I think the narrative that connects AI to job loss for many of the CEOs that are doing it, it is just too lazy - Jensen Huang
The narrative that connects AI to job loss is "too lazy", Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang told CNA on Monday (May 25). He added that it
Huang said some executives were blaming layoffs on AI "to sound smart."
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang criticized CEOs who blamed artificial intelligence for layoffs, calling the narrative "lazy." "I think the narrative that connects AI to job loss for many of the CEOs that are doing it, it is just too lazy," Huang told Singapore broadcaster Channel NewsAsia in an interview on Monday."AI has just arrived. How is it possible they're already losing jobs?" he asked.
Huang said it "doesn't make any sense" for companies to link layoffs to AI before generative AI tools became widely useful in the workplace."How is it possible that AI became productive and useful only six months ago, and they were somehow laying people off two years ago because of AI?" Huang told CNA in Taiwan.
Huang said some executives were blaming layoffs on AI "to sound smart.""I really hate that," he said.
Buyout fund manager Advent is exploring a sale of Singapore-based The Learning Lab, Singapore after two failed attempts earlier.
Rippledot Capital has been appointed the sell-side advisor.
Interesting news.
$400m USD is about $510m SGD. If we apply a generous P/S of 10 and a P/E of 20 for valuation, we are looking at annual revenue of $51m and net profit of $25m, assuming they have close to 100% ownership.
I recall reports of them failing to sell at $677m SGD previously, so I guess they have decided to reduce the multiples to try to clear the market, i.e. they have high intentions of selling and exiting the business.
Would you pay $510m for a tuition business with $25m net profit and maybe 10% YoY growth today?
That is 5% ROI, lower than the SPY and only slightly higher than the current 10Y treasury yield at 4.3%. Not me personally, even if this is one of the category's market leaders we are talking about with substantial brand equity and somewhat VRIN competitive advantages (but very possible for a well-resourced competitor to emulate) including tangible and intangible assets such as their best-in-market curriculum, curriculum and teaching staff, large number of existing students and networks, etc.
How One Of Singapore's Top 20 Richest Billionaire And His 2 Children Went Bankrupt - Lim Oon Kuin
It is sad to read this. Lim Oon Kuin and his 2 children declared bankruptcy and it seems like he has a high chance of dying in prison.
It is a classic case of taking on too much risk. Lim Oon Kuin bet the house and went long on oil futures during Covid. The futures famously turned negative which resulted in a lot of margin calls from brokers. I personally know an acquaintance who also lost huge sums from this unfortunate event. Many were surprised and asked 'How can the price of an asset turn negative?'. For futures, they can.
Lim Oon Kuin basically got margin called by his banks and decided to cook the books.
Many people say that Covid was a black swan event but if such black swan events happen almost routinely every decade or two to financial markets then how can they be really black swans?
'Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises' by Charles Kindleberger and 'This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly' by Reinhart and Rogoff are classics on macro crises and panics.
The 84-year-old was found ‘disoriented’ with breathing difficulties, says his son Read more at The Business Times.
The founder of Hin Leong, Lim Oon Kuin, has fallen on his sword, revealing he hid more than US$800 million in losses speculating in oil futu
Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises : Aliber, Robert Z., Kindleberger, Charles P., McCauley, Robert N.: Amazon.sg: Bo
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly : Reinhart, Carmen M., Rogoff, Kenneth S.: Amazon.sg: Books
One of the most important decisions companies make is whom they name manager. Yet Gallup research suggests they usually get it wrong -- cost
Key Points:
Companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time, Gallup finds.
Bad managers cost businesses billions of dollars each year, and having too many of them can bring down a company.
Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units, Gallup estimates. This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement. Gallup reported in two large-scale studies in 2012 that only 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and a staggeringly low 13% worldwide are engaged. Worse, over the past 12 years, these low numbers have barely budged, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide are failing to develop and contribute at work.
Conventional selection processes are a big contributor to inefficiency in management practices; they apply little science or research to find the right person for the managerial role. When Gallup asked U.S. managers why they believed they were hired for their current role, they commonly cited their success in a previous non-managerial role or their tenure in their company or field.
