FT: “It is impolite to think of management consultants as comparable to call centre bots. But remuneration changes at the top of McKinsey & Co, that most blue-blooded of consultancies, show that, when it comes to billing, the two are becoming more aligned. McKinsey is under pressure from clients to tie its fees to outcomes achieved — such as lower costs, higher profits or increased market share — rather than to the hours its consultants spend concocting advice designed to achieve those ends. Charging for results delivered rather than work done makes revenue less reliable, which helps explain why the firm will shunt a bigger share of partners’ pay into equity and husband more cash.”
Ajay Shah: “The last time the domestic private sector achieved a one-year gain of net fixed assets above 20 per cent in nominal terms was 2009-10. The last time this metric crossed 10 per cent was 2019-20. The Indian private corporate sector is exhausted and risk-averse. How can economic policy navigate these frictions and generate a sustained private-investment cycle? It is safe to say that the growth process is stuck. Business as usual — conventional tinkering measures — will not help; we need to think on a bigger scale…Economic agents sceptically watch the gap between words and deeds, and slowly learn to trust. The Budget speech of July 1991 generated a private investment boom only by 1995. The reforms of the Vajpayee government yielded a private investment boom only by 2003. Economic agents that matter observe the Indian state over time and only gradually allocate capital.”
Business Standard: “Artificial intelligence (AI) and edge computing are enabling cameras to understand moving images in real time and trigger alerts for action.. From bank ATMs to highways and retail stores, a variety of sectors are applying AI-powered cameras for smart monitoring in nearly every part of the country. Visuals had to be stored locally earlier but new solutions allow connected-camera systems to store data in external locations for safety. In low-bandwidth locations where uploading visuals can be time consuming, smart cameras use edge computing to send data and alerts almost instantly…“Vision AI is becoming a critical infrastructure. India is late to it, and that is the opportunity,” says Rajiv Kaul, executive vice chairman and chief executive officer of CMS Info Systems, a cash logistics company. “China built it as state infrastructure. The West let it grow as a private patchwork. India still has the chance to architect it as sovereign infrastructure, in a democracy. That means the stack stays Indian: The chipset, the models, the command centre, the data. Run by Indian companies.””
Arnold Kling: “Imagine the total information available on the Internet in 2000 as just one book. By today, there would be over 33 million books on the Internet. Understood this way, each book that you read represents a much smaller fraction of available information than it did 25 years ago. To me, this implies that I should spend less time reading books and more time reading essays on the Internet. The opportunity cost of reading a book may not be 33 million times what it was 25 years ago, but it has gone way up.”
