Ben Armour
Ben Armour
Correspondent, The Yuan

Ben Armour is a lawyer and freelance reporter, editor, and translator. He holds a JD from Temple University and a BA in English from the University of Maryland. He writes articles on such subjects as Law, Business, Finance and Politics. He is based in London.



The Yuan’s Governments4AI webinar urges governments to close Pandora’s box
Governments4AI
As the world confronts the specter of the unbridled rise of AI, global AI community The Yuan ran its Governments4AI webinar yesterday, calling on authorities everywhere to unite their forces to formulate and impose commonsensical, measured restraints on AI development.
Ben Armour  |  Jan 25, 2024
Top AI and policy experts call for an international AI safety treaty
Optimization
A league of AI VIPs has signed an open letter urging an AI safety treaty. Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio and The Yuan’s contributors Gary Marcus and David Wood joined with many others to call for setup of a working group at the UK AI safety Summit now underway as a first step.
Ben Armour  |  Nov 02, 2023
The Yuan raises the red flag, wards off incursions by GAI chatbots
Metaverse
As GAIs such as ChatGPT find ever-wider use, this exciting development also risks obsoleting many human functions. ‘Singularitarians’ may hail this step, but The Yuan is committed to keeping humans in the loop, and so offers this cautionary tale for our contributors’ edification.
Ben Armour  |  Jun 09, 2023
PwC exec cites ‘crucial’ safeguards to fight cyberattacks
People
For virtually every company nowadays, incorporating digital solutions and offerings of their products and services is essential, both to avoid being left in their rivals’ dust and to arm themselves with the latest digital weapons to fight off cyberattacks and other threats in this brave new digital world, Wilson Chow, PwC’s global TMT leader, explained to The Yuan.
Ben Armour  |  Feb 13, 2023
The Yuan is now available in Factiva
Game-changers
The Yuan has racked up another huge gain in its advance to become the world’s premier AI platform. The Yuan recently sealed a deal to share its content with New York-based business media giant Dow Jones. The Yuan’s articles now feature in Dow Jones' Factiva business intelligence platform.
Ben Armour  |  Dec 10, 2022
The Yuan lights up Times Square with call for Open Medical Data
Open Data 2022
The massive Nasdaq screen in New York’s Times Square lit up on October 16 emblazoned with The Yuan’s manifesto to the world demanding free access by all to global medical data and to announce our Open Letter to the leaders of all nations urging global cooperation to permit free access to medical data to serve all humanity, not just a few narrow interests.
Ben Armour  |  Oct 17, 2022
The Yuan Retrospective on 2022 AI - Big Pharma, Big Tech Ally, Double-Team Covid-19 (II)
Retrospective on 2022 AI
The alliance of Big Pharma and Big Tech in the mostly successful quest to develop vaccines to vanquish COVID-19 has been a keynote of the pandemic. In the follow-up on The Yuan platform series of articles predicting the evolution of AI in 2022, The Yuan editor and contributor Ben Armour relates whether his forecast of AI’s development trajectory hit the mark or fell short or wide of it. Original content superseded by events is omitted for the sake of brevity.
Ben Armour  |  Oct 10, 2022
A Stagflation Storm Is Brewing, Leading Economist Warns
Emerging markets
The threat of stagflation is increasingly worrisome, with both short-term and long-term structural factors to blame. Can the widespread implementation of AI help to offset some of these factors? And even if it can, will that be enough to avert a worst-case scenario for the global economy?
Nouriel Roubini, Ben Armour  |  May 10, 2022
EIU Talks Up Elon Musk's Twitter Grab With The Yuan
Optimization
E-carmaker Tesla CEO Elon Musk has clinched a deal to take over Twitter for US$44 billion in one of the biggest leveraged buyouts every, one likely to shift control of the platform to the world’s richest person. Conservatives hope he restores ex-US President Donald Trump and other de-platformed firebrand right-wing politicos, while liberals hope he will curb fringe speech and conspiracy theorists and stifle disinformation. Dexter Thillien, Lead Analyst, Technology & Telecoms, The Economist Intelligence Unit, talks up the repercussions of this earth-shattering takeover with The Yuan.
Dexter Thillien, Ben Armour  |  May 02, 2022
China, US Break Ahead of the Pack in Race for AI Hegemony
Governance
China and the United States have officially locked horns in a contest of titans to determine which superpower will emerge as the world’s foremost leader in artificial intelligence. Ben Armour and Jack Kotin, editors and contributors at The Yuan, break down the current situation and predict what the future may hold.
