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This rebroadcast originally aired on March 17, 2023.

Computer brain interfaces used to be the stuff of science fiction.

Now, headphones and earbuds with sensors that can read your brain waves and sell your data are hitting the market.

"Nobody should walk into this blindly thinking that this is just another fun tool," Nita Farahany says.

"This is the most sensitive organ we have. Opening that up to the rest of the world profoundly changes what it means to be human and how we relate to one another."

But that brainwave information can also be used by corporations and governments.

"China has very clearly said that they believe that the sixth domain of warfare is the human brain," Farahany adds.

"They are investing tremendous dollars into developing brain computer interface, but also figuring out ways to disable brains or to spy on brains."

Today, On Point: Big business, big government and your brain.

Nita Farahany, professor of law and philosophy at Duke University. Her new book is titled The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology. (@NitaFarahany)

Margaret Kosal, teaches international affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, currently on leave to the Savannah River National Laboratory. (@mekosal)

Tan Le, CEO of EMOTIV, which manufactures wearable neural sensing devices. (@TanTTLe)

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Wearable tech, your Fitbit, smartwatch and the like. They can already do things like measure your heart rate or how well you're sleeping just based on how you're moving or signals through your skin. So, what do you think the next frontier might be in wearable tech? The next new thing devices can monitor and measure. Just think about it. Really think.

TAN LE: I use my earbuds every day because I want to know how my brain changes based on all of the things that I do, because my brain is changing all the time. It's the most sophisticated learning apparatus that we have.

So I use my earbuds as a way to understand what's happening to my brain as I play with my daughter, hang out with my cat, listen to music, work. And it's really interesting. I learn a lot about myself. I learn a lot about what makes me happy and perform better. And when I'm really stressed, what impact that has on me.

CHAKRABARTI: This is Tan Le, co-founder and CEO of EMOTIV, one of a new crop of companies that sees great potential in BCI or brain computer interface technology.

Le believes the possibilities for such tech are endless. Helping the elderly experiencing cognitive decline, empowering the disabled community to perform actions simply through thinking. Even helping you understand yourself better how to be happier or more efficient.

Le says brain computer interface tech will one day be able to do all of these things. Through major advances in miniaturized electroencephalography technology or EEG, which can read signals from the human brain and send them to amplifiers, which in her company's case are in those earbuds.

LE: It's giving you feedback on your computer. So if I click on the icon to see what's going on in my brain at the moment, I can see what's happening in my brain. And then I can also see a report over the course of the day, when during the day my brain was in an optimal state. And then I can correlate that with what I was doing at that time.

So when I look back on my afternoon on Sunday, I knew exactly what I was doing. So I knew why that was different to the barrage of back-to-back meetings I had on Friday afternoon, which caused my brain to be a much more intense state. And so that allows me to change my day a little bit, carve out more time for focused work so that I can actually work more optimally.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, Tan Le isn't the only one who thinks this is utterly fascinating. Her three-year-old daughter sees her at her desk, wearing her earbuds and checking in on her state of mind.

LE: She said, Mommy, I want to see. And I said, This is mommy's brain. And she said, I want to see my brain. And I said, You're too little. So it doesn't fit her. But she's so intrigued by it.

CHAKRABARTI: Currently, EMOTIV earbuds are available only on their website. Le says she hopes that one day they'll be available in stores for widespread use in the consumer market. But for now, her main clients are not consumers, they're employers.

LE: One of our clients is JLL. JLL is a large real estate organization, and JLL came to us saying that, you know, the future of work is changing rapidly. How can we design our workplaces better so that we can make sure that when people are at work, they're getting what they want from the work environment?

So in that case, we will invite volunteers within the organization to sign up for a research study where they will wear a device for a certain period of time. And what we do is we capture brain data from those experiences in order to try and map out what is the relationship between an environment that's conducive to teamwork and collaboration. This is something that doesn't actually achieve those desired outcomes.

CHAKRABARTI: By the way, JLL is also known as Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc, one of the largest real estate companies in the world, ranked 185th on the Fortune $520 billion in revenue last year and 100,000 employees worldwide, some of which have been asked to participate in the kind of research study Le mentioned. So what happens to the data those employees' brains are pumping out into EMOTIV earbuds?

LE: What's really important about EMOTIV is that fundamentally we do not believe in how companies have transacted with data in the past. We are a company that was born about ten years ago. And so we've seen a lot of the changes in the public's view of how data is mined for corporate advantage without the informed consent of the users and participants.

And so we conduct ourselves in a very thoughtful and ethical manner in regards to data. The users need to have control of when they collect data, how data is shared, and in fact, we don't sell or share your data with anyone without explicit consent.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, this is On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarti and that was Tan Le, co-founder and CEO of the Neurotechnology firm EMOTIV, one of a new group of companies that's rapidly advancing the possibilities of brain computer interface technology. Well, my guest today says the positive possibilities of such tech are exciting and essential. But it's naive to think that power to read brainwaves will be used exclusively for good because the potential for exploitation is just too great, both by corporations and governments. So she says now, as brain computer face, technology is starting to enter our lives and our minds. Now is the time to establish new rules, to defend the right, to think freely and to keep our minds, our own private property.

That comes from Nita Farahany, professor of law and philosophy at Duke University. Her new book is The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology.

