Australia’s second Tax Commissioner, Robert Ewing, is best remembered for his credo that ‘[t]he principle rule of the Department is to assist taxpayers in every possible way.’
Good News: Russell Crowe shows incredible impact recent rain had on firegrounds
Yuval Levin (NYT): “In one arena after another, we find people who should be insiders formed by institutions acting like outsiders performing on institutions.” And the new book is A Time to Build.
James Packer to be grilled at Crown casino inquiry
Former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull says Trump is the world's 'leading climate denier'
Artists Add Value? Here’s a List Of Practical Ways During The Australian Fires
Artists have stepped up in a huge way at this dark time in Australian history by volunteering their talents and resources to support communities and firefighters. They have demonstrated artists and arts practice can contribute to our society with passion, ingenuity, and imagination. –The Conversation
GAO – Office of Management and Budget—Withholding of Ukraine Security Assistance. B-331564: Jan 16, 2020. In the summer of 2019, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) withheld from obligation funds appropriated to the Department of Defense (DOD) for security assistance to Ukraine. In order to withhold the funds, OMB issued a series of nine apportionment schedules with footnotes that made all unobligated balances unavailable for obligation.
People no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life
Want A Job? Increasingly You’ll Have To Get By The AI Algorithms First
With HireVue, businesses can pose pre-determined questions — often recorded by a hiring manager — that candidates answer on camera through a laptop or smartphone. Increasingly, those videos are then pored over by algorithms analyzing details such as words and grammar, facial expressions and the tonality of the job applicant’s voice, trying to determine what kinds of attributes a person may have. Based on this analysis, the algorithms will conclude whether the candidate is tenacious, resilient, or good at working on a team, for instance. – CNN
Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law. OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.
- View Decision (PDF)
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Citizens United decision. The legacy of ‘Citizens United’ has been destructive. We need campaign finance reform. WaPo. I’ll say.Ultrafast camera takes 1 trillion frames per second of transparent objects and phenomena Phys.org (RM)Newly discovered immune cell points to universal cancer treatment New Atlas (david l)Living in Alan Turing’s Future New YorkerThis weird-looking pigeon is actually a drone that flies with real feathers MIT Technology ReviewThe biology of coffee, the world’s most popular drink The ConversationTHE PLAYBOOK FOR POISONING THE EARTH InterceptProPublica, The IRS Tried to Crack Down on Rich People Using an “Abusive” Tax Deduction. It Hasn’t Gone So Well.:In March 2019, the IRS added a scheme to its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of “the worst of the worst tax scams.” That same scheme was targeted, just weeks earlier, when the U.S. Department of Justice filed a fraud lawsuit against a handful of promoters allegedly responsible for generating more than $2 billion in improper tax write-offs. And the Senate Finance Committee has been investigating that very same racket, recently demanding thousands of pages of documents from six promoters. Lawmakers from both parties have introduced legislation to halt the same practice.
AI and machine learning get talked about so much these days that one
would think they are on the agenda of every company, but they are not—or
at least not many companies are doing anything about it.
Earlier this year, consultancy company EY carried out a survey and invited respondents such as the members of the Directors’ Institute Finland and the upper operative management of Finland’s 500 largest companies. EY designed the survey in cooperation with the Chairman of the Board of Nokia Corporation, Risto Siilasmaa. According to the results, about a third of companies make no use of AI or machine learning in their internal operations. About one-fifth of companies make no use of AI or machine learning in external operations and have no plans to do so.
So it seems that when it comes to AI, many companies are still in the locker room putting on their shoes while some are at the starting line and still other are already hitting their stride in the first curve.
Harnessing AI for Corporate Management
Change is on the way, however: over 95% of the respondents believed that their companies would be using AI and machine learning internally in some way by 2020. This means that the next couple of years should be quite busy on this front.
As far as internal functions go, AI could be useful in management or even board work.
A quite well known example of the use of AI in corporate management is Hong Kong based investment company Deep Knowledge Ventures, which started using an AI application called VITAL in its board a few years ago. The company says that they don’t make a single investment decision if VITAL doesn’t support it. The founder and CEO of the company Dmitry Kaminskiy says that the application has lived up to its name: without its help in analysing investment targets, the company would have invested in over-hyped projects and may even have gone under.
The possibilities provided by AI can also be examined through the lens of the requirements that the Finnish Limited Liability Companies Act sets for company management, i.e. that the management must promote the interests of the company with due care. Boards fulfil this duty of care when they make a logical decision or take other action taken based on proper information and have not been influenced by any conflicts of interest when doing so.
AI could prove particularly helpful in the gathering and analysis of data. It could also be possible to delegate some routine tasks to an AI to free up the management’s time for more important things.
