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FUTURE REPORT
76
42
04
04 The true superpowers 42 Batteries are taking off 76 News media grows strong
The online world is ruled by Big Tech Electric aircraft are starting to take After decades of challenges and
– and their influence is felt in the real off – literally. Airlines have invested change, Schibsted’s news media
world as well. Is it too late to force the in trials, and are aiming for short- stands strong. Now there are six
companies to start prioritising public range commercial flights to launch battles to win to leverage success.
good over profit? somewhere within the next decade.
Welcome to our outlook on trends we find interesting within tech, people and business.
Schibsted Future Report is written by our own people and inspired by our media heritage.
If you want to share the content – you can find it on futurereport.schibsted.com.
Intro
AN UNPRECEDENTED
MOMENT IN HISTORY
I
n 1839 Christian Schibsted started a small printing business. Two decades later, he
founded the newspaper Aftenposten to branch out, which became Schibsted’s first
example of rethinking its business.
Today, after 180 years of entrepreneurship, innovation and investments,
Schibsted has grown into a family of strong brands ranging from media houses to
online marketplaces, digital growth businesses, and start-up investors. We still car-
ry with us both the values of our media heritage and that desire to branch out, go
for growth, rethink and reinvent ourselves.
Our media heritage also inspires the Schibsted Future Report. This annual outlook on
trends within tech, people and business is written by our own people and we truly believe
that sharing ideas and being transparent is a foundation for democracy.
In the past year, our willingness to go for change and growth has given us the opportu-
Kristin nity to consolidate the Nordic classifieds market, by acquiring the Danish classifieds mar-
ketplaces DBA and Bilbasen, and welcoming them into the Schibsted family. We believe
Skogen Lund this puts us in an even better position to deliver on our mission; to empower people in
their daily lives.
T
CEO
Years in Schibsted: 3 as CEO o keep growing, Schibsted (and everyone else) will have to deal with the fact that
and 6 as Commercial Director and the world is at a crossroads. The digitalisation of society has taken leaps during the
CEO of Aftenposten 2004–2010 pandemic, and everyone is racing to build and maintain a digital relationship with
their customers. To succeed, they will need developers, UX-experts, engineers and
technologists. The problem is that there are too few to go around as it is.
According to Gartner’s Emerging Risks Survey 2021, global talent shortage is now the
top emerging risk for all organisations. Korn Ferry estimates a worldwide deficit of 4.3
million tech-skilled workers by 2023, of which 1.5 million in Europe alone.
On top of that, studies carried out by Microsoft, among others, show that a high per-
centage of the workforce want the option of working remotely and are willing to change
jobs to do so. What is more; remote job postings on Linkedin have increased five times
since the pandemic outbreak.
In other words: we are witnessing two fundamental changes in the labour force simul-
taneously. First, a global shortage of tech people, which has already been named “the
war for talent”. Second, a global talent migration in a border-free, post-pandemic labour
market, often referred to as “the great reshuffle”.
There’s no easy way for employers to counter any of these fundamental changes.
Competing on compensation and benefits alone, for instance, may prove to be diffi-
cult when the global giants have seemingly bottomless war chests in the war for talent.
However; one can compete on culture – offering a better place to work, and one can com-
pete on purpose – offering a more meaningful place to work.
I
think we are facing an unprecedented moment in the history of work, where we all
need to rethink not just how we work, but why we work. More people will be doing
work they love at companies they feel passionate about. And this presents opportu-
nities to organisations who engage their employees, offering trust and purpose.
I also think it is a good idea to showcase the talented people already working at the
company, letting their ideas and voices be heard. And that is exactly what we do with the
Schibsted Future report.
1
Tech
36
18
12
12 Get ready for the metaverse 18 Medicine is getting artificial 36 Working remote for 10 years
It’s more than just video conferencing Neural prosthetics, protein-folding AI, Virtual collaboration is old practice for
in virtual reality. The loosely defined and machine-learning disease control. Schibsted Tech Polska. The employees
metaverse is taking its first steps, and These are just a few of the areas where in Poland have been parts of teams
this is story of why you should start new tech is helping doctors be faster distributed over multiple countries
caring. and smarter. since the tech hub’s inception.
Tech
STUCK IN le Peninsula
THE WORLD
App
OF BIG TECH Cap
ll
Itunes Ato
eH
It’s been a rough few years for a handful of US tech companies, due wa
ard
re
to a seemingly endless stream of scandals and harsh criticism from
politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. The result? “Big Tech” is bigger
than ever. But what if they have only started to flex their muscles?
4 5
Joint Empire of Facebook Gulf of
Misinformation
m
gra
sta
f In
so
dom
cer
King Whatsapp
uen
Infl
S
everal executives reacted with shock, according people posted. Critics would say that Facebook has been years. In 2018, it was revealed that the company Cambridge damning investigation showing that the company, including
to the people in the room. The proposal meant doing this all along, letting its algorithms prioritise what is Analytica had harvested data from 87 million Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, was very aware of the harm the platform
crossing a line, unleashing a hitherto unused presented to users. What shows up in the News Feed is what users, data that had been used in Donald Trump’s pres- was causing. The company’s own researchers identified
weapon. The code name was “Project Amplify”, people perceive as important, a form of personal truth for idential campaign. The revelation not only tarnished problems in report after report, but the company chose not
and it was a new strategy that social media behe- every individual. Facebook’s reputation, but it also had real financial conse- to fix them, despite public vows to do so.
