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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1701923070-820x547.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-474613" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1701923070-820x547.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1701923070-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1701923070-135x90.jpg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1701923070-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1701923070-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1701923070-scaled.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co., during a Bloomberg Television interview on the sidelines of the JPMorgan Tech Stars Leadership Forum in London, UK, on Monday, Oct. 2, 2023. &#8220;Your children are going to live to 100 and not have cancer because of technology,&#8221; Dimon said. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Jamie Dimon, the veteran CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, said he was convinced that artificial intelligence will have a profound impact on society.



In his annual letter to shareholders released Monday, Dimon chose AI as the first topic in his update of issues facing the biggest U.S. bank by assets — ahead of geopolitical risks, recent acquisitions and regulatory matters.



“While we do not know the full effect or the precise rate at which AI will change our business — or how it will affect society at large — we are completely convinced the consequences will be extraordinary,” Dimon said.



The impact will be “possibly as transformational as some of the major technological inventions of the past several hundred years: Think the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the Internet.”



Dimon’s letter, read widely in the business world because of his status as one of the most successful leaders in finance, hit a wide variety of topics. The CEO said that he had ongoing concerns about inflationary pressures and reiterated his warning that the world may be entering the riskiest era in geopolitics since World War II.



But his focus on AI, first mentioned in this format in a 2017 shareholder letter, stood out. The technology, which has gained in prominence since ChatGPT became a viral sensation in late 2022, can generate human-sounding responses to queries. Enthusiasm for AI has fueled the meteoric rise in chipmaker Nvidia and helped propel tech names to new heights.  



JPMorgan now has more than 2,000 AI and machine learning employees and data scientists, Dimon said. But the technology could ultimately touch all of the bank’s roughly 310,000 employees, assisting some workers while replacing others.



“Over time, we anticipate that our use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job, as well as impact our workforce composition,” Dimon said. “It may reduce certain job categories or roles, but it may create others as well.”



This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon Interview

Jamie Dimon says AI may be as impactful on humanity as printing press, electricity and computers

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="598" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/100432242-larry-ellison-ceo-oracle-getty-820x598.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-474536" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/100432242-larry-ellison-ceo-oracle-getty-820x598.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/100432242-larry-ellison-ceo-oracle-getty-300x219.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/100432242-larry-ellison-ceo-oracle-getty-123x90.jpg 123w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/100432242-larry-ellison-ceo-oracle-getty-768x560.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/100432242-larry-ellison-ceo-oracle-getty-1536x1120.jpg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/100432242-larry-ellison-ceo-oracle-getty-scaled.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Every tech company is talking up its AI opportunity. Oracle is no exception. But during an earnings call in March, Oracle’s Larry Ellison laid out a future market opportunity focused on a major customer that investors may think about less often that Fortune 500 companies.



The Oracle founder, former CEO and current chairman and chief technology officer, sees national and state government applications being run on platforms like Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to a much greater degree than today, and indicated that it’s starting to happen in a variety of ways.



“We talk about, you know, winning business with companies. For the first time, we’re beginning to win business for countries,” Ellison said. “We have a number of countries where we’re negotiating sovereign regions with the national government.”



Major tech companies vying for massive government contracts in the cloud are nothing new. Microsoft and Amazon had a lengthy battle over a cloud deal with the Department of Defense, and both those AI players as well as Oracle and Google ended up all in on a $9 billion DoD contract in 2022.



But Ellison went further in his prediction when speaking with analysts on the recent earnings call, saying “Every government, pretty much every government, is going to want a sovereign cloud and a dedicated region for that government.”



Oracle, which works with Nvidia and Microsoft on generative AI capabilities, has already helped use cloud tech to cut red tape for countries. One example Ellison gave was Albania. It is trying to ascend to the European Union with the help of chatGPT, with the generative AI helping to decipher and summarize its laws and aid the country in what it needs to change in order to be compliant with E.U. regulations.



“It took Serbia eight years to harmonize their laws to be able to join the E.U.,” Ellison said. “Albania is facing the same thing, but with generative AI, we can read the entire corpus of the Albanian laws and&nbsp;actually harmonize their laws with the EU in probably more like 18 months to two years.”



