Watch: Spectator Taking Selfie Sparks Major Crash At Tour de France
A spectator taking a selfie sparked a crash on stage 15 of the Tour de France on Sunday. The incident occurred about 80 miles from the finish line.
“Someone taking a selfie on the side of the road,” said commentator Dan Lloyd, who CNN quoted.
“It was one of the Jumbo riders who was clipped by them enough that he lost control … just somebody stepping too far out, trying to take a picture, clipping the riders who are hugging one side of the road to the other, and this is the consequence of that,” Lloyd continued.
BBC News said the spectator made contact with American rider Sepp Kuss, causing him to take down his team-mate Nathan van Hooydonck and other riders.
“There was a narrowing in the town and a spectator in the road, and I guess he just clipped my handlebars.
“Luckily I’m OK and hopefully the other guys in the crash are all right. It’s not ideal.
“I think it’s fatigue. It’s been such a hard race and everybody is a bit tired. You lose a bit of alertness and there’s always things out of your control as well.”
All riders who crashed were able to get back on their bikes and finish the 111-mile stage from Les Gets les Portes du Soleil to Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc.
Days ago, the official Twitter account of the Tour tweeted a video of what appears to be another spectator taking a selfie and nearly knocking out a rider.
By Alyce Anders, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist
Investors are keen to declare victory for the Federal Reserve in the war on inflation. But the June CPI data is only encouraging for bond bulls if you look at the world in a vacuum.
Yes, there was a lot to like in last week’s report: Headline CPI rose just 0.2% and the year-over-year rate fell 1% to 3.0%, the lowest since March 2021. Core inflation rose 0.2%, to 4.8% y/y, down from 5.3% in May and the peak of 6.6% in September 2022.
Not so fast, though. Base effects were huge factor and that means comparisons will be tougher going forward. And the composition of the decline showed volatile categories accounted for the bulk of the drop. That means future inflation relief might not be so linear.
And further improvement in supercore inflation, heavily influenced by the services sector, will be harder, due to its relationship with the labor market and wages.
The problem is that while job growth may become more limited from here, it won’t be for lack of demand — and that can fuel inflation. Demand for labor continues to outstrip supply, firms are still hiring and raising compensation while companies find relative ease in passing price increases to customers.
Since February I have not budged from my thesis that companies expect better business conditions in the second half of the year, in part due to inventory restocking and continued strength in services supported by a healthy consumer and labor markets. That means it’s still full steam ahead for the jobs market — something that won’t spell relief for inflation, in bad news for bond bulls.
Friday’s preliminary July survey report from the University of Michigan showed consumer sentiment shot to the highest since September 2021 amid slower inflation and relative stability in the labor market. Consumers see their finances on the upswing and the lowest percentage in a year-and-a-half blame high prices for eroding their living standards.
That could signal inflation expectations are getting entrenched. At the household level this could influence savings, investment decisions, along with wage- and price-setting behavior — making it harder for the Fed to bring inflation down.
Meanwhile, financial conditions are loosening and that’s keeping consumers spending, according to Bank of America Corp., which reported a 2.2% y/y household spending bump in the week ended July 8, encompassing the July 4 holiday, after a lull in June. Gains were larger than in 2022 and across a wide range of categories. While it is too early to say whether the recent gains portend stronger spending this year, the signs suggest they may.
The consumer and labor markets are strong, and investors know better than to put too much stock in these top-line, potentially one-time inflation metrics, as a good portion of the weakness this month came from out-sized price declines in categories that are not likely to be repeated. And when looking at the core measure of inflation that is most closely linked to labor costs, there is still a significant amount of pressure that threatens to keep inflation above the Fed’s 2% target.
Ford Slashes F-150 Lightning Truck Prices By Up To $10,000 As EV War Heats Up
Just two days following Tesla, Inc.’s tweet showcasing the first Cybertruck rolling off the production line, Ford Motor Company made a move to cut the prices of its F-150 Electric Lightning pickup truck.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday morning that Ford had reduced the price of the Lightning Pro by almost $10,000 to $49,995 (a 17% discount). The highest-end version of the EV truck, the Platinum Extended Range F-150 Lightning, was reduced by $6,000 to $91,995.