F
moth Facebook hatched in a meeting in ear- “Project Amplify” would mean something entirely new. quences. When the story broke in March 2018, Facebook’s
ly 2021, as reported by the New York Times. The By actively promoting positive news stories about the com- stock tanked. In July the same year, Facebook announced rom the company’s perspective, its strategy has been
mission: to improve Facebook’s image by using pany, “truth” is now the same as “what makes Facebook that growth had slowed down due to the scandal. The stock a success. Advertising revenues have continued to rise
Andreas the site’s News Feed-function to promote stories that put look good”. fell 20 percent in one day. In a few months, 200 billion USD of and in autumn 2021, Facebook’s stock market value
Cervenka
the company in a positive light. Silicon Valley veteran and social media-critic Jaron the company’s market capitalisation was wiped out. broke one trillion USD, double of what it was before
The potential impact is enormous. News Feed is Lanier referred to the major social media networks as Facebook’s reaction can be summarised as follows: we Cambridge Analytica. The same can be said of the oth-
Facebook’s most valuable asset. It’s the algorithm that “gigantic manipulation machines”, possessing the power to are sorry and promise to do better. This has been repeat- er tech giants. Companies including Google, Amazon and
Columnist, decides what is shown to users when they log in to the site. alter emotions and political views among billions of people ed every time new, negative stories about the company Apple have been at the crosshairs of public debate for years,
Aftonbladet In essence, it is the “window to the world” for their users, by pulling digital levers. Now Facebook has decided to use emerge, such as the spread of disinformation, the nega- both for alleged abuse of their dominant market positions
Years in Schibsted:
who, totalling nearly three billion, constitute more than a its machine for its own purpose. tive impact Facebook’s product has on the mental health of and for the negative effect their products and business
10 years at SvD (2007–
third of all humans on planet Earth. We will return to the implications of this, but first, it young people, and how the network was used to instigate models can have on people and society.
2017), at Aftonbladet
from December 2021 For many years Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is important to understand why Facebook and Mark genocide in Myanmar, among other things. But if the stock market is a reliable gauge of the future,
defended the company’s policy on free speech with the Zuckerberg would want to do this. It is no bold assertion But behind the many apologies it seems Facebook has and it often is, the conclusion is clear: these companies
mantra that the social network should not be the “arbiter to say that Facebook’s public image is in acute need of a continued with business as usual. In September 2021, the are untouchable. Despite a storm of criticism, court cases
of truth” online, i.e., they would not censor content that facelift. The company has been plagued by scandals for Wall Street Journal published “The Facebook Files”, a and billion-dollar fines, stocks have continued to propel
6 7
Tech
To the Tumblr Fandoms
Usenet
ever upwards. How is this possible? Let’s start with break- conducted an experiment among
ing down the different ways Big Tech dominates the world 700,000 users to see if their states
today. of mind could be altered by changes in
When discussing this topic, parallels are often drawn News Feed. The answer was yes.
to the influential corporations of the late 1800s and early
1900s, Standard Oil for example. These comparisons are THE INFRASTRUCTURE SUPERPOWERS
misleading. Standard Oil and its owner John D. Rockefeller In December 2020, Google went down, meaning users
could never dream of the amount of power that rests in the could not access Gmail, Google Docs or Youtube. Although
t of hands of the Silicon Valley-titans of the 2020s. the outage only lasted 45 minutes, it made headlines all
Poin Sale THE NEW ECONOMIC SUPERPOWER
over the globe. The same thing happened to Facebook in
October 2021. As an expert said to CNN: “For many people
In 2010, the total market cap of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook is the same as internet”. After the 2008 financial
Facebook and Amazon was more than 700 billion USD. That crisis it was clear that a small number of banks were “sys-
was equivalent to the GDP of the Netherlands. The ascent temically important”. This is now very true for Big Tech.
had been amazingly fast; at this point Amazon was 16 years Serious disruptions in their services would quickly have
old, Google twelve and Facebook only six. In autumn 2021, severe and costly consequences.
The Forgotten Isles
their combined value had reached 9,500 billion USD, more
than the GDP for Japan and Germany combined. The total THE POLITICAL SUPERPOWERS
of M annual revenue for these five corporations is north of one Big Tech has surpassed Big Oil as the biggest spenders on
yspac
e trillion dollars, more than the defence budgets of USA,
China, and Russia combined.
lobbying in Washington D.C., with an increase in spend-
ing from 20 to 124 million USD between 2010 and 2020.
In the election cycle of 2020, a total of 2.1 billion USD was
THE MARKET SUPERPOWERS spent on political ads on Facebook and Google. In a mani-
Facebook owns four of the five largest social media net- fest published in 2017, Mark Zuckerberg noted that in elec-
works in the world. Google, owner of the second largest tions across the world “the candidate with the largest and
(Youtube), has a 92 percent market share on search. Apple’s most engaged following on Facebook usually wins”. In other
and Google’s operating systems, IOS and Android, con- words: use us or you lose.
trol 99 percent of the global smart phone market outside
of China. Apple takes in 65 percent of the global revenue THE CAPITAL MARKETS SUPERPOWERS
on mobile apps, and Amazon has 50 percent of the e-com- It could be argued that the stock market has become the
merce market in the US, as well as 32 percent of the glob- most important gauge for global decision-makers. It takes
al market for cloud services, followed by Microsoft. The list decades to make them do anything to combat climate
goes on. This not only creates huge profits but also creates change, but if stocks drop dramatically, decisive action
an enormous asset in form of the 21st century’s most valua- from politicians and central banks are delivered within days
ble commodity: data. or even hours. This was last seen in early 2020, when fears
of the economic impact of the pandemic brought the Dow
THE INNOVATION SUPERPOWERS Jones down by 13 percent in one day. The direction of the
Up to 50 percent of the venture capital raised by start-ups stock market is, in turn, more and more intertwined with
circles back to Google and Facebook in the form of advertis- that of Big Tech. Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and
ing, almost as a “tax on innovation”. If new, competing ser- Microsoft constitute a quarter of the S&P 500 index.
vices emerge, Big Tech can either try to buy them or launch
THE AI SUPERPOWERS
Amazonian
competing products. Their headway in terms of resources
and user base makes it extremely difficult – if not impossi- “Dark patterns”. That is what scientists call the tricks that
ble – to pose a real threat. digital companies deploy to manipulate users. Sometimes
the purpose can be quite trivial, like making people sign
Heartlands
THE PERCEPTION SUPERPOWERS up for a newsletter or share their email. The point is that
Twenty years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, one in 16 you as a user do something that you didn’t intend to do.
