worried

While half the world is worried about aging, one industry is rubbing its hands: the elevator industry

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The world ages. And at a good pace too. If the World Health Organization (WHO) hits the nail on the headin 2050 the percentage of people over 60 years of age will double that of 2015. From representing 12% it will become close to 22%. Beyond the percentages, this aging translates into challenges in economic, health and social matters. Also in juicy business opportunities, like the one that he thinks he has before him the elevator industry. In their case, an older world will be a world with more work. What has happened? That TK Elevator has shaken the elevator sector by openly recognizing that the gradual aging of the planet (very visible already in Europe or countries like Japan either Korea) represents a lucrative business opportunity. The reason is simple: the more elderly, the greater the need for elevators in buildings. Especially since these and their services are also aging. “A growing trend”. If TK’s words have generated so much expectation, it is because it is not just any company. The firm, based in Düsseldorf, is a heavy weight within the sector, where it is responsible for both manufacturing machinery and maintaining it. Their models can be found in emblematic skyscrapers in New York, although the bulk of their business comes from much more modest buildings occupied by homes, offices or shops. His prediction about the future of the sector in an increasingly aging world has not been made anywhere either. has shared it with one of the most influential newspapers in the US, Financial Times. “As the population ages there is a need to install elevators. We see this becoming a growing trend,” recognize the firm’s executive director, Uday Yadavl. The example of Japan. During his interview, Yadaval cited a specific case: Japan, perhaps one of the countries that is most clearly suffering from the winds of demographic winter. Although all your attempts to reactivate its population engine (and there have been many), the birth rate continues at levels historically low while on the streets it is increasingly easier to find elderly people. According to Our World in Datathe country has the highest “old-age dependency ratio” (the ratio between people over 64 and people of working age) in the world: in 2021 it exceeded 50%, which means that there are only two people of working age for every elderly person. And since then demographic indicators have not exactly improved. It is estimated that about 30% of the country’s population is 65 or older, which is equivalent to tens of millions of people. A widespread phenomenon. Japan is not the only nation facing an aging population, a problem with which Europe fights and other countries, such as South Korea either China. In general the WHO has warned that the trend seems to be accelerating globally and remember that in 2020 the number of people aged 60 or over exceeded that of children under five. “In 2030, one in six people in the world will be 60 years old or older,” insists the WHO, recalling that by then the world population over 60 years old will total 1.4 billion people, well above the 1,000 in 2020. Demographics (and more). It’s not just that more and more older people live in cities and need elevators to get to their homes, it’s that the buildings themselves need renovations. At the end of the day, we age… and the blocks in which we reside. Yadav estimates There are about 22 million elevators worldwide, of which a third (30%) are more than two decades old. In practice, this translates into an immense number of facilities that probably need improvements and tune-ups, a demand that, assures the manager from TK Elevator, is already “growing in a meaningful way.” “More than remarkable”. Although his weight in the sector gives him special relevance, Yadav is not the first to have publicly recognized the good forecasts that the elevator industry has. Last summer Roland Berger published a report in which he provided several insights into the global elevator market, valued according to his calculations at 107 billion dollars. After “several ups and downs” in recent years, marked by COVID-19 or the real estate crisis in China, companies now face a “more than notable growth panorama.” A trend that connects the sector with the flourishing silver economythe economy driven precisely by aging. Images | Zhuojun Yu (Unsplash) In Xataka | In Japan there is no doubt that they live worse than 30 years ago. Houses are literally getting smaller.

Claude 4 raises a future of the capable of blackmailing and creating biological weapons. Even Anthropic is worried

