Rebellion Research is a hot funds manager that uses an AI, developed a few years ago and only sparingly altered since then, to decide what stocks to trade. The AI produces a list, and humans execute the trades. Sexy Wall St math and programming blah blah. Here’s why they take this approach:
“It’s pretty clear that human beings aren’t improving,” said Spencer Greenberg, 27 years old and the brains behind Rebellion’s AI system. “But computers and algorithms are only getting faster and more robust.”
Savor that for a moment. But wait! There’s more:
The firm’s current portfolio is largely defensive. One of its biggest positions is in gold stocks, according to people familiar with the fund.
The defensive move at first worried Mr. Fleiss, who had grown bullish. But it has proven a smart move so far. “I’ve learned not to question the AI,” he said.
Letting the Machines Decide: New Wave of Investment Firms Look to ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in Trade Decisions
I know, right!?!
Got a question for the Old Spice man? Want to comment on his amazing abs? Do it. Reach out on Twitter, facebook, or your personal blog. He will find it and respond. You can follow the action on Twitter or on the Old Spice brand channel.
They have made a ton of these already, and Mustafa continues to be utterly charming. The man is a complete professional. Which of course is why I am so interested. Because after 15 years in the advertising industry, I deeply appreciate this kind of dedication and excellent creative. Yep.
UPDATE: Making the Old Spice response videos. They have made over 150 so far (June 14)!
Oh and he sent real flowers in real life to Alyssa Milano! I love this campaign.
I am in love with it.
I want to marry it.
UPDATE, June 15: Throwing in the towel. Don’t get excited, though – towel not actually thrown.
Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. You know, like the college students that form the backbone of so many psychology studies done in universities.
The fact that WEIRD people are the outliers in so many key domains of the behavioral sciences may render them one of the worst subpopulations one could study for generalizing about Homo sapiens…. WEIRD people, from this perspective, grow up in, and adapt to, a rather atypical environment vis-à-vis that of most of human history. It should not be surprising that their psychological world is unusual as well. (2010: 79-80) [...]
So, to sum up this post-Henrich, next stage concern: I worry that W.E.I.R.D. classification flatters the WEIRD, focusing on traits that Westerners typically highlight to describe themselves in ways that are, however inadvertently, pretty self-congratulatory. If we were to call the same group, Materialist, Young, self-Obsessed, Pleasure-seeking, Isolated, Consumerist, and Sedentary (MYOPICS)… you get the idea. (By the way, I’m not committed to this, only to getting my own acronym – You know the steps in the cheap acronym process: Set acronym. Find words to fit each letter.)
We agree it’s WEIRD, but is it WEIRD enough? by Greg Downey—where there is much much more, plus charming illustrations.
And in this context, we have to realize that the US no longer has a truly adversarial press. It has a commercial press that is entirely driven by fear of losing readers and/or viewers. Remember that the MSM allowed Palin – then a total unknown – to go an entire campaign without an open press conference. She knows they’re patsies. She’s much less afraid of them than they are of her. And rightly so.
More at “Moms Just Know When There’s Something Wrong”
Reporting in the journal Animal Behaviour, the Steele team showed that when squirrels are certain that they are being watched, they will actively seek to deceive the would-be thieves. They’ll dig a hole, pretend to push an acorn in, and then cover it over, all the while keeping the prized seed hidden in their mouth. “Deceptive caching involves some pretty serious decision making,” Dr. Steele said. “It meets the criteria of tactical deception, which previously was thought to only occur in primates.”
And many other squirrel facts of interest in Nut? What Nut? The Squirrel Outwits to Survive.
A series of type sets made from materials, including soil, hair, paperclips, and gummi bears—all very prettily photographed. The hair one in particular is oddly gross. Soil is my favorite.
Bryne was the first trainer ever killed by orcas at a marine park. It took Sealand employees two hours to recover her body from Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum. They had stripped off all of her clothes save one boot, and she had bruises from bites across her skin. “It was just a tragic accident,” Al Bolz, Sealand’s manager, told reporters at the time. “I just can’t explain it.”
Emphasis added. From The Killer in the Pool.
At least, so far:
What is the four-sided Mind of which Nick Carr speaks — this imaginative, rational, inventive, subversive angel striding through the ages, showering the generations with its beneficence? Who is this promethean shapeshifter, whom we’re now in our churlishness binding to some rock for the crows to feast on its innards? What Carr is describing isn’t a historical reality — it’s a god. And it does not exist.
Reading isn’t just a monkish pursuit: Matthew Battles on The Shallows