Americans believe the US government knew about the With artificial intelligence these tools become more and
attacks and let them happen. Conspiracy theories and dis- more powerful and potentially deceptive. The more data
information have become the new normal, and research an AI-algorithm can use to train on, the more effective it
has shown social media plays an important role. What becomes. This places Big Tech in a unique position to use
Google and Facebook choose to allow, or not allow, on their these techniques. The problem with this is best summed up
platforms shapes our view of the world. In 2012, Facebook by Meredith Whittaker, a former Google engineer and now
8 9
Tech Tech
head of the AI Now Institute at New York University: “You Google eliminated negative news stories about Google
never see these companies picking ethics over revenue.” from searches, or they monitored Gmail and Google Docs
In all the ways mentioned above, the power of Big Tech to stop whistle-blowers or investigative reporters? What if
Ba
yo is growing bigger every day. It is important to say that not Facebook took down the accounts of politicians who are
fA everybody thinks this is a problem. However, it seems like critical of Big Tech? What if Youtube only recommended
ds there is a consensus among democratically-elected leaders documentaries that showed how fantastic Silicon Valley is
in both the U.S. and Europe that the influence of these com- for humanity?
panies must be reined in. The U.S. and the European Union This might all seem rather dystopian, but the question
recently agreed to take a more unified approach in regulat- must be asked. After all, anything that can be done with tech-
ing big technology firms. In fact, even the people who work nology tends to be done. With Facebooks “Project Amplify”,
in the industry share this view. In a survey of 1,578 tech this is already inching towards reality. Most importantly,
employees made by Protocol, 78 percent said that Big Tech what could anyone do to prevent this? The answer is: noth-
Mountains of Gmail
is too powerful. ing. As things stand now, Facebook and Google are con-
So, what can be done? A variety of options are already on trolled by Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page/Sergey Brin who
the table, from forcing companies to break up to altering own more than 50 percent of the voting power. An American
laws that give social media companies a free pass compared president can be thrown out of office, but no one can sack
to traditional media. If the New York Times publishes hate Mark Zuckerberg. And the reality is that Big Tech can use the
speech they are liable, when Facebook does the same, they power of their platforms for more or less any purpose they
are not. In the US, this legislation is referred to as “Section please.
A
230”, and there is a debate around whether to change it. At
the same time, numerous lawsuits have been filed around s Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen told
the world against the Big Tech-companies on anti-trust CBS 60 minutes: “The thing I saw at Facebook over
land
issues. The stock market has sent the message that the idea and over again was there were conflicts of interest
Google
that any of these measures could seriously harm these com- between what was good for the public and what
panies is simply unfounded. And that view could very well was good for Facebook, and Facebook over and over
be justified. There are several reasons why Big Tech-titans again chose to optimise for its own interests, like making
can sleep well at night. Let’s run through some of them. more money.”
Here we arrive at the crux of the problem. Silicon Valley’s
BREAKING UP IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE algorithms govern the world, but these giants are in turn
The businesses of Big Tech are deeply interconnected. It governed by an even more powerful algorithm: the para-
would take years of litigation to make such a decision a real- digm that is called shareholder value. To satisfy Wall Street,
ity. With 300 billion dollars of annual profits, the legal cof- Big Tech-giants must deliver constant growth and more
fers of Silicon Valley are limitless. profits every year. And in the choice between ethics and
profit, the answer is, more often than not, profits.
FINES WOULD HAVE TO BE ASTRONOMICAL Silicon Valley author and entrepreneur Tim O’Reilly
TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE has called Big Tech “slaves under a super-AI that has gone
Between 2017 and 2019, the EU slammed Google with a total rogue” – meaning the financial markets. Breaking out of
of eight billion USD in fines. That is less than seven percent this cycle is easier said than done. Companies like Apple,
Google+ of the company’s pre-tax profit during those three years. As Google and Facebook use their stock to pay their employ-
the stock market often regards fines as a “one-off”, it is not ees, which means they are highly dependent on stock prices
clear if even larger fines would hurt the market cap at all. rising. But bad ethics also runs the risk of alienating these
Google Wave TOO DRASTIC OF MEASURES COULD TRIG-
same employees. Internal protests have rocked Google,
Amazon, and Microsoft in recent years.
GER A STOCK CRASH Hurt society or hurt the stock price? Lose staff over
In theory, politicians could of course make new laws that scandals or over bad pay? These are the dilemmas that
Google Buzz severely hurt Big Tech. This would very likely lead to correc- the most powerful companies in history face. Whether
tion of their stock prices, which in turn would weigh heavi- Big Tech has really become too-big-to-stop remains to be
ly on the start-up ecosystem and the economy at-large. To seen. Ultimately the power rests with you. Without the bil-
Google Glass have voters lose trillions of dollars, or even worse their jobs,
is not a price any politician is willing to pay.
lions of daily users, Silicon Valley’s influence amounts to
exactly zero.
So, if your kids or grandkids one day ask how a few indi-
THE COMPANIES COULD FIGHT BACK viduals acquired so much wealth and power, the answer is
This is the most underestimated scenario of all. What if simple: we gave it to them.
10 11
Tech
ME ERSE
Investment analyst
in New Models Team.
Years in Schibsted:
1. I look forward to:
These shades actually
making me faster.
Foto: Edward Louis
ENTER THE
VATEM
Facebook is hiring 10,000 people
to work on it. The Metaverse is
no longer science fiction – some
say it’s the next Internet.
T
hroughout the last few decades, much of what
we previously considered science fiction has
become more science than fiction. We may not
have flying cars yet but asking your fridge to cre-
ate a grocery list is an everyday occurrence. And
– as has been stated so many times before – our
precious smartphones have more processing
power than NASA did when it sent Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin to the moon. So it shouldn’t come as a sur-
prise to us when terms like “the metaverse” are no longer
constrained to The Matrix and Ready Player One. But before
we look at how the metaverse will impact our future, let’s
understand it.
