Where is our lighthouse to guide us to a CBDC and AI future?
Fintech in Asia is without parallel and may be a lighthouse for the West.
Artwork of the day: Ida O’Keefe Lighthouse, 1931
Georgia O’Keeffe is often celebrated as a modernist pathfinder who paved the way for female artists. But she also had a talented younger sister Ida.
In 1931 and 1932, Ida produced a series of paintings inspired by the Highland Lighthouse in Truro on Cape Cod. The works, composed withbracing confidence and drama, blend familiar forms with geometric abstraction. The gestural paintings also take a cerebral approach to light and structure. Ida commented, “With each progressive lighthouse, new colors and compositions were introduced, each one becoming more radiant in color and more complicated in composition.”
Where is our lighthouse? Where is the beacon that will keep us off the rocks and lead to a safe harbor in our digital future?
Sadly, for the moment, there isn’t one and today’s newsletter will show why we probably won’t get one!
Today’s newsletter is divided in three parts:
1. CBDC and Payment Focus:
-SWIFT’s CBDC Platform:
Think that SWIFT is a lighthouse in the CBDC darkness? It may be to some, but for those nations who object to sanctions or don’t like the rather complex system SWIFT has devised, it is terra incognito!
-Africa’s CBDC Future:
CBDCs may provide a lighthouse for Africa. A beacon calling African nations to build CBDCs that will boost financial inclusion and aid cross border transfers.
-Digital Wallets take off:
Consumers have plotted a course for digital wallets and are dropping cards. This is the first step in getting people familiar with going digital and will lead to CBDC and Stablecoin payments. Once people go digital they don’t go back.
2 Asia Focus:
Fintech at the speed of Asia:
Is Asia’s fintech a lighthouse for the West? I think so because cross-border payments through mobile digital wallets are taking off in Asia! The West should follow suit and this article ties in with people’s love of digital wallets in the article above.
3. Generative AI Focus:
Scaling AI in Banks:
Banks can’t yet scale AI because they can’t hire teams to do the work. This argues for a centralized resource just like I wrote about in my book “Innovation Lab Excellence.:
GenAI is so yesterday, AGI is coming:
When will a computer think like a human? AGI is coming soon, but to most humans, it won’t matter. They will be happy with an AI that is almost human but fools them into thinking it is.
Enjoy!
1. CBDC & PAYMENTS FOCUS:
SWIFT TO LAUNCH NEW CBDC CONNECTOR IN 1-2 YEARS, 38 INSTITUTIONS PARTICIPATE
SWIFT sees CBDC as the future and will launch its CBDC transfer platform in 1-2 years, showing how predictions of SWIFT’s demise at the hands of CBDCs are premature! Nick Kerigan, SWIFT's head of innovation, stated, "We are looking at a roadmap to productize (launch as a product) in the next 12-24 months. It's moving out of experimental stage towards som…
AFRICA'S CBDC FUTURE!
TWO fabulous papers on how CBDCs will be a true game-changer for Africa! First, an article by an old friend, Dr. Lauren Johnston, on how China’s Digital yuan will be a new force for digital finance throughout Africa. Many African nations are engaging with China through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and those that develop CBDC will eventually engag…
Global Payment Report 2024: The Era of Consumer Choice
We are entering “the era of people and payments,” where consumers have more choices than ever but this is just the beginning! According to WorldPay, this era is not defined by technology but by people. Consumer choice is driving merchants more than technology.
2. ASIA FOCUS
Fintech at the Speed of Asia
While fintech is a global phenomenon, it has undisputedly had the most impact in Asia. Asia’s growing economies and high levels of underbanked individuals and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) amplified fintech’s impact far beyond anything seen in the West.
3. AI FOCUS
To Scale AI in Banking Centralize Resources
McKinsey must have read my book "Innovation Lab Excellence” because their solution that banks centralizing resources when developing AI is right from my book! In a market with a highly constrained supply of AI or, in my book, digital talent, the only way to build a workable team is to make them a central resource.
Going Beyond GenAI into AGI!
So we're all enthralled with Generative AI (GenAI), right?
Well, I have news for you GenAI is "so yesterday" because Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is coming! Or is it?
GenAI is certainly impressive and unquestionably useful, but it's far from an AI that thinks like a human.
Human-like AGI is coming, and according to a recent report by Gladstone AI, it's around the corner with the first systems in another 18 months.
McKinsey, however, working with academics, says it's decades away.
You pick the number! I'm placing my bet on years not decades!
The 8 capabilities needed for AI to become AGI
Visual perception
Audio perception
Fine motor skills
Natural language processing
Problem-solving
Navigation
Creativity
Social and emotional engagement
👊STRAIGHT TALK👊
Computers that think just like they do in science fiction movies are coming, it's not if, but when.
The eight criteria McKinsey lay out based on academic research seem a high bar to pass.
The problem with them is that while academics may have set the bar high, normal humans set the bar very low!
Need examples?
People are already willing to fall in love with GenAI avatars and consider them companions now!
Or how about banks handing over customer service to GenAI bots? Do you really think that this will end well?
No "Turing test" was required for humans to make either of these psychological leaps!
Even if a sufficiently smart and personable "near-AGI" system is developed, we'll be so enthralled with our new companions (overseers?) these eight criteria won't matter.
An AI a few orders of magnitude brighter than ChatGPT is around the corner and that's all that is needed for many to live in a world that resembles the movie "Her."
Thoughts?
Thank you to all my subscribers who have been sharing Cashless! You are now the No. 1 driver of subscriptions, and prove that word of mouth still works better than X!
I seems You are in a very disillusioned mood these days. Welcome to the club!
Right, there is no lighthouse. The future is uncertain, as it is always. That is its very nature.
Certainty and progress are mutually exclusive.
We need to build our power of VIVEKA (the [mental] power of discrimination [between good <whatever leads us nearer to Good{Which is everything there is}> and bad]) anyway for dealing with our increasingly problematic societies.
Here are some dim artistic lighthouse-short-films that could righteously be called Sci-Fi:
"A Woman's Battle For Music Taste Approval From The Robot Overlords" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvfNQV8Yrjo
"NEVEN" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzyIZzO9zgI
Re Lighthouse: Being an engineer I'd fallback to proven design patterns & re-use "crossing the river by touching the stones".
But, being spoiled lazy digitally: I'd prompt: Dear AI, please begin at a future wish point of global multipolar peace of equal sovereignties. Then work backwards in time for all the spectrum of pathways to this day. Then iterate continuously with new global input events, re-compute, review & archive (oh, & highlight pathways containing tag words: CBDC, AI) Thank-you so very much! ✌️