Tag: Mark Zeckerburg

Facebook Wielded Data to Reward, Punish Rivals, Emails Show

.    Facebook Inc. wielded user data like a bargaining chip, providing access when that sharing might encourage people to spend more time on the social network — and imposing strict limits on partners in cases where it saw a potential competitive threat, emails show.

A trove of internal correspondence, published online Wednesday by U.K. lawmakers, provides a look into the ways Facebook executives, including Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, treated information posted by users like a commodity that could be harnessed in service of business goals. Apps were invited to use Facebook’s network to grow, as long as that increased usage of Facebook. Certain competitors, in a list reviewed by Zuckerberg himself, were not allowed to use Facebook’s tools and data without his personal sign-off.

In early 2013, Twitter Inc. launched the Vine video-sharing service, which drew on a Facebook tool that let Vine users connect to their Facebook friends. Alerted to the possible competitive threat by an engineer who recommended cutting off Vine’s access to Facebook data, Zuckerberg replied succinctly: “Yup, go for it.”

Continue reading Facebook Wielded Data to Reward, Punish Rivals, Emails Show

Deutsche Bank CEO suggests robots could replace half the company’s 97,000 employees

via CNBC –   | @AbigailJHess      Some very smart people say that robots are going to steal your job.

Researchers at Oxford University estimate that 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be replaced by robots, automated technology and automated intelligence (AI) within the next 20 years. Jeff Hesse, PwC principal and U.S. people and organization co-leader, tells CNBC Make It, “The displacement is already beginning to happen.”

Elon Musk told the National Governors Association, “There certainly will be job disruption. Because what’s going to happen is robots will be able to do everything better than us.” Musk even went so far as to say that “AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.”

John Cryan, the millionaire CEO of Deutsche Bank, is the latest industry leader to suggest that technology will lead to significant layoffs — and possibly sooner than we think.