The term “metaverse” was coined by author Neal
Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”. He used the
13
Tech
term to refer to a 3D virtual world inhabited by avatars of 2D websites. The Verge has broken down the parts of the team meetings remotely via VR
real people. The term comes from “meta” (beyond) and metaverse that most excite the tech industry right now, setups, sitting on our couches at
“verse” (from universe), and it is typically used to describe things like “real-time 3D computer graphics and person- home while appearing at a confer-
a futuristic virtual world on the internet in some form. Still, alised avatars,” and “a variety of person-to-person social ence table in a virtual space with
the term, as it pertains to an actual, real-world phenome- interactions that are less competitive and goal-oriented our colleagues.
non, doesn’t really have a universally accepted definition. than stereotypical games.” Independent tech analyst
P
Venture capitalist and author of “The Metaverse Primer”, Benedict Evans explained the cur-
Matthew Ball, writes that “The Metaverse is best under- reviously mentioned author Matthew Ball believes rent discourse around the metaverse
Camilla stood as ‘a quasi-successor state to the mobile internet’”. that the metaverse will have as big of an impact on our like “standing in front of a whiteboard
Buch
This is to say, it’s a technology that will completely change daily lives as the electricity revolution and the mobile in the early 1990s and writing words like
how we operate in the world but also take a long time to internet. It’s also an interaction of the same kind – the interactive TV, hypertext, broadband, AOL,
develop based on many different, secondary innovations internet (and its iterative version, the mobile internet) multimedia, and maybe video and games,
Advisor Editorial and inventions. couldn’t have happened without the electricity revolution, and then drawing a box around them all and
Content Since metaverse is not a completely developed term with and the metaverse couldn’t happen without the internet. labelling the box ‘information superhighway’”.
Years in
a clear definition, it’s tricky to pin down, but I’ll give it my Ball writes that the “metaverse iterates further by placing Essentially, we’re merging tech and concepts such
Schibsted: 1.5
best shot. Currently, as far as we can define it, the metaverse everyone inside an ‘embodied’, or ‘virtual’ or ‘3D’ version of as augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reali-
looks like a successor to the internet in which its users are the internet and on a nearly unending basis. In other words, ty, gaming, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens and
more tangibly connected to the virtual experiences taking we will constantly be ‘within’ the internet, rather than have more, under one umbrella.
I
place there. That could be via everything from voice inter- access to it, and within the billions of interconnected com-
faces, to VR headsets and haptic wearables. puters around us, rather than occasionally reach for them, ’ve started thinking about the theory of the metaverse
In the long run, it is believed that all of these experi- and alongside all other users and real-time”. Facebook CEO like electricity. The idea is that we’ll be using it so natu-
ences will be connected and collected in the metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg, who is a big proponent of the metaverse, rally in our daily lives, when swapping our glasses for AR be a merging of
just like the internet is the collection of a vast universe of has described it as “an embodied internet”. glasses with interactive screen overlays, that we don’t the two needs.
His plan is to shift Facebook from a social media compa- even think about it unless it goes down. As I mentioned The major challenge
ny to a metaverse company, and he’s already put this plan before, we already use an extended internet, in which our with this, of course, is that not
e’re already unlocking our
W
in motion. The company will change its name – the social physical bodies, voices and gestures are connected to our everyone has access to the tech fuelling this
network will keep Facebook but the parent company will devices (think face scans, voice assistants, and VR). The development – a lot of people don’t even have access to
be renamed, much like Google’s approach with its parent metaverse is the extension of this. Perhaps we’ll all have a reliable internet connection. Just as the smartphone
phones via facial recognition
company Alphabet. This could be to avoid the less than stel- virtual avatars representing ourselves online, for which we accelerated the mobile internet, other personal devices
lar reputation linked to Facebook, but it also symbolises buy virtual designer clothes and virtual bespoke art pieces will be the driving forces of the hypothetical metaverse.
the shift in course. Zuckerberg plans to employ 10,000 new with non-fungible tokens. The smartphone is relatively accessible for the majority of
workers in Europe to join the company’s components and The key difference between that and what we have today people today, but that wasn’t the case when ideas about a
and buying digital art via create this metaverse.
Now, that all sounds very sci-fi. But it’s really just the next
step in the development of things we already take for grant-
is connectivity – between ourselves and the virtual world,
and between the many different existing virtual worlds.
Especially following the giant disruptor that is the Covid-19
mobile internet arose. Just like all other technical develop-
ments throughout history, the metaverse will surely devel-
op into something completely different than how we first
non-fungible tokens. ed. We’re already unlocking our phones via facial recognition
and buying digital art via non-fungible tokens. Admittedly,
it feels more far more far-fetched that we’ll be having our
pandemic, the need to physically engage with other people
is huge, but so is the need to connect with people over vast
distances in just a matter of seconds. The metaverse could
imagine it now. But until then, I’ll look forward to meeting
your avatar form in my virtual palace filled with non-tangi-
ble art in the near future.
14 15MEET OUR PEOPLE | Tech
UNLOCKING SERVING ADS “IT’S ABOUT
THE SCHIBSTED WITHOUT USING PROTECTING
UNIVERSE TRACKING SOCIETY”
With more than three million users logged
in every day, Schibsted Account is a play-
er you can count on. The service is used to
log in to Schibsted’s newspapers, market-
places and other digital services, and it
has become the way that most end users
engage with the Schibsted brand.
