Earlier this month, Facebook announced it will ask its two billion users to rank their trust in news sources as part of an effort to combat the spread of misinformation.

The changes come as the online giant seeks to address charges that it has failed — along with Google and Twitter — to prevent the spread of false news, especially ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.

“Local news helps build community — both on and offline,” Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the social network.

“It’s an important part of making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is valuable.”

Zuckerberg traveled around the US last year, visiting with Facebook users.

“One theme people kept telling me is how much we all have in common if we can get past some of the most divisive national issues,” Zuckerberg said in the post.

“Many people told me they thought that if we could turn down the temperature on the more divisive issues and instead focus on concrete local issues, then we’d all make more progress together.”

He also cited research suggesting that reading local news prompted people to be more engaged in their communities.

Facebook is showing US members more stories from news sources in their cities or towns, and plans to begin doing the same in more countries later this year.

Recent changes at Facebook include a new “trusted sources” ranking intended to “make sure the news you see is high quality” and to foster “a sense of common ground” rather than sow division, Zuckerberg said in a previous post.

Facebook decided to rely on member surveys to rank trust in news sources.

A freshly-introduced update highlights what friends and family share on the network, over advertisements, celebrity and media posts.

The company cast the changes as part of a refocus on “community” — prioritizing social interactions and relationships, even if it means people spend less time on the platform.

Known for annual personal goals ranging from killing his own food to learning Chinese, Zuckerberg’s stated mission for this year is to “fix” the social network.

He plans to target abuse and hate, as well as interference by nation states.

An interactive sign stands outside a telco shop in the upmarket Gangnam district, calling out to potential customers.

“Handsome oppa in grey… pretty onni in red… look over here!” it beckons two passers-by, using the affectionate Korean terms for brother and sister.

The artificial intelligence-enhanced system, powered by a supercomputer and connected to sensors, cameras, speakers and a robot inside the shop, will then recommend cellphones or offer coupons to its captivated audience.

Such machine-human promotional interactions, could well be the future of telco shops, Mr Lee Jin Seok, a manager at South Korean telco giant, KT Corporation, told The Straits Times.

“It appeals to millennials and digital natives, who prefer to make their own decisions without much interaction with sales people,” he said, using a term to refer to those born in the digital age. The interactive sign has stood outside KT Corporation’s flagship store since Aug 31 last year as part of a trial programme.

Innovations like this are fast taking centre stage as South Korea gears up for the fourth industrial revolution and spends big on developing supercomputers and related technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), big data and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Although known for its tech advancements and fast Internet speeds, South Korea is a relative latecomer in the fields of AI and supercomputers. It was only in April 2016 that the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) pledged to invest 100 billion won (S$123 million, US$94 million) in projects including the building of the country’s own 30 petaflop supercomputer by 2025.

South Korea has only five supercomputers ranked on the latest TOP500 list of fastest computers in the world, used mainly in its weather agency and by Internet providers. But none are Korean-made and the fastest is only 2.39 petaflop, as compared with China’s top-ranked 93 petaflop system, which is 39 times faster.

The decision to play catch-up came after Google’s computer AlphaGo beat one of South Korea’s best Go players Lee Se Dol in a historic machine-versus-man win, in 2016, triggering calls for the country to boost its AI development.

A spokesman for the Ministry of ICT told The Straits Times it has been working with two consortiums since May last year to develop and integrate the hardware and software needed for the supercomputer project.

It involves about 300 experts from IT companies, research institutes and universities.

The digital push is backed by President Moon Jae In, who hopes that government support for the fourth industrial revolution, combined with private efforts, can create thousands of new jobs and generate economic benefits worth some 40 trillion won.

The Ministry of ICT said AI is key in leading the fourth industrial revolution and that AI-related investments increased 47 per cent to 163 billion won last year, up from 110 billion won in 2016.

Supercomputers can help push AI advances, said Mr Lee of KT Corporation, which in July opened an AI research centre equipped with the country’s fastest computer. The system boasts a 720,000 graphic processing unit core, allowing it to process massive amounts of data and enable deep learning.

The KT sign, for one, is able to have “very natural interactions” with prospective customers because it is backed by a supercomputer with very fast processing speeds, he said. “We will be able to do more in the future, such as developing a multilingual system.”

For many, it is simply too lucrative an opportunity to pass up. Some have reported doubling or tripling their profits in less than a year.

A college kid, obviously a newbie, even claimed profits 45 times the initial investment.

David Kurniawan, who works at a mobile intelligence company, is a case in point.

The 27-year-old said he had made US$1,060 in profit on his $2,733 investment in Ethereum, a cryptocurrency originating from Russia, in the space of only seven months.

