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
This rather supposes the technology works... Which it largely doesn't...
đŚNobel 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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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...
The Big Short (2015) shouldnât be as rewatchable as it is. Itâs 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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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...
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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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.
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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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...
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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I felt like this the other week when I used the expression "cable" in connection with foreign exchange rates. (One for the old-timers...)
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Your regular reminder that politicians, irrespective of party, should not be allowed to make decisions without a responsible adult present...
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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"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...
Sam Altman on GPT 6: âThere will be a chance that it will be a GPT 3-4 style leapâ in terms of science problems, where with GPT 5 it has these tiny glimmers and âGPT 6 it can really do itâ
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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...
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 theyâre buying as much of it as they can and thinking about selling it
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The people who invent and promote AI systems are deliberately choosing to harm vulnerable people. We should be condemning them, not celebrating them.
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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This is by far the most fundamental question you can ask. And virtually nobody ever asks it...
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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Very much this...
CX is the moat everyone thinks AI is. Lately, every company seems to be adding âAI-poweredâ 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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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...
Parallels between the 2008 Credit Crisis and Todayâs AI Valuations Structural Echoes 1. Off-balance-sheet leverage. 2006â08: banks warehoused mortgage risk in SIVs. 2025: hyperscalers are funding AI data centres through SPVs and JVs that sit off the parent balance sheet. Metaâs
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