Business
Banks in Canada Warn Over Trudeau Inflation and Unsustainable Debt
Banks and economists in Canada warn that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to increase annual spending by billions of dollars will lead to unsustainable debt, especially if economic growth is weaker than expected.
To compete with the US Inflation Reduction Act, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s latest budget added C$43 billion ($32 billion) in net new costs over six years, primarily by increasing healthcare spending and clean-technology subsidies. According to Derek Holt, an economist at the Bank of Nova Scotia, overall program spending is set to balloon to 51% above pre-pandemic levels by 2028, contradicting her description of the budget as prudent.
“Big spending, big deficits, big debt, high taxes, high inflation, and bond market challenges are not the path to prosperity,” Holt wrote in an investor report released Wednesday, describing the country’s federal and provincial governments as “addicted to high spending.”
The increase in spending comes despite the government projecting C$34 billion less revenue over the next six years than in November. Higher interest rates are expected to harm economic growth.
“Canada has moved beyond its post-1990s and pre-pandemic voter apprehension of big spending promises and has entered a new era driven by massive spenders at the federal and provincial levels of government,” Holt said. “The risk is that the deficit will grow even larger if GDP performs worse than expected versus the budget’s use of stale forecasts from February — before the recent turmoil — that project no contraction.”
Furthermore, the green subsidies announced in Freeland’s budget become more generous over time. While the budget estimates that the net cost of the various green tax credits will be around C$20 billion over the next five years, the finance department estimates that the cost will exceed C$80 billion by 2034.
When asked about Holt’s report, Trudeau and Freeland defended their spending as necessary, arguing that Canada is in a better fiscal position than its Group of Seven counterparts.
Freeland also stated that the green incentives would help growth in the long run, citing former Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz’s budget assessment. “If you make investments that increase the country’s economic capacity, that is fiscally responsible,” she told reporters in Ottawa.
The fiscal projections in the budget are fraught with risk, according to John Manley, finance minister under former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, in 2002 and 2003.
He said that if deficits worsen, future governments may be forced to make difficult decisions about program cuts. In the 1990s, Chretien’s government had to take drastic measures to bring Canada’s debt under control, and Manley claimed that his budget as Industry Minister was severely cut.
“If Liberals don’t want to face that kind of calamity, it’s far better to carefully manage the growth of your expenditures and revenue,” Manley said on BNN Bloomberg Television. “Because otherwise, there will be a reckoning, and someone will have to face it.”
People in Canada are struggling to keep up with rising costs.
People in Canada are struggling to keep up with rising costs.Rising prices have impacted nearly everyone in Canada, and many believe they have reached a tipping point. According to Global News, new data shows that more than half of Canadians struggle to keep up with inflation.
Rising prices have impacted nearly everyone in the country; some believe they have reached a tipping point. According to new data, more than half of Canadians are struggling with inflation.
According to a recent Ipsos poll, 32% of people are struggling to meet the rising costs of everyday necessities.
This is just one of several statistics highlighting the country’s current financial difficulties.
“22% of Canadians, or more than one in every five, say they are completely out of money.” “They’re saying they can’t afford any more household expenses,” said Sanyam Sethi, vice president of Ipsos Public Affairs.
“Things aren’t going well. The concerns are nowhere near being addressed.”
According to a poll, one-fifth of Canadians are ‘completely out of money’ as inflation bites, over half of Canadians struggle to make ends meet, and women are the most concerned about their finances.
“Women are nearly twice as likely as men to say there is no way they can pay more for household expenses or necessities because they are completely tapped out,” Sethi explained.
Women are concerned that they will not be able to feed their families, and women’s shelters in Kelowna say their resources are in high demand because people require assistance.
“Whether it’s this year, five years ago, or, sadly, five years from now, we’ll always be full.” “With or without an economic crisis, that’s just our reality,” said Allison Mclauchlan, executive director of the Kelowna Women’s Shelter.
Borrowing costs rise as the Bank of Canada raises its benchmark interest rate.
According to Mclauchlan, it can also be difficult for women who have escaped an abusive situation to regain financial stability.
“Think about a woman who has been financially abused for ten years and has no bank account, no savings, no earnings and how difficult that is,” McLauchlan explained.
Residents in Kelowna told Global News that rising living costs had forced them to change their spending habits.
With gas prices rising again, more than 55% of Canadians were concerned they couldn’t afford it.
Cryptocurrency
Sony Is Once Again Facing A Potential Security Breach, This Time By A Ransomware Group
Once more, Sony faces the possibility of a security breach, this time from a ransomware group alleging to have compromised PlayStation systems. On Sunday, the group LAPSUS$ proclaimed the alleged hack on their dark website. This could have significant implications for PlayStation users, although details remain scant.
According to the ransomware group, they have compromised all Sony systems and seized valuable information, including game source code and firmware. As “proof,” they have provided screen captures of what appears to be an internal login page, PowerPoint presentation, and file directory.
However, according to cybersecurity specialists, this information could be more convincing. Cyber Security Connect stated, “None of it appears to be particularly compelling information.” They suspect that LAPSUS$ may have exaggerated the scope of their breach.
Based on the limited data available, it is extremely difficult to determine the scope or integrity of the hackers’ claims. PlayStation’s online services do not appear to have been impacted so far, with no word if user data is at risk.
Sony Is Once Again Facing A Potential Security Breach, This Time By A Ransomware Group.
Not for the first time have Sony’s systems been targeted. In 2011, the PlayStation Network was compromised, exposing the personal information of 77 million users. Sony ultimately locked down PSN for nearly a month to improve security.