The Lightning pickup truck has encountered its fair share of problems. Shipments of the EV truck were halted earlier this year due to ‘battery issues.’ We shared footage of the EV fire that prompted Ford to stop production for nearly a month.
Marin Gjaja, chief customer officer of Ford’s electric-vehicle business, told WSJ that supply chain issues and rising material costs had driven the cost of the EV truck up over the last year. Ford has raised the MSRP of its EV trucks multiple times in the last year (read: here & here). The carmaker appears to be sacrificing margins to compete with Tesla amid the price war.
WSJ noted:
The move comes after Tesla — which had a 60% US market share in electric vehicles this year through June, according to Motor Intelligence — reported a surge in second-quarter deliveries that was helped by sharp price cuts and discounts rolled out earlier this year. Also over the weekend, Tesla began production of its Cybertruck nearly four years after the prototype was introduced.
Earlier this year, Ford cut Mustang Mach-E electric SUV prices after Tesla lowered its Model Y price.
In January, we were among the first to note that Tesla’s weaponization of price cuts was a move to crush EV competition.
Ford shares are down about 1% in premarket trading in New York following the news of price cuts.
Perhaps the price cuts also suggest demand issues…
Empire State Manufacturing Survey Signals Slowing Inflation, Growth
The New York Fed’s manufacturing survey beat expectations in July (+1.1 vs -3.5 exp), but fell to barely positive from the +6.6 print in June. The overall sentiment index has swung wildly in recent months from optimisms to pessimism and back, and that is highlighted by manufacturers’ diverging views of business conditions, with roughly 29% reporting an improvement and some 27% citing a deterioration.
Perhaps most notably, the report showed a further cooling of inflationary pressures.
Measures of prices paid and received by New York state manufacturers slid to levels not seen since mid-2020.
Source: Bloomberg
However, the outlook for prices received picked up, even as the overall outlook for business declined (with the average workweek expected to decline notably).
Luxury Group Richemont Plunges On Signs Of Worsening US Slowdown
Luxury group Richemont, the owner of Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry, reported a surprise drop in revenue from the Americas in the three months through June. Faltering demand in one of its biggest markets is an ominous sign of a weakening consumer.
Richemont reported an overall 19% increase in sales. Jewelry revenue rose 24%, coming in line with analyst expectations. Its watchmaker division recorded sales growth of 10% at constant currencies, missing analyst consensus forecasts. Most of the growth came from Asia-Pacific and European markets. However, the slowdown in luxury demand in the US, which saw a 4% decline, overshadowed optimism.
Pessisms about US markets sent shares of Richemont in Europe tumbling as much as 9.5%, the most significant decline in more than a year.
Luxury goods stocks slid on the news, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE fell 3%, Hermes dropped 3%, and Kering declined 2.0%. The Stoxx 600 Consumer Products index fell 2.6%.
In May, Richemont Chairman Johann Rupert warned about an emerging US downturn, forecasting that the world’s largest economy would experience a credit contraction.
Even though Richemont’s overall sales were solid, mainly because of Asia and Europe, there were new concerns about a China slowdown following overnight news of weaker-than-expected GDP numbers.
Here’s what Wall Street analysts are saying about the US slowdown (list courtesy of Bloomberg):
Citi (buy, PT CHF180.5)
A mixed bag of results but full-year consensus for sales and operating profits should remain broadly unchanged
“The miss was entirely due to the US turning negative,” analysts Thomas Chauvet and Lorenzo Bracco write
Expect pressure on the share price
Bloomberg Intelligence
“Richemont’s slight beat on consensus confirms support from high-margin jewelry, own retail and Asia, where we expect China to have rebounded,” wrote Bloomberg analyst Deborah Aitken
“That supports a more muted performance in Americas, where we expect more investment to build up,” she adds
The 2% drop in sales in the Americas falls slightly short of consensus, though there was a wide range of estimates due to its 25% fiscal 1Q23 comparable year-ago growth base there. Similarly for Europe, where growth is against a 42% year-ago mark
Vontobel analyst Jean-Philippe Bertschy
“Negative growth in the Americas is likely to temper some of the market expectations.”
