Tinius Digest April 2020

45 percent of Norwegian have come across fake news about the coronavirus outbreak during the last seven days. Only 27 percent are sure they have not seen any fake news during the last week.

Of the people that have seen fake news about the virus, 38 percent names social media as the source. Nine percent stated that they saw the news on Norwegian websites, and six percent saw fake news on foreign websites.

53 percent of Norwegians between the age of 30-44 and 52 percent under the age of 30 have seen fake news about the coronavirus. People of higher education are reporting seeing fake news more often than other people.

Only eight percent believe that their perception of a brand is negatively affected if their advert is shown alongside coronavirus-related content.

Readers request ads that help them stay healthy (45%), help them with their personal finance (31%), and offer an immediate difference for the readers (28%).

43 percent of the respondents want information about companies and brands they are interested in.

There is a time after Corona. In the free text field in the survey, a large proportion of respondents state that they want positive messages, easy and regular ads, and entertainment tips until the Corona crisis is over.

We are facing a breakthrough in the mass production of design molecules. This enables substantial medical advances, but also food based on synthetic proteins and ingredients. All industries will be affected by the emergence of synthetic products, which also raises difficult questions about ethics and security.

Smart earbuds and glasses will digitally overlay audio without others hearing, and while you continue to hear what’s going on around you. Audio augmented reality (or AAR) will not only help runners stay safe, but can help the visually impaired by verbally describing what – or who – you’re looking at. The connected glasses and AAR ecosystem offer tremendous new business opportunities.

The future of digital transformation is rooted in two key areas: A.I.-as-a-Service and Data-as-a-Service. Microsoft, IBM, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are all developing new services and tools ranging from robotic process automation to offering GPUs (graphics processing unit) in the cloud – enabled by fiber- or 5G-connections.

China has a rapidly-expanding middle class, an educated and trained workforce, and a government that executes long-term plans. China will continue to assert prolific dominance in 2020 across multiple areas, including the development of critical digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data collection and scoring, bioengineering, and space.

Home and office automation are becoming mainstream. The next-generation network infrastructure will accelerate the adoption of sensors, cameras, and microphones. The global market could reach $214 billion by 2025. Which company’s operating system controls all those devices, and what happens to the collected data will spark public debate.

Automated systems need data and a framework for making decisions. Every living person is shedding a vast amount of data continuously, and this data is analyzed by automated systems to make decisions for or about us. The score determines the price to show us on e-commerce sites, or if we are a potential security risk. The report anticipates that regulators will take a more profound interest in scoring in the coming year.

The beginning of the end of the end of the beginning of forgetting has begun. After a decade of posting photos, videos, and written messages on social media, it’s now clear that it isn’t possible to truly delete or erase our pasts. Detailed information about everyone will persist far into the future, creating a wormhole of future challenges.

The number of Scandinavian households owning a computer has been falling rapidly since 2015. Today 87 percent of Norwegians have access to a computer in their home (down from 97 percent in 2015). The same number is 88 percent in Sweden (down from 98%) and 91 percent in Denmark (down from 98%).

While one third in the US and UK have access to a smart speaker, the technology is adapting slowly in the Scandinavian countries. Today 15 percent of Swedes have access to a smart speaker at their home, with the adoption rate even slower in Denmark (9%) and Norway (7%).

The smart speaker adoption in Norway may be slow – but Google has a whopping 81 percent market share. In Sweden 41 percent chooses Google Home-products, while Danes tend to buy Sonos One (42%). Sonos supports both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Amazon is dominating the smart speaker market in the UK (74%), Germany (72%) and the US (70%).

The more children and the richer you are, the more connected devices in a household: In Norway, a household of four has 13 connected devices. Households without children have an average of 7.5 units. The same numbers for Sweden (10,8/6,8) and Denmark (10,7/6,3).

It’s becoming virtually impossible to see a future where VR glasses go mainstream. Today only three percent of Scandinavians have access to a virtual reality device in their household. In the US, the number has shrunk from eight percent in 2017 to six percent in 2020.

Americans have largely negative views of major internet and technology companies’ impact on society. Their top concern relates to the amplification of misinformation on the internet (74%). Americans believe the companies do more to divide society (60%) than to unite it (11%).

77% of Americans say major internet and technology companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple have too much power. But: Americans are equally divided among those who favor (50%) and oppose (49%) government intervention that would require internet and technology companies to break into smaller companies.

Americans do not trust social media companies much (44%) or at all (40%) to make the right decisions about what content should or should not be allowed on online platforms. However, they would still prefer the companies (55%) to make those decisions rather than the government (44%).

While 93 percent of Italians are following daily news updates about the coronavirus, only 50 percent of Germans and 56 percent of the French do the same.

64 percent are getting most of their information about the pandemic from major news organizations. But: Among all the professions and relations listed, journalists are pointed to as the least trustworthy source.

63 percent report they believe coronavirus information from their employer. That’s higher than government websites (58%) and health company websites (56). Only 51 percent believe information from traditional media companies.

For white users, the systems misinterpreted 19 percent of the words. For black users, the system misinterpreted 35 percent of the words.

Only two percent of audio recordings from white users were recorded as unreadable by the systems. The percentage increased to 20 percent for black users.

Apple (worst results) misinterpreted 23 percent of the words spoken by white users and 45 percent of the words spoken by black users. The same numbers for Microsoft (best results) were 15 percent misinterpretation for white users and 27 percent for black users.