FT: “China’s real robot revolution has been happening with much less hoopla in industry. Rather than set sprinting records or breakdance, industrial robots do much more prosaic, repetitive stuff, but China is using its superpower of scaling and building supply chains to challenge the global market. Chinese companies installed 295,000 new industrial robots in China in 2024, capturing 54 per cent of the global total, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Two years ago China already operated over 2mn industrial robots — about 4.5 times more than Japan, the second-ranked nation. China’s robotics industry revenue surpassed Rmb300bn ($44bn) last year, with a five-year average annual growth exceeding 20 per cent, according to data from the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.”
NYTimes: “The New York Times/Siena Poll has traditionally been a telephone survey, but over the last few years we’ve experimented with most of the major methods for contacting voters. These include sending them text messages (and sometimes offering financial incentives to participate), sending them mail with financial incentives, and getting data from panels of people recruited online to take polls. At the end of it all, the Times/Siena poll is still a telephone survey. The phone, while expensive, is still much faster and cheaper than high-incentive mail surveys. And the phone still seems to reach a more representative population — based on measures like educational attainment and record of voting in recent elections — than supplementing the phone with text-message links to surveys or online panels. What keeps the phone viable? Its secret sauce is that it has a high cooperation rate.”
FT: “What could yet disrupt entrenched dollar dominance is technology. The plumbing of cross-border payments is being rebuilt before our eyes. Many central banks are experimenting with blockchain and other solutions to make international payments faster, cheaper and more efficient. At the same time, technologies that reduce frictions in cross-border transactions will make it easier for private investors, including firms and households, to acquire foreign assets and search for funding in global capital markets. This ought to have a levelling effect, giving every currency a chance to compete on a level footing. But the reality might prove rather different. The larger size of US capital markets relative to other countries, along with US first-mover advantage in enabling private sector innovations to settlement technologies, may well reinforce the dollar’s dominance.”
WSJ: “Not too long ago, companies were doling out bonuses to encourage AI use. Now, at least one major firm is rewarding employees who demonstrate the very human skills needed to ensure all that AI use makes a difference. Ernst & Young’s U.S. division says it will invest $100 million in employee rewards to recognize people who show skills like adaptability, innovation and judgment, as well as experimentation with AI. Individuals can earn spot awards up to $500, and the professional-services firm will give cash awards of up to $25,000 to people and teams that make a material difference to the firm.”