Ida Kristine Norddal’s product team and
related engineering and UX teams, all with-
in the User Foundation unit, are growing
rapidly to keep up with user needs and to Data is what makes Armin Catovic tick. The number of cyber-attacks has
further develop the service and experience. It’s also one of the reasons why he increased dramatically in the last ten to
“We want to step up our game, to make joined Schibsted – in addition to the fact five years. Today everyone is a target.
sure the users understand who Schibsted is that he now can use it to do good. “Like many others, we really need to
and that they can trust us with their infor- His team has developed a contextu- improve in this area”, says Ralph Benton.
mation,” she explains. al advertising product, which uses data As CISO he has initiated a cyber secu-
Schibsted Account’s most obvious task models to identify specific content in rity program to improve information
is to enable Schibsted users to prove who articles on Schibsted’s news sites. and IT security, how Schibsted detect
they are, and by doing so, they get access “This makes it possible to offer ad and respond to cyber attacks and to
to our products and services, it also ena- segments to our customers, based on educate all employees on security risks.
bles subscription offers. But the poten- news content alone. We don’t need to “It’s about protecting yourself, your
tial and future ambitions point towards so use cookies or tracking”, Armin explains. colleagues, Schibsted – and in the end
much more – Schibsted Account is on its More specifically, it means that adver- the whole society.”
way to becoming an important key to the tisers can pinpoint certain keywords to That last thing is particularly valid for
Schibsted universe. which they want to be connected. The a company with media outlets. Except
“We also want users to be able to discov- data models find those words in articles attacks where someone’s trying to steal
er and explore all the different things that on Schibsted’s news sites, and an ad can customer information, or ransomware
we offer”, adds Ida Kristine. be placed there. attacks where someone brings a site
She describes this as Schibsted’s hidden Recently, Armin and the team devel- or service down – in the fake news era,
treasure – news, buying and selling, order- oped a more advanced model that can news sites are facing risks that their con-
ing breakfast, finding a handyman and a lot identify broader contexts. tent might be manipulated.
more – services that the users can access “For instance, bicycle retailers would As an individual, you should protect
with their Schibsted account. typically want to be connected to your digital identity.
“Our ambition is to simplify the whole cycling or Tour de France. Now they can “When possible, use multifactor
user experience, making it easy to go have a wider perspective and choose to authentication – like Bankid or OKTA
between our different services, using the be seen in stories about climate change, – when not possible, use strong and
same log-in and, when needed, the same since bikers often cycle to reduce their unique passwords, and do not use the
account information”, says Ida Kristine. environmental impact.” same password everywhere”, urges
No doubt, her team has a lot to do – and And the advertisers are happy about it. Ralph.
many treasures yet to reveal. In between, “Feedback from both our own prod- The good news is that in Schibsted we
they also communicate with all these users. uct specialists and the advertisers has have already learned a lot.
Every month they send out more than been very positive, and we’ve now “When we sent out the last fake phish-
three million emails, another reason why reached a monthly revenue target of ing attack, a lot of employees reported
Schibsted Account is the Schibsted brand’s 1 million SEK/NOK.” it to the IT Service Desk and that is really
most important ambassador. good”.
Ida Kristine Norddal Armin Catovic Ralph Benton
Product Lead, Schibsted account Senior Data Scientist & Tech Lead Chief Information Security Officer
Years in Schibsted: Almost 4 Years in Schibsted: Almost 1 Years in Schibsted: 2.5
17READING AND SAVING
18
MINDS LIVESWe are entering a new era of medicine,
where AI will revolutionise healthcare
and treatment. It might also lead to more
empathetic doctors.
19Tech Tech
The first implantable pacemaker
– a Swedish invention from 1958 –
contained two transistors. A modern
pacemaker contains anywhere from
10,000 to 100,000 transistors.
P
ancho was 20 years old when he was paralysed and part of an AI revolution in medicine and health care. significantly reducing development timelines for drugs
and lost his ability to speak. He was a Mexican- The AI research field was conceived at Dartmouth College and vaccines. For instance, during the Covid-19 pan-
born amateur football player and a field work- in 1956, a year when James Dean ruled the silver screen demic, Alphafold’s predictions were used to map out the
er in the California vineyards, until one summer and Elvis Presley had his first number one hit, Heartbreak proteins of the virus.
Sunday after a match, he was in a car crash. After Hotel. Since then, AI has had its ups and downs, exaggerat- Currently, AlphaFold is being used to help develop new
surgery, he suffered a stroke and his life changed. ed expectations followed by troughs of disillusionment. The drugs for tropical diseases. It has already helped scientists
When he woke up from his coma, he tried to term “AI winter” was coined specifically to denote periods of find a safe drug for treating sleeping sickness, replacing a
move. He couldn’t. He tried to talk and discov- disenchantment, when investment in AI dried out and the previous drug that is highly toxic.
Sam ered he couldn’t form a word. Then he started to cry, but he pace of progress slowed. Other areas where AI is currently being used include:
S
Sundberg
couldn’t make a sound.
At that point he wished he hadn’t come back from the ince Pancho’s accident in 2003, however, AI has made MEDICAL IMAGING
coma at all, he recently told a New York Times reporter. great strides thanks to the advent of artificial neural Interpretation of visual data is key in fields such as derma- and have proven themselves useful in diagnosing a vast
Freelance writer, Pancho felt like his life was over. networks. The theory behind it had been established tology and radiology, and fertile ground for machine learn- range of diseases, relying on techniques such as image
Svenska Dagbladet Fifteen years later, his life would change again, when a decades earlier, the idea that software networks mim- ing algorithms. Tech companies, hospitals and universities recognition, symptom evaluation and natural language
Years in Schibsted: 2.5
group of American scientists implanted a chip with 128 icking the arrangement of neurons in the human brain around the world have developed machine learning algo- processing.
