Business

Can A.I. bring back the three-martini lunch?

Imagine the life of an advertising executive and a scene from Mad Men is likely to come to mind: Don Draper snake-charming a pair of Kodak marketing executives with a perfectly crafted pitch about the emotional pull of nostalgia (“It’s delicate, but potent…”) in order to win the account for their new slide projector. “This […]

Business

Why smart-city tech has lost its buzz

Just a few years ago, smart cities, a catch-all phrase for connecting urban infrastructure like parking meters and stoplights online, had major buzz. The idea was to use machine learning to crunch data collected across cities to, for example, minimize traffic delays and reduce pollution. But smart city projects haven’t taken off as quickly as expected, […]

Business

HireVue drops facial monitoring amid A.I. algorithm audit

The journalist Malcolm Gladwell, on his podcast, “Revisionist History,” devoted a recent episode to his theory of “hiring nihilism.” It is Gladwell’s belief that people are so bad at predicting who will perform well at a given role—especially based on traditional screening criteria such as CVs and candidate interviews—that one should simply concede that all […]

Business

3 things to watch for in A.I. in 2021

New developments in artificial intelligence may seem trivial compared to recent events like the Capitol riots in which pro-Trump rioters attempted to subvert the election. But 2021 will likely be a big year for A.I., and with a new White House administration soon in place, there may be a clearer set of national A.I. policies […]

Business COVID 19

How A.I. can speed up the COVID-19 vaccination drive

Happy New Year everyone! A warm welcome back too to my Fortune “Eye on A.I.” partner Jonathan Vanian, who has just returned from paternity leave. Jonathan helped compile the news items, research, and Brain Food sections for this week’s newsletter. I spent some time over the last few weeks reporting a story, which will be […]

Business

Even the COVID-19 vaccine rollout is dangerously faulty. Science and information could mend it

With limited tools of COVID-19 vaccines currently available, countries are scrambling to pick  who must be first in line to get the shots. However, oftentimes, that issue has been settled dependent on broadly tagged groupings of at-risk inhabitants, for example”the older” or even”essential workers” While it might sound easy, this strategy is short-sighted, as it dismisses the […]