Some analysts are skeptical of Ellison’s talk as being anything more than typical C-suite rallying for a key business unit. Oracle shares are up about 21% YTD, but Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow expressed concern about lower OCI growth during its latest earnings, which could “worry investors, as this is the main investment story.”



A version of future featuring cloud services and artificial intelligence-powered solutions can make government more efficient. Ellison said for starters, redundancy is a focus for government, in the case of disaster and disaster recovery. But it’s also moving into health care information and internet access projects.



Countries including Serbia are standardizing on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and using generative AI for processes like automating health care. Deals related to delivery of internet services in partnership with Elon Musk’s Starlink to remote areas are taking place in Kenya and Rwanda, where OCI and Starlink are mapping rural farms to see which crops are growing in what area, and if they are getting enough nutrients like nitrogen and water. “These maps are AI-assisted, help them plan their agricultural output and predict their agricultural output, predict markets, the logistics of the agricultural output, doing all of all of those things as next-generation national applications,” Ellison said.



Food security, rural school and rural hospital internet access, are other examples of what Ellison said are among the “all sorts of interesting new AI applications out there that you’ve probably never heard of before, at least I hadn’t heard of before until these last 12 months now that we’ve worked on and we’re now in the process of delivering.”



He also mentioned automation of vaccination programs, and other healthcare program “across the board.”



“We’re living in a world where like data and information is the gold of the future,” said Dan Gardner, CEO of digital strategy agency Code and Theory. “If the government can get access and action on that their data faster, why would we want to slow that down? We want that to be as efficient as possible. A lot of that is like mundane human resources, that maybe those people could be doing something else that is way more valuable.”



Cloud and generative AI applications allowing countries to give rural areas internet access could increase educational opportunities and create more economic value. It could also allow citizens to have more insight into government processes, said Tapan Parikh, Cornell University associate professor. “One thing technology’s always been good at is potentially making bureaucracies more efficient, or at least more transparent internally,” he said.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-black-mirror-governments">‘Black Mirror’ governments</h3>



But the push to move more government processes to the cloud is also opening the door to new risks, especially as countries trust newly developed generative AI systems. While they may make processes faster than ever, there are bound to be mistakes as the technology develops and could make citizen data accessible to cyber criminals. “We shouldn’t use these technologies as an excuse to not maintain oversight and control over political processes,” Parikh said. “Certainly, I think that’s a very important thing, particularly when you’re dealing with countries that may not have the same kind of governance capacity.” Oracle did not respond to a request for additional comment on Ellison’s earnings call discussion.



“There’s the ‘Black Mirror’ bad side of it: Big Brother, data wars, AI warfare and all that stuff,” Garder said. “As far as like removing red tape and being more efficient and getting better use out of crops across the country, that’s incredible. That’s the multiplier of humanity that could really improve because of AI.”



AI raises a host of concerns.



Gardner pointed to the proliferation of more generative content in an election year around the world and all the issues related to tech-enabled interference. “Maybe it’s not like chips on the ground. But it’s data security, authentication of who you are, who governments are, what content you’re viewing, all the connection points between financial systems, and AI governance. Using AI as a tool of destruction is quite scary.”&nbsp;



“No big government in the world can afford to move all of their services and especially critical ones like defense, taxes, health care, completely into the cloud and into the hands of gen AI,”&nbsp;said Simone Bohnenberger, chief product officer at cloud company Phrase. “It’s just not in the realm of, I think it’s not responsible to do that. The potential risks outweigh the benefits of doing that.“ OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, is mostly trained on existing content on the internet. That could pose a problem, especially when text from lesser known languages like Albanian need to be analyzed, Bohnenberger said. “If you look at the World Wide Web or the internet, the vast majority of content there’s English, I think a quarter of the content is English, followed by Chinese,” she said. “Albanian is a minority. It’s very questionable for me how well that actually works for a small country like Albania and like an outlier language, because there’s just not much data you can train a model on. And if you don’t have much data, then the outputs will be very messy.”