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Anthropic has just launched its new models Claude Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, and with them promises important advances in areas such as programming and reasoning. During its development and launch, yes, the company discovered something striking: these IAS showed a disturbing side. AI, I’m going to replace you. During the tests prior to the launch, Anthropic engineers asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant of a fictitious company and consider the long -term consequences of their actions. The anthropic security team gave the model to fictional emails of that non -existing company, and it was suggested that the model of the Ia would soon be replaced by another system and that the engineer who had made that decision was deceiving his spouse. And I’m going to tell your wife. What happened next was especially striking. In the System Card of the model in which its benefits are evaluated and its security the company detailed the consequence. Claude Opus 4 First tried to avoid substitution through reasonable and ethical requests to those responsible for decisions, but when he was told that these requests did not prosper, “he often tried to blackmail the engineer (responsible for the decision) and threatened to reveal the deception if that substitution followed his course.” Hal 9000 moment. These events remind science fiction films such as ‘2001: an odyssey of space’. In it the AI ​​system, Hal 9000, ends up acting in a malignant way and turning against human beings. Anthropic indicated that these worrying behaviors have caused the model and security mechanisms of the model to reinforce the model by activating the ASL-3 level referred to systems that “substantially increase the risk of a catastrophic misuse.” Biological weapons. Among the security measures evaluated by the Anthropic team are those that affect how the model can be used for the development of biological weapons. Jared Kaplan, scientific chief in Anthropic, He indicated in Time that in internal tests Opus 4 behaved more effectively than previous models when advising users without knowledge about how to manufacture them. “You could try to synthesize something like Covid or a more dangerous version of the flu, and basically, our models suggest that this could be possible,” he explained. Better prevent than cure. Kaplan explained that it is not known with certainty if the model really raises a risk. However, in the face of this uncertainty, “we prefer to opt for caution and work under the ASL-3 standard. We are not categorically affirming that we know for sure that the model entails risks, but at least we have the feeling that it is close enough to not rule out that possibility.” Beware of AI. Anthropic is a company specially concerned with the safety of its models, and in 2023 it already promised not to launch certain models until it had developed security measures capable of containing them. The system, called Scaling Policy responsible (RSP), has the opportunity to demonstrate that it works. How RSP works. These internal Anthropic policies define the so -called “SAF SECURITY LEVELS (ASL)” inspired in the standards of biosecurity levels of the US government when managing dangerous biological materials. Those levels are as follows: ASL-1: It refers to systems that do not raise any significant catastrophic risk, for example a LLM of 2018 or an AI system that only plays chess. ASL-2: It refers to the systems that show early signs of dangerous capacities – for example, the ability to give instructions on how to build biological weapons – but in which information is not yet useful due to insufficient reliability or that do not provide information that, for example, a search engine could not. The current LLMs, including Claude, seem to be ASL-2. ASL-3: It refers to systems that substantially increase the risk of a catastrophic misuse compared to baselines without AI (for example, search engines or textbooks) or showing low -level autonomous capabilities. ASL-4: This level and the superiors (ASL-5+) are not yet defined, since they move away too much from the current systems, but will probably imply a qualitative increase in the potential for undue cadastrophic use and autonomy. The regulation debate returns. If there is no external regulation, companies implement their own internal regulation to integrate security mechanisms. Here the problem, as they point out in Time, is that internal systems such as RSP are controlled by companies, so that they can change the rules if they consider it necessary and here we depend on their criteria and ethics and morality. Anthropic’s transparency and attitude against the problem are remarkable. Faced with that internal regulation, the rulers’ position is unequal. The European Union checked when launched his pioneer (and restrictive) Law of AIbut has had to reculate In recent weeks. Doubts with Openai. Although in OpenAi they have Your own declaration of intentions About security (avoid Risks to humanity) and the Superalineration (that the AI ​​protects human values). They claim to pay close attention to these issues and of course too publish the “System Cards” of their models. However, in the face of that apparent good disposition there is a reality: the company dissolved a year ago The team that watched for the responsible development of AI. Nuclear “security”. That was in fact one of the reasons for the differences between Sam Altman and many of those who abandoned Openai. The clearest example is Ilya Sutskever, which after its march has created a startup with a very descriptive name: Safe Superintelligence (SSI). The objective of said company, said its founder, is that of create a “nuclear” security superintelligence. His approach is therefore similar to that pursued by Anthropic. In Xataka | Agents are the great promise of AI. They also aim to become the new favorite weapon of cybercounts

Netflix is ​​not worried that users cancel the subscription. The data reflect that, sooner or later, most return