Be Aware, Keep Up
It would be an exaggeration to claim that company boards would have an obligation to use AI, but it is a good idea to keep AI on the agenda. ‘Develop or be left behind’, is how Reaktor’s Director of Artificial Intelligence Hanna Hagström summed up the situation for C&S. Risto Siilasmaa is on the same wavelength, ‘the only way to achieve a competitive edge is to be quicker than everyone else’, he said in connection with EY’s survey. Corporate management would be well advised to keep their antennas raised and actively think about how their company could benefit from AI and what kinds of application AI could have. Of course, it is important to keep in mind that new solutions always bring costs and new kinds of risks.
There is one significant limitation to the use of AI in boards of directors: in Finland, AI applications cannot be appointed as full board members. The Limited Liability Companies Act does not explicitly state the board members must be natural persons, but that is only because this has been taken for granted. This issue has previously been discussed in connection with whether a legal person could service as a board member, as is the case in some countries. Today, the global discussion has moved on to whether an AI could be a full board member and what kinds of legal challenges such membership would entail. For the time being, however, it is clear that whether or not a board uses AI, the responsibility for any decision rest with the people who made it
Earlier this year, consultancy company EY carried out a survey and invited respondents such as the members of the Directors’ Institute Finland and the upper operative management of Finland’s 500 largest companies. EY designed the survey in cooperation with the Chairman of the Board of Nokia Corporation, Risto Siilasmaa. According to the results, about a third of companies make no use of AI or machine learning in their internal operations. About one-fifth of companies make no use of AI or machine learning in external operations and have no plans to do so.
So it seems that when it comes to AI, many companies are still in the locker room putting on their shoes while some are at the starting line and still other are already hitting their stride in the first curve.
Harnessing AI for Corporate Management
Change is on the way, however: over 95% of the respondents believed that their companies would be using AI and machine learning internally in some way by 2020. This means that the next couple of years should be quite busy on this front.
As far as internal functions go, AI could be useful in management or even board work.
A quite well known example of the use of AI in corporate management is Hong Kong based investment company Deep Knowledge Ventures, which started using an AI application called VITAL in its board a few years ago. The company says that they don’t make a single investment decision if VITAL doesn’t support it. The founder and CEO of the company Dmitry Kaminskiy says that the application has lived up to its name: without its help in analysing investment targets, the company would have invested in over-hyped projects and may even have gone under.
Hollywood Is Turning To AI To Decide What Movies To Make
No, machines aren’t writing usable scripts. (Yet.) But we all know about projects that seemed terrific on paper but turned out to be disastrous bombs — and about sleeper hits that seemed very niche but caught on. Now companies like Cinelytic and ScriptBook say that their AI software can analyze the qualities of a script and cast, compare them with large quantities of data on what films have and haven’t attracted a sizable audience, and predict how well a given project will do. And these companies claim far higher accuracy rates than those of human studio execs. Journalist Steve Rise investigates. – The Guardian
Another example has been getting attention closer to home here in
Finland. Tieto Corporation adopted an AI application called Alicia T to
support the decision making of the management team of its Data-Driven
Businesses unit. However, based on media coverage at least, AI
applications like VITAL and Alicia T are still quite rare.The possibilities provided by AI can also be examined through the lens of the requirements that the Finnish Limited Liability Companies Act sets for company management, i.e. that the management must promote the interests of the company with due care. Boards fulfil this duty of care when they make a logical decision or take other action taken based on proper information and have not been influenced by any conflicts of interest when doing so.
AI could prove particularly helpful in the gathering and analysis of data. It could also be possible to delegate some routine tasks to an AI to free up the management’s time for more important things.
Be Aware, Keep Up
It would be an exaggeration to claim that company boards would have an obligation to use AI, but it is a good idea to keep AI on the agenda. ‘Develop or be left behind’, is how Reaktor’s Director of Artificial Intelligence Hanna Hagström summed up the situation for C&S. Risto Siilasmaa is on the same wavelength, ‘the only way to achieve a competitive edge is to be quicker than everyone else’, he said in connection with EY’s survey. Corporate management would be well advised to keep their antennas raised and actively think about how their company could benefit from AI and what kinds of application AI could have. Of course, it is important to keep in mind that new solutions always bring costs and new kinds of risks.
There is one significant limitation to the use of AI in boards of directors: in Finland, AI applications cannot be appointed as full board members. The Limited Liability Companies Act does not explicitly state the board members must be natural persons, but that is only because this has been taken for granted. This issue has previously been discussed in connection with whether a legal person could service as a board member, as is the case in some countries. Today, the global discussion has moved on to whether an AI could be a full board member and what kinds of legal challenges such membership would entail. For the time being, however, it is clear that whether or not a board uses AI, the responsibility for any decision rest with the people who made it
