This week we begin with an article on the UK’s Public Health England (PHE) agency that oversees pandemic response, blaming an Excel spreadsheet error for its inability to add 16,000 confirmed coronavirus cases to the national COVID-19 tracker. Next, we have a piece on Bloomberg providing stockbrokers and Wall Street professionals with a competitive edge by allowing them to leverage geospatial data. The following article outlines the significance of AI and facial recognition in tracing missing children in India, despite concerns over privacy and leakage of data. Then, we have an S&P Global Rating analysis that gauges the potential of new alternative climate-physical-risk data sets and future physical climate risks on public finance entities in the US. Following this is a blog post on President Trump’s war on TikTok, Data, and “Digital Bodies”. To round off the newsletter is a video, in which investor and author Roger McNamee, outlines how tech giants like Google, LinkedIn, PayPal, and Facebook have come to dominate the global tech scene.
Excel Spreadsheet Error Blamed for UK’s 16,000 Missing Coronavirus Cases
The UK failed to add nearly 16,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus to its national track and trace system due to an Excel error. A number of reports, including from The Guardian, Sky News,and The Daily Mail say the mistake was caused when an Excel spreadsheet used to track confirmed cases of the virus reached its maximum file size and failed to update.
How Geospatial Data Drives Insight for Bloomberg Users
Stockbrokers and other Wall Street professionals who use Bloomberg terminals are always on the lookout for an edge. Increasingly, that edge is coming in the form of geospatial data that describes the movement of people and goods – as well as natural events like hurricanes and viral pandemics — through space and time.
Facial Recognition Tech Can Help Trace Missing Children Despite Privacy Handicap
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, held a virtual global summit on Artificial Intelligence (AI) from October 5 to 9. The event, held in collaboration with NITI Aayog, was called RAISE 2020 (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment). The government is going all out to encourage development and the incorporation of AI in various aspects of research and development in the country.
The ESG Pulse: Better Climate Data Could Provide Foundation For Understanding Physical Risks
With Climate Week just behind us, climate-related risks continue to be prominent in our analytical thinking. We recently published an exploratory climate scenario analysis, which tests the potential of new alternative climate-physical-risk data sets and how they might enhance our dialogue with rated U.S. public finance entities regarding future physical climate risks.
TikTok and the War on Data: Great Power Rivalry and Digital Body Counts
In 1971, the US declared a War on Drugs. In 2001,it began a still ongoing War on Terror. In 2020, the country has initiated a global War on Data to ‘combat’ the malicious collection of US citizens’ personal data. It is the first time that America is going to war for its population’s digital bodies. While this represents a further shift of the battlefield to the domains of cyberspace and trade, there is a likelihood that this war too will entail significant human suffering.
Data spies: The Dark and Shady Practices of Silicon Valley | Roger McNamee | Big Think
In this absorbing talk spanning the last 20 years of tech, Roger McNamee starts at the origins of the PayPal Mafia (which included entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman) and traces them to Silicon Valley’s global domination. Data is used by online vendors in all industries to make behavioral predictions for profit – often in unethical or cloaked ways.
Source: https://mailchi.mp/zigram/data-asset-weekly-dispatch_12_october-3
