City profiles
Masayoshi Son The Softbank founder has a warning for any human foolish enough to dismiss Pepper, his pet “humanoid”, as a novelty, says Tim Bradshaw in the FT. Those who “deride Pepper will face a future in which they will be overtaken by robots”, he warned darkly last week – “smart robots” that “can learn by themselves and act on their own”. Son’s Japanese conglomerate is investing heavily to bring this future closer. Last week, its $93bn Vision Fund splashed out on Brain Corp, a Californian outfit whose mission is to make robots “as commonplace as computers and mobiles are today”. Son reckons artificial intelligence will “outstrip human capabilities” within 30 to 50 years, but professes to be quite relaxed about that. “AI is not created to put mankind at risk. It is created to make humans happy.”
Seeing as how bankers have been personae non gratae for much of the last decade, it took a brave BBC producer to put Virgin Money chief Jayne-anne Gadhia on Desert Island Discs, says Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. But Gadhia “came up with the goods”, blaming an “alpha-male” culture for the downfall of her ex-employer, RBS. Her claim that banking has been “transformed” by the crisis isn’t strictly true, however. On the contrary, behaviour in the “post-crisis period” (Libor fixing, money laundering, fraud…) has been “as ugly as ever”. And with the huge build-up of consumer debt, “there are signs of history repeating itself”. Gadhia may be the “acceptable face” of banking, but she can’t claim the sector has been completely reformed.