Very few people can pull off all five of these requirements of good management. Most managers end up with team members who, at best, are indifferent toward their work -- or, at worst, are hell-bent on spreading their negativity to colleagues and customers. However, when companies can increase their number of talented managers and double the rate of engaged employees, they achieve, on average, 147% higher earnings per share than their competition.
Reimaging Government From The Ground Up - Li Hong Yi
I think Hong Yi makes some very good points. He talks about how managers have limited attention and can get overwhelmed when too many things are placed on their plate.
The attention based view is a known and mainstream logic among management experts.
However, I don't fully agree that is a problem in most government organisations due to delegation and scoping of work.
For example, the CEO tells the CTO to create a new website. The CEO will leave everything to the CTO and his team. The CEO may take a look and leave some comments for the CTO but that's it.
I think the issue he faces is more of his engineering teams going into many different organisations and making apps for them and getting the apps approved. It is perhaps more of an innovation, structural and authority issue which I think GovTech has solved quite well so far by being an inhouse WOG consulting and development arm.
3 Changes To Resolve Over 50% Of Workplace Conflicts
Some of my observations over the years.
Don't throw your temper, exercise patience
Don't throw your temper, especially at the first instance. Be patient, communicate and always give someone at least 2 chances to explain first. The second chance can be days after the initial chance to give the person time to think and prepare properly.
People who throw their tempers at the slightest things are bad managers and colleagues.
Don't make a minor issue into a major one
Good managers resolve major issues and set up checks and balances to prevent them from happening.
Bad managers and colleagues do the reverse, they make minor issues into major ones and are unable to prioritise (i.e. everything is important and a priority). They lack courage to speak truth to power.
Always hear all sides to a story
Never listen to one sided stories, always get all parties into the same room and listen to all sides and be fair. This minimises misunderstandings and reduces rumours spreading.
Complainants do not have the right to keep their complaints secret from the accused, the accused person always has a natural justice right to know the details and to respond (under the Employment Act 'Due Inquiry' must be given for all investigations into possible misconduct). Apply confidentiality to others who are not involved or to whistleblowing cases where the organisation's reputation is at risk due to a possible major crime.
Walgreens Has A Cult ‘Peelable’ Candy, Courtesy Of A TikTok Craze
It’s tiny, squishy, chewy, shaped like a cute baby mango and GenZers have gone crazy over it. Walgreen’s can’t keep it in stock.
“The interactivity of it is really cool and it’s what makes the peelable candy really fun,” said Marty Esarte, vice president of Walgreens’ owned brands, in an interview with CNN. “It also creates a discussion point: Is the outer layer better than the inner gummy or are they better together or separate?”
Esarte admits that he didn’t expect the squishy treat to become a viral hit. “Literally in about four to five days after we launched it, we sold through nearly all of the product,” he said. “If we had expected that to happen, we probably would have had more.”
For Nice Gummies, Tiktok is a good channel. Most audiences are technically in the consideration stage (everyone except perhaps diabetics or certain groups can eat gummies and are thinking of eating constantly) and if the video successfully calls them to action, they can simply buy the gummies at Walgreens later (no locational constraints mostly).
Videos of third parties (influencers) trying out the gummies and reviewing them is much more persuasive and authentic than the brand itself boasting that the candy is good (too 'corporate').
Having a video go viral and selling out is the dream of many small business owners. For professional marketers, we know that it is impossible to make this happen with certainty, what we can do is to maximise the chances by having a stream of good organic content, using good hashtags, descriptions, integrating with other channels, creating synergy with paid amplification, working with suitable influencers, etc. But luck and having a good product plays a big role as well. For more predictability in conversions, that is where paid amplification comes in.
For B2B, higher priced and more niche items, for example refrigerators and tuition classes, organic Tiktok may not work as well in of driving conversions as most FYP audiences may not be 'in market'. Organic Tiktok may serve largely to boost awareness and recall but not drive conversions, although it can also assist conversions as one of the later touches' channels with earlier touches' channels amplifying to 'in market' audiences.