electrodes into his brain, plugged a cable into his skull and would provide an important step in the evolution of think- rithms that surpass human experts at detection of various
trained deep learning software to read his mind. Today, ing computers. But it wasn’t until the 2000s that it bore fruit, skin conditions, cancers and other abnormalities. While DISEASE CONTROL
Pancho can speak again. When he thinks of words, the soft- when processor speeds, storage capacity and data availabil- human specialists can be highly skilled at examining rashes On December 31, 2019, the Canadian medtech company
ware decodes the signals from his brain and his words are ity finally reached a tipping point in which it became feasi- and reading x-ray plates, they require years of training and Blue Dot alerted its clients about a new flu-like virus spread-
spoken in a gravelly, synthetic voice. ble to train large neural networks on vast amounts of data, they are a scarce resource. AI speeds up the process, makes ing in Wuhan, China. They were a week ahead of the World
Interpreting his brain signals and translating them into quickly leading to improvements in image recognition, auto- these skills more accessible and can, in some cases, detect Health Organisation and the Centers for Disease Control,
words is only possible thanks to an artificial neural network matic translation, and other domains. anomalies that human doctors cannot. thanks to their use of machine learning algorithms that were
interacting with Pancho’s organic one. The AI software was Notably, AI systems have defeated humans at games like processing 100,000 news items and disease reports in 65
trained on his thoughts during 50 sessions in which Pancho go, Dota and Jeopardy. Social media corporations have HEALTH RECORDS ANALYSIS languages every day. AI-supported systems such as the Blue
was trying to speak words, until it recognised the patterns used machine learning to find the best methods to keep Electronic health records create new opportunities for Dot platform can monitor the spread of new diseases, but
of brain signals that corresponded to certain words. (Thanks us refreshing our feeds in endless loops of distraction, and machine learning algorithms to find previously unknown also predict future trajectory based on data such as travel
to his new ability to speak, the patient has expressed that self-driving cars are inching ever closer to arriving on our patterns in symptoms, diagnoses, medications and treat- patterns, hospital admittance, historical data from previous
Pancho is the nickname he prefers, to protect his privacy.) streets. But only in the last few years has medical AI start- ment effects. Researchers in Uruguay have developed a epidemics and mathematical models.
Pancho’s AI-assisted rehabilitation may seem like the stuff ed taking off in a big way. And if you think hooking a cable to system that analyses the text a doctor enters in a health
of science fiction. It is all the more remarkable for being real, Pancho’s skull and reading his mind is something of a mira- record and pulls up similar cases that may contain valuable DRUG INTERACTIONS
cle, well, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. insights. Spanish researchers have created a system that For patients taking a large number of medications, drug
Alphabet’s AI research company Deepmind is perhaps analyses a patient’s health record, and predicts risks for interactions can be potentially harmful as well as hard
best known to the public for creating Alphago, the go-play- diseases based on their historical data along with data from to track by individual physicians. Spanish and Chinese
Notably, AI systems have
ing AI that runs circles around human go masters. But their their family’s health records. As health record data grows at researchers have shown that machine learning algorithms
work on Alphago has turned out to be useful in another a rapid pace, human physicians cannot keep up, but they can scan databases, medical literature and electronic
domain as well. In 2020, Deepmind entered their tweaked can learn from the analysis performed by AI systems. health records and find patterns indicating adverse reac-
defeated humans at games
AI, Alphafold, in a contest to solve the problem of pro- tions to drug combinations.
tein folding. To nobody’s surprise, Alphafold crushed the DIAGNOSIS
competition. Symbolic AI was first tailored to diagnose disease in the DRUG DISCOVERY
like go, Dota and Jeopardy.
Biologists have hailed Alphafold’s success as the first 1970s, using rules-based decision trees to create “expert AI has proven its ability to speed up drug discovery dra-
time AI has solved a significant scientific problem. An systems” to assist professionals in their decision making. matically. It is useful in several ways, such as predicting
improved understanding of protein folding is already Recent methods instead rely on artificial neural networks the 3D structure of target proteins, predicting drug-protein
20 21Tech Tech
A SUPERPOSITION
interactions and toxicity risks, designing biospecific and death. As evidence of AI’s potential continues to grow,
drug molecules as well as assessing drug activity. While odds are that privacy advocates will be fighting a lost cause.
Deepmind has turned its attention to neglected tropical After all, no government would prioritise privacy over a cure
diseases, British medtec start-up Exscientia and Japanese for cancer or prevention of the next pandemic.
W
pharmaceutical firm Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma used
TO CHANGE
AI to create a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disor- ill friendly and competent doctors be replaced
der. Development took only twelve months (compared to then, by robodocs with superior diagnostic skills
the expected timeline of five years) and the drug is now and knowledge of drug interactions? Well, not so
in human trials. Many other research teams around the fast. If there is one domain where humans are irre-
world are currently using AI to find new drugs, and Andrew placeable, it’s emotional work. No algorithm will
Hopkins, CEO of Exscientia, recently predicted that all new feel genuinely sympathetic about your knee pain. If you want
drugs will be created with the help of AI by 2030. cold, hard facts, go see Dr Alphacure. If you want someone
COMPUTING
who can relate to your problems, go see someone made of
NEURAL PROSTHETICS the same stuff as you: flesh, blood, bone.
With machine learning, Swiss researchers have trained Sometimes, you see your doctor just to get your prescrip-
algorithms to interpret the muscle signals of an amputee, tion renewed. But often, when you go because of a new ail-
to control a prosthetic hand. The task is complex because ment or injury, you are not only hoping for an intelligent
muscle signals are noisy and traditional approaches have analysis of your symptoms. You want to be taken care of,
yielded clumsy results. Machine learning changes the game, by someone who understands – from the inside – what it is
and the AI-powered prosthetic is more precise and quicker to have your body starting to fail. You want someone who
to react than previous prostheses. Advances in this field are knows what it is like to wake up at 4 a.m., chest pounding,
bearing fruit in many research labs and Pancho’s new ability fearing that your expanding mole might be a mark of death.
to talk is another example of this approach, called a speech In time, AI could be taught to simulate these emotional skills.
neuroprosthesis. But fake empathy, in the end, is just manipulation.
As Pancho’s example and all the ongoing research While human expertise can be replaced by AI, empathy
demonstrates, we are entering a new era of medicine where cannot. But as AI unburdens medical practitioners from
machines can read the signals of our bodies, unfold ami- many of the mechanical tasks of the profession, physicians
no acid molecules, replace lost abilities and tailor drugs to may have greater opportunity to develop their human-to-
the protein structure of specific viruses. There will be dis- human skills. In this way, medtech AI will not only revolution-
putes over privacy and security, as AI systems crave massive ise drug research, give voice to the speechless and improve
amounts of data to further increase their capabilities. But diagnostic accuracy. It may just lead to more empathetic
the technology is so powerful and the stakes are literally life doctors, too.
