Information is Wealth.

I've been nervously chatting to Lara on the dating platform Match.com for two minutes. She's flattered me about my age ("so young!") and she says she's going to take care of me. I like her already - but Lara is not real. She - or rather, it - is a chatbot, an artificially intelligent computer program developed to communicate with people online. The bot was launched in France in 2016 and then rolled out in the UK in April 2017, to help potential clients get started in their search for love by setting up their Match profile for them. It was the first to be released by a major dating site and the firm claims that 300,000 people a month complete their dating profiles with help from Lara. Image copyrightMATCH.COM The chatbot is not a voice-controlled interface - you communicate by typing - but it can operate in 12 languages, asking users simple questions about what they are looking for and what they are like. Experts say it can also encourage people to be more h...

Five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them? 1 — Deutsche Bank CEO suggests robots could replace half the company's 97,000 employees. The CEO of Deutsche Bank says technology will lead to significant layoffs at his organization in the not-too-distant future. To date, 4,000 jobs have been cut of the 9,000 the bank announced in late 2015 were threatened as part of a 5-year plan. According to its CEO, technology will allow Deutsche to cut thousands more jobs, and he believes entire industries will be able to replace workers with robots. (Source: CNBC) Why this is important for your business: When big company CEOs are openly talking about robots replacing their employees then the writing is on the wall.  Smart business owners are already investing in technology to reduce the overhead associated with their employees and that will increase over time. Soon will the developing world have a sip of it too. 2 — ...