Quiz

How Aware Are Companies of Competitors’ Use of Robots and AI?

Also: fake reviews on Amazon; the impact of the LA mansion tax; and the valuable location data your phone collects

1 of 5
1 of 5
Illustration of businessmen with briefcases running forward on their respective running tracks

What’s the competition up to? About 3,000 Italian firms, asked to estimate how prevalent robots and AI were in the operations of competing firms:
Overestimated the technology adoption of other firms.
Underestimated the technology adoption of other firms.
Got it about right.

Read on: Learning of the greater robotics adoptions or plans of competing firms spurred surveyed firms to accelerate their own plans to use automation.

2 of 5
3 of 5
3 of 5

In April 2023, Los Angeles enacted a “mansion tax” on luxury homes and other high-value properties, expecting to collect $600 million to $1.1 billion a year and use that money to spur construction of affordable housing. In practice:
The tax has disappointed, bringing in less than $400 million a year.
Exceeded expectations, bringing in more than $2 billion a year.

Read on: Worse, the tax led to a slowdown in overall housing construction in Los Angeles, from backyard apartments known as alternative dwelling units to multifamily buildings, two categories the city hoped to encourage.

4 of 5
4 of 5
Three blue and white round GDPR logos that gradually fade from left to right.

In 2016, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation broadly restricted the collection and sharing of consumers’ personal data. In clinical trials for pharmaceutical research, the law:
Helped companies, as consumers knew any data they shared wouldn’t be disclosed to others. The number of drug trials surged.
Hurt, as cautious companies reduced collaborations with new partners, did fewer trials and performed them in fewer places.
Had no effect.

Read on: There’s no indication that this issue — or slower innovation, or high compliance costs or any other privacy-law fallout for the industry — has made consumers interested in toning down the regulation.

5 of 5
5 of 5
Aerial view of rush hour in city crosswalk.

Some of the most popular apps on smartphones track your movements and report them to an industry that re-sells the data to companies involved in investing, retailing, marketing and real estate. That location aggregation industry, by 2032, is expected to grow to:
About $6.4 billion.
About $64 billion.
About $640 billion.

Read on: Increasingly, economists and social scientists are using the location data in hardcore research, the kind that goes into peer-reviewed publications, and then into corporate strategic plans and public policy debates. Data on where a single device shows up throughout a day is just a much more believable indicator of a person’s movements than all but the rarest of source material researchers had before.