You’re scrolling through your favorite dating app, hoping to find a connection, when suddenly you discover that the prices you see aren’t the same as what others are seeing. Imagine realizing that the premium services you desire come with a price tag tailored specifically for you, without your knowledge. It’s akin to navigating a maze blindfolded, unsure of whether you’re getting a fair deal or not. In 2022, the EU…
Quick Hits Pennsylvania amended its tax law to make amounts contributed to dependent care assistance excludable for income tax purposes. The change aligns Pennsylvania with the federal treatment and is retroactive for the 2023 tax year. Employers may have withheld taxes on dependent care assistance contributions and may have issued Forms W-2 that overstated income. On December 13, 2023, Pennsylvania enacted House Bill (HB) 1300, which changed the state’s treatment…
When people discover a new work hack, they can be tempted to keep it to themselves. Maybe they subconsciously want to gatekeep it, or maybe they mean to share it with colleagues but forget. Over time, this creates “islands of intelligence.” And while being on an island is great for a relaxing vacation, at work these private knowledge bases can hinder learning and development across the organization—which is why it’s…
a16z General Partner Zane Lackey and Partner Joel de la Garza recently sat down with us to discuss the state of security in 2024. They addressed the top concern for CISOs: the impact of generative AI on enterprise security. Here’s what they had to say about the key considerations for technology adoption and strategies CISOs can employ to navigate the rise of AI-driven security solutions: 1. What is the biggest…
Posted April 5, 2024 This content first appeared in the April 2024 Fintech newsletter. If you’d like more commentary and analysis about news and trends from the a16z Fintech team, you can subscribe here. Gauging Generative AI x Financial Services Angela Strange (Adapted from a16z General Partner Angela Strange’s March 21 tweetstorm) Financial services is a heavily regulated industry, so you might think that it would be slow to adopt…
In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey head of brand strategy Amanda Lee chats with Bonnie Wan, the head of brand strategy and a partner at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, about her new book, The Life Brief: A Playbook for No-Regrets Living (Simon Element/Simon & Schuster, January 2024). Wan discovered that she could repurpose the creative brief that she had been using with advertising clients for decades—a revelation that has brought…
The UK tax system is a highly complicated system – full of allowances and exemptions, some more unusual than others. When it comes to Inheritance Tax (IHT) there are thankfully a range of tools which can be used to help reduce this hefty tax. Peter Webb, our Head of Tax Advisory, looks at some of the more surprising loopholes. When it comes to UK tax, IHT is the big hitter.…
Quick Hits Florida enacted legislation that will ease employment restrictions for minors sixteen and seventeen years old. The law gives parents and school superintendents the ability to waive the limitation on minors working only thirty hours per week while school is in session. The changes take effect on July 1, 2024. The enacted legislation, House Bill (HB) 49, amends Florida’s Child Labor Law to ease some of the restrictions on…
For several decades now, the number of people moving from their home country to other destinations has been growing exponentially. The United Nations estimates that more than 280 million people are now living in a country other than their country of birth. This figure is 130 million higher than it was in 1990, and more than three times higher than in 1970, an increase that confirms the escalation of the…
Topics Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images The battle to get companies to take sustainability seriously is essentially over. Even in the face of the “anti-ESG” movement — a very American phenomenon — there are vanishingly few large organizations around the world that really question the need…
Tennessee has joined the ranks of states regulating, in various ways, the use of artificial intelligence to manipulate an individual’s likeness. On March 21, 2024, Gov. Bill Lee said “thank you very much” to the Tennessee legislature and signed into law the Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security (“ELVIS”) Act of 2024, HB 2091/SB 2096, which updates Tennessee’s right of publicity statute. The new law is groundbreaking because Tennessee has…
Quick Hits The respective paid sick leave laws of the State of Washington and the City of Seattle have recently been clarified and updated. Under Washington’s paid sick and safe leave law, only construction workers who are directly engaged in construction work by performing “service, maintenance, or construction work on a jobsite, in the field or in a fabrication shop using tools of the worker’s trade or craft” are eligible…
Today we are announcing significant changes to Azure AI Search in support for customers building production ready generative AI applications. Azure AI Search has drastically increased storage capacity and vector index size at no additional cost, so customers can run retrieval augmented generation (RAG) at any scale, without having to compromise cost or performance. In this post, we will walk through how customers: Can achieve more scalability at a lower…
The first quarter of 2024 has drawn to a close and we’re excited to unveil the findings of our latest State of Enterprise Tech Spending report, intended to gauge the budget planning and overall sentiment of large enterprise technology buyers. As in previous quarters, we polled 100 CXOs who collectively represent over $35B in annual technology spending. To get up to speed on past reports, check out what we published…
