on his podcast PTProphet. We had a great hour long talk yesterday and his podcast is posted here. We talked about dreams, purpose, execution, making happy choices, no regrets, making an impact, living in a VUCA world, visualization, being creative. And the machine gun story. Enjoy.