Professor Farahany, Welcome back to On Point.

NITA FARAHANY: Thank you. It's great to be here.

CHAKRABARTI: So I would like you to take us back to the first moment you realized that this revolution in tech was coming. You write about a 2018 summit at the Wharton School in Pennsylvania. What happened there?

FARAHANY: So I had been studying neurotechnology and even consumer neurotechnology for quite a few years, but at that summit, early on in the summit, Josh Duyan stood up.

He was one of the people at a company that was a startup called Control Labs. And he was showcasing this new device where they were taking electrodes and putting them into what looks like an everyday watch. And he held up his hands and he said, "Wouldn't it be great if instead of having the kind of clumsy output that we have, that is these hands, these like sledgehammer like devices, we could interact much more seamlessly with all of the rest of our technology with a device like the one on my wrist."

Or if we wanted to type, we could type by thinking about typing, rather than by having to pound away on a keyboard. And how we've gone backwards in time typing on phones with our two thumbs. What he was showcasing was something altogether different than anything I had seen before. Because while I had played with and seen these devices in the past, they hadn't really solved the form factor.

They were still electrodes that you would have to wear across your forehead and a headband that was both silly looking and uncomfortable. But the applications were also much more limited. They were limited to things like meditation or, personal gaming devices that you might play. This idea that you could take and make brain-wearable devices integrated into our everyday devices to power our interaction with all of the rest of our technologies, that was the moment when I realized all of the things that I'd been thinking about and worrying about for quite a long time.

Suddenly, were going to come true. And I was convinced, given the form factor, that it would just make sense for Apple to acquire Control Labs. But I was floored when a year later it was Meta who acquired them instead.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS)

FARAHANY: I thought that was the pivotal acquisition and then I was like, okay, it is time to get writing this book.

CHAKRABARTI: A.k.a. Facebook. A.k.a. Mark Zuckerberg. Okay.

FARAHANY: Exactly. Exactly. I was like, if Mark Zuckerberg is investing in this technology the things I was worried about, they're going to come true. And it also just made it so clear to me that this is a mainstream movement. This is the next big thing.

It's not a niche application for people who are interested at home and trying to quantify and see their own brains. This was going to become the way in which we interact with the rest of our technology by using our brains and our thoughts as the way we interact with everything around us.

That was a revolutionary moment, and that acquisition was both terrifying, but also a call to action, to get writing and to get this message out.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so but your view on the brain computer interface technology is quite nuanced. You don't see it as a universal bad. So we're going to talk about its potentials, the complex potential in a minute here, but doesn't it makes sense though, that this would be, you call it the last fortress, that technology hasn't yet fully overwhelmed.

But the brain is very much how we, in a sense, what happens in the brain is how we define ourselves as human beings. So it is what generates all our thoughts, feelings, actions. So it would seem very logical that technology would want to understand, harness, and maximize what it can do with that.

FARAHANY: Absolutely. So first of all, you're right. My view is nuanced. And my view is nuanced. Because I believe that this technology is the next step for humans in ways that can be deeply empowering. And I also think the fact that our brains have remained this black box and mysterious, even to us, that we can only access through self-reflection in ways that aren't objective.

That's not good for addressing any of the major causes of human suffering, such as neurological disease and disorder and mental illness, or even just understanding ourselves. So of course it makes sense. that this is where the next step in both self quantification, but also the thing that we as humans would be pushing for, which is access to and understanding our own brains would be happening.

It also just makes sense that we have all of these clumsy interfaces between us and other technology and the ability to be able to much more seamlessly interact with other technology would be deeply appealing to other companies. But I'm also a skeptic on motivations. And, both I think my own cultural heritage, but just the work that I do as an ethicist and a law professor, it's always made me look at, okay, but what are the complex set of motivations that bring these different organizations to the table.

Yeah, that mix is what makes you our favorite kind of guest, Professor Farahany. So we'll talk a lot more about the positives, the negatives, and really most importantly, what kind of questions you say we should be asking ourselves now as a society, as this technology comes at us at full pace.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Farahany, you've actually worn some of these devices that currently exist yourself.

Can you tell us a little bit about what it is that you wore, how it worked and what it felt like to have it?

FARAHANY: Sure. I have been toying around in some ways with many of these devices, but also using them personally for some applications. So the earliest of these devices were hard, plastic devices that would go across your forehead and some of them tuck behind your ears or fit tightly across your scalp.

And the idea was to make contact with dry electrodes to your forehead or to different parts of your scalp that could allow the electrical activity in your brain to be picked up. And then interact with, through Bluetooth, some kind of application on your phone. And the more recent devices, as you described, and as the conversation with Tan Le made clear, that I also have had access to, are electrodes that are embedded inside of your ear buds.

And these feel just like the normal ear buds you would use to make a phone call or listen to music or do a Zoom call or headphones, where the soft cups that go around your ears have electrodes inside of them as well. So you can't detect them. They're just like the rest of the technology that you would wear or one of these watches that has a sensor inside.

I've used them primarily, both to test them out, but also for meditation. So I'm not great at self-meditation. Being able to both keep my focus and ability to stay in that state, but also am I doing it right? And what's neat about these devices is the interaction with an application lets you get real time, what's called neurofeedback.

