This week, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report stating that in the coming years, robots and AI will replace 75 million jobs globally. At first, this is due to four specific technological advances—ubiquitous high-speed mobile internet; artificial intelligence; widespread adoption of big data analytics; and cloud technology. By 2022, thanks to smart algorithms and advanced robotics, almost 60% of those organisations surveyed expect to have significantly modified how they produce and distribute their products. As a result, the productivity of existing jobs will improve [...]

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There is more data than ever in the world and in the coming years, it will only increase exponentially. However, just collecting data is not enough if you wish to become a data-driven business. For that, you need to analyse the data to gain insights, and as you are probably aware, there are multiple ways to do so, each increasing in complexity and the value they create: descriptive analytics, diagnostic analytics, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics. Descriptive and diagnostic analytics is similar to business intelligence; it helps you understand what happened in the past, from [...]

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A decentralised web was how the web was originally envisioned, but somehow in the past 25 years, it ended up in the hands of a few very powerful companies. As Sir Tim Berners-Lee said during the Decentralised Web Summit in 2016: “The web was designed to be decentralised so that everybody could participate by having their own domain and having their own webserver and this hasn’t worked out. Instead, we’ve got the situation where individual personal data has been locked up in these silos.” Over the years, the objective of a distributed network of nodes where everyone would be able to [...]

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Last year, I was researching for my PhD, and I noticed that there was a lack of knowledge available on how Blockchain could be used for social good. Most of the information available related to Blockchain was either about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies or how the financial services industry could benefit from distributed ledger technology. This seemed strange to me, especially because Goldman Sachs already stated in 2015 that "Blockchain can change … well everything". That was when Dr Philippa Ryan and I set to work to fill this gap and investigate how Blockchain can be used to improve our [...]

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Artificial intelligence has the power to change our society dramatically. Within the coming years, it is likely that AI is taking over many of the jobs currently done by humans. Not only repetitive work can be taken over by AI, but also more difficult jobs such as customer service representative, journalist, chef, driver or team leader. It seems that many of the functions of existing organisations can be taken over by artificial intelligence, thereby of course also creating many, yet unforeseen, jobs. As a result, organisations will look completely different in the future. Therefore, let’s [...]

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The internet has a problem. On the one hand, we have the ‘Western internet’ where everyone can do as they like, where you can be anonymous and say/do whatever you want, but where reputation and online trust is difficult. As the famous saying goes: “on the internet, nobody knows that you are a dog”. On the other hand, we have the ‘Chinese internet', where every action you do is recorded and contributes positively or negatively to your reputation. However, privacy is non-existent. None of these two internets is ideal, which is why we are working on a solution to make anonymity [...]

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This week, Elon Musk praised the work of OpenAI after a team of five neural networks had defeated five humans, who ranked in the top 99.95 percentile of players worldwide, in the popular game Dota 2. The five bots had learned the game by playing against itself at a rate of a staggering 180 years per day. The game requires strong teamwork among the five players and, therefore, the achievement is quite remarkable and more evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming more advanced. However, directly after the five bots beat the five humans 2-1, Musk cautioned for the power of[...]

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Many banks around the globe are not very crypto-friendly. Most of them simply refuse any company that has something to do with cryptocurrencies, whether you are a trading company or doing an ICO. These banks rather stay away from cryptocurrencies, being afraid of criminal activities such as money laundering. Although you could argue that the entire point of a crypto startup is not to have a bank account, almost always you still need a bank account, for example, to pay your taxes or your employees. The question then arises, where in the world should you go to if you want to open a bank account[...]

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AI and Blockchain are two of the hottest technology trends hitting the market today. Blockchain stands to revolutionise communication and transaction recordation, building trust between strangers and enabling increased provenance, transparency and privacy. AI takes on incredibly complex tasks and applies tremendous computing power to learn these tasks to near perfection. So, how do these very disparate technologies come together to create even more opportunity? Though created using fundamentally different approaches to technology, both technologies have a lot to offer each other. The Merging [...]

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A few days ago, some of the world’s most renowned entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists in the technology industry warned for the dangers of artificial intelligence and that of lethal autonomous weapons. Over 150 companies and 2400 individuals from 90 countries signed the lethal autonomous weapon pledge at the 2018 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. I signed it as well, as I believe that we should do whatever it takes to stop lethal autonomous weapons as they can seriously destabilise the global society. Already, artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly [...]

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