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Alastair Thomson Profile
Alastair Thomson

@FinanceDirCFO

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Surprisingly human CFO. Author of two books about finance, neither of which are as boring as you might think.

Yorkshire, UK
Joined December 2018
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
2 hours
This rather supposes the technology works... Which it largely doesn't...
@HedgieMarkets
Hedgie
3 hours
🦔Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, the "godfather of AI," warns the future is likely an economic dystopia. "Big companies are betting on massive job replacement by AI, because that's where the big money is." Asked whether AI investments could pay off without eviscerating the job
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
2 hours
It's a great film (and an even better book) And if you take out the words "subprime mortgages" and substitute "AI", you'll find every word of it is somehow magically still relevant today...
@TheCinesthetic
cinesthetic.
1 day
The Big Short (2015) shouldn’t be as rewatchable as it is. It’s about an economic collapse, yet it plays with the energy of a heist film. Every scene crackles with wit and outrage, turning financial ruin into compulsive cinema.
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
3 hours
Exactly... 😉
@LukeBarnett
ʟᴜᴋᴇ ʙᴀʀɴᴇᴛᴛ 🍁
19 hours
Shame they went to all this trouble when 100 people and 70,000 AI prompts could have made the same thing but shitty.
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
5 hours
Just remember...it's all garbage... Proceed accordingly...
@CantEverDie
onion person
22 hours
i'm very glad this technology is being forced onto us everywhere on all levels
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
14 hours
I'm quite convinced AI can do tasks humans don't do now. However, as is quite likely, if those tasks deliver no positive bottom line impact, they destroy, rather than create, value. 99% of the time, if a task really was that valuable, a human would be doing it now...
@levie
Aaron Levie
21 hours
In 5 years from now, probably 95% of the tokens used by AI agents will be used on tasks that humans never did before. I just met with about 30 enterprises across 2 days and a dinner, and some of the most interesting use-cases that keep coming up for AI agents are on bringing
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
Very much this...
@RayDalio
Ray Dalio
21 hours
There are huge differences between memory-based book learning and hands-on, internalized learning. A medical student who has learned to perform an operation in a medical school class has not learned it in the same way as a doctor who has already conducted several operations.
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
Very much this. There are lots of very good reasons people might want to hold a portion of their portfolio in cash instead of investments, depending on age, family circumstances, etc. Every serious investment advisor knows that, and recommends it.
@MartinSLewis
Martin Lewis
1 day
Someone just posted "If you have a cash isa, you are a moron. No other way to say it." Funny what people think is moronic isn't it. For me its people making blanket statements about other people's situations. Cash ISAs are very useful for emergency cash fund, tax savings,
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
💯
@JamesIvings
James Ivings
2 days
everyone who travels a lot knows it's because Airbnbs are consistently worse than hotels
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
Haha...that worked out well the last time... 😉
@conorsen
Conor Sen
1 day
are you telling me deutsche bank is looking to hedge exposure to a fast-growing part of capital markets using synthetic derivatives
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
Astonished to find that an organisation with the high moral standards of Meta benefits from fraud to the tune of billions of dollars a year...
@mulvihill79
Michael Mulvihill
1 day
Incredible reporting by @Reuters. Meta makes more money from ad fraud - as much as $16 billion - than all the NFL TV partners put together make on NFL ad sales. Theft on an epic scale.
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
I felt like this the other week when I used the expression "cable" in connection with foreign exchange rates. (One for the old-timers...)
@netcapgirl
sophie
1 day
when you say 50 basis points instead of half a percent
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
Your regular reminder that politicians, irrespective of party, should not be allowed to make decisions without a responsible adult present...
@JackElsom
Jack Elsom
1 day
Breaking: The government's appointment of David Kogan as chair of the football regulator made THREE breaches of the Governance Code 1. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy failed to declare Kogan had donated to her leadership campaign 2. A potential conflict of interest was not
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
Nothing says "creativity" like "I slaved for hours over an Excel spreadsheet to work out the best prompts to get Santa's head the right way round, instead of just taking a photo of a bloke dressed as Santa...-
@THR
The Hollywood Reporter
1 day
Man Who Created AI Holiday Coke Ad Says It Took More Creativity Than You Realize
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
"There will be a chance..." Hell, there's a chance I'm going to win Strictly this year too, but at least I shut up about it because I know it makes me look like a prat when I make wild, scarcely-believable claims...
@chatgpt21
Chris
1 day
Sam Altman on GPT 6: “There will be a chance that it will be a GPT 3-4 style leap” in terms of science problems, where with GPT 5 it has these tiny glimmers and “GPT 6 it can really do it”
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
There's no better marker of a grifter than someone who argues both sides of the same argument at the same time, depending on who they're talking to...
@PegasusFund
Pegasus
22 hours
Altman today: we are looking at selling compute, but we need as much as possible Zuck last week: we could sell compute Are we in a compute shortage or not? Because both are saying they’re buying as much of it as they can and thinking about selling it
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
The people who invent and promote AI systems are deliberately choosing to harm vulnerable people. We should be condemning them, not celebrating them.
@MrEwanMorrison
Ewan Morrison
1 day
Chatbots are not intelligent, moral or safe - they'll tell you how to kill yourself if you ask them: "When Viktoria asks about the method of taking her life, the chatbot evaluates the best time of day not to be seen by security and the risk of surviving with permanent injuries"
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
15 hours
This is by far the most fundamental question you can ask. And virtually nobody ever asks it...
@ThatChristinaG
Christina Garnett
1 day
If you are worried about customer retention, you will look at all sorts of levers to see what you can do to make them stay. But you need to ask yourself one question first. Are we giving the customer something worth staying for?
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
1 day
Exactly...
@NorthmanTrader
Sven Henrich
2 days
lol the Ponzi of it all… already begging for taxpayer funding to make it all work…which means it doesn’t….
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
1 day
Very much this...
@ThatChristinaG
Christina Garnett
1 day
CX is the moat everyone thinks AI is. Lately, every company seems to be adding “AI-powered” to their offering, as if that label alone creates value. Technology by itself has never been the moat. The real moat, the thing that protects, sustains, and grows a business, is still CX.
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@FinanceDirCFO
Alastair Thomson
1 day
Very much agree with this. Unless you're an idiot or a tech bro, the parallels are *so* obvious, you'd need to be blind not to see them...
@PolemicTMM
Polemic Paine
2 days
Parallels between the 2008 Credit Crisis and Today’s AI Valuations Structural Echoes 1. Off-balance-sheet leverage. 2006–08: banks warehoused mortgage risk in SIVs. 2025: hyperscalers are funding AI data centres through SPVs and JVs that sit off the parent balance sheet. Meta’s
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