So if I get my brain states into a way that brings down my stress level and shows that I'm in this kind of meditative state. You have signatures in your brain that can be detected and decoded that suggest that. Then you get something like chirping birds or some other kind of audible feedback.

And that's been really helpful for me. I'm a chronic migrainer and high stress levels can really trigger a migraine for me. And using these as a preventive tool, something where, even if I just spend a few minutes of bringing my stress levels down and remaining in a meditative state, for me, have been really helpful in limiting the frequency and the severity of my migraines.

CHAKRABARTI: It occurs to me that there are, then, there's so many potential applications, positive applications for this technology. I've suffered from depression for most of my life, and I think it would be amazing to have a device that would give me some sort of feedback to say, "Your brain patterns right now are indicating, I don't know, some sort of negative feedback loop that's going to deepen your depression." Or something, anything like that.

FARAHANY: No, you're right. You're right. So first I'm so sorry that it's [something] you've grappled with.

CHAKRABARTI: It's okay.

FARAHANY: But you're one of many millions of people who are grappling with different effects of the brain, whether it's migraines or depression or people who suffer for epilepsy, for example, and need an early warning of having an epileptic seizure. These devices can be quite powerful. In fact, I talk about some of those and in the book from using both feedback, but also neurostimulation, which has been transformative for some people with depression or people who have ADHD.

For example, there are a lot of studies that show that using neurofeedback, especially in children, over a number of weeks, can actually be more powerful than drugs or drugs alone and certainly have far fewer side effects. Or somebody who has epileptic seizures like a very close family friend of ours died of an epileptic seizure without early warning. She was alone at the time. She vomited from the epileptic seizure and then died from they believe choking on her own vomit, if she had a one hour, in advance early warning of having that seizure, she could have gotten herself to safety.

She could have made sure that she took just in time medication. There's so much good that could come from being able to track our own brains and improve them, enhance them, use neurofeedback. Our own daughter, our eight-year-old, while she doesn't use one of these neurological devices, uses biofeedback through a heart rate monitor, which has been gamified.

She can play games, which get harder when her stress levels and heart rate increase. And then the way that she wins the game is by being able to self-control by emotionally regulating. And learning those skills at a young age, I think are powerful and important. So I'm definitely not a Luddite when it comes to this technology.

I think it's both coming, but it also has a lot of promise for humanity. If done, if implemented with the right safeguards, if used in ways that benefit individuals. I think it can be incredibly transformative.

CHAKRABARTI: That poor word, 'if,' it carries so much weight on its shoulders.

FARAHANY: It does. It does. And unfortunately, I have to say that because I am somebody who is deeply optimistic and I want the good of this technology for humanity. But I see the risks and I see the risks, especially in this domain, because there is really nothing more sensitive and fundamental than what it means to be human, than having that space of inner monologue, of private thought, of being able to entertain and turn over ideas in your own mind without fear of it being misused by other people, accessed by other people, commodified by companies, interfered with by governments and the potential of connecting our brains to technology makes all of those risks a possibility.

CHAKRABARTI: Just as an aside thought, there's the technology in and of itself, the hardware. Then there's the means by which we can interpret it, right? The kind of feedback the machines generate. But how much confidence at this moment do you have about the interim phase, like the analysis of what the brain, those EEG signals are sending, do we actually know and understand how to read what the signals are?

FARAHANY: Yeah, it's a great question. A lot of people ask me, how good are the devices? And my answer to that is, it depends on what you're using them for.

Can it decode your literal thoughts, the true inner monologue that you're having? No, both the technology itself, like the electrodes, the sensors, the hardware, have improved vastly over the past decade, but there's still some noise and interference. And different people may have them applied in different ways that aren't quite the right fit, to pick up exactly the right signal.

And there can be interference from muscle twitches or eye blinks or other devices in your environment. Because it's electrical activity that is picking up. And then the software, the AI, I think everybody knows that AI has been having just exponential growth in its capabilities. And what we're picking up here from the brain.

Through these devices, what they're detecting, really is patterns of data. And those patterns of data increasingly can be interpreted and decoded with the sophistication of the algorithms at play. So I think depending on what we're talking about, it can be very accurate and very good for basic brain states like attention and boredom and cognitive decline and stress.

And are you happy? Are you sad? It can be very accurate for probing the brain for information, through particular signals of recognition in the brain. But it doesn't do, unless it's implanted neurotechnology. There's not very good real time decoding of speech, for example, even though that is coming in many ways.

And in some ways, we can talk about even your intention to type or to communicate or send a text message, can be decoded with this technology. So it just depends.

CHAKRABARTI: Intention. Okay.

FARAHANY: Intention, right? I say that because there's you thinking in your mind and having a kind of moment of self-reflection and then you intending to type something, which is speech that you mean to go from your mind out into the rest of the world, and that has different representation in the brain. It's easier to decode speech you intend to communicate than that inner monologue.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. So this is where we get into Minority Report territory, but we're going to hold that thought, if I can use that pun here, for a moment.

Because now what I'd like to do is push into the possible futures that you think through in the book, The Battle for Your Brain, because we'll get to governments in a few minutes, but I think the most immediate place of change we might see was hinted at by Tan Le at the beginning of our show. Because workplaces would be very interested or are very interested in whatever means to make work better, workers more efficient, what have you.