Then there’s security and data risks with allowing foreign companies access to citizen data, Parikh said. Even the U.S., with all its resources, has been vulnerable to data hacks, including a recent February incident with contractor CGI Federal which exposed personally identifiable information on employees. The recent battle between the U.S. and China over TikTok is an example of how control of sensitive consumer data can be interjected into geopolitics. “I think certainly that’s a concern going forward for countries who are working with vendors from different countries,” Parikh said.

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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/107345165-1702048316016-gettyimages-1421604025-dsc05224-820x547.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-472903" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/107345165-1702048316016-gettyimages-1421604025-dsc05224-820x547.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/107345165-1702048316016-gettyimages-1421604025-dsc05224-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/107345165-1702048316016-gettyimages-1421604025-dsc05224-135x90.jpeg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/107345165-1702048316016-gettyimages-1421604025-dsc05224-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/107345165-1702048316016-gettyimages-1421604025-dsc05224-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/107345165-1702048316016-gettyimages-1421604025-dsc05224-scaled.jpeg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Roughly half of adults are stressed about personal finance, a new survey spanning various advanced economies found. D3sign | Moment | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



At least half of adults in a range of major economies report being stressed about their personal finances, and say inflation is one of the main reasons.



A significant number also say they feel worse-off financially than their parents, and are pessimistic about their children’s financial futures, the International Your Money Financial Security Survey conducted by SurveyMonkey found.



In the U.S., Australia, Spain and Mexico, around 70% of adults said they were “very or somewhat stressed” about money. The percentage reduced slightly to 63% in the U.K., 57% in Germany, 55% in Switzerland, and roughly half of people in Singapore and France.



Across those countries, between a half and two thirds of people said they considered themselves to be part of the middle class — except in the U.K., where it was a lower 37%.



Yet despite the middle classes traditionally being considered financially comfortable, between 45% and 62% of those who put themselves in that group described themselves as “living paycheck to paycheck.”



Half of adults in Australia, Germany and the U.K. said they were worse off than they were five years ago.



Meanwhile, of the countries surveyed, only adults in Singapore and Mexico were more likely than not to say they were better-off financially than their parents.



Inflation was widely cited as the source of financial stress, along with a lack of savings, economic instability and rising interest rates.



The study of 4,342 adults was carried out in March and released on Wednesday,



“The health of the global economy, though muted in some areas, is not being reflected in the perceptions of the average person&#8230; Despite the performance of the economy writ large, roughly half of adults are stressed about their personal finances in every country studied around the world,” said Eric Johnson, CEO of SurveyMonkey, in an accompanying article.



Global economic growth is slowing yet most developed economies have avoided the recessions that were forecast amid high inflation and interest rate hikes. Labor markets have proved resilient, but numerous surveys have suggested grim sentiment among consumers who have been hit hard by price rises in household bills and everyday goods.

107345165-1702048316016-gettyimages-1421604025-dsc05224

Half of adults globally are stressed about their finances, and inflation is a key reason

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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="450" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ABSA-PMI-Trsanscribe-Image-820x450.png" alt="" class="wp-image-472613" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ABSA-PMI-Trsanscribe-Image-820x450.png 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ABSA-PMI-Trsanscribe-Image-300x164.png 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ABSA-PMI-Trsanscribe-Image-160x88.png 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ABSA-PMI-Trsanscribe-Image-768x421.png 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ABSA-PMI-Trsanscribe-Image.png 994w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /></figure>



The ABSA Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 49.2 points in March from 51.7 in February, crossing below the line that separates expansion from contraction, ABSA said in a release.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2024/south-african-factory-activity-declines-in-march-absa-pmi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Despite the fluctuation, ABSA says there was a positive note in the survey: respondents expressed the most optimism about expected business conditions since the start of 2023</a>.&nbsp;



&#8220;When you look closely, you&#8217;ll see that the main drivers were sluggish demand,’’ Sello Seleke, macro economist at ABSA told CNBC Africa’s Fifi Peters. But…&#8220;we also saw something quite interesting. So in terms of supply delivery times, we saw that shortening. So what this says, which is quite positive in recent context, is that it shows that, your supply chains are getting better.’’



&nbsp;South Africa’s economy is struggling to recover from record power shortages last year and an uncertain economic environment as the country heads to elections that some analysts are predicting may end the 30-year majority rule of the African National Congress. The vote will be held on May 29.