Jack Kotin, Ben Armour  |  Apr 06, 2022
China AI Policy Targets Global Primacy by 2030(Part II)
Governance
China’s artificial intelligence policy shoots for nothing less than global supremacy by the decade’s end. In this second installment of his two-part essay The Yuan contributor Ben Armour speculates as to whether the country will succeed in its audacious bid to topple the United States and set itself at the top of the AI totem pole or whether this quest will ultimately prove chimerical.
Ben Armour  |  Feb 15, 2022
China AI Policy Targets Global Primacy by 2030(Part I)
Governance
The issuance of China’s most recent key artificial intelligence policy document in November has brought its AI governance and support mechanism to fruition. The Yuan contributor Ben Armour leads a guided tour through the labyrinth of this eight-document suite that lays out Beijing’s bold initiative to overthrow the United States and take over as top dog in the AI domain.
Ben Armour  |  Feb 14, 2022
Love in the Time of AI(Part III)
Game-changers
The Yuan contributor Ben Armour concludes his trilogy in this the third portion of his three-part series on amorous artificial intelligence. The first tranche in this sequence homed in on sex robots, while the second discoursed on love+AI in the form of chatbots. For this segment, strap on your virtual reality headset, and brace for blast-off as we zoom through the ether with our favorite billionaires hand-in-hand with AI in quest of life eternal.
Ben Armour  |  Jan 28, 2022
Love in the Time of AI(Part II)
Metaverse
The Yuan contributor Ben Armour continues his disquisition in this the second installment of his three-part series on amorous artificial intelligence. The first tranche in this series focused on sex robots. This one addresses love+AI in the incorporeal form of chatbots.
Ben Armour  |  Jan 27, 2022
Love in the Time of AI(Part I)
Metaverse
Views on the ‘marriage’ of humans and artificial intelligence are all over the shop, with the issue of sex robots a particular bone of contention. The Yuan contributor Ben Armour threads through this minefield and attempts to answer the question as to whether AI+love is a mésalliance, or a match made in the stars in this three-part series.
Ben Armour  |  Jan 26, 2022
The Yuan AI 2022 - Big Pharma, Big Tech Ally, Double-Team COVID-19
The Yuan AI 2022
The alliance of Big Pharma and Big Tech in the mostly successful quest to develop vaccines to defeat COVID-19 has been one of the most noteworthy events of this year. In the last of the series of articles this week on The Yuan platform predicting the evolution of artificial intelligence in 2022, Ben Armour explores how this marriage has transfigured healthcare, as well as reaping a windfall for both sectors, and forecasts what this union holds in store for 2022.
Ben Armour  |  Dec 31, 2021
Pioneering Report Maps AI+RWS Sector, Forecasts 40% Yearly Growth in China
Domain knowledge
A pioneering new report offers an overview of pharma RWS/RCT industry developments in 2020-2021, Asia’s RWS market size, trends there and in China - where it predicts 40 percent yearly growth - and showcases Asian RWS industry leaders. It discusses use of virtual Twin Studies, GWAS, Pharmacovigilance and AI, and explores RWS and AI used in diagnostics, biomarkers, image analysis, disease prevention, and Big Data. It then cites the challenges and opportunities faced by AI-driven WRS and lists governmental regulations on RWS and Big Data in Asia.
Jian Zhou, Ben Armour  |  Oct 29, 2021
‘Terminator’ Is Back With US Intel Arm’s AI-Powered ‘Project MARS’
New era
'Terminator' said, I'll be back," and now indeed returns in this report on the US Defense Intelligence agency's 'Project MARS.' Let Machine Learning (ML) and Neural Network expert Pawel Maksymiak show you the ins and outs of this chilling system, which like Skynet in the movie, deploys the ultimate assassins on AI-targeted kills, among the many other robotic weapons in its arsenal. This story is de rigueur reading for all fans of the film franchise.
Pawel Piotr Maksymiak, Ben Armour  |  Sep 10, 2021
Health Takes Center Stage at WAIC in Shanghai as AI Steals the Show at Health Fairs in Dubai
New era
All eyes were on AI+Medical at the recent World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2021 in Shanghai, while AI+Healthcare also came under the spotlight at last month’s Arab Health and its intertwined Medlab Middle East in Duba. Differing in theme, the three events still have much in common and highlight the ever-closer marriage of AI and medicine.
Ben Armour  |  Jul 21, 2021
‘Lazy’ AI Is a Problem in Some Cases, but a Solution in Others
Generic
‘AI Says Men Are Lazy,’ a headline proclaimed last year. This may be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. AI absorbs the worst traits of its human minders, and indolence is no exception. Slothful AI can be harmful or beneficial in different scenarios. Thus, one AI application took shortcuts in diagnosing COVID-19, with potentially dire consequences. Lazy AI also solved a big problem for the bike-sharing business – the ‘rebalancing problem’ by simply doing nothing.
Ben Armour  |  Jun 30, 2021