Is quantum computing the next major revolution in Many will be familiar with Moore’s Law
computer science or will it remain a dream scenario for describing the increase in processing
power. It states that the number of tran-
the foreseeable future? Sven Størmer Thaulow, EVP Chief sistors on a chip will double every oth-
Data and Technology Officer, looks into an area that is still er year. It’s hotly debated, but for some
surrounded by myths. years now, many have claimed that
Moore’s Law will soon be dead and that
Sven processing traditionally operates via a
digital computer language; everything
we have reached the limit for how many
transistors can be packed into a chip.
Størmer – images, sounds, text, etc – is broken
down into 1s and 0s. When I write “S”
We’re currently down to three nano-
metres between the transistors, with
Thaulow using my keyboard, it represented as
“01010011” – the ASCII character code
the standard distance on your Iphone
chip being five nanometres. Attempts to
EVP Chief Data and Technology Officer in binary format. This is done by feed- remedy this are being made by designing
T
Years in Schibsted: 2.5 ing current into eight “transistors” in a processors in 3D and other techniques.
processor (or chip), with different volt- However, increased computing pow-
he fields of quantum mechan- age levels representing the binary states er is not just about the number of tran-
ics and quantum computing of “1” or “0”. A thing inside the computer sistors on a single chip; today we buy
are difficult to understand, reads this and displays “S” on my screen. vast amounts of computing power in the
even for people who have stud- In data processing, building more cloud and no longer have to rely on hav-
ied them at university level. But powerful computers has largely been a ing our own computers in-house. This
what are they, and what makes matter of packing as many transistors as means that we can all easily access vast
their application in computer possible into a chip and getting the clock resources to solve computing problems
science so interesting? frequency (the speed at which the com- precisely when needed, no more, no less.
First we need to take a step back. Data puter computes) as high as possible. Demand for such computing power
22 23Tech Tech
The bigger and more complex the
(such as Google and IBM) have launched seemingly endless list of constraints
separate research programmes. Venture and variables.
capital firms are investing in quantum ◌ Classification tasks using machine
optimisation task, the greater the
startups. The first exclusively quantum learning. A typical example of a clas-
companies have gone public. National sification task involves putting labels
authorities are investing strategically in on images, for example: “dog”, “tree”
need for computing capacity.
the defence sector, among others, after and “street”. Quantum computing has
having financed basic research over sev- proven to be more efficient at per-
eral decades. forming complex classification tasks.
Yet we’re still lagging behind when ◌ Simulation of nature, such as in molec-
it comes to application. We’ve not yet ular modelling. Modelling anything
reached the point of “quantum advan- other than the most basic chemical
tage”, at which a quantum computer reactions is mathematically impossi-
has grown especially rapidly due to the quantum computers and conventional can solve a problem faster than a com- ble for conventional computers, but
need to train machine learning algo- processors is how computing power is puter using conventional data process- with a quantum computer this may
rithms on large datasets. These algo- scaled. To double the computing power ing. Researchers expect the first case be doable. Development of medicines
rithms try to find an optimum in a in a conventional processor, you essen- of quantum advantage will be achieved and batteries are two practical exam-
system with a large number of dimen- tially need to double the number of tran- some time in the next three to five years. ples of potential areas of application.
T
sions (for example, housing prices) sistors. In a quantum computer, the The aim of quantum computers is to
– a big mathematical problem. Just computing power is doubled with every perform computations that no conven- he key point here is that when or
imagine how many variables that influ- additional qubit. This means that the tional computers can realistically man- if quantum computers become
ence the price of a house. The bigger and computing power in a quantum comput- age. A major task that lies ahead will be commercially available, they will
more complex the optimisation task, the er grows exponentially when the proces- to explore their applications. And to do serve as a supplement to con-
greater the need for computing capaci- sor is scaled. this we need to think differently. New ventional data processing. State
ty – a need it will be difficult to keep up Combined, this enables quantum computational strategies must be devel- authorities, hyperscalers (Big Tech com-
with using conventional data processing computers to perform multiple comput- oped to take full advantage of these panies) and large universities are expect-
techniques. Even today, tasks already ing operations simultaneously, churning totally new devices. The mathematics ed to be the early adopters of quantum
exist that are so complex that running their way through computations which and the algorithms underlying the tasks computers due to the fact that they will
them on even the world’s biggest com- today’s biggest supercomputers would to be performed will be fundamentally probably need to operate at extremely
puter cluster is inconceivable. This is take thousands of years to complete. different. low temperatures in dedicated facilities.
T
where quantum computing is emerging Researchers and innovators often So the number of quantum computers
as a promising technology. his sounds incredible, but at what miss the mark when getting to grips will likely be small initially – that is, given
Quantum computing is about using stage are we at in the develop- with new innovations: Thomas Edison today’s technological constraints.
quantum mechanics – the theory of how ment of quantum computing? thought that the phonograph he invent- That said, quantum computers will
things interact at small scale – to cre- Well, the theory of quantum ed would be used primarily for language more extensively be offered as a cloud-
ate a computer that is insanely faster at computing is more than 40 years learning; the developers behind text based service, on par with conven-
solving certain problems than a conven- old; in 1981 the American physicist and messaging thought it would primarily be tional data resources, and be made
tional binary computer. A quantum com- Nobel laureate Richard Feynman said: used by courier companies to notify their available using much simpler user inter-
puter does not have bits (no 0s or 1s) but “Nature isn’t classical, dammit, and if customers of parcel deliveries. So what faces (high-level programming lan-
rather qubits, i.e. bits with more states you want to make a simulation of nature, do we think quantum computers will be guage) than those we have today, where
than just 0 or 1. Qubits draw on two you’d better make it quantum mechan- used for? Three likely areas stand out: developers in reality need to understand
properties that distinguish them from ical, and by golly it’s a wonderful prob- ◌ Large-scale optimisation problems quantum mechanics in order to program
regular bits: first, they can be put into lem, because it doesn’t look so easy”. where the task is to maximise an out- the machines.
a “superposition state” that represents In many ways it can look as if we’ve put based on an inconceivably vast So what does this mean for Schibsted?
both 1 and 0 simultaneously. Second, reached the same point in solving that number of variables simultaneous- We will monitor developments, but will
multiple qubits can be entangled, mean- problem as the internet had in the early ly. Some practical examples of appli- probably wait a few years before we start
ing that states in pairs of quibits can be 1990s. Most work is currently being run cation are in the transport sector, for experimenting with the technology –
changed immediately. in labs, though industry is beginning to finding optimal routes, or in finance and when that day comes, we will do it
Another important difference between grasp its potential. Big Tech companies for optimising profit based on a using cloud-based quantum computing. The quantum computers that exist today
typically look like large chandeliers,
hanging from the roofs of science labs.
