New York (CNN Business)The machines are officially winning. Investors who've relied on a standard 60/40 portfolio this year have taken a bath as stocks and bonds have tumbled. Even gold, the go-to safe haven in volatile times, is underperforming. But for a small subset of specialized hedge funds known as quants, the chaos of 2022 has unleashed a windfall. While the S&P 500 is down more than 13% this year, quant hedge funds -- which rely on complex mathematical models to make investing decisions -- are up more than 15%, according to HFR, a hedge fund research group.

This paper proposes a new method to predict individual political ideology from digital footprints on one of the world's largest online discussion forum. We compiled a unique data set from the online discussion forum reddit that contains information on the political ideology of around 91,000 users as well as records of their comment frequency and the comments' text corpus in over 190,000 different subforums of interest. Applying a set of statistical learning approaches, we show that information about activity in non-political discussion forums alone, can very accurately predict a user's political ideology. Depending on the model, we are able to predict the economic dimension of ideology with an accuracy of up to 90.63% and the social dimension with and accuracy of up to 82.02%. In comparison, using the textual features from actual comments does not improve predictive accuracy. Our paper highlights the importance of revealed digital behaviour to complement stated preferences from digital communication when analysing human preferences and behaviour using online data.

Sean Chou thinks robots are stupid. "All you have to do is type in'YouTube robot fail,' says Chou, CEO of Chicago-based AI startup Catalytic. Here, we'll make it easier: click to see robots fail. And even though they're getting smarter all the time and serving industry in novel ways, Chou is firm in his belief that "we're pretty far from'Terminator.'" It's that they're rising much more slowly than some of the more breathless media coverage might have you believe -- which is great news for most of those who think robots and other AI-powered technology will soon steal their jobs. The consensus among many experts is that a number of professions will be totally automated in the next five to 10 years. A group of senior-level tech executives who comprise the Forbes Technology Council named 13, including insurance underwriting, warehouse and manufacturing jobs, customer service, research and data entry, long haul trucking and a somewhat disconcertingly broad category titled "Any Tasks That ...

In Japan, a low birth rate and aging of the population are causing the working-age population – those aged between 15 and 64 – to contract dramatically. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC)2, Japan's working age population as of October 1, 2021, was 74,504,000, down 584,000 from the previous year. This came to 59.4% of the total population – the smallest it has ever been. And the trend is expected to accelerate. Contraction of the working age population affects society in a number of ways, the biggest concern being potential economic decline due to a shortage of workers. Government and corporations have driven efforts in recent years to grow the number of workers by creating better working environments for women and the elderly, but it is essential that the labor force gets an even bigger boost now in the face of quickening contraction of the available population.

Sponsored Feature Internet connectivity has changed everything, including old-school industrial environments. It's a situation that's creating clear and present security concerns, and the industry needs new approaches to dealing with them. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) adoption is speeding ahead. Research from Inmarsat found that 77 per cent of organisations surveyed have fully deployed at least one IIoT project, with 41 per cent of them having done so between the second quarters of 2020 and 2021. The same research also warned that security was a primary concern for companies embarking on IIoT deployments, with 54 per cent of respondents complaining that it stopped them using their data effectively.

Artificial intelligence-powered systems are the battlefield's future.

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Over the past two weeks, emotions have run high around the evolution and use of emotion artificial intelligence (AI), which includes technologies such as voice-based emotion analysis and computer vision-based facial expression detection. Video conferencing platform Zoom came under fire after saying it might soon include emotion AI features in its sales-targeted products. A nonprofit advocacy group, Fight for the Future, published an open letter to the company: It said Zoom's possible offering would be a "major breach of user trust," is "inherently biased," and "a marketing gimmick." Meanwhile, Intel and Classroom Technologies are working on tools that use AI to detect the mood of children in virtual classrooms.

It is, to say the least, a very extensive report that raises important issues, but one can't help thinking that it might be self-serving in some cases, especially for the enormous tech companies that have already invested billions in AI and would like to control the degree of government intervention. That being said, it is well worth looking at the recommendations from the AI report and seeing whether or not they also apply to cybersecurity risk generally, as well as the cybersecurity, privacy, secrecy and safety risks of AI systems themselves. While the report is about AI, the recommendations apply equally well, if not more so, to cyberspace and cybersecurity risk. And then there is the cybersecurity of AI to consider as well as the use of AI in cybersecurity. It is, to say the least, a very extensive report that raises important issues, but one can't help thinking that it might be self-serving in some cases, especially for the enormous tech companies that have already invested billions in AI and would like to control the degree of government intervention.

Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, the internet of things and quantum computing are expected to unlock unprecedented levels of computing power. These so-called fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies will power the future economy and bring new levels of efficiency and automation to businesses and consumers. AI in particular holds enormous promise for organisations battling a scourge of cyber attacks. Over the past few years, cyber attacks have been growing in volume and sophistication. The latest data from Mimecast's State of Email Security 2022 report found that 94% of South African organisations were targeted by e-mail-borne phishing attacks in the past year, and six out of every 10 fell victim to a ransomware attack.

Dual-use technology as applied to AI and associated technologies has become a central element in today's great power competition. In military and policy communities across the globe, it is believed that the countries who lead in the development of emerging technologies such as AI, machine learning and quantum computing, will garner economic, military, and political strength for decades. Simultaneously, regulating the export of these items is important to policy making in many countries which are concerned with maintaining international peace and security and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. While the US still holds its record as the most important global technological innovator, China has made substantial progress in developing critical technologies. Current advances might be used for beneficial purposes, but many are concerned that AI innovation may also be harnessed with harmful intentions.