Q: What project are you undertaking with your academic career? I study the economics of education. My goal is to understand how education shapes big-picture outcomes like inequality, upward mobility, and economic growth. I’m looking across educational levels from early childhood through college to think about the value of education both as instrumental to our economic lives and as an intrinsic good. I want to help provide evidence for which…
The future of healthcare is software-defined and AI-enabled. Around 700 FDA-cleared, AI-enabled medical devices are now on the market — more than 10x the number available in 2020. Many of the innovators behind this boom announced their latest AI-powered solutions at NVIDIA GTC, a global conference that last week attracted more than 16,000 business leaders, developers and researchers in Silicon Valley — and many more online. Designed to make healthcare…
The 16th edition of the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management honours Professor Dasgupta for his work in defining the field of environmental economics by incorporating and quantifying the social value of nature.The award also takes into account Professor Dasgupta's leadership of an independent, global review on the Economics of Biodiversity commissioned by the UK Treasury in 2019. The Dasgupta Review is expected…
Howie and Harlan are joined by Kate McEvoy, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, to discuss the programs’ underappreciated advances in holistically addressing health, housing, and food security. Reflecting on the upcoming election, Harlan notes that facts matter, whether in medicine or politics. Howie reports on the dangers of glyoxylic acid in hair straightening products. Links: “Trump Leads Biden in Six of Seven Swing States, WSJ Poll…
The discovery of rare variants in the genes BSN and APBA1 are some of the first obesity-related genes identified for which the increased risk of obesity is not observed until adulthood.The study, published in Nature Genetics, was led by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit and the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit at the Institute of Metabolic Science, both based at the University of Cambridge. The researchers used…
Professor James Rowe from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at Cambridge will co-lead a team that will test multiple existing and novel blood tests, looking at a range of types of dementia.The trials will capitalise on recent breakthroughs in potential dementia blood tests, and generate the evidence needed for them to be validated for use in the NHS within the next 5 years. The teams from Dementias Platform UK (which includes…
Quick Hits The FDIC released proposed revisions to its guidelines for reviewing bank mergers. The proposed revisions include a prohibition on banks using noncompete agreements with employees of units that are divested as part of the merger. The FDIC is seeking comments on the proposed revisions. On March 21, 2024, the FDIC unveiled proposed revisions to its Statement of Policy (SOP) on Bank Merger Transactions, which was last amended in…
On February 24, 2022, the discussion on European security was terminated. Europe defined itself as a community of states hostile to Russia (there are exceptions like Hungary and Slovakia, but they have little influence on the EU as a whole). Economic, political and other ties between the European states and Russia were reduced to a minimum. The question of the European security system boiled down to its hard realist basis:…
Businesses that prioritize diversity in their workforce significantly increase the likelihood of fostering creative and innovative thinking among their employees by 150%. Also, companies with a lot of different ethnicities and races in their management team are 35% more likely to do better than average in their industry. For a long time, people have understood that teams with diverse backgrounds work better together. How can you make sure your workplace…
The recent market turmoil and ongoing challenges of an accelerated energy transition are putting pressure on all sectors of society, from governments to utilities to consumers—industrials included. Industrials are highly exposed to energy costs and the recent price volatility caused by large disruptions such as the invasion of Ukraine, among others, has severely affected the sector’s energy cost baselines. In addition, the sector has to significantly reduce emissions to meet…
Mistrust continues to govern relations between Russia and the West. Two years of full-scale military confrontation have only served to confirm existing negative preconceptions about each side’s intentions. President Putin could make the initial move to break this deadlock by sending a clear message that Russia does not seek to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and considers the idea of security guarantees for Ukraine to be legitimate. In response, Western leaders should…
An image of a verdant forest glade or a tranquil pasture. Natural scenes typically conjure up positive emotions and a sense of wellbeing for most individuals, but could they also influence them to make healthier food choices? The answer, according to our new article, just published in Nature’s new journal Communications Psychology, is yes.Our studies, which exposed people to natural or urban environments before asking them to make snack or…
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images Ethics is often associated with the abstract realm of philosophers. But there’s nothing abstract about the risks for business leaders: Ethical missteps can expose their companies to a host of reputational, regulatory, and legal risks. In response, companies develop ethical guidelines or codes for decision makers and set up boards to govern guideline usage. For example, companies under growing pressure to fight bias are…