This adds to the mounting concerns about a slowdown in the US economy, and it comes during a period where the Biden administration is promoting ‘Bidenomics’ ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle.
Zoltan Poszar On The Global Financial System’s “Monetary Divorce” From Dollar Hegemony
For the past decade, Zoltan Poszar has arguably been the world’s foremost expert in the ugly nuances and arcanery in world money-markets (and more recently, on how the financial and physical markets overlap on the geopolitical chessboard). However, amid all the chaos at Credit Suisse, the erstwhile expert on all things ‘pipes’ in the global funding markets has decided to go out on his own.
The name of his new firm is Ex Uno Plures, “and I will be providing research to institutional investors and consult institutional investors about the plumbing,” Poszar explains at the start of this discussion with Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast.
The former Credit Suisse man expounds on the concept of “Bretton Woods III” and the changing dynamics in the global economy, explaining that the traditional idea of a unipolar world dominated by the US dollar is shifting, and we are entering an era where multiple currencies will play a significant role. Simply put, he notes, the global financial system is going through a “monetary divorce” from US dollar hegemony and becoming more multi-polar.
“You know, these topics: de-dollarization, the re-monetization of gold, using central bank digital currencies to build out, to knit out a de novo financial system, you know, the petroyuan and the renminbi invoicing of commodities and traded goods going forward.”
Zoltan highlights the growing focus in the West on reducing dependence on Chinese supply chains and becoming more self-sufficient in key areas.
On the other hand, in the East, there is a focus on extracting themselves from the Western financial system and de-risking their relationship with the US dollar and Western financial institutions.
“If you go into a world where trade is not dominantly invoiced in dollars… it’s no longer a machinery where the dollars are getting created on the margin, the dollars are getting accumulated on the margin. And the question is how do you recycle the earned dollars back into funding and rates market?”
He mentions that there have been developments indicating a move away from the US dollar as the dominant currency, such as the renminbi (Chinese currency) being used for invoicing commodities and the increasing use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
“We are starting to see evidence that more and more commodity trades are being settled in renminbi… you can have a lot of ground that renminbi could gain.”
Zoltan suggests that CBDCs could create a new network of correspondent central banks, facilitating direct settlement of international transactions between central banks rather than relying on correspondent banks.
By establishing this state-to-state and central bank-to-central bank network, independent of Western financial centers and the dollar, Zoltan believes it could provide an alternative to the current dollar-based system.
“The underlying issue here is very much one where if you look at this unipolar world… you should be imagining correspondent central banks.”
Regarding the role of CBDCs, Zoltan suggests that they can be a part of RMB internationalization. CBDCs can help raise offshore RMB and tap swap lines with the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). He highlights the overlap between countries planning or piloting CBDCs and the network of swap lines with the PBOC. Zoltan notes that evidence shows an increasing number of commodity trades being settled in renminbi, and the share of renminbi in trade finance has been growing, indicating a potential gain in the currency’s importance in the coming years.
“Gold is definitely something that’s coming back as a theme… we are seeing this more and more in the data that especially the countries that are not geopolitically aligned to the US are shunning Treasuries and shunning the dollar and they are buying gold instead.”
He also emphasizes the need to rethink the role of central banks as dealers of last resort in the foreign exchange (FX) market, particularly for the global East and South, in the context of CBDCs and the correspondent central bank system.
Zoltan believes that the evolving dynamics of global trade and the emergence of multiple currency options for payment will have significant implications for dollar funding and rates markets. He mentions that if countries have the option to pay for commodities in different currencies such as dollars, renminbi, or gold, it could reshape the FX swap market and the demand for dollars. The accumulation of dollar reserves by countries, such as China, may also be affected if they can use their own currency for commodity imports, reducing the need for large dollar reserves.
“You can pay dollars for oil, but you can also pay renminbi for oil. But if you are a gold miner, you can also pay for oil with gold… You would just choose whichever one is cheaper.”