In March, the supplier deliveries index declined to 54.1 from 62, suggesting an improvement in congestion at local ports which have been crippled by crime and corruption. Another positive development was the improvement in the index tracking business conditions in six months’ time which rose to 62.1 points, the highest since the beginning of last year.&nbsp;

ABSA-PMI-Trsanscribe-Image

SA factory activity declines in March, ABSA says

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1760011544-820x547.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-472610" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1760011544-820x547.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1760011544-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1760011544-135x90.jpg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1760011544-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1760011544-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1760011544-scaled.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">02 November 2023, Great Britain, Milton Keynes: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (l) is welcomed by Rishi Sunak (r) , Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, at the &#8220;AI Safety Summit 2023&#8221; (International Summit on Artificial Intelligence Safety) at Bletchley Park. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa (Photo by Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure>



The United States and Britain on Monday announced a new partnership on the science of artificial intelligence safety, amid growing concerns about upcoming next-generation versions.



Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and British Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan signed a memorandum of understanding in Washington to jointly develop advanced AI model testing, following commitments announced at an AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park in November.



“We all know AI is the defining technology of our generation,” Raimondo said. “This partnership will accelerate both of our institutes work across the full spectrum to address the risks of our national security concerns and the concerns of our broader society.”



Britain and the United States are among countries establishing government-led AI safety institutes.



Britain said in October its institute would examine and test new types of AI, while the United States said in November it was launching its own safety institute to evaluate risks from so-called frontier AI models and is now working with 200 companies and entites.



Under the formal partnership, Britain and the United States plan to perform at least one joint testing exercise on a publicly accessible model and are considering exploring personnel exchanges between the institutes. Both are working to develop similar partnerships with other countries to promote AI safety.



“This is the first agreement of its kind anywhere in the world,” Donelan said. “AI is already an extraordinary force for good in our society, and has vast potential to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges, but only if we are able to grip those risks.”



Generative AI &#8211; which can create text, photos and videos in response to open-ended prompts &#8211; has spurred excitement as well as fears it could make some jobs obsolete, upend elections and potentially overpower humans and catastrophic effects.



In a joint interview with Reuters Monday, Raimondo and Donelan urgent joint action was needed to address AI risks.



“Time is of the essence because the next set of models are about to be released, which will be much, much more capable,” Donelan said. “We have a focus one the areas that we are dividing and conquering and really specializing.”



Raimondo said she would raise AI issues at a meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council in Belgium Thursday.



The Biden administration plans to soon announce additions to its AI team, Raimondo said. “We are pulling in the full resources of the U.S. government.”



Both countries plan to share key information on capabilities and risks associated with AI models and systems and technical research on AI safety and security.



In October, Biden signed an executive order that aims to reduce the risks of AI. In January, the Commerce Department said it was proposing to require U.S. cloud companies to determine whether foreign entities are accessing U.S. data centers to train AI models.



Britain said in February it would spend more than 100 million pounds ($125.5 million) to launch nine new research hubs and AI train regulators about the technology.



Raimondo said she was especially concerned about the threat of AI applied to bioterrorism or a nuclear war simulation.



“Those are the things where the consequences could be catastrophic and so we really have to have zero tolerance for some of these models being used for that capability,” she said.

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Do you have a joint account? Here’s what that says about your relationship

Jamie Dimon says AI may be as impactful on humanity as printing press, electricity and computers

Oracle’s Larry Ellison thinks every government will want to build a ‘sovereign’ AI cloud in the future

Why gas is so expensive in California

Around the world in a hydrogen-powered airplane

How Long Should You Stay At Your Job?

How Blockchain Tech Aims To Democratize Real Estate Investing

India could benefit from China’s tech troubles

When a swordfish attacks an underwater vehicle

Inside Alef, the company trying to build a car you can both drive and fly

Why The Boeing 737 Max Has Been Such A Mess

Half of adults globally are stressed about their finances, and inflation is a key reason

Flying cars are taking off. Would you ride in one?

How India is challenging China as Asia’s tech powerhouse

SA factory activity declines in March, ABSA says

US, Britain announce partnership on AI safety, testing

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