By Matthew A. Sloan, A. Scott Hecker, and Adam R. Young Seyfarth Synopsis: On April 1, 2024, the Federal Register published OSHA’s final rule revising its regulations regarding whom employees can authorize to act as their representative(s) to accompany compliance officers during on-site OSHA inspections. Under Section 8(e) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, employees and employers alike have the right to have a representative accompany OSHA Compliance Officers (“CSHOs”) during physical…
Today, I am excited to announce the public preview of our unified security operations platform. When we announced a limited preview in November 2023, it was one of the first security operations center platforms that brought together the full capabilities of an industry-leading cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM), comprehensive extended detection and response (XDR), and generative AI built specifically for cybersecurity. This powerful combination of capabilities delivers a…
Inflation remains front and center for consumers and businesses, which continue to reel from the double-digit rise in prices during the COVID-19 pandemic and the interest rate hikes designed to cool them. While price increases for goods have slowed, the climate remains uncertain, with inflation ticking up again as recently as February.How should companies navigate the mood of shoppers, who remain cautious after being squeezed over the past two years,…
Nobody likes to think about their own death, but it may be important to consider some of the challenges your family could face when you’re gone. The “cost of dying” is on the rise and if you don’t put plans in place now, you could leave your loved ones in a difficult position. Indeed, according to SunLife, the average cost of dying – including basic funeral costs, professional fees for…
Before the end of this decade, autonomous vehicles (AVs), electric vehicles (EVs), and shared forms of mobility are poised to transform the mobility landscape. How will the auto insurance landscape evolve to adapt to this wave of disruption? This is a large question with many, many answers. At ITC Vegas 2023, McKinsey brought together a group of 20 leaders from auto insurance, automotive, and mobility to discuss the future of…
Despite the recent buzz, customer service automation isn’t a new concept. As early as the 1980s, interactive voice responses (IVR) were first developed, using pre-recorded voices to answer basic queries, redirect calls and guide users.[1] Today, due to technological advancements and artificial intelligence (AI), the functionalities of customer service automation have completely revolutionised interaction between businesses and their customer base. This has paved the way for modern and intuitive products…
People seem to really like their iPhones. What is the harm to consumers from the behavior that prompted the EU regulation and the Department of Justice lawsuit? The iPhone is indeed a great product. I have one myself. Perhaps the easiest way to explain it is to consider how we would all feel if Motorola had been able to prevent the innovation that became the iPhone 20 years ago and,…
By Rachel See, Dawn Solowey and Adrienne Lee Seyfarth Synopsis: In a written opinion issued on March 7, 2024, the EEOC confirmed that an employee must not only show a sincerely held religious belief, but that the employee’s religious belief is actually in conflict with the workplace training or program. The EEOC’s opinion also confirmed that an undue hardship analysis is not limited to considerations of an employer’s financial cost,…
(Image created with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence tool)Happiness, an elusive condition we all want to experience, is a popular topic. It’s a complex subject. It may or may not require everything from good health to sufficient wealth to good relationships in varying degrees for each of us. The result is measured in terms of outcomes that may be more or less than we expected, just as customer satisfaction is measured…
3 April 2024By Jacopo Cimadomo and Demosthenes Ioannou Governments and central banks can shield the economy from shocks with their decisions. The ECB Blog looks at a recent high-level conference that analysed the interaction of fiscal and monetary policy and questioned some long-held beliefs. Governments and central banks reacted boldly to mitigate the economic damage of the pandemic and recent geopolitical conflicts. Euro area governments and the EU as a…
On the surface, the cloud journey for many European companies is an impressive story. A stunning 95 percent of European companies in our recent survey say they’re capturing value from cloud, and more than one in three say they intend to have more than half of their workloads on cloud. But scratch below the surface, and the story is a little less rosy. The vast majority of the value companies…
Since time immemorial, the sea has been a contested arena for state and non-state actors, for the passage of valuable goods and the control of traffic. Traditionally, the straits have been the focus of attention.On March 23, 2021, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, the world had its first experience with an accidental blockade of global maritime traffic due to the Evergreen Ever Given, which blocked the Suez Canal…
The initiative, led by Professor Ioanna Sitaridou (Queens' College and Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics), contributes to the UN’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-32), which aims ‘to draw global attention on the critical situation of many indigenous languages and to mobilise stakeholders and resources for their preservation, revitalization and promotion.’ Romeyka is thought to have only a couple of thousand native speakers left in Turkey’s Trabzon region, but…