Shifting his focus from global to local, the money-market-mage mentions mentions that the solutions crafted by the Fed to address liquidity problems, such as the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), were powerful and surprising. He acknowledges that the BTFP program received mixed responses, with some seeing it as the right move within the framework of Basel III regulations, while others criticized it for potentially undermining the need for interest rate risk management in banks’ portfolios. Nevertheless, Zoltan believes that the BTFP is now a part of the system and will likely remain as a standard feature.
He highlights the importance of the BTFP in supporting the Treasury market by preventing banks from liquidating underwater bonds and potentially causing further strain in the market. The program provides a mechanism for banks to access liquidity without disrupting the market and serves as part of the scaffolding of the financial system.
He points out that while blanket deposit insurance may not be implemented, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) acts as a buffer between the troubled institution and the Federal Reserve, ensuring that the Fed’s lending is secured to its satisfaction.
Zoltan explains that the banking system will likely deal with problems on a case-by-case basis. While there may be challenges in credit portfolios and commercial real estate lending books, as well as potential consolidation across the banking system, there are levers that the Fed can pull to help resolve issues. He notes that interest on reserves provides banks with a steady stream of interest income, which can indirectly help pre-fill their capital base.
Zoltan also mentions the role of larger institutions like JPMorgan and the potential for banks like Wells Fargo, which still have unused balance sheet capacity, to assist in cleaning up issues if needed. He emphasizes that while there may be micro-dislocations and challenges in specific areas, the overall banking system is fine, and the key is to anticipate and position appropriately.
“I think the banking system is fine for now… There will be consolidation across the banking system. But there are many levers that the Fed pull to help clean things up.”
Regarding shadow banking, Poszar explains that if his thesis about world trade invoicing in currencies other than the dollar comes true, it could provide balance sheet relief for global systemically important banks (GSIBs). The shift of market making and FX functions to the balance sheets of central banks and the migration from correspondent banks to correspondent central banks would potentially benefit US banks, allowing them to use their balance sheets for other purposes.
“Regarding that shadow banking question… I think over time that’s going to provide balance sheet relief to all the GSIBs because FX market making, credit lines exclusively provided in US dollars… that’s the bread-and-butter domain of JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Citibank.”
He suggests that as the shadow banking system deals with credit and real estate problems, the banking system could become a source of strength, providing both capital and balance sheet capacity.
“It’s better to suffer those losses in non-banks than banks because banking crises are very nasty things.”
Zoltan concludes by noting that the concept of shadow banking has evolved, and he focuses on the new frontier of traditional financial functions migrating to the balance sheets of central banks, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and different currencies. He believes this shift will drive rates and funding markets in the future and intends to focus on mapping and understanding this new shadow banking terrain.
Finally, Poszar highlights the fact that “in the IMF data and in the data of the Gold Council, we see this massive increase in foreign central banks’ purchases of gold.”
“That gold aspect definitely survives… You basically have gained sovereignty from a monetary perspective… So again, you will not have to run with as much FX reserves…
…I think that gold aspect definitely survives… I think the commodity shortage and this… I think it’s definitely there in gold.“
* * *
Listen to the full podcast below:
Zoltan reveals his next move — 2:06
The meaning of Ex Uno Plures — 2:31
Is the Bretton Woods III thesis playing out? Plus a new angle on CBDCs— 5:19
Are big macro stories actionable for investors? — 15:26
Changes in structural demand for US Treasuries — 24:13
The role of commodities financing in Bretton Woods III — 27:21
Thoughts on the recent banking drama — 33:36 Strength of the banking system now — 39:51
CBDCs and central banks a the new shadow banks — 44:02
For decades, it has been goading Russia into a conflict it never intended to fight…
At the Vilnius summit last week, NATO leaders told anyone who will listen that Ukraine’s future lies within NATO. As US president Joe Biden put it to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine is going to become a NATO member.
But these are hollow words. NATO’s torturous communiqué, published on Tuesday, drowned any promise of membership in a sea of caveats. NATO leaders will ‘extend an invitation’ to Ukraine to join NATO after the war ends. But only if ‘allies agree and conditions are met’; only if they’re satisfied with ‘Ukraine’s progress on interoperability’; and only if Ukraine undertakes ‘democratic and security-sector reforms’. NATO has extended an invitation with one hand and withdrawn it with the other.