Compare that to 5 percent you would earn on a time deposit in a year, or the average of 10 percent profit on stocks, then you get the picture.

Ethereal was quoted at $393 a coin when David started, and now it is $944.

“Buy low, and sell high,” he said, adding that it was not all that different from investing in gold, real currencies and stocks.

Good advice for anyone contemplating to play in the cryptocurrency market: Watch the market closely. No one can rule out a bubble.

The volatility of bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, has shown that trading is not exactly for the faint of heart and the reason why Indonesia, among other countries that include China and South Korea, have moved to ban cryptocurrency.

Starting at $9.37 at its launch in 2009, it jumped to $60.89 in March 2013 and to $936 in January 2017.

It reached its peak at $19,203 on Dec. 17 but has since been dropping. On Friday, it was still worth $11,470.

Bitcoin is one of 48 cryptocurrencies now being traded globally. Besides Ethereum quoted at $1,159 on Friday, other popular coins include Litecoin ($182.08), Zcash ($463.8) and Dash ($ 801.65).

The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance said there were around three million active cryptocurrency users worldwide in May 2017.

But PT Bitcoin Indonesia said in December that 900,000 Indonesian users have traded in its currency in the last two years. It also claimed to have a 70 percent share in the Indonesian cryptocurrency market.

Aladincoin, a cryptocurrency issued by the United States-based financial institute Aladin Capital, held a conference last week to announce its entry into the Indonesian market, with claims of having the support of the World Bank.

The government had initially warned people about huge potential losses in cryptocurrency trading, but in December the central bank moved to ban it outright.

Any payment using cryptocurrency would be considered illegal because it violated Law No. 7/2011 on currency that states that the rupiah was the only legal currency for transactions in Indonesia.

Administrative sanctions would be leveled at financial services that facilitate these transactions.

“There are no regulators or administrators supervising bitcoin,” Bank Indonesia Governor Agus Martowardojo recently said. “Its value is not based on any underlying economic fundamentals.”

Google’s website http://www.blog.google confirmed the investment, saying that the investment allows the global firm to partner with a great local startup and deepens its commitment to Indonesia’s digital economy.

“By investing in local companies, building locally relevant products and training local talent, we hope to see more amazing local champions like GO-JEK emerge in Indonesia,” Google said.

Indonesia is estimated to have more than 133 million internet users, the fifth largest population of internet users in the world.

Google said it has already trained nearly 60,000 Indonesians on mobile app development, toward its goal of training 100,000 developers by 2020. Through its Gapura Digital initiative, the company has also trained more than 40,000 small business owners in 10 cities.

GO-JEK is a rival of two other major ride-hailing services, namely Uber and Grab.

While some bases are well known to groups that want to attack them, the map also shows what appear to be routes taken by forces moving outside of bases — information that could be used in planning bombings or ambushes.

The map, made by Strava Labs, shows the movements of its app users around the world, indicating the intensity of travel along a given path — a “direct visualization of Strava’s global network of athletes,” it says.

Routes are highlighted over large parts of some countries, but in others, specific locations stand out.

The map of Iraq is largely dark, indicating limited use of Strava’s app, but a series of well-known military bases where American and US-led anti-jihadist coalition forces have been deployed are highlighted in detail.

These include Taji north of Baghdad, Qayyarah south of Mosul, Speicher near Tikrit and Al-Asad in Anbar Province.

Smaller sites are also highlighted on the map in northern and western Iraq, indicating the presence of other, lesser-known installations.

More dangerously, stretches of road are also highlighted, indicating that Strava users kept their devices on while traveling, potentially providing details about commonly-taken routes.

In Afghanistan, Bagram Air Field north of Kabul is a hive of activity, as are several locations in the country’s south. And in Syria, Qamishli in the northwest, a stronghold of US-allied Kurdish forces, is clearly visible.

Tobias Schneider, a security analyst who was among the group of people who discovered that the map showed military bases, noted that it indicated military sites in Syria, as well as the Madama base used by French forces in Niger.

“In Syria, known Coalition (i.e. US) bases light up the night. Some light markers over known Russian positions, no notable coloring for Iranian bases,” Schneider wrote on Twitter.

“A lot of people are going to have to sit thru lectures come Monday morning,” he wrote, referring to soldiers likely to be taken to task for inadvertently revealing sensitive information while trying to keep in shape.

The issue could have been fairly easily avoided: According to Strava, “athletes with the Metro/heatmap opt-out privacy setting have all data excluded.”

