Global Millionaire Count to Surge Despite Wealth Inequality, UBS Report Reveals

According to the annual report by Swiss Bank UBS, the number of dollar millionaires keeps on rising in the globe despite global wealth inequality. UBS did a survey in 56 countries and found out that millionaires are going to increase a lot by 2028 in 52 countries. In The Netherlands and UK, the number of millionaires is going to decrease by 2028 and there will be 17% less millionaires in 2028 than 2023 in these two countries.

The USA has the most number of millionaires right now. It had 7.64 million millionaires in the USA in 2000 but now 21.95 million people from the total population are millionaires in 2023. This number will increase up to 25.43 million by 2028. 0.4% of China’s population are millionaires which makes six million total millionaires in the country. France is followed by China with 2.9 million people being millionaires in 2023.

Other countries with the most number of millionaires in 2023 are Japan (2.83 million), Germany (2.82 million), UK (3.06 million), Canada (1.99 million) and Australia (1.94 million). In 2000 or early 21st century, there were just 14.7 million total millionaires in the countries which have been analyzed. In 2023, there are about 58 million total millionaires in all these countries.

USD Millionaires (current and forecast)
Country	2023	2028	2023–2028
Taiwan	788,799	1,158,239	47%
Türkiye	60,787	87,077	43%
Kazakhstan	44,307	60,874	37%
Indonesia	178,605	235,136	32%
Japan	2,827,956	3,625,208	28%
South Korea	1,295,674	1,643,799	27%
Israel	179,905	226,226	26%
Mexico	331,538	411,652	24%
Thailand	100,001	123,531	24%
Sweden	575,426	703,216	22%
India	868,671	1,061,463	22%
Brazil	380,585	463,797	22%
Norway	253,085	308,247	22%
Russia	381,726	461,487	21%
Canada	1,991,416	2,402,200	21%
Australia	1,936,114	2,334,015	21%
South Africa	90,595	108,557	20%
Switzerland	1,054,293	1,253,334	19%
Hong Kong SAR	629,155	737,716	17%
Chile	81,274	95,173	17%
France	2,868,031	3,322,460	16%
United States	21,951,319	25,425,792	16%
Belgium	564,666	653,881	16%
Saudi Arabia	351,855	403,874	15%
UAE	202,201	232,067	15%
Germany	2,820,819	3,229,283	14%
Hungary	24,692	28,260	14%
Qatar	26,163	29,927	14%
Singapore	333,204	375,725	13%
Spain	1,180,703	1,327,797	12%
Portugal	171,797	189,235	10%
Italy	1,338,142	1,461,731	9%
Mainland China	6,013,282	6,505,669	8%
Greece	80,655	80,295	−0.45%
Netherlands	1,231,625	1,179,328	−4%
United Kingdom	3,061,553	2,542,464	−17%

Read next: 2024 Data Shows Decreasing Global Wealth in Most of the Countries this Decade
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Fury Increases In Latin America Against Meta After It Fails To Notify Artists About Using Their Data To Train AI

Meta making use of personal data belonging to the artist community for AI training has long been a subject of debate. Many have resorted to complaints, lawsuits, and going as far as to boycott its apps as the tech giant failed to get consent or reward compensation.

Now, fury is increasing in the Latin American region as many continue to complain about Meta’s AI models scrapping their online work for the sake of training.

Meta tried to respond by rolling out a new form for those in the UK, US, and EU where it would request users to opt-out before their data was used. Unfortunately, the same was not the case with those in Latin America who are now complaining about Meta’s hidden tactics of failing to do the same, stripping them of hard work and great efforts without any compensation.

One illustrator in the EU has explained how Meta marketed her hand-painted crafts featuring everyday life without consent as she was not an artist and therefore Meta didn’t feel the need to ask her before using her material.

Now, people in Latin America are furious as AI regulation is close to being non-existent. There are no rules for privacy and even if there are, it’s more or less like they never existed. Hence, no users in this part of the world get a say on whether or not their content could be used for the sake of training Meta’s AI models.

Speaking to nine artists arising from this region, one local media outlet had their views recorded including how they were blindsided by Meta’s unfair actions. But the tech giant is refuting the claims and mentioning that it sent them plenty of alerts in the app, including emails to explain what was going on.

Meta is now being slammed for discrimination and failure to adopt the same regulations globally that are seen in places like the US and EU. Meta’s spokesperson is not backing down, adding how the firm believes in creating and using AI that’s safe and responsible.

It continued to explain how using public data for AI model training was nothing new and a widely accepted and used practice in today’s modern day and age, definitely not something that they felt was unique.