24Tech Tech
“I WENT FROM
This hearing aid dates back to the later half This example is from the
of the 19th century, and now resides in the 1950s, but similar models
collection of the Museum of Medical History are still used to this day.
in Uppsala, Sweden.
HANDICAPPED
TO CYBORG”
An early electrical
model, with a
single earpiece,
dating back to
the 1930s.
Here is the Phonak
Audéo Paradise, the
model the author of this
article is currently using.
Last fall I became a cyborg. Now, when I tap twice on my default mode today. But all this time I still my audiologist Heidi to call me when any setting a timer, jotting down a to-do, way cheaper than my Phonaks (which
felt handicapped, and I didn’t like that great leaps were made on functionality. sending a simple text message, etc. A are hovering around 1,400 USD in
left ear, I answer a phone call or hang up. If I tap twice on my they were visible – so I kept my hair long. Then came the breakthrough. Heidi few times I’ve asked questions like “who Norway).
right ear, I activate Siri. My new hearing aids make me feel Being a vocalist in a band was a good called me in November 2020, asking me is xx”, but what you can do with this new ◌ “Invisible Airpods” will be the prima-
superpowered. Improving our senses and bodies will be the combination. to come over. She handed me a hear- audio interface is limited to the intelli- ry audio interface toward the internet.
A
future for all of us, says Sven Størmer Thaulow. round 2014, the first mobile con-
ing device called Phonak from the Swiss
company Sonova Group. And now, after
gence of Siri and not to the content or the
value chain, which is super smooth.
It’s always on you and it’s personal –
so why bother with Google Home?
Sven Størmer Thaulow the future and numerous smart glasses
with AR have been tested. But now I’m
nected hearing aid entered the
scene. It was connected to the
15 years with hearing aids – I have offi-
cially become a cyborg. I don’t feel like
For 17 of the 24 hours in a day, I am
connected to the internet – inside my
◌ Siri will become a lot smarter and
tailored towards “non-screen” com-
A
convinced that it’s within the audio space mobile through Bluetooth, not I have a handicap anymore. I feel super- brain practically. It saves me loads of munication. This means you won’t
s a kid I handled the fact that I that things will take off. Superpowered only in an app, but into the operat- powered. Privileged. And I am sure this is friction during the day; I probably pick need to pick up your phone to browse
was born with a reduced hearing hearing aids will become consumer elec- ing system IOS. The hearing aids worked the future for all humans. up the phone 40–50 percent less. I don’t through what Siri has found on the
by compensating with lip-read- tronics – filling the missing link in the like headphones and the voice audio was I can use the aids as I do airpods when need to charge or look for my airpods Internet when asking her a question.
ing and being seated in the first audio interface ecosystem. excellent – but they didn’t have a micro- I talk on the phone. It’s almost a problem either. Just imagine you are about to have a
I
row in the classroom. Later, in the But the road to make me a cyborg has phone. I had to hold up the phone to my as people don’t have any visual cue that meeting with someone and you’d like
army and at university – exposed to the been long. mouth when speaking. You could also I am on a call. The audio quality is also n my view, the true breakthrough to get some information about them.
myriads of Norwegian accents and most It all started with “in ear”-aids, devic- control different programs and the vol- close to the quality from airpods. I have of connected humans will come Siri will be able to provide that, direct-
likely some effects of playing in bands – it es that practically plugged my ears so ume, either through an app or directly in now used these hearing aids for about from medtech. And it starts here, ly into your ear.
became more tiresome to compensate, that no natural sound could enter. In the control centre on Iphone. I could also twelve months, and I haven’t used my air- with audio. And while I’m walk- ◌ App providers will build in Siri support
so I started using hearing aids. the mid-90s, I got the first programma- stream music from my Iphone – but the pods at all. And I am listening to a lot of ing around with some fellow hear- on loads of functions so that it’s possi-
Until last fall it has been a varied ble devices that could amplify sound sound was optimised for voice, so it was music. ing-impaired cyborgs, waiting for my ble to use functionality inside the apps
experience. They serve as an important on six different frequency bands. Then, treble-crap. But this started to become But what’s probably the coolest thing audiologist, Heidi, to reveal yet another without picking up the phone. Today
support, but they lack in refinement in the early 2000s, came the tiny aids cool. So, I cut my hair. about my new hearing aids is that they breakthrough – here are some predic- there are very few apps that have
– and always make me acutely aware that hung behind my ear and that had a Still, the potential was so much great- are gesture activated. If I tap twice on my tions about the soon-to-come future of implemented functions towards Siri,
of my handicap. But then something speaker connected by a fairly invisible er. When could I drop my airpods? Why left ear, I answer a phone call or hang up. the audio interface: which is why “she” has limited reach
happened. chord. At that time, the buds stuck into weren’t the hearing aids truly connect- If I tap twice on my right ear, I activate Siri ◌ In five years from now you will be able on our phones.
For years we´ve talked about cyborgs my ear were full of holes, and amplifica- ed two-ways so I could talk in them, and can ask whatever I want – hoping she to buy “Invisible Airpods” from Apple
and wearables, while techies implant- tion was much better, resulting in a more talk to Siri, and get answers? I kept ask- will understand. I use it mostly for con- or equivalent. They will be the prici- I can’t wait for the next innovation in this
ed RFID chips under their skin to demo natural sound picture. These are still the ing every year for innovations and I told trolling Spotify, beefing up the volume, est Airpods you can get hold of, but space!
26 27You can also read
