Apple debuted its latest A12 Bionic chip.

The most remarkable thing of the new product is Apple’s latest A12 Bionic chip. Apple calls it “the smartest and most powerful chip ever in a smartphone”. It has a six-core CPU a four-core GPU and an updated Neural Engine. It’s also industry’s first 7-nanometer chip.

As for CPU, it includes two high-performance cores. It reaches 15% faster and 40% lower power than A11 Bionic. As for the other four efficiency cores, they up to 50% more energy efficient. As for GPU, we know that A11 Bionic is fast, but A12 Bionic is even 50% faster.

In addition, it is a chip with meaty AI processing. Neural Engine is designed to handle AI tasks. For example, on stage, Apple showed an app, Homecourt, which is a real-time analyst for your performance. It can track and record every shot the player takes, the number of shots and misses, the time, the height and the angle of releases…It is amazing that we can get all the information just from a phone and it’s possible only if it has an A12 Bionic chip.

Find more information from Apple September Event 2018:

Truth, Lies, and the Internet

I read an interesting article this week and I want to share with you guys. It is Truth, Lies, and the Internet, written by Rebecca J. Rosen. Rebecca points out that bad information is spreading more rapidly because of the Internet; but meanwhile, facts are also checked easier owing to the Internet through fact-checkers and they’re promoting. The quantity of fact-checking in 2011 is over twice that high than in 2004. Wrong pieces of information can be amended by public readers on institutions such as Slashdot. Thus, those websites with unique commenting systems are able to provide good information. However, many rumors still circulate after being checked. Rosen uses herself as a fact checker as the example. She finds that it is easy to rectify wrong facts or digits. However, it is difficult to correct wrongheaded ones with correct numbers. Accuracy is just a start and base of truthful information, and people will still be misled and misunderstand the point even it is accurate.

Another point taken consideration is about how the human mind works. It is believed that information is received by the human mind, and then transformed to ideas and opinions but in poor reasoning at the same time. For instance, human often believes the information that already exists. In other words, human reasons are for argument, not for accuracy. “The human mind is better at spotting the flaws in someone else’s argument than its own, and in groups or pairs can do much better on a variety of tests than when flying solo” (Rosen, 2011). I found same thoughts from a video, Why Facts Don’t Convince People, from YouTube. It asserted that “The human brain evolved to help us survive and not necessarily to help us be factually accurate so we often respond better to social and tribal dynamics than to intellectual analysis”. Fortunately, people are still full of hope in creating a more truthful Internet.

 

Article link: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/truth-lies-and-the-internet/250569/

 

Do We Really Need to Worry About Unemployment Caused by AI?

In a survey with respect to Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, and the future of jobs, Arron Smith and Janna Anderson (2014) collected 1896 experts of technology’s responses and attempted to find out whether the impact of AI and robotics on jobs by 2025 will be negative or not. The statistical findings were that about 48% of experts were concerned about the displacement of jobs by robots, and others stated confidently that AI will create more jobs than that it may destroy.

In recent decades, robots with AI can finish some pre-defined works instead of human workers. Those robots possess the ability as much as workers. Some people start to worry about job losses and worse wealth inequality. Even some governments have posted anti-AI statements in public. For instance, after the meeting among some scientists who were against AI and President Obama, a federal report pointed out that “AI could threaten up to 47 percent of jobs among 702 occupations in two decades” (Berger, 2016). This indicates that if these threatened jobs result in job replacement, millions of Americans have to make a meager living and face challenging economic problems at least in a short term.

However, I found an interesting thing that existing workers are insufficient for the demand. In Stephen Moore’s report, America’s worker shortage: One million and counting, he asserted that one of the most serious problems of the U.S. economy for companies nowadays is finding workers when plenty of working-age people are out of the labor ‎force. He wrote, “There are at least one million jobs that go begging day after day if only employers could find workers to fill them”. For example, U.S. Gulf Coast refiners plan to do repairs in 2017, but they are facing a great labor shortage; and it is difficult to find even the lowest-skilled workers. Next year, planned maintenance may cost 1.26 billion dollars, according to Industrial Information Resources (IIR), a department detecting labor supply for refiners and other industrial companies. It is no doubts that repairing is a huge cost. However, refiners have to spend even more money to interest and retain employees, and engage skilled workers from another area to finish works. Obviously, it is inefficient and expensive. Jarrett Renshaw (2017) pointed out that “That’s going to complicate scheduling and even extend outages, a vice president of IIR said”. Find more information from this link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-refineries-labor-analysis-idUSKBN14I0FAAt this time, automatic systems and controlled robots can displace some of the skilled blue-collar workers, brings more labor supply and satisfies the demand of the industry. AI plays an important role in meeting the worker shortage by offering labors and cutting costs. What do you think? Do we really need to worry about the unemployment caused by AI?

 

An Analysis of E-Payment Method in China

Nowadays, e-payment is almost the first choice when people purchase products in China. Alipay and WeChat Pay are two most popular solutions for purchasing. Back to over 10 years ago, there was no doubt that Alipay was the most popular one and none of its competitors could threaten it.  In the chart shown below, green represents Alipay, red represents WeChat Pay and dark blue represents others. In 2012, Alipay owned nearly 60% market share of mobile payments. It also had most yearly total mobile payments: 90 billion USD. WeChat Pay only owned about 10% market share and around 20 billion USD (China Internet Watch, 2017).

[ Image source: https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/20322/digital-payment-ecosystems-china/ ]

Monopoly ended until WeChat Pay was launched. In 2013, WePay was launched by TenPay and WeChat. TenPay started in 2005, and it is the leading third-party payment platform. It provides payment and security systems for WeChat Pay. WeChat is the most popular social media mobile application in China. After downloading WeChat, the users can turn on WeChat Pay service for free. Money can be simply spent from the account or collected as balance. Users can also link bank cards to deposit or withdraw money.

WeChat Pay developed rapidly during the past few years and has become the second most popular e-payment method in China. As of February 2017, WeChat Pay has 300 million users connected by bank account, which is 100 million less than Alipay. However, WeChat has nearly 500 million users, which is more than Alipay. WeChat users probably become WeChat Pay users. I think WeChat Pay has a huge potential to have more users than Alipay.

[ Image source: Emma Lee (2017) https://technode.com/2017/08/18/alipay-vs-wechat-challenges-and-strategies-of-two-payment-giants-going-global/ ]