So if you don't mind, I want to read a little bit of a scenario that you imagine here at the beginning of the book, and then you can talk us through the rest of this. So this is what Nita Farahanysays. We might be closer to than we think. So it goes like this.

"You're in the zone. You can't even believe how productive you've been.

Your memo is finished and sent. Your inbox is under control, and you're feeling sharper than you have in a decade. Sensing your joy, your playlist shifts to your favorite song, sending chills up your spine as the music begins to play. You glance at the program running in the background on your computer screen. And notice a now familiar site that appears whenever you're overloaded with pleasure.

Your theta brainwave activity decreasing in the right central and right temporal regions of your brain. You mentally move the cursor to the left and scroll through your brain data over the past few hours. You can see your stress levels rising as the deadline to finish your memo approached, causing your beta brainwave activity to peak right before an alert popped up telling you to take a brain break.

But what's that unusual change in your brain activity when you're asleep? It started earlier in the month. You compose a text to your doctor in your mind and send it with a mental swipe of your cursor. 'Could you take a quick look at my brain data? Anything to worry about?'"

So what happens next in your imagined scenario here?

FARAHANY: So from there, there's a number of different pieces from the employer looking at the brain data and sending a message to the employees saying, "Congratulation on your brain metrics over the past quarter. And you've earned another performance bonus." You're excited about that.

You still have your earbuds in, not thinking about all of the data that you're giving to your employer as you go home jamming to the music and having forgotten that brainwave data is being collected at the same time. And then you come to the office the next day and a somber cloud has fallen over the office.

And you discover that the government has subpoenaed all of the brainwave data along with all of the other information about employees because they're looking for coconspirators for a crime. And it's funny, that scenario, my brilliant editor at St. Martin's press, he invited me to write a scenario that could really put it all together in kind of one easy to understand narrative. What's the full spectrum of this, from the promise, which is your ability to do things like hone your own focus and attention and track your own brain activity and bring down your own stress levels and have real time feedback about when you're suffering from cognitive overload.

To the risks and the ways in which employers are already using this technology. Where it's dystopian in what I describe it as, I believe, of having your brain be part of the performance metrics. There's so much happening in the workplace right now on productivity scoring and, the, I think, over surveillance of employees in ways that really are not helping morale or the dignity of work. And these brain metrics are already being used by companies and increasingly will.

And then the frightening possibility, which we've already seen with other kinds of personal health data, whether it's Fitbit data or heart rate data, which has been subpoenaed by law enforcement and used in criminal cases. And the idea that once you open up your brain passively, thinking that you're using it to track your own attention, that all is fair game.

And can give a lot of insights. The example that I use in that scenario is that they're looking for synchronization of brain activity between different workers. Turns out when you're working with people, you have higher degrees of synchronization in your brainwave patterns, and you could actually use that to figure out who's collaborating, who's developing a union, who's working together, who you wouldn't expect to see those patterns of synchronization.

And so as I start to imagine all of that, and all of those scenarios, are possible with existing research and existing technology, I think it makes clear what the kind of dystopian possibilities are of surveillance of the brain. When you even talk about in this imagined scenario, that maybe you might find a coworker attractive and that would be recorded in your brain activity.

FARAHANY: Yes. Yes. You can pick up those. You can tell amorous feelings that, these inward and deeply held feelings are not things you would want to reveal. I'll tell you a funny story, Meghna, which is my eight-year-old has her first crush. She'll be embarrassed that I'm sharing this with you and with the world, but her friend apparently has a crush on her as well.

It's the most mortifying thing to them possible that they both have a crush, right? It's the thing that everybody is teasing them about, even though we think it's darling and wonderful. And, but that, imagine when you were a child and you have these early crushes, which are so incredibly formative, you don't want anybody else to know and you're in a classroom required to wear neural interface, brain wearables to track your attention and focus, which can pick up so much more information, including, these kinds of amorous feelings.

Those are things you should be able to keep to yourself. Those are things that other people shouldn't have access to. Those are things that are so formative to self-identity. And so when I talk about these ideas of mental privacy and the importance of this last bastion of freedom, this last fortress, I think it's the most important fortress.

It's the one that's most formative to who you are as a human being.

CHAKRABARTI: About the workplace then, it seems like there's two major sets of issues here. One is A, how this technology can have an impact on workers, both positively and negatively. But B, in terms of the economy that we all function in, this all sounds like surveillance capitalism potentially on megasteroids.

Visit link:

'Battle for your brain': What the rise of brain-computer interface technology means for you - WBUR News

What GAO Found

New vehicles are increasingly equipped with driver assistance technologies designed to prevent or mitigate crashes (crash avoidance technologies) and support the driving task (driver support systems). According to interviewed stakeholders and research GAO reviewed, when drivers have a realistic understanding of their vehicles' driver assistance technologies, they are more likely to use them as intended. There is some evidence, however, that consumers do not always have an accurate understanding of technologies' capabilities and limitations. One study found that between 27 and 79 percent of consumers surveyed had misperceptions about the limitations of different crash avoidance technologies in their vehicles. In addition, misuse is a safety concern particular to partial driving automation systems, a type of driver support system, which can take over some of the driving tasks in a vehicle but still requires the full attention of the driver.