‘It seems there is no readiness either to invite Ukraine [in]to NATO or to make it a member of the alliance’,tweeted an angry Zelensky. His reaction is eminently understandable, as his nation fights for its own survival, and looks ahead to how it might secure its borders against the prospect of further Russian aggression in the future.
But Zelensky can hardly have been surprised by NATO’s two-facedness. Ukraine has been engaged in this membership dance with NATO for the best part of three decades. It always follows the same pattern. NATO makes eyes at Ukraine, beckoning it over with the offer of joining. At the same time, it recoils from Ukraine, tying up the possibility of membership in vague conditions. Always watching on is an unfailingly angry Moscow. This week, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov complained furiously about the threat of ‘possible NATO enlargement’ through the incorporation of Ukraine.
So NATO keeps opening the door to Ukraine, while constantly pulling it shut, and Ukraine has been left in the worst of all possible worlds. NATO has long said Ukraine will join – a blood-red line for the Russians – but never follows through on it, leaving Ukraine both imperilled and undefended.
NATO’s communiqué this week, written amid a conflict that it helped to stoke, stressed that ‘NATO does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia’ – and that it will ‘seek stability and predictability in the Euro-Atlantic area and between NATO and Russia’. But if NATO is seeking ‘stability and predictability’, it’s not doing a very good job. For all the talk of NATO expansionism representing some grand American masterplan, the communiqué reveals the approach to be blundering and incoherent, but no less dangerous for it.
This has dragged it into conflicts it has neither the will nor wherewithal to fight. And it has pulled it towards nations to which it can’t commit itself.
Mired in a world that its own expansion has helped to destabilise, NATO is now inherently incoherent.
As Ukraine is discovering to its cost.
This moment has been a long time in the making.
From its formation in 1949 up until the disintegration of the USSR, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was defined by the Cold War. It served an explicitly anti-Communist purpose, and it was limited by the geopolitical realities of the Cold War order. Indeed, its make-up remained pretty much unchanged throughout this period – only one member, Spain, joined between 1955 and 1991, taking the membership total to 16.
The end of the Cold War completely disoriented NATO, depriving it of both purpose and geopolitical boundaries. An alliance established for defensive, anti-Soviet ends was transformed during the 1990s into a vague vehicle for the promotion of Western ‘values’ and interests. It wanted to expand, enlarge, bring others into the Western fold. Of its current 31 members, 15 were added after 1991.
It expanded ever eastwards, towards Russia. First the former Warsaw Pact nations joined, followed by the former Soviet republics. At every stage, this process of expansion was antagonising Russia, intensifying the national chauvinism and militarism of its increasingly insecure ruling clique. In a grim irony, NATO expansion almost started to justify itself – by creating a Russian threat on NATO’s increasingly militarised eastern borders.
Ukraine was always going to expose the world-historical folly of NATO expansion. Indeed, Russian and Western diplomats warned, from the collapse of the USSR onwards, that Ukraine becoming part of NATO would provoke Russia. But that didn’t stop successive Western leaders from continuously flirting with the prospect, as part of NATO’s new expansive purpose. As early as 1994, NATO concluded a framework agreement with Ukraine, in the shape of the Partnership for Peace initiative. At the Bucharest summit in 2008, NATO explicitly declared, at the urging of then US president George W Bush, that Ukraine and Georgia would become members. A few weeks later, in an ominous sign of what was to come for Ukraine, Putin launched an invasion of Georgia.
Yet while NATO has spent nearly 30 years dangling the prospect of membership in front of Ukraine, dragging it towards the West and antagonising Russia, nothing has ever come of it. NATO may have felt impelled by its expansionist logic to flirt with expanding into Ukraine, but it has always baulked at the potential consequences – especially after Moscow showed its willingness to retaliate by annexing Crimea in 2014. And so the prospect of membership has always been on the table for Ukraine. But the table has always been out of reach.