Property Lim Brothers To Introduce Code Of Conduct
Co-founder Adrian Lim said that morale among agents was affected from the fallout.
My view on this PLB news may be a bit controversial but I regard this as a personal thing and not a public one.
In fact, it is probably the norm in most SMEs in Singapore that the TMT comprises people who have close relationships with the owner.
The owner of a private company has the right to appoint anyone he wants to his csuite, be it his son, his mistresses (notably Stanley Ho), his friends or someone else.
Is this the best possible way to run a company? Probably not but who is anyone to tell an owner how to run his own company?
The changes seem to be very reactionary to me and mostly an attempt at retaining staff and reducing bad press.
I remember in 2021, Facebook rebranded as Meta. Just after the Covid pandemic, Mark Zuckerberg was very bullish on Virtual Reality, which he declared would be the future of Facebook.
"Over time, I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we're building towards" Mark Zuckerberg
"Imagine, for example, how useful it could be to wear glasses that give you virtual directions in your line of sight, or immediate translations of street signs in foreign languages. Or even make it possible for you to have a conversation with someone who is thousands of miles away as a three-dimensional hologram in your living room instead of a head and shoulders on a flat screen. And, as I will go on to explain in more detail, the potential societal benefits — particularly in education and healthcare — are vast, from helping med students practice surgical techniques to bringing school lessons to life in new and exciting ways" Nick Clegg
The social media giant says the new name will better encompass what it does.
The metaverse is a logical evolution. It’s the next generation of the internet — a more immersive, 3D experience.
There was no real data, even experimental ones, to back his opinion and 'vision'. VR was not widely used by most people and the technology was not mature. However, Mark Zuckerberg was so enthusiastic about it he renamed his company and repeatedly spoke about it.
Fast forward to 2026, 5 years later, revenue from VR is around $2b annually and losses have increased to $19b annually (about 25% of Meta's entire net profit). A lot of those costs are in engineers salaries and Meta should be able to re-deploy the engineers elsewhere to work on other products, in other words, they are quite dynamic. Meta possesses 'dynamic capabilities'.
Meta went rather big on VR spending up to $20b annually, they did not just experiment with a smaller budget. VR is still immature and has not gained inroads into the mass market. However, Meta glasses is a bright spot and are seeing increasing sales in 2025 and has sold up to 7 million sets.
In 2025, Meta seems to have switched its focus to AI, just like every major tech company.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission for his company to be the first to reach so-called artificial superintelligence — generally conside
VR is still sputtering and still seems far from mass market adoption. The number of early adopters is also small.
For a new technology to gain mass market adoption, the usual strategic process is for price to fall low enough and for the technology to be useful and good enough to attract mass market personas. A lot of work also has to be done in terms of marketing or in the unique case of Tesla, earned media amplification, to create awareness and to persuade different personas to try it.
Will VR become mass market one day and will Meta ever be able to turn a profit on its VR business? No one knows, including Mark Zuckerberg.
With the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in its seventh day, President Trump says the aim is to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction and "
As the Iran war continues, I am reminded that even war, which is one of the most labour intensive activity, is now largely a competition of technology and military science.
As Iran fires its drones and missiles, America's friends such as Israel and Kuwait are shooting them down with layers of air defences. To someone like myself who is not a military expert, it is quite amazing the precision at which these equipment operate.
The Hollywood films depicting WW2 scenes of soldiers charging to their deaths and commanders spurring them with motivational speeches is not the reality today.
F22s take out the main air defences, F35s and B2s take out the remaining threats and B1s, F15s, F16s, B52s and drones carry out precision strikes after air superiority has been established.
Even during WW2, a group of physicists working on the Manhattan Project created the nuclear bomb which then triumphed over every weapon and army on earth, ending WW2.
If the nuclear bomb had been invented by Germany, we would be living in a very different world today.
Budget 2026: Surplus for FY2025 Revised Up Sharply to S$15.1b
The surplus was previously estimated at around S$6.8 billion.
Our government has performed well fiscally and through their often centre right policies.
Singapore's main competitive advantage is good governance. From good governance, the rest, such as a good business environment, safe streets, clean estates, low corruption, effective policies, good infrastructure, follow.