In 2023 September, Facebook’s parent firm rolled out a host of new AI features where the content was mined across various apps. This is where posts shared publicly via different apps were part of the information used for training models that it unveiled at Connect.

Common examples included the AI-based search tools combined into the Instagram platform as well as picture generators located across different nations like Ghana, India, the US, South Africa, Australia, and Canada.

This is not the first time that we’ve heard about complaints rolling out from the Spanish community. Many artists have also reiterated the same thoughts on how Meta indulges in data collection practices that are illegal and unfair so it can attain its own benefits at the expense of others.

This is why more companies are now seeking to add copyright protection policies to ensure fair trading, along with gender equality and moves to reduce carbon footprint.

The perfect example has to be Brazil which is giving greater protection to citizens than that observed in any other Latin American nation. Its laws related to data protection are the most similar to that seen in the EU.

Therefore, Meta is bound by the law to provide users with the chance to opt out of using their data for training AI models.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: Most of the Apps on Google Play and App Store are Making a Decent Chunk of the Revenue from Subscriptions
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Most of the Apps on Google Play and App Store are Making a Decent Chunk of the Revenue from Subscriptions

Most of the top apps on Google Play and App Store are making the majority of the revenue from in-app subscriptions. Out of 50 top grossing apps in the USA, 31 of them have subscriptions and make most of the money from it. 4% of the apps on App Store and Google Play had in-app subscriptions in May. This shows that there aren’t many apps that monetize through subscriptions. A lot of apps on Google Play and App Store are still free and do not have any ads.

The apps which are using the most subscriptions are gaming apps. Majority of the gaming apps are using subscriptions to monetize. Many of the developers of other apps are also using in-app subscriptions now. According to App Intelligence, 44% of the total revenue was generated from subscriptions.

This doesn’t mean that adding subscriptions to apps is going to make developers millionaires overnight. But many apps on App Store and Google Play are making billions collectively so adding subscriptions in apps does help in generating some good revenue.

H/T: AF.

Read next: Study Shows AI Models are Not Capable of Performing Tasks Which Are Beyond their Training
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Study Shows AI Models are Not Capable of Performing Tasks Which Are Beyond their Training

MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory researchers recently conducted a research to find out how different LLMs perform memorization and reasoning skills. Most LLMs go through complex training so they can perform complex tasks. The researchers gave different basic tasks to AI models like GPT-4 and Claude which were opposite to their default tasks, the tasks they were trained on.

The researchers developed some tasks which were entirely new to these two LLMs but these tasks were made according to the capabilities of these AI models. Different logical, evaluating and arithmetic tasks were designed for them. When large language models are trained with arithmetic tasks, they are mostly given arithmetic in base 10 so when users interact with them, the LLMs give the impression that they are good at arithmetic tasks. But they are unable to perform well in all arithmetic bases. The research showed that LLMs can just perform common tasks which are consistent and do not have any generalization. This pattern was the same when these LLMs were given altered chess problems, chord fingering and spatial reasoning.

Despite all this, the study has some limitations as it just experimented with specific tasks and not real life problems and challenges. But the research shows that AI models are not as capable as humans may think they are. They just do what they are trained about and cannot perform well if they are given tasks which were not in their training.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

New Claims Raise Eyebrows On Google’s Gemini Accessing Personal Data Without Consent

In the last few years, the trend of generative AI has picked up the pace.

From OpenAI to Microsoft and Google, the list of AI tools and chatbots keeps increasing. This has also given rise to a plethora of opportunities that come with increased usage but at the same time, the drawbacks related to privacy must be addressed.

Keeping that thought in mind, many are now raising questions about Android maker Google’s Gemini chatbot. The latter was accused of accessing and reading personalized documents related to tax via the tool’s latest sidebar.

Image: Solen Feyissa / Unsplash

This new sidebar was launched on an array of Google apps including Docs and Drive, giving the AI chatbot the chance to see what users are working on and at the same time, provide suggestions and an analysis of the documents at hand.

However, one user was baffled to see the tool go way beyond its authorized limits by reading his personal tax documentation when no consent was given. He explained how his tax returns were very confidential and for Gemini to summarize it was an eye-opener.

Seeing Gemini ingesting data present inside private documents is a huge wake-up call as it’s doing tasks that nobody has asked it to do and users aren’t aware of how they can stop this.

The fact that AI tools are pulling out commands without receiving any prompts is worrisome and now they’re racing to ask Google how they can disable settings for Gemini to stop it from breaching their privacy.

