Tweet Post Share Save Print “ They’re Watching You at Work .” “ AI Here, There, Everywhere .” “ What People Hate About Being Managed by Algorithms .” We are no stranger to headlines conjuring up science fiction images of a future in which human judgment, ingenuity, and initiative are increasingly undermined by machine-based management. The dominant narrative regarding technology at work is that the machines are replacing human judgment and as a result making work more technocratic and controlled. But there’s another story that’s important to tell here: That of organizations which are using technology to  enhance  the autonomy of their workers, enabling their leaders to exercise  greater  strategic judgment. As scholars of organizational structure, we see evidence that technology in fact lies at the heart of efforts by companies to organize around employees rather than management. Companies that have successfully re-designed their structure, routines, and pract...

  1. Upstart Holdings According to Upstart, 80% of Americans have never defaulted on a loan, yet only 48% qualify for the lowest interest rates banks offer. Management believes that discrepancy stems from a lack of data. Specifically, many of the most sophisticated credit models incorporate just 30 variables, so lenders determine loan eligibility and set interest rates based on very little information. In turn, some applicants are mistakenly approved, and others are mistakenly rejected, which means the creditworthy borrowers end up subsidizing those who default. To solve that problem, Upstart leans on big data and AI. Its platform captures over 1,600 data points per applicant then measures those variables against past repayment events to quantify risk. To that end, internal studies have shown that Upstart's AI can cut loss rates by 75% while keeping approval rates constant, or it can boost approval rates by 173% while keeping loss rates constant. Either way you measure it, tha...

  In recent years, computer-generated animations of animals and humans have become increasingly detailed and realistic. Nonetheless, producing convincing animations of a character's face as it's talking remains a key challenge, as it typically entails the successful combination of a series of different audio and video elements. A team of computer scientists at TCS Research in India has recently created a new model that can produce highly realistic talking face animations that integrate audio recordings with a character's head motions. This model, introduced in a paper presented at ICVGIP 2021, the twelfth Indian Conference on Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing, could be used to create more convincing virtual avatars, digital assistants, and animated movies. A team of computer scientists at TCS Research in India has recently created a new model that can produce highly realistic talking face animations that integrate audio recordings with a character's head mo...

  Threat analysts have observed a new campaign named ‘OiVaVoii’, targeting company executives and general managers with malicious OAuth apps and custom phishing lures sent from hijacked Office 365 accounts. According to a report from Proofpoint, the campaign is still ongoing, though Microsoft is monitoring the activity and has already blocked most of the apps. The impact of executive account takeovers ranges from lateral movement on the network and insider phishing to deploying  ransomware and business email compromise incidents. OAuth is a standard for token-based authentication and authorization, removing the need to enter account passwords. Apps that use OAuth require specific permissions such as file read and write permissions, access to calendar and email, and email send authorization. The purpose of this system is to offer increased usability and convenience while maintaining a high security level within trustworthy environments by reducing credential exposure. With...

  Despite the ensuing slowdown due to the pandemic, Samsung managed to keep its smartphone shipments at respectable levels, according to new data obtained by  market research firm IDC . It is even more impressive, given that Q4, 2021 witnessed a decline in the overall number of smartphones sold, likely due to a paucity of major launches. Samsung managed to ship a total of 272 million smartphones in all of 2021, representing a rise of 6.0% over last year’s figure. It is a tad lower than the 300 million estimates from earlier, but it is quite common for different studies to reach different conclusions. Apple came in a close second at 235 million shipments. Arch-rival Xiaomi fell surprisingly short with only 191 million units, followed by Oppo and Vivo at 133.5 million and 12.3 million units shipped, respectively. We have to bear in mind that the numbers for Chinese OEMs could be a lot higher if we take into account domestic sales in their home market of China, the data for ...