One day, if our good governance is gone, perhaps if a crooked government gains power and starts filling key positions of power with their allies, then everything will start to unravel slowly within a decade and even the reserves may be touched.
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
Mustafa Suleyman believes current AI computational power will only accelerate, disrupting every kind of work you do “sitting down at a compu
If I imagine that I am an average marketer going about my daily BAU tasks, let's see how many tasks can AI do at the moment.
First, I spend an hour checking my emails, messages and replying to them.
AI cannot do these for me. They can help to draft templates but I am still doing most of the work.
Next, I sit into 3 meetings, to discuss problems, provide updates and communicate with others.
AI also cannot do these for me at all currently. It cannot even schedule meetings for me via voice commands.
AI is great for preliminary research but that is about all it can do.
Next, I focus on media buying on various media platforms.
AI also cannot do this for me at all, even the computer use AI models are very prone to basic errors.
Today, with laptops and the Tripartite Alliance in Singapore promoting workplace flexibility, white collar work can be done at least partially remotely, reasonably speaking.
However, even with soft legislation pushes, government encouragement and the real ability to do it technologically, many companies want employees to spend 5 days in office sitting at a desk for fixed hours daily. In many companies, non public facing employees are still expected to dress in business shirts and pants.
So yes, I am pretty sure we won't have all our white collar work automated by 18 months time. In fact, I doubt this will happen even in 10 years' time.
The agency announced on Jan 27 moves to tighten course funding guidelines to maintain course quality. Read more at straitstimes.com. Read mo
Many Singaporeans received $4k or more of Skillsfuture credits to take up courses. This is substantial funding. From the government's perspective, they want employees to learn new skills, stay relevant and be more productive.
I know of friends who took up wine tasting courses, baking courses and excel courses. Many companies have been set up to provide courses that accept citizens' Skillsfuture credits and their education are not exactly the best. They are highly sales and profits oriented and not student centric.
Kudos to companies which are serious about adult education and have serious curriculum, trainers and online and offline materials and good pedagogy.
Personally, I wanted to use my credits but could not find a course I liked in Singapore with a suitable registration date so I paid $70 for a Coursera subscription and frankly it has been great.
Learn in-demand skills with online courses and Professional Certificates from leading companies like Google, IBM, Meta, and Adobe. Explore f
When I am free, I work through design modules by the California Institute of Art and cybersecurity modules by Microsoft. I like that these are world class curriculum and organisations, so I am assured that I am learning the right stuff from world leading experts, which is the whole point of forking out money for formal education for me.
Access to Coursera, in my view, is basically enough to self teach most subjects at the bachelor's degree level for a motivated adult.
Maybe the Singapore government should just provide all adults with a Coursera subscription. For those who want offline instruction and interaction, there are the local universities and polytechnics and established private schools.
Looking at the daily charts, SLV is currently around $70, which is also the daily 50 SMA.
Trapped momentum longs over the past 2 months, as well as longs prior to that, will be looking to exit, either to take profits or stop loss, if they have not already.
Shorts, hearing the news, will be looking to take up positions.
Size traders, both longs and shorts, will be fighting it out around the 50 SMA, which is probably what we are seeing. This is an area with many retail stops, which the institutional traders will want to take out.
If the longs cannot defend the 50 SMA, the 200 SMA at around $46 may be tested.
Looking at the monthly, it looks even more over extended. SLV has never closed anywhere near $50 on a monthly basis prior to the recent ramp up before except in 2011. Partly depending on how crazy Trump gets, it is conceivable we can see SLV gradually fall back to under $50, which is the monthly 20 SMA and also the daily 200 SMA.
JP Morgan Securities acted as the primary stopper, absorbing 633 contracts at the $78.29 settlement price. Throughout January, silver was ag
Of course size and institutional traders can push intraday price around. They don't just have the size to do it, they can also see the majority of order flows as they purchased them from the major brokers.
There was already a lot of selling with the news, they easily dropped the bid all the way to the bottom and then at a level low enough where selling dried up, placed a big bid right at the bottom to buy the selling that was drying up and then pushed the bid back up.