What was even more shocking is when the user actually found the setting to switch such actions off, he was confused as they were already disabled so why was the AI tool doing something that it was never instructed to do?

While tech giant Google does provide support documents that detail more about how Gemini should be used across Google Drive, the company fails in terms of detailing how the feature could be disabled or how to stop the AI chatbot from getting access to data inside Google Drive.

Google has failed to address the concerns of many who don’t think this should ever happen. It’s a huge eye-opener to the world in terms of what Gemini is capable of and how AI cannot be trusted at any given point in time.

Gemini is either hallucinating or this setting is so buried that I can't find it in either my @Google account or Drive settings or Gemini Privacy Hub after searching for 15 minutes. (Pardon my french in the screenshot but felt like expressing anger to the machine...) pic.twitter.com/xyRi8pyTTb

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 10, 2024

...what if I still don't want it looking at my docs unprompted? I didn't *ask* it to summarize my taxes, it just did. It should be up to me whether/which private docs prompt the model.

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 10, 2024

...which again highlights why *it shoudn't ingest my documents without my prompting it to*

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 10, 2024

I’m curious whether other people are showing the same (default?) toggles I’m seeing. Right now workplace and yt music are turned off but the others (yt video, flights, hotels, and maps (!!!) integrations are all on. Don’t think I’ve seen or touched these before…

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 10, 2024

...nor does it justify or explain why they made invocation of Gemini for one document sticky for all documents after that unless and until you close it, meaning all those doc summaries you didn't affirmatively ask for end up in your Gemini chat logs. So...

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 11, 2024

Yet, as shown above, I interacted with it just today. So...this is another privacy feature that doesn't appear to be working correctly? And/or was overridden by signing up for Workplace Labs? Who knows. I gotta go to bed but hopefully will get more info tomorrow.

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 11, 2024

Read next: AI Writing in Education: Study Shows Alarming Detection Gaps
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

AI Writing in Education: Study Shows Alarming Detection Gaps

A new study by University of Reading published in PLOS One finds that many students submit their AI generated exams and most of them go undetected too. The researchers of the university secretly submitted AI generated exams in addition to real exams done by students of psychology and made some examiners check the papers. The results found out that 94% of the AI generated submissions weren’t detected by examiners.

This wasn’t all because the AI generated answers didn’t only get passed by human examiners, but they also got more scores as compared to exams by human students. In some cases, a difference of full grade was also observed between AI generated exams and human written exams. Some AI generated exams also got first-class honors.

• Also read: How To Use Google Docs Secret Feature to Detect AI Content Writing

This study has raised serious questions about the future of education. As AI is growing fast and is used by a lot of people, how can colleges and universities administer AI detection methods? Many of the AI detection tools are inadequate and cannot detect AI writing efficiently. Many of the educational institutions are not using traditional exam procedures and are making their students write assessments. Assessments can easily be written using AI tools but no institute is prepared to detect AI in those assessments.

An associate professor at Reading’s School of Psychology says that educational institutes shouldn’t go back to hand-written exams but they should work to evolve with AI. The researchers say that this study should be seen as a call for action because if the students are using AI tools in their education, how can they work in a reputable institute without having any knowledge about the subject they studied. Educators and administrators should think seriously about it because the institution of education is not in a good place right now.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

WhatsApp is Going to Add a New Feature Which Will Let Users Translate Messages on App

WhatsApp is one of the best messaging apps out there because it provides all the features users need for messaging and staying in touch with other people. According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is set to have a live translation feature that would provide users in-app translations. This feature will help users communicate well with foreign, languages, customers and companies.

Right now, users need to go to a translation website or app to translate messages on WhatsApp and most of the time users use Google Translate. This takes extra time so now Google Translate is going to partner up with WhatsApp so users can directly translate the messages. Google’s Live Translation Technology is going to provide leverage on WhatsApp. Users will have to download different translation packs to translate messages on the app. There is no news about how many languages are going to be supported on WhatsApp but Google Translate can translate more than 100 languages so the same will probably happen on WhatsApp.

This feature is currently available on Beta version but it is not activated right now. WhatsApp or Google has shared no news about how users’ privacy will be managed if these two tech giants are set to partner up for translation purposes on WhatsApp. Even though companies claim to protect users’ privacy, most of the time they share users’ data without their permission or even train AI models with that data without any consent. We will have to see how this partnership will affect the privacy of users.

Image: WBI

Read next:

• UBS 2024 Report Shows Decreasing Global Wealth in Most of the Countries this Decade

• Researchers Found Out that Writers Can Generate Interesting, Enjoyable and Stories with Good Plot Lines Using AI
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World