Business & Economy

How has the Economy during 2020 affected our current life? What is actually Economy? Were the effects of COVID too heavy in our economy? These are some of the topics we are going to examine in this article.

To start off what is Economy? Economy is the wealth and resources of a country or region, especially in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services. Now what is are Financial Markets? A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities and derivatives at low transaction costs. Some of the securities include stocks and bonds, raw materials and precious metals, which are known in the financial markets as commodities. 

During the middle of January, the coronavirus began to spread around Asia, then Europe and eventually became a “full-on” pandemic when it began to spread across America. As soon as the Coronavirus entered the USA the stock exchange fell. It is being called the third wost stock market crash in American History. This is because government officials from around the world began to shutdown all economic activity and creating strict lockdowns. When everything shut down millions of people were left unemployed therefore meaning no salary resulting in no food or anything. Apart from that, all air travel was limited. Therefore all the stocks in the airline industry fell to the ground. As stocks hit rock bottom with the Wall Street transition to online, people were stuck in their homes with fear.

This Pandemic changed our economy and our way of living in a way that was quite unprecedented. Companies and people started to move their “work spaces“ to online platforms such as zoom, google meets, teams and more. Some workers still had their jobs, although earning a little less, but of course better than nothing.

Since the economy was turning to the online ”realm“, stores like Amazon, eBay and other companies had a huge boom. citizens were stuck in their homes because of quarantine and needed an efficient way to order products and continue to “consume“. Apart from companies who sell products and ship them directly to your homes, companies like Netflix and Hulu Known as movie streaming giants, saw a considerable increase in the value of their stocks. A fantastic example of this would be the increase on the Netflix stock. In March 11 of the year 2020 the Netflix stock was worth $349.92, since then the value has gone up by 100 percent because the current price of the Netflix stock is $676.90.

To a certain extent we could say that Covid-19 has benefited those who invest in the Stock Market but not the “average consumer“. Definitely the pandemic has also created a more innovative future and country. In poetical words being stuck in ones home opened the creative side of the citizen and allowed it to blossom. Since the year 2020 We have seen a country who is more open towards innovation and the technology it holds. Nonetheless the pandemic did come with many downsides, including the death of millions and a unpredicted change in the course of our history. Lets hope the technologic advances brought with the pandemic remain as well as the stable growth of the economy.

Finally the Pandemic did not only bring changes to the stock market but also to home owners ano lessors. Since the government created a policy which would un allow lessors to remove tenants from their properties regardless if the tenant had payed the monthly fees or not. This is a good aspect to a certain degree because people would still have a home but this has some repercussions for the land owner because most likely they are reliant on that payment to feed their families or maintain this homes. I mention both sides because to me the most important thing is to tell both sides of the story. Having mentioned all these aspects I believe that we were transformed by this pandemic for the good and bad.

Tuesday November 2, 2021

“Machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make” -Nick Bostrom. Does this quote have some reality or is it just an absurd thought? In my opinion, this could become a reality and in this article, I will explain why. As always let's start by mentioning some key definitions and providing a historical background so we can further immerse ourselves in this topic. 

So what is artificial intelligence? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by animals including humans. When did the experimentation with (AI) begin? The experimentation with artificial intelligence cannot be traced to an exact date, nonetheless, historians believe that Greeks had myths about robots and Chinese and Egyptian engineers had built automatons. Nonetheless, we can conclude that formal (AI) started in the mid-1950s, in Scientific Conference at Dartmouth College, where the first “robot“ was introduced, with basic speech.

So how has (AI) advanced? I would personally say that during the past decade we have seen huge advancements in this technology, such as: 

-Vaccine development by AI 

-Fully Automated driving (Robo Taxis) 

-Applied natural language processing

-Quantum Computing

-Covid-19 Diagnosis (1 hour)

-Autonomous Battle Tank

-Lung Cancer Diagnosis

-Tesla Bot 

-IBM Watson

-etc…

Having mentioned some of the Artificial Intelligence advances in recent years we can see that these technologies are growing and improving at a very rapid pace. Could they perhaps improve to such a level in which they surpass Human intelligence? This question is hard to answer but in my opinion, it is a possibility. I don‘t mean human extinction but I mean huge unemployment rates for the next years. Let us take as an example Waymo One, a self-driving van that functions as a taxi. This type of vehicle could eliminate all the employment of taxi drivers from across the globe. Even though this process would take decades it would still become a reality. It’s as if we are living another Industrial Revolution. Similar to that period we are seeing unemployment going up and the stocks of ”big tech“ companies going up.

As an example, we can see Tesla's (TSLA) increase in stock value from 2010 to the present. As I mentioned before the Technological Revolution more or less began by the year 2010. Tesla (TSLA) stock in 2010 was worth 3.84 USD. Currently, we can see that the value of Tesla (TSLA) is 1,106.75 USD. Analyzing these numbers we can see a total increase of about +1,099.89 (28,642.90%) all-time. Another example is Palantir Technologies, by the end of 2020 their stock prices were at 9.20 USD, as of right now we can see their prices are at 21.63 USD. This means an increase of +12.41 (134.89%), which is of course fantastic. Finally, if we look at IBM’s Common stock and examine their all-time chart we can see their starting price in the 1980s was 12.09 USD. As of November 19, 2021, their stock prices have reached 115.75 USD, which is a +103.81 (858.64%). After taking a look at all these prices w can see that the tech industry is taking over the economy and causing a revolution. 

Now that we took a look into these facts we can conclude that these technologies will and have had a positive impact on our economies. If we see the implementation of AI in every industry we will suffer large rates of unemployment, nonetheless, I believe this crisis would not last for such a long time. Throughout history, we can see that the economy has some downfalls due to unemployment but they always can be resolved and everyone gets their job back because at the end of the day human labor is almost impossible to replace, apart from the judgment and moral values that human work and opinions are supposed to demonstrate. 

Therefore I do believe that we should continue to implement AI systems in our country and world. They are the future and will allow for safer and more precise manufacturing industry. As long as we don’t replace human labor completely. As always we should strive for innovation as long as it provides us with better quality of life since innovation is always good with a balance. 

Friday, November 19, 2021