European AI Regulation: Wiley Publishing

Articles

What next for Wagner’s African empire?

This article goes into how the Wagner Group actually funds its entire operation through its exploits in Africa. Instead of a hierarchical business, they run this loose conglomoration of evil enterprises, which all serve the same purpose… extract resources from other countries through “defense” and corruption. This is important to the Russian government, because those resources give it financial power while enduring Western Sanctions

Inside the Mormon Church’s Globe-Spanning Real-Estate Empire

When I was in college we took a lot of trips. The most interesting one was to Provo, Utah to play against BYU. It felt like we had entered another world. The Church of Latter Day Saints owns over $100 billion in assets. This begs the question why a church needs such a large pool of resources… particularly one that uses its religious affiliation to minimize tax liability. The organisation even refuses to state exactly how large their fund is.

The Race to Regulate Artificial Intelligence

AI has captivated the world. The regulation thereof, is fascinating (at least for me). Here, Foreign Affairs argues that Europe is best positioned to create sustainable regulation for Artificial Intelligence. There are three approaches globally; The US’ Market driven approach, China’s State driven approach, and Europe’s Right’s driven approach. This may create a goldilocks situation, where the EU has the most sensible AI regulation, because of how popular AI regulation has become.

John Wiley & Sons - How AI affects publishing

John Wiley & Sons is an organisation that publishes; Research, Academic and Talent resources for universities and companies. The research segment provides peer-reviewed Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishing content platforms, and related services to academic, corporate, and government customers, academic societies, and individual researchers.

The Academic segment provides scientific, professional, and education print and digital books, digital courseware, and test preparation services, as well as engages in the comprehensive management of online degree programs for universities (so this is where all of my textbook money ended up).

What I found most interesting about Wiley is that they have saturated their market. All of their growth comes inorganically, which means that they grow by buying companies. This strategy is difficult to master, because it is kind of like a dating process… except it’s about millions of dollars. They’ve had to divest many of their assets, which is like breaking up because you just can’t work with your partner.

The more I read through Wiley’s annual report, the clearer it became that this company has serious problems. Why would a university require their students to buy a $300 textbook, when they can take opensource code and build teachers that are just way better resources than what currently exists?

What I did learn is that the margins in publishing are really good, particularly on the research side. For some reason scientists don’t create open source journals and allow these massive publishing houses to be the only player that makes money on their work.

All in all companies like Wiley are going to go down the drain. The company is quite extractive and unless they find ways to adapt to the times and integrate AI into products, they look like a business in decline.

Lessons

Having the same friends for a long time is really valuable. Last week I got to spend time with some of my friends, who I’ve known since I was 13. It was so special to have that time with them and be able to

The Academic segment provides scientific, professional, and
education print and digital books, digital courseware, and test preparation services, as well as engages in the comprehensive management of online degree programs for universities (so this is where all of my textbook money ended up).