Thai start-up Ricult, founded by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumnus is now perhaps the most interesting start-up in the “social enterprise” category – not only in Thailand but also on the global stage. Ricult has received kudos in many social enterprise competitions around the world. And it is the first Thai start-up to receive a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Ricult was also bestowed the “Innovative Ideas and Technology on Agribusiness” award from the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).

Ricult came to Thailand in mid-2017, just months after it had first launched its service in Pakistan. It was co-founded by Aukrit Unahalekhaka, CEO of Ricult Thailand, and his classmate at MIT, a Pakistani. The inventors shared a passion to empower agriculturists with technology and innovation.

“Ricult comes from the middle syllables of the word ‘agriculture’. We desire to utilise technology and innovation to change the country to empower the agriculture industry, which is the backbone of Thailand,” said Aukrit.

He said that 40 per cent of the world’s population are agriculturists or around 1.3 billion people, of which around 700 million people work in developing countries where they have largely not been empowered by technology and innovation. Ricult’s solution and service is to feed satellite imagery and weather information through machine learning to provide predictive information that could help agriculturists increase efficiency while reducing cost – and eventually help them increase their profit margin.

“We invite agriculturists to use our services,” said Aukrit. “First, they need to put their farms and what crops they plant as well as the location of their farm into our system. Then, we will monitor agriculturists’ farms with a satellite to capture an image. We use the satellite image, along with weather information, as well as information from the agriculturist to do big-data analysis. Then, each agriculturist can access our analysis of their data and transform it into a conversational database. The data stored on the ‘Cloud’ via their convenient channels included mobile applications, web-based applications, LINE, and short message services (SMS).”

“And it’s without cost,” said Aukrit.

He said satellite images and precise weather information empowered by the company’s big-data analytical software can help agriculturists to improve their yields. The precisely analysed data, built specifically for their individual farms, can help agriculturalists more easily achieve precision farming.

In Thailand, corn yields are around 700 kilograms per rai (0.16 hectare), but maximum yeields of up to 2,000 kilograms per rai are being achieved in “developed” countries. With satellite image and weather information, he said, Ricult aims to double the corn yield in Thailand, reaching 1,400 kilograms per rai.

But that is not the end of it. Once the company has an expanded database, funding, and additional staffing, it believes it could help the nation achieve maximum corn yields of 2,000 kilograms per rai.

Under the plan, the company will start with big-data analysis for cash crops, started with corn in 2017, cassava in 2018 and rice, palm, and sugar cane in 2019.

Agriculturists in developed countries have been using technologies, specially big data and drones to manage their farms and that has helped bring yields of up to 2 to 3 times higher than in “developing” countries. Aukrit wants to bridge this gap with technology at an affordable price point, since most Thai agriculturists have small or medium sized operations and have a limited amount of money to invest.

“Our service is free for agriculturists. Revenue comes from other parties in the agriculture supply chain. Most are large corporates that we offer access to the analysed data,” said Aukrit. “In 2017, we got sponsorship from the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) and the Betagro Group. We helped 200 agriculturists monitor their crops over a total of 3,000 rai. We helped them improve productivity 30 per cent, reduce cost 20 per cent and increase their profit margin 50 per cent.”

His company aims to double its profit margin in 2019, while for 2018 it hopes to help 1,000 agriculturists with 10,000 rai of corn and cassava farms. And it also will do a base-line survey to enable future impact studies of Rivulet’s service to agriculturists and society.

“The big data for the agricultural sector is good for not only agriculturists themselves, but also good for many stakeholders in the supply chain, including banks who offer loans to agriculturists, fertiliser companies to know their customers, and feed factories to do traceability efficiently,” said Aukrit.

Ricult received a round of seed funding from DTAC and subsequent competition-related grants from around the world – together around US$250,000 (Bt7.83 million). It aims to raise a pre-series A round of funding worth $1 million in February.

“We want to be the social enterprise start-up with the capacity to raise funds and make a profit,” said Aukrit. “We will have a double bottom-line, making profit for shareholders and an impact on society.”

And he’s already working on the next related breakthrough: bringing the Internet of Things and drones to help improve the agriculture sector as well.

“There are so many technologies that can help the agricultural industry,” he said. “Innovation is in the company’s DNA.”

It’s a task that involves advanced digital tools such as machine learning, but my background is neither in computer sciences nor in marketing.

I began my career in finance, before alternating positions in marketing and finance. With every new beginning, I believe, the most important quality is attitude. I aim to embrace change as an opportunity for new successes. For one, you can’t really avoid change – but nor should you try to!