NATO has never really been serious about Ukraine. It was still playing this game on the eve of Russia’s invasion, with secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg urging Ukraine to undertake myriad reforms before admission could be considered. And it is still doing the same thing now, while Ukrainians are fighting for their lives – and their nation’s very existence.
NATO’s incoherence remains a serious problem. It generates the conditions for conflict, yet it lacks the purpose and authority to impose order. Putin and the Russian elites are ultimately responsible for their barbaric invasion of Ukraine, but the role NATO expansion has played in stoking – and providing a pretext for – this conflict cannot be ignored.
Before Russia’s invasion, NATO was effectively provoking a war it didn’t want to fight. Now, it is helping Ukraine to fight for a future it refuses to commit to. Before this week’s summit, Joe Biden said that some ‘Israel-style’ security arrangements might be available for Ukraine ‘if’ there is a peace agreement with Russia. The ‘if’ was telling. It seems NATO’s main player won’t even guarantee vague security arrangements for Ukraine.
Of course, not all NATO members are of the same mind. By all accounts, the UK, Poland and now France want to bring Ukraine into NATO as soon as possible. The US and Germany, however, are far more reluctant. Both are said to be (understandably) fearful of being drawn into a future conflict with a nuclear-armed superpower – hence the US-led talk of more informal security arrangements for Ukraine. If only they’d realised this all those years ago. This internal disunity only makes NATO more incoherent, making it even more of a destabilising force.
Despite the abundant evidence to the contrary, some Western pundits have claimed that Ukraine obtaining NATO membership is the only way of securing the peace. Given the role NATO has played in fuelling conflict over the past three decades, that seems more than a little fanciful. If there is to be a lasting peace, it needs to be achieved outside of NATO. For Ukraine, it has always been nothing but trouble.
“We Will Bring You Down”: German MP Vows To Dismantle WHO’s Grip On Governments
German MP Christine Anderson last week shredded the World Health Organization, calling it a group of “globalitarian misanthropists” who she – and a group of seven other MPs, have vowed to dismantle in order to oppose the WHO supplanting democratically elected governments.
“An unelected body like who is controlled and run by multi-billionaires should never be allowed to act in place of a democratically elected government,” she said during the Citizen’s Initiative conference in Brussels.
Anderson says she’ll expose and name any individuals, including government officials and parliamentarians, who support the WHO ‘power grab’ and disrespect democracy.
“It is you [WHO] that is the small fringe minority,” she continued. “You are the ones who do not have the right to dictate to the people what they want and what they don’t want.”
“So take it from me … take it from the millions and millions of people around the world. We will bring you down, and we will not tire until we have done just that. So brace yourselves. We are here, and the fight is on. So let’s have the fight.”
The right-wing government has been ruthless in its immigration reforms since coming to power in September last year…
The Swedish government on Thursday announced plans to tighten the requirements for family immigration in an attempt to make Sweden a less attractive destination for asylum seekers and reduce the number of new arrivals into the country.
Sweden’s Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard.
The new proposals are also backed by the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats who keep the Moderate-led coalition in a majority through a confidence-and-supply agreement. One measure would raise the age for when the government can refuse a residence permit for a spouse or common-law partner from 18 to 21 to deter young migrant couples and prevent forced marriages.
“This corresponds to the highest age limit allowed under EU law,” said Swedish Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard who claimed “a paradigm shift is now being implemented in Swedish migration policy.”
The government also proposed limiting the issuance of residence permits on humanitarian grounds, which would remove the possibility of granting permits to children and certain adults in particularly distressing circumstances.
“The proposals aim to reduce the number of asylum seekers who apply to Sweden,” Sweden Democrats’ Party Secretary Bäckström Johansson told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
He later told a press conference that “the government and the Sweden Democrats continue to stand up for stricter migration legislation.”
The new Swedish government, voted in last September, was a significant swing to the right and has already made great strides in tightening immigration in line with voters’ wishes. The Sweden Democrats offered its support to the government on the sole basis that immigration into the country be reduced.
“We will make sure that action is actually taken to control migration, an area where the previous government utterly failed, and that we actually start to implement reforms to fight crime.