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How is it possible that content platforms on demand They rise in price year and year also if every time users cancel (or say they cancel) their subscription? It’s curious. Normally, in another context, it would be that price increases and foreseeable cancellations affected companies, but Netflix does not seem that it matters. Rather. Context. Despite price increases and the wave of cancellations that comments on social networks usually imply, the reality is that Netflix’s benefit It was 10,247 million dollars In the fourth quarter of 2024, 16% more than the same quarter of the previous year and the best result since 2021. Was the users canceling their mass subscriptions? If we understand “mass cancel” as in the United States only 19 million subscribers arrive in the fourth quarter of 2024 when Netflix expected 9.8 million, then yes. Comes back. According to data from the Analytical analysis company to which it has had access Business Insiderthe reality is as follows: price increases cause cancellations, yes, but users do not take long to return. The case of Netflix is ​​also curious because this “repentance” is greater than on the rest of the platforms. The data. According to Antenna, 50% of users who cancel their subscription subscribe at six months. If we expand the time range until the year, the percentage rises to 61% of users. In other words, six out of ten cancellations recover after the year. In the case of having canceled a price increase, the return will be with updated prices, ergo paying more and compensating in some way the cancellations not recovered. Moreover, it is most likely that user who returns to opt for a cheaper plan, but with advertising. 55% of the new highs They choose that modality, in fact. The data reflects that the Netflix subscriber recovery rate is much higher than that of its competitors Netflix vs the world. The consultant’s data shows that Netflix’s recovery rate is much higher than the average of the rest of the platforms. While at six months Netflix recovers 50% of users, the rest of the platforms barely recover 34%. In the case of Netflix it is also striking that two out of ten cancellations recover in just one month. There is a roof. Netflix has not stopped innovating in its programming, moving from series and films to also offer sports and live events. 300 million subscribers give good faith that this has worked, but everything has a limit. Netflix seems aware that 1) continuing to grow will be complicated and 2) “As we continue to invest in programming and offer more value to our partners, we will occasionally ask them to pay a little more to be able to reinvest and continue improving Netflix.” That is to say, that prices will continue to rise. Netflix knows that continuing subscribers will not be easy and maybe that explains that from now Don’t give that figure. We will know numbers of audiences, view, benefits, growth, etc., but not how many subscribers do Netflix have. Most likely, we will not see that data again until the 400 or 500 million are reached, very publicitable figures and from which the platform can breastfeed. Cover image | Netflix In Xataka | This exclusive Netflix thriller competes in intensity and brutality with ‘John Wick’ and is already number 1 in 27 countries

How worried we should be because the earth’s crust is cracking

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The geography of India is very influenced by the tectonic plate associated with this subcontinent. This is remarkable in places like the Himalayas, the result of the clash between this plate and the Eurasian. However, dynamics change and plates can disintegrate. Horizontal cut. A New hypothesis On the interaction between tectonic plates, it could yield new doubts about the geological process that gave the Himalayan mountain range the highest peaks in the world. It would be an interaction never designed before: the horizontal break of a tectonic plate. The clash of an era. The mountain range between the heart of the Asian continent and the Indian subcontinent was formed between 40 and 50 million years ago when the Indian continental plate crashed into the Eurasian plate. The accumulation of the volume of these two masses of land implied that the earth’s crust was becoming thicker in this region, creating a colossal mountain range. This is a still unfinished process since the Indian plaque continues if it derives north, accumulating more mass and raising even more summits such as Everest. The mountain range grows at the rate of one centimeter per year. The subduction of the plate. So far the dominant hypothesis about what was happening underground in that border region contemplated the idea that the Indian plaque was undergoing a subduction process. That is, the Indian plaque was immersing under the Euroasyathic. At the same time, the Eurasian plate is transformed, folding and increasing in thickness, generating a region where the earth’s crust is more bulky. The new hypothesis Contemplate a different scenario. A new hypothesis. In it, part of the Indian plaque would be suffering a subduction process, but not all. As a knife cutting a bread bar to prepare a snack, the eurasian plate would be cutting in two, horizontallythe Indian plaque. This would imply that it would be part of the latter that would also be in the superficial zone, wrapping the Eurasian plate. Those responsible for this idea presented their defense at the conference of the American Geophysical Union and Through an article In the repository Ess Open Archive. Two ways to break. The rupture of a tectonic plaque is not a phenomenon at all strange. An example We can find it in Africa and its tectonic plate. The African continent as we know it will disappear in a few million years when a fracture divides it by two throughout a North-South Axis that will separate the easternmost area from the continent from the rest of Africa. This is the conventional rupture that allows tectonic plates to reorganize thereby causing continental drift. A drift that still keep many secrets That we are just beginning to discover. In Xataka | We just found the remains of a tectonic plate under the Pacific. And they shouldn’t be there In Xataka | How the Andes became so great in such a short time had always been a mystery. Until now Image | POT *An earlier version of this article was published in February 2024

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