Change is a great opportunity and I encourage you to take a new job every three to four years. Whenever you change jobs or are given a new object, you need to be ready to deal with many unpredictable things: new responsibilities, new colleagues, a new boss, etc. Therefore, a “can-do attitude” comes first. Of course, you may be gripped by a fear of failure as you are about to start a new project. But we need to dare, to take risks and to act fast.

When you fail, think of it instead as gaining experience. Look back on both your failures and successes to learn from them.

The ability to embrace change is particularly critical right now because change is inevitable across all industries, including media, banking – and telcos as well.

Digital is the future. We need to be open-minded, acknowledge reality and learn to cope with consumers’ behaviour and technological changes as quickly as possible, changing the way we work and how we approach our customers.

Diverse customer behaviour

Traditionally, in our industry, the way to offer our products and services was done via SMS and MMS with designated timing.

But this approach is no longer in line with the fact that the patterns of customer behaviours are increasingly diverse, as are their lifestyles.

Digital technology offers a more precise approach, allowing marketers a deeper understanding of individual customer behaviours. Thanks to new tools, it is as if we had a million media planners on hand.

And with the significant migration to the use of digital channels via the DTAC app, we have a fantastic opportunity to better know our customers and offer them the right service at the right time.

One of the key factors of success to drive digital growth is our “data scientists”. They are responsible for modelling and analysing insights on customers in order to find the reasons why they don’t show interest in the services we offer and what we should be doing better. Our data scientists collect a billion points of data daily from our customer base of 20 million subscribers.

In addition to contextual marketing, we have used machine learning on image recognition systems in collaboration with DTAC’s sales group, with the aim of verifying SIM registrations. Moreover, we are developing a social listening tool in partnership with the social engagement team and call centre to trace, analyse and measure the feedback from our customers’ voices through DTAC’s Facebook page.

Digitalisation has pushed change faster than ever. We need to think differently, act fast, test and run. If something works, let’s grow it. If something fails, let’s pivot. Our key motto is “fail fast, learn faster”. Honestly, this is the most challenging job I have ever had. Once we reach the top, we celebrate a little, then we have to move on. Life is an endless journey.

Chatsuda Santanont is head of customer value management (CVM) at DTAC.

Sectoral leaders have announced their commitment to strengthen collective action on this agenda, including at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

In an open call, they also encouraged other organisations to join in an initial multi-stakeholder gathering in spring 2018.

Organisations so far involved include: The UNHCR, World Bank, World Food Programme, Consumers International, Omidyar Network, the Linux Foundation, FIDO Alliance, GSMA, Hyperledger, ID2020, Open Identity Exchange, Sovrin Foundation, World Identity Network, Accenture, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Mastercard, Microsoft, Sedicii and Visa.

According to World Bank estimates, about 1.1 billion people lack formal identification. Digital identity and access systems can unlock a range of basic and empowering services for individuals, including financial inclusion, healthcare and

education. Equally, they hold significant promise for helping refugees and displaced populations to access immediate and longer-term services.

Achieving progress will require overcoming significant shared challenges. In addition to coordination challenges such as interoperability, individuals and communities have voiced concerns about flaws and vulnerabilities in existing systems that need to be addressed.

“Digital identities and access systems are foundational elements of our shared digital future. They offer tremendous opportunities for individuals and society, especially for those without formal ID,” said Derek O’Halloran, head of the World Economic Forum System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Digital Economy and Society.

“Additionally, we need to ensure that new approaches are being laid in a sustainable, inclusive and trustworthy manner. Governments, international organisations, civil society and business will all play a critical role in creating this future,” said O’Halloran.

Money and widespread cooperation is necessary to make it work.

“We estimate it will take $12 billion to achieve identification for all,” said Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank CEO and co-chair of the Identification for Development (ID4D) High-Level Advisory Council with Amina J Mohammed, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General.

“The World Bank will secure over $750 million investments in ID-related projects in the next three years and we will strive to mobilise more financing from other sources.

“If we are to reach more than a billion people without proof of identity, we need everyone to work together, including countries, development

partners, UN agencies, the private sector and civil society,” Georgieva said. Multi-stakeholder dialogue is needed to figure out how to pursue the opportunities that come with digital identities and ensure protection of rights in a sustainable and responsible manner. It is critical to deliberate, for example, on who should create, control and benefit from people’s identity information. To empower individuals, identity systems need to enhance security and convenience, preserve privacy and uphold individual rights and freedoms. Adopting shared principles, standards and practices, alongside innovations in technologies and implementation frameworks, will be important to support these goals.

“Individuals have the most to lose if things go wrong with digital ID – so they need control over how their identity is used and by whom, along with

gold-standard data security and solid assurances that it won’t affect access, for example, to

healthcare, welfare support or education, or key

democratic rights to vote or speak out,” said Amanda Long, director-general, Consumers International.

