Use AI to accelerate adoption of central bank digital currencies, says IMF head The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged the application of AI technology to speed along the maturity and accelerate adoption of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in a speech in Singapore on Wednesday. "The benefits of CBDCs will depend on how technologies evolve," declared IMF managing director Kirstalina …
I thought the same thing. For as long as I've remembered I've been a techno optimist, but also cynical. I feel we could achieve amazing things as a species, but we'll probably fuck it up.
Most people aren't cynical like me, but I think since 2021 with Covid vaccines being mandated for vast numbers of people who really didn't need them, a lot more people have also become cynical. When I say "mandated" I mean, "You take this or you lose your job". So, that's why I think these CBDCs just won't take off in any big way. (probably they wouldn't have anyway, but I think this has shifted the equation a bit) Enough people have seen what governments are capable of, and their guard is up. The only way they are going to get these things adopted widely is by mandates, as in "this is the only way you'll get paid, take it or leave". I think enough people would just leave under that threat.
On the other hand, if they give out free sweets or hamburgers then probably loads of people would sign up straight away. ;-)
My prediction, millions will be wasted setting these up and they will quietly disappear as no one will be interested.
for vast numbers of people who really didn't need them
But shareholders of pharmaceutical companies needed people to have them in.
We probably are never going to find out the truth because there is no audit trail (oopsie daisy I deleted my Whatsapps again...)
and there were billions to swindle. You buy a lot of silence for this kind of money and also buy a lot of propaganda.
millions will be wasted setting these up
There are companies most likely already lined up to develop this. Probably the usual suspect. It's going to take years of expensive development using the cheapest workers and every tax loophole available.
《I feel we could achieve amazing things as a species》
The evidence is human beings (plural) achieve SFA whereas the odd individual has made massive gains and contributed enormously but the "enshitifiers" arrive and for their own enrichment foist the now befouled contribution onto a swinish polloi.
And yes 《but we'll probably fuck it up.》 No probably about it.
AI + Cryptocurrency - what a cesspit! If the IMF thinks that is the solution... I don't even want to know what, in their more lucid moments, they think the problem is.
POSSIBLE advantages to you.
CAVEAT: AFAICS, a CBDC looks to be more or less like a government guaranteed prepaid credit card. Assuming that's true and assuming that the potentially huge problems of security and counterfitting can be controlled, the advantages to us as individuals might be.
1. No more wallet full of plastic? (Fat chance of that -- as an elderly US citizen I have no less than 5 cards of various sorts that need to be perused just to get medical services, plus a library card, a couple of different, park "passports", three credit cards because you never know for sure which will be accepted by the merchant and occasionally any one may be arbitrarily declined by the electronic gods, etc, etc, etc).
2. No need to input name, rank,credit card number, date(s) and mysterious codes into idiosyncratic, cranky, often horribly designed software when purchasing stuff on-line.
3. No need to have anywhere near as much personal data stored by various online agents in an electronic communication system that is currently so sloppily constructed that occasional data theft from one or more of the way too many agents holding your data is virtually guaranteed.
4. Anonymity for small transactions. (Well, that's what the Chinese -- who seem to be furtherest along with CBDC are promising. They might mean it).
5. (Near) universal acceptance. (I'm not sure your corner drug dealer will take CBDC but most merchants likely will).
6. Lower transaction costs (Well, that's the claim. And, of course, the government will never take it into its head to tax CBDC transactions ... absolutely not ... never ... well except maybe for the duration of the current emergency).
7. There may also be be some advantages at the level of people who buy and sell commodities in 100,000 metric tonne quantities. Beyond my pay grade. Wouldn't know. (Actually, I think that's quite possible and its not impossible that some of the benefits might filter down to the end user.)
Most of your list is bullshit.
1. CBDCs won't eliminate carrying plastic, because they won't eliminate credit cards because many people will still want to spend money today they won't have until tomorrow. A digital wallet like Apple's or Google's eliminate carrying plastic in theory - but won't fully eliminate that need until every merchant accepts contactless payment.
2. Again they won't eliminate credit cards so they won't do this. You can eliminate that today for many sites with Apple/Google Pay or Paypal though.
3. Again they won't eliminate credit cards so unless you only pay in "cash" sites will still store data. Apple Pay is pretty private as far as information passed to merchants so there's already a solution for that today, for sites that support its use. Google Pay less so.
4. Anonymity and "Chinese" in the same sentence? Really? CBDCs in China may be designed to do a lot of things, but one thing they won't do is protect the anonymity of its citizens from their government!
5. Unless they mandate universal acceptance AND remove paper bills from circulation that won't happen in our lifetime.
6. Again they won't eliminate credit cards so they won't eliminate transaction costs. And as you say makes it all too easy for the government to add a "small" tax per transaction that grows over time, as one band of politicians sees it as a source of new tax revenue, and another band sees it as a way to cut income taxes for big money donors without decreasing total tax revenue.
7. AFAIK CBDCs aren't designed for that, and I don't see any advantage for using them versus the current method of ACH or wire transfers.
She sounds more like she's left reality and is now in cloud cuckoo land. Specifically, in the province of TechnoMeNoUnderstando where people with no idea of what things do shout "blockchain! it's the future of everything! AI! It's the future of everything!" to try and sound like they're keeping up with all the cool kids, but reveal their lack of understanding of the trend du jour.
It feels like they had a checklist of words to use in this and they managed to fit them all in.
I'm pretty sure I've seen reports on el-reg and elsewhere saying that every time someone has used 'AI' to try and eliminate some sort of bias it has actually made it worse. Didn't various companies try AI for recruitment and it was even more biased than humans?
Looking at Kristalina Georgieva's history she is from a politically connected family, has a long stint in academia followed by the World Bank, the European Commission and then IMF. Unlikely to have ever worked a minimum wage job or had a bad credit rating.
You have to like the thesis. Yes, we (for various values of "we") have all sorts of problems (for various values of...) with things like cash, currencies, debt, payment systems, credit ratings, and so on. These are complicated. We've also seen that digital currencies and AI, new technologies that we're still trying to develop a decent understanding of and have little history with — and what there is, is disappointing — have all sorts of complicated problems. So combining them will probably help, right?
"I've been disappointed by alleged silver bullets before, but this silver bullet will definitely work!"
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