Migrants wanting to come to Sweden to work will need to secure employment with a salary of 26,560 Swedish krona (€2,347.15) per month, more than double the current requirement of SEK 13,000.
Critics among the liberal benches in Stockholm’s parliament claim the plans announced on Thursday risk violating the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights, an argument the Swedish government rejects.
Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard insists the proposals are in full compliance with international obligations and will promote greater integration among the currently divided societies that co-exist, particularly in Sweden’s major cities.
Is generative AI the catalyst for the next industrial revolution? Or is it a flash in the pan? Is the entire workforce destined to become AI makers and managers?
It’s possible that one, all, or none of these options could be correct.
But, despite how fast large language models (LLMs) and tools have grown the popularity of artificial intelligence, one thing that is clear is that there are no quick or easy answers.
Amidst all this uncertainty, opinions on how we use AI in the workplace have evolved. Recent survey data from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reveals how the labor force feels about AI in the workplace today, compared to how they felt five years ago.
As Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao and Bhabna Banerjee detail below, the consultancy surveyed 13,000 people (C-suite leaders, managers, and frontline employees) in 18 different countries for the results, and divided their top two responses into five categories: Curiosity, Optimism, Concern, Confidence, and Indifference.
ℹ️ Data note: Since the top two feelings were selected and categorized per question, the percentages across categories do not total to 100%.
More Optimism, Less Caution Around AI
General curiosity about AI remains almost unchanged (at 60%) since 2018.
Meanwhile, despite how rapidly AI has advanced in the last five years, or perhaps because of it, more than 50% of workers surveyed are optimistic about AI’s impact on work, a 17 percentage point (p.p.) increase from 2018.
And though 30% remain concerned about AI, this fell 10 p.p. over the same time period.
Clearly, respondents perceive AI in the workplace far more positively now than they did in 2018. But that’s not all. The respondents’ confidence in how AI can influence their work has also increased (+5 p.p.) and indifference towards it has shrunk significantly (-7 p.p.).
Given the explosive growth in generative AI since the end of 2022—ChatGPT gets 1.8 billion visitors a month—it’s not surprising that workers are far more aware of AI compared to just five years ago.
Optimistic Leaders, Cautious Employees
As with any survey data, the devil is in the details. BCG notes that the sentiments between rungs on the company ladder differ sharply around AI.
While two-thirds of polled leaders are optimistic about AI in 2023, less than half of polled frontline employees shared the same sentiment. Frontline employees were also the biggest group that responded with concern (nearly 40%).
Importantly, frontline employees are almost as optimistic as they are concerned about AI in the workplace.
Managers were closer to leaders in their AI optimism, though some experts believe their jobs might actually be the most at risk of being replaced all together.
More Use, More Optimism Around AI
With ChatGPT reaching 100 million active users just two months after launching, it’s clear that more and more people are experimenting with generative AI.
In BCG’s poll, regular AI users—categorized as people who use it at least once a week for work—are nearly three times more optimistic than concerned about AI’s impact on their work in 2023.
Even rare users are two times more optimistic than cautious, with the non-user category registering the most concern.
Which brings us to who these regular users are.
A staggering 80% of the leaders polled say they’re already regular users of AI, compared to 46% managers and 20% frontline employees.
While eyebrow-raising, these figures are not surprising.
People in leadership positions tend to have a mandate to stay ahead of the curve on current business trends, and along with their less strictly defined roles, have more freedom to try, use, and adopt AI tools while they formulate policies for their workplace.
At the same time, AI tools may not be green-lit en masse in many workplaces yet, preventing frontline employees from giving them a go.
So Is AI Coming For Jobs or Not?
Regardless of how definitively one can make a claim about artificial intelligence taking away people’s jobs, the survey respondents were unanimous that AI in the workplace will have some kind of an impact on their employment.
Slightly more than one-third felt that their job is in jeopardy as of 2023, while an overwhelming 86% polled said they needed training to adapt to how AI will transform their work.
With how fast the field is currently transforming, upskilling could be the safest path to follow as the AI revolution unfolds.
