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A woman tests Vueling’s new biometric recognition system at El Prat airport, January 19, 2023, in El Prat de Llobregat, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. 

David Zorrakino | Europa Press | Getty Images

As end-of-summer travel lines back up at TSA airport checkpoints in the U.S., one overseas airport is going all-in on a biometric passenger experience. The Smart Travel Project at Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi will involve biometric sensors at every airport identification checkpoint by 2025.

Airport security and travel experts have generally cheered the move.

“They are boldly moving forward in adopting facial recognition as the means to let travelers into their system, and I commend them for doing it,” said Sheldon Jacobson, an engineering and computer science professor at the University of Illinois. Jacobson has been studying airport security since the 1990s and helped the TSA develop its pre-screening program, which allows some travelers in the U.S. to skip the checkpoints. “Facial recognition is the future, and we will start to get intelligent with airport security and focus on the traveler rather than the items they bring. By doing that, you create a different paradigm,” Jacobson said. “What they are doing in Abu Dhabi is just the beginning, but it has to start somewhere.”

Going completely paperless from the parking garage to your seat-back tray table is unnerving to some who wonder if a Crowdstrike-type outage could bring down fully electronic boarding systems and grind travel to a halt. But Jacobson says those are very rare events, and even if the system completely shut down because of an outage, the net benefits of a biometric travel experience over time will outweigh the costs.

Zayed International Airport’s program relies on a partnership with the government. The UAE’s Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs & Port Security collects biometrics from any traveler arriving in the UAE for the first time. The airport then uses this database to verify passengers passing checkpoints. The airport did not respond to a request for comment on its plans. Saeed Saif Al Khaili, General Director at the United Arab Emirate’s Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs, and Port Security, said in a recent press release that the Biometric Smart Travel project “aims to enhance the travel experience at Zayed International Airport from curb to gate, ensuring high levels of security and safety.”

Jacobson says the TSA tends to move more slowly and incrementally on changes, and that the UAE’s political system allows for faster implementation of programs, so this all-encompassing collection of biometric data likely wouldn’t fly in the U.S., at least not now. Whenever new biometric programs are introduced, he said, there is “tremendous pushback.”

Still, the U.S. public appears to be getting more comfortable with usage of biometrics at airports.

According to data analytics firm J.D. Power and Associates, a majority (53%) of those surveyed at major U.S. airports say biometrics in airports are a good idea or they are willing to use a biometric security check. An additional 12% say they are a good idea but have privacy concerns.

Among the concerns expressed are what type of data someone would need to give during the biometric enrollment process, and whether biometric security processes will be used to track movements throughout the airport, or if biometric data will be used outside the airport.

“To make the technology more widespread and allow airports and travelers to take advantage of it, airports should establish clear guidelines and processes and make travelers aware of potential uses. Buy-in from travelers is essential,” says Mike Taylor, J.D. Power’s senior managing director of travel, hospitality, and retail.

Shawn DuBravac, futurist and author of “Digital Destiny: How the New Age of Data Will Transform the Way We Work, Live, and Communicate,” said he believes biometrics will transform travel. “While we’ve seen growing use of biometric sensors to streamline travel, the vision of a fully paperless experience by next year is incredibly ambitious,” he said.

Singapore launches passport-free immigration processing at Changi Airport

Travel veterans generally agree that some aspects of biometrics will be involved in future airport visits if they aren’t already. DuBravac sees biometrics at airports in the U.S. used as a tool to make the human element more responsive.

“Instead of managing mundane tasks like document verification, personnel can provide higher levels of customer service, assist travelers with special needs, and ensure that the overall passenger experience is efficient and welcoming. Automating routine processes will empower a more human experience,” he said.

Billionaire Elon Musk lauded Zayed’s innovation, commenting on X in response to a video that showed a traveler breezing through check-in at the Abu Dhabi airport that the U.S. needs to “catch up.”

“Musk’s comments are close to wishful thinking,” said Irina Tsukerman, a national security lawyer and fellow at the Arabian Peninsula Institute. She noted that privacy concerns and costs would likely prevent the implementation of a whole biometric airport experience in the U.S.

“This worked in Abu Dhabi because UAE is a small, wealthy monarchy with a high degree of population trust in the government and sufficient resources to devote to technical innovation,”  Tsukerman said. The same ingredients aren’t in place in the U.S. “Transition to full automation for all eligible travelers will be time-consuming, onerous, expensive, and meet resistance from airport worker unions,” she said.

Despite Musk dinging U.S. airports, it isn’t like there isn’t a biometric presence in the United States.

In 2018, LAX became one of the first airports in the United States to pilot biometric boarding, and today, it is used as an option for qualifying passengers.

“At LAX, we use biometrics to support our airline partners and federal authorities to speed up the process of boarding international departing flights,” said Ian Law, chief digital transformation officer, Los Angeles World Airports, which includes LAX. There are up to four biometric lanes at each international departure gate and facial recognition technology can be used to do touchless, paperless traveler verification.

“Airlines are able to significantly reduce the time needed to board a flight, cutting the time travelers stand in line,” Law said.

While no U.S. airports are close to Abu Dhabi’s goal of a completely biometric airport, plenty of airports in the United States at least use some biometrics. According to the TSA, its PreCheck option is currently available at more than 200 airports with over 90 participating airlines nationwide and has a voluntary facial recognition component. To be approved for PreCheck, participants fill out an online form, pay a fee, undergo a background check, an in-person interview, and can opt-in for a facial recognition scan.

Clear, a publicly trading company, has also made inroads into more than 55 U.S. airports, allowing those who pay a fee and undergo prescreening to skip the lines and board biometrically. The service has made some lawmakers balk at creating a tiered system of travelers, and in California a group of lawmakers tried – but failed — earlier this year to restrict Clear.

Travel technology provider Amadeus is not involved in the Abu Dhabi airport’s biometric program but has them at other airports, such as