Vehicle Dashboard Displays Driver Assistance Technology Activation

Within the Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) provides consumers with information on crash avoidance technologies through its New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), additional information on its website, and other means. NHTSA uses checkmarks to indicate whether vehicles come equipped with the four crash avoidance technologies that it recommends and that meet NHTSA's performance criteria. In 2022, NHTSA published a draft roadmap with plans to upgrade NCAP, including recommending four more crash avoidance technologies and developing a rating system for them. These upgrades would provide more comprehensive and comparative information to consumers. However, NHTSA has not finalized its roadmap and has missed time frames even though work on these upgrades started years ago. Developing realistic time frames and publicly communicating its progress could help NHTSA provide consumers with more meaningful information. Aside from NCAP, NHTSA provides consumers with a description on partial driving automation systems, but there is little information about their intended use and operational limitations. Providing this information could assist consumers in developing a more accurate understanding of these systems.

According to NHTSA, almost 42,800 people died in vehicle crashes in 2022. New vehicles are increasingly equipped with driver assistance technologies that could help reduce crashes and fatalities. NHTSA administers NCAP to educate consumers about vehicle safety, including driver assistance technologies, and to assist in consumers' purchasing decisions.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, included a provision for GAO to review consumer education about driver assistance technologies. Among the issues this report examines are (1) consumers' use and understanding of driver assistance technologies; and (2) the extent to which NHTSA contributes to consumers' understanding and using the technologies as intended.

GAO reviewed NHTSA's relevant rulemaking documents, website, and studies; analyzed a nongeneralizable sample of NHTSA consumer complaint data; and interviewed NHTSA and other relevant agency officials and a range of industry stakeholders, including automakers and safety organizations. GAO assessed NHTSA's efforts against key project schedule management practices.

See more here:

Driver Assistance Technologies: NHTSA Should Take Action to Enhance Consumer Understanding of Capabilities and ... - Government Accountability Office

Investment analysts at StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of Firsthand Technology Value Fund (NASDAQ:SVVC Get Free Report) in a report released on Sunday. The firm set a hold rating on the investment management companys stock.

Shares of SVVC opened at $0.26 on Friday. Firsthand Technology Value Fund has a 12-month low of $0.17 and a 12-month high of $1.02. The business has a 50-day simple moving average of $0.25 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $0.29. The stock has a market cap of $1.79 million, a PE ratio of -0.05 and a beta of 1.43.

An institutional investor recently bought a new position in Firsthand Technology Value Fund stock. Atria Wealth Solutions Inc. bought a new stake in shares of Firsthand Technology Value Fund, Inc. (NASDAQ:SVVC Free Report) during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor bought 22,797 shares of the investment management companys stock, valued at approximately $79,000. Atria Wealth Solutions Inc. owned approximately 0.33% of Firsthand Technology Value Fund at the end of the most recent reporting period. 52.70% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Firsthand Technology Value Fund, Inc is a business development company specializes in venture capital investments in start-up, early stage, middle stage, late stage, early development stage, and PIPEs. It seeks to invest in pre-IPO companies. The fund also seeks to make investments in companies with operating histories that are unprofitable or marginally profitable, that have negative net worth, or that are involved in bankruptcy or reorganization proceedings.

Receive News & Ratings for Firsthand Technology Value Fund Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Firsthand Technology Value Fund and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

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Firsthand Technology Value Fund (NASDAQ:SVVC) Research Coverage Started at StockNews.com - Defense World

Key Financial Results

All figures shown in the chart above are for the trailing 12 month (TTM) period

Revenue missed analyst estimates by 2.8%. Earnings per share (EPS) also missed analyst estimates by 13%.

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Suzhou Anjie Technology Full Year 2023 Earnings: Misses Expectations - Simply Wall St

Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister, argued that policing AI was akin to building a plane already in flight inherently risky and difficult work. Harris trumpeted Washingtons efforts to address the dangers of AI through voluntary business agreements as the worlds gold standard. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, who was also in attendance, urged others to follow Brussels new, legally binding rulebook to crack down on the tech.

The debate represented a snapshot of a bigger truth. For the past year, a political fight has been raging around the world, mostly in the shadows, over how and whether to control AI. This new digital Great Game is a long way from over. Whoever wins will cement their dominance over Western rules for an era-defining technology. Once these rules are set, they will be almost impossible to rewrite.

For those watching the conversation firsthand, the haggling in the British rain was akin to 19th-century European powers carving up the world.

It felt like an alternate reality, said Amba Kak, head of the AI Now Institute, a nonprofit organization, who participated in the discussions. At the end of the meeting, 29 countries, including China, European Union members, and the United States, signed a voluntary agreement to reduce risks that have climbed the political agenda thanks to the arrival of OpenAIs ChatGPT.

In the year ahead, the cut-throat battle to control the technology will create winners and losers. By the end of 2024, policymakers expect many new AI standards to have been finalized.

For this article, POLITICO spoke to more than three dozen politicians, policymakers, tech executives and others, many of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, to understand the dynamics at play as the world grapples with this new disruptive technology.

Excerpt from:

Inside the shadowy global battle to tame the world's most dangerous technology - POLITICO Europe

By Mohammed Soliman

Just as Halford Mackinder, in his seminal workThe Geographical Pivot of History, argued that control over the Eurasian heartland held the key to global mastery, the world stands at the precipice of another pivotal shiftone driven not by geography, but by the relentless force of exponential technological innovation. This is the age of the Technological Pivot of History, where the balance of power hinges not only on landmasses but also on the ability to harness and wield the ever-evolving arsenal of technological advancements.