“Without these guarantees, ID schemes will face opposition and fail to fulfil their potential,” she said.

Technology can play a part, but it won’t be enough on its own. “We believe that technologies like blockchain can play a powerful role in creating a secure, portable, personal solution for those living without identity, but technology alone isn’t enough,” said Peggy Johnson, executive vice president of business development at Microsoft. “A challenge of this magnitude requires commitments and collaboration across sectors to develop the shared standards and principles required to deliver lasting impact.”

With the use of digital technologies across the world at an all-time high, and with the adoption of the Internet of Things expected to connect over 200 billion devices to the Internet by 2020, the scope of identity management is also fast expanding to devices and legal entities.

Digital identity is relevant in a wide range of situations that require people and entities to prove who they are – there is no universal,

“one-size-fits-all” approach. This is reflected in the diversity of approaches adopted in various ID and access systems implemented to date. Ongoing

dialogue and coordinated action between stakeholders from across sectors, industries and regions will foster shared understanding of challenges and solutions, and accelerate global progress

The two long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) named Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong were born at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai, and are the fruits of years of research into a cloning technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer.

“The barrier has been broken by this work,” co-author Muming Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience of CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, told AFP.

Until now, the technique has been used to clone more than 20 different animal species, including dogs, pigs and cats, but primates have proven particularly difficult.

The birth of the now six and eight-week old macaque babies also raises ethical questions about how close scientists have come to one day cloning humans.

Humans could be cloned by this technique, in principle, said Poo, though this team’s focus was on cloning for medical research.

One day, the approach might be used to create large populations of genetically identical monkeys that could be used for medical research — and avoid taking monkeys from the wild.

“In the United States alone they are importing 30,000 to 40,000 monkeys each year by drug companies,” said Poo.

“Their genetic backgrounds are all variable, they are not identical, so you need a large number of monkeys. For ethical reasons I think having cloned monkey will greatly reduce the (number of) monkeys used for drug tests.”

Monkeys are commonly used in medical research on brain diseases like Parkinson’s, cancer, immune and metabolic disorders.

‘Much failure’ before success

“The method used for these experiments is similar to that used to clone Dolly,” in 1996 but with several “updates,” said William Ritchie, an embryologist on the team that cloned Dolly the sheep at the Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh.

The process involves removing the nucleus from a healthy egg, and replacing it with another nucleus from another type of body cell. The clone becomes the same as the creature that donated the replacement nucleus.

“We tried several different methods, but only one worked,” said senior author Qiang Sun, Director of the Nonhuman Primate Research Facility at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neurosciences.

“There was much failure before we found a way to successfully clone a monkey.”

Adult donor cells were attempted, but those clones died within hours of birth.

What worked as replacement nuclei were cells that came from fetal connective tissue.

Poo said it took first author Zhen Liu, a postdoctoral fellow, three years to perfect the procedure.

“The SCNT procedure is rather delicate, so the faster you do it, the less damage to the egg you have, and Dr Liu has a green thumb for doing this.”

Ethical questions

Other monkeys have been cloned in the past, by a different and simpler technique called embryo splitting, which mimics how twins arise naturally.

The first primate ever cloned this way was Tetra, a rhesus monkey born in 1999.

Embryo splitting can produce a maximum of four at a time, while the new technique could in theory clone far more.

Still, the process that produced Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong remains “very inefficient and hazardous,” because the two babies were the only born from a group of 79 cloned embryos, said British scientists Robin Lovell-Badge, group leader of The Francis Crick Institute.

“While they succeeded in obtaining cloned macaques, the numbers are too low to make many conclusions,” said Lovell-Badge, who was not involved in the study.

“With only two produced it would have been far simpler to just split a normal early embryo into two, to obtain identical twins.”

Nor do the findings, published in the US journal Cell, bring scientists any closer to human cloning, Lovell-Badge argued.

“This clearly remains a very foolish thing to attempt, it would be far too inefficient, far too unsafe, and it is also pointless.”

Darren Griffin, professor of genetics at the University of Kent, greeted the paper with “cautious optimism” and called it “very impressive” from a technical standpoint.

“The first report of cloning of a non-human primate will undoubtedly raise a series of ethical concerns, with critics evoking the slippery slope argument of this being one step closer to human cloning,” he added.

“The benefits of this approach however are clear. A primate model that can be generated with a known and uniform genetic background would undoubtedly be very useful in the study, understanding and ultimately treatment, of human diseases, especially those with a genetic element.”