In 2014, North Korea launched a devastating cyberattack against Sony Pictures in retaliation for the film The Interview. The release of terabytes of sensitive data, including scripts for upcoming films and employees’ personal and medical information. Time will tell if Sony can once again recover its systems from a significant cyberattack. However, PlayStation users may need to prepare for potential consequences.
If LAPSUS$’s claims are accurate, this breach could have comparable repercussions. There is a possibility that sensitive source code and intellectual property could be compromised. There is also the possibility of significant PlayStation Network service disruptions. As with any hack, we recommend that users alter any passwords used on any PlayStation service to avoid problems with other online accounts.
CGMagazine has sought out Sony for comment, but at the time of publication, the company has neither confirmed nor denied the breach’s scope; we will update the article if the situation changes.
SOURCE – (cgmagonline)
Amazon is investing up to $4 billion in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and acquiring a minority stake in the company, the two companies announced on Monday.
The investment underscores how Big Tech companies are pouring money into AI as they race to capitalize on the opportunities that the latest iteration of the technology is set to fuel.
According to Amazon and Anthropic, the agreement is part of a larger collaboration to develop so-called foundation models, which are the basis for the generative AI systems that have garnered worldwide attention.
Foundation models, also known as large language models, are trained on vast online information pools, such as blog posts, digital books, scientific articles, and pop songs, to generate text, images, and videos that resemble human labor.
Amazon Is Investing Up To $4 Billion In AI Startup Anthropic In Growing Tech Battle.
Under the terms of the agreement, Anthropic will use Amazon as its primary cloud computing service and train and deploy its generative AI systems using Amazon’s custom processors.
Anthropic, based in San Francisco, was founded by former employees of OpenAI, the creator of the ChatGPT AI chatbot that made a global impact with its ability to generate responses that resembled human responses.
Anthropic has released Claude, its own ChatGPT competitor. The most recent version, available in the United States and the United Kingdom, can “sophisticated dialogue, creative content generation, complex reasoning, and detailed instruction,” according to the company.
Amazon is racing to catch up to competitors such as Microsoft, which invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 and another multibillion-dollar investment at the beginning of the year.
Amazon has been releasing new services to keep up with the AI arms race, such as an update to its popular assistant Alexa that enables users to have more human-like conversations and AI-generated summaries of consumer product reviews.
SOURCE – (AP)
Computer
Photo Giant Getty Took A Leading AI Image-Maker To Court. Now It’s Also Embracing The Technology
Anyone seeking a gorgeous photograph of a desert landscape will find various options in the Getty Images stock photography collection.
But suppose you’re searching for a wide-angle image of a “hot pink plastic saguaro cactus with large, protruding arms, surrounded by sand, in a landscape at dawn.” According to Getty Images, you can now request that its AI-powered image generator create one on the spot.
The Seattle-based company employs a two-pronged strategy to address the threat and opportunity of artificial intelligence to its business. First, it filed a lawsuit against a prominent provider of AI-generated images earlier this year for what it claimed was a “stunning” violation of Getty’s image collection.
But on Monday, it joined the small but expanding market of AI image creators with a new service that enables its customers to create novel images trained on Getty’s vast library of human-made photographs.
According to Getty Images CEO Craig Peters, the distinction is that this new service is “commercially viable” for business clients and “wasn’t trained on the open internet with stolen imagery.”
He compared this to some pioneers in AI-generated imagery, such as OpenAI’s DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stability AI, the creator of Stable Diffusion.
“We have issues with those services, how they were built, what they were built upon, how they respect creator rights or not, and how they actually feed into deepfakes and other things like that,” Peters said in an interview.
Anyone seeking a gorgeous photograph of a desert landscape will find various options in the Getty Images stock photography collection.
In a lawsuit filed early this year in a Delaware federal court, Getty alleged that London-based Stability AI copied without permission more than 12 million photographs from its collection, along with captions and metadata, “as part of its efforts to build a competing business.”
Getty asserted in its lawsuit that it is entitled to damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, which could reach $1.8 trillion. Stability seeks dismissal or transfer of the case but has not formally responded to the underlying allegations. Similar to the situation in the United Kingdom, a court conflict is still brewing.
Peters stated that the new service, dubbed Generative AI by Getty Images, resulted from a long-standing partnership with California-based tech company and chipmaker Nvidia, which predated the legal challenges against Stability AI. It is based on Edify, an AI model created by Picasso, a division of Nvidia’s generative AI division.
It promises “full indemnification for commercial use” and is intended to eliminate the intellectual property risks that have made businesses hesitant to use generative AI tools.
Getty contributors will also be compensated for having their images included in the training set, which will be incorporated into their royalty obligations so that the company is “actually sharing the revenue with them over time rather than paying a one-time fee or not paying that,” according to Peters.
Anyone seeking a gorgeous photograph of a desert landscape will find various options in the Getty Images stock photography collection.
Getty will compete with rivals such as Shutterstock, which has partnered with OpenAI’s DALL-E, and software company Adobe, which has developed its own AI image-generator Firefly, for brands seeking marketing materials and other creative imagery. It is unlikely to appeal to those seeking photojournalism or editorial content, where Getty competes with news organizations such as The Associated Press.
Peters stated that the new model cannot produce politically damaging “deepfake” images because it automatically blocks requests containing images of recognizable persons and brands. As an illustration, he entered “President Joe Biden on a surfboard” as a demonstration to an AP reporter, but the tool rejected the request.
“The positive news about this generative engine is that it cannot cause the Pentagon to be attacked. “It cannot generate the pope wearing Balenciaga,” he said, referring to a widely shared fake image of Pope Francis wearing a fashionable puffer jacket generated by artificial intelligence.
Peters added that AI-generated content will not be added to Getty Images’ content libraries, reserved for “real people in real places doing real things.”
SOURCE – (AP)
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