The pace of innovation today is nothing short of breathtaking.Moores Law,what was once a simple observation, has morphed into a self-actualizing prophecy, with processing power doubling roughly every two years. This exponential growth isnt confined to silicon valleysits reshaping every facet of human lives, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Transistors, the building blocks of chips, are now routinely crammed into spaces smaller than the width of a human hair. This miniaturization, driven by Moores Law, has fueled the rise of smartphones that outperformed desktop computers just a decade ago and unleashed the potential for even more powerful AI applications like autonomous vehicles and real-time medical diagnostics. Generative AI, a subfield focused on creating new content, is already producing stunning results. Tools like DALL-E 2 can generate photorealistic images from mere text descriptions, whileGPT-3andGoogle Bardcan write convincing human-quality prose poems and even code. As these models grow more sophisticated, their parameters, the variables that define their behavior, become increasingly complex, opening a vast universe of creative and exponential possibilities.

Robotics and automation are transforming industries, from manufacturing to agriculture. Automated assembly lines are churning out goods with unprecedented efficiency, while robots are tending crops and managing livestock with precision. These advancements are not only boosting productivity but also create new opportunities for human-robot collaborationLooking at an example thats even more impressive, consider the revolutionary field of DNA testing. Once relegated to expensive research labs, genetic analysis is now accessible to the masses. Companies like23andMeandAncestryDNAoffer affordable kits that unlock previously unknown family history and even predict predisposition to certain diseases. This democratization of genetic information is leading to breakthroughs in personalized medicine andunderstandingof human health.

The impact of these technological advancements extends far beyond technical improvements, fundamentally altering the power dynamics on the global stage. Just as empires of the past rose and fell based on their mastery of geography and resources, so too will future power dynamics be determined by technological prowess. The landscape of national strength is shifting. Territorial size, resource wealth, and even military might no longer guarantee supremacy. Instead, the ability to foster innovation, attract talent, and adapt will determine who thrives in this rapidly changing landscape. In recent decades, theexponentialgrowth of technology has redefined state sovereignty and hegemony. New geopolitical lines will continue to be drawn around technology and the flow of information, whereby historically, they were formed geopolitically and by way of traditional military superiority. Thus, technology is central to the balance of power. In recent years, its become clear that the United States and China are locked in a tech-fueled great power competition, with implications spanning from cyber warfare to intellectual property, from data to AI, and from undersea cables to low-orbit satellites.

The intensifying competition in the cyber and technology domain, often referred to as the US-China tech Cold War, is prompting major and regional powers to develop their own cyber and technology doctrines. From the chokepoint of Dutchchipmakingto the ambitious AI programs ofSaudi Arabiaand theUnited Arab Emirates, a new wave of rising powers is disrupting the global technology landscape. East Asian shipyards, led by Japan and Korea, now churn out the giants that traverse the worlds oceans, while India and Vietnam witness an industrial revolution. In the skies, Turkey has carved a niche as adrone superpower, with its Bayraktar TB2s becoming a sought-after commodity. These nations are not just catching up, theyre pushing boundaries, shaping the future of technology, and challenging established leaders in a race for innovation that promises to reshape the world. Their technology doctrines reflect the growing recognition that technological prowess can be a significant power multiplier in the current multipolar and volatile world.

The United States, a long-time trailblazer in technology innovation, now faces greater scrutiny from other nations observing the impact of its tech capabilities on its past geopolitical standing. Case in point: US technology played a vital role in the recent Russia-Ukraine conflict, supporting Ukrainian efforts to counter the Russian invasion. Unsurprisingly, China is pouring billions into AI research and development, aiming to achieve dominance in a technology poised to revolutionize every aspect of human life. Consider the United States, its Silicon Valley churning out disruptive technologies, but grappling with internal divisions and anxieties about the pace of change. The race for technological supremacy is on, and its outcome will define the new hierarchies of power.

Unlike the zero-sum battles for geographical control, the Technological Pivot offers the potential for shared gains amidst inequalities. However, the digital divide threatens to leave entire populations behind in the exponential age. Ethical considerations loom large. Questions of privacy, security, and the very nature of humanity in the age of machines demand urgent attention. Navigating this Pivot demands a paradigm shift in thinking about international cooperation on standards and regulations to ensure responsible and ethical use of technologies, as the use of technologies poses existential questions about our place in a world increasingly shaped by machines.

The Technological Pivot of History is a transformative era where the balance of power is no longer solely dictated by geography but by the ability to harness exponential technological innovation. As the world witnesses the escalating US-China tech Cold War, it becomes evident that the race for technological supremacy is shaping the future hierarchies of power. The digital divide will be widened in the exponential age and threatens to leave entire nation-states on the sidelines of this Technological Pivot of History.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities.

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The Technological Pivot Of History: Power In The Age Of Exponential Innovation Analysis - Eurasia Review

Peggy Sauer was one of the "Damsels in Design" at GM hired to work on car interiors. She's shown here with her design for the backseat of a 1958 Oldsmobile. GM Heritage Center/Pegasus Books hide caption

Believe it or not, there was once a prototype of a minivan that included a small washer and dryer that way, moms could do the laundry while the kids were at soccer. That vehicle, explains journalist Nancy Nichols, was never produced, but it's an eye-opening window into the long relationship between car manufacturers and their female consumers.

Nichols has written a new book on the history of women and car culture. In Women Behind the Wheel: An Unexpected and Personal History of the Car she explains how cars became a gendered technology.

Cars have always been major characters in Nichols' life. Her father who lost his brother to an auto accident as a child became a car salesman, mostly selling used cars. Her brother drove race cars on weekends. Decades later, Nichols' father was in a car crash that resulted in a traumatic brain injury that changed his life.

"The car, for men, has always been about adventure, about power, about strength, about a performance of their own masculinity. ..." Nichols says. "The car for women was about making sure that you could take care of your domestic duties what you needed to get done for your job as a mother or your job as a housewife."

On how the invention of the electric starter made cars accessible to women

A 1916 ad for the Baker Electric. The Collections of Henry Ford/Pegasus Books hide caption

A 1916 ad for the Baker Electric.

The early cars were hand-cranked, and that was part of why they were very difficult for women to drive. They were very hard to start. Also, they didn't have power steering. They didn't have power brakes. There were some models in which it was very difficult for women to even reach the pedals. ...

It wasn't until 1910 when a man named Charles Kettering developed an electric starter for the car, and this was a real game changer for women because it allowed women to start the car without a great deal of personal strength, and it greatly expanded their ability to use the car when there weren't men around.

In the first instance, the ladies car was an electric car. It was meant for women who were largely very wealthy. For example, Clara Ford drove a Detroit Electric. She did not drive a Ford. That's because in the early days, these combustion engines were thought too difficult for women to start and drive, and also too dangerous. There was also some concern that the combustion engine would create unwanted sexual excitement for women. They vibrated ... so they were not allowed to have them. Wealthy women, by and large, had the electric. They were kind of like golf carts today. They drove them around their estate. They drove them to their friends, for social engagements.

On car coats and automobile fashion in the 1910s

The car coat was designed to help women get in and out of the car. ... I went to the New York Public Library, and I found from Saks Fifth Avenue, a catalog, it was about 200 pages long, and it was all about helping women adapt to this new car culture, which was really very new. So early cars were open. They didn't have roofs. Women got dirty. They were cold. Women were sold ermine blankets. They wore goggles that evolved as the car became more enclosed.

And so women ... were advised by the Ladies Home Journal, for example, to wear gloves, to have a hat with a short veil, because the act of driving a car is performative, and it's always been expected that women dress a certain way and look a certain way. So, for example, Ford had coats that were made to match, used the same material in the interior of the car to create matching handbags, matching coats. So it was a very coordinated thing.

A post-World War II Ford ad shows all the ways the car helps a woman in her family duties even as they extend beyond the home. The Collections of Henry Ford/Pegasus Books hide caption

On how car manufacturers coached salesmen on how to sell cars to women

For example, certain salesmen were told to go to the home, find out what the woman's favorite color was, then bring a car that was in that shade to the home a very decked out car that she might feel attracted to. ...

The interior of the car was thought to be particularly a female space, a place for domestic arts. So this is a place where women were involved in picking the fabric of the seats or the floor mats, the interior colors. So the slogan or kind of the watchword from that time would have been, "He picks the engine. She picks the paint job."

On the minivan's reinvention from hippie car to mom car

The hippies use the van as a kind of roving space for romance. So they would have on their vans, "if it's a rockin', don't come a knockin'." Because these were intimate spaces that were designed for intimacy. They had specific mood lighting. They had wine racks, they had shag rugs. ....

Fast forward a little bit to my generation, I'm a Boomer. I have always worked. I had a young son when I was working, so I use my minivan. I drove a Honda Odyssey, and I used it to meet my dual responsibilities as a mother and as a professional woman, and I'm about 65 years old. ... My generation was the biggest waves of women who are trying to meet these dual responsibilities. So we would have on our suit and our little high heels and our cute little bow ties, and we would also be in the grocery store, and we would be dragging kids through the grocery store in those outfits, and we would be taking them to soccer.

You have to give the American automobile industry so much credit: They were on every single demographic trend. They fully understood what women wanted and needed. ... They weren't doing it out of generosity, but they did a great job.

Author Nancy Nichols

You have to give the American automobile industry so much credit: They were on every single demographic trend. They fully understood what women wanted and needed, and they were out to make it work for women, in very capitalist ways. They weren't doing it out of generosity, but they did a great job. And the minivan was really created in order to help women make that transition from home to work to getting the kids to soccer. ...

I think when most of us were fantasizing about what it meant to be a woman, we weren't thinking, "Oh, we're going to be raising our child at 45 miles an hour." But we spent a lot of time in those minivans.

On how Subaru became seen as a car for lesbians

Around 1994, a set of executives at Subaru were having focus groups in western Massachusetts, and what they realized [was] ... the people who were buying their cars fell into two categories: One was what we would call kind of an essential worker now. They were nurses. They were EMTs. They had to get out in all weather. There was no chance that they could skip work if the weather was bad. And the other group tended to be lesbians. And they found this very interesting, and they pursued it. And what they realized is that lesbians were very fond of their car.

So they started speaking and trying to encourage more lesbians to buy their car, by a kind of coded set of advertisements. So in the advertisement, the license plate, for example, would say, "get out and stay out." Which was coded language. It could mean get out into nature and stay out in nature, but it could also mean, you know, come out of the closet and stay out of the closet. Or the license plate would say "P-Town" and Provincetown in Massachusetts has always been a very welcoming place for the gay community. So they started and became the first company to actually get out front and market to the gay community.

On "male" crash dummies as an industry standard

The original crash dummy was a six-foot man with a hat on. And came from dummies that were created to test for pilots to eject out of their planes. So those crash dummies were modified and began to be used in the manufacturing of automobiles. So there's two ways in which these dummies are used. And one is the federal government has their standards, their crash standards, and they have their dummies. And those dummies historically have been made for men, and they don't take into account smaller women.

To their great credit, automobile manufacturers now test their vehicles using many different kinds of dummies, but the actual ratings they get come from these dummies that are used by the federal government. And there has been a push by women legislators to try to get that changed. And there's been some movement, but it's still quite concerning. And as a result of that, women are more likely to be injured in a crash because their musculature is different.

On where women fit into the car technology of the future

We're at this really important point in the life of the automobile where we're going to have autonomous vehicles, we're having electric vehicles, we have women legislators who are arguing for better, more inclusive kinds of safety dummies. So I want women to be aware of all these aspects of the car. The car as a domestic space, the car is a place where you can really be injured. And I want them to just kind of take ownership of this. We are active consumers in the automobile world.

Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.

See the rest here:

'Women Behind the Wheel' explores the intersection of gender, culture and cars - NPR

Key Financial Results

All figures shown in the chart above are for the trailing 12 month (TTM) period

Revenue exceeded analyst estimates by 1.6%. Earnings per share (EPS) missed analyst estimates by 58%.

Looking ahead, revenue is forecast to grow 15% p.a. on average during the next 2 years, compared to a 18% growth forecast for the Electrical industry in China.

Performance of the Chinese Electrical industry.

The company's shares are down 7.0% from a week ago.

We should say that we've discovered 3 warning signs for Shanghai Weihong Electronic Technology that you should be aware of before investing here.

Find out whether Shanghai Weihong Electronic Technology is potentially over or undervalued by checking out our comprehensive analysis, which includes fair value estimates, risks and warnings, dividends, insider transactions and financial health.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

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Shanghai Weihong Electronic Technology Full Year 2023 Earnings: Revenues Beat Expectations, EPS Lags - Simply Wall St

Key Insights

Does the March share price for Powertech Technology Inc. (TWSE:6239) reflect what it's really worth? Today, we will estimate the stock's intrinsic value by estimating the company's future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. We will take advantage of the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model for this purpose. Believe it or not, it's not too difficult to follow, as you'll see from our example!

Remember though, that there are many ways to estimate a company's value, and a DCF is just one method. If you still have some burning questions about this type of valuation, take a look at the Simply Wall St analysis model.

View our latest analysis for Powertech Technology

We use what is known as a 2-stage model, which simply means we have two different periods of growth rates for the company's cash flows. Generally the first stage is higher growth, and the second stage is a lower growth phase. To start off with, we need to estimate the next ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years.

Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, so we need to discount the sum of these future cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate:

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St) Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = NT$70b

We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after this ten year period. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at a future annual growth rate equal to the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield of 0.8%. We discount the terminal cash flows to today's value at a cost of equity of 8.8%.

Terminal Value (TV)= FCF2033 (1 + g) (r g) = NT$11b (1 + 0.8%) (8.8% 0.8%) = NT$142b

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= NT$142b ( 1 + 8.8%)10= NT$61b

The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is NT$131b. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of NT$201, the company appears around fair value at the time of writing. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind.

The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the cash flows. You don't have to agree with these inputs, I recommend redoing the calculations yourself and playing with them. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Powertech Technology as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 8.8%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.458. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.

Whilst important, the DCF calculation is only one of many factors that you need to assess for a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" For instance, if the terminal value growth rate is adjusted slightly, it can dramatically alter the overall result. For Powertech Technology, we've put together three important elements you should consider:

PS. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the TWSE every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks just search here.

Find out whether Powertech Technology is potentially over or undervalued by checking out our comprehensive analysis, which includes fair value estimates, risks and warnings, dividends, insider transactions and financial health.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

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A Look At The Fair Value Of Powertech Technology Inc. (TWSE:6239) - Simply Wall St

Key Financial Results

All figures shown in the chart above are for the trailing 12 month (TTM) period

Revenue missed analyst estimates by 5.8%. Earnings per share (EPS) exceeded analyst estimates by 29%.

Looking ahead, revenue is forecast to grow 18% p.a. on average during the next 3 years, compared to a 22% growth forecast for the Software industry in China.

Performance of the Chinese Software industry.

The company's shares are down 9.0% from a week ago.

Before you take the next step you should know about the 1 warning sign for Weaver Network Technology that we have uncovered.

Find out whether Weaver Network Technology is potentially over or undervalued by checking out our comprehensive analysis, which includes fair value estimates, risks and warnings, dividends, insider transactions and financial health.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

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Weaver Network Technology Full Year 2023 Earnings: EPS Beats Expectations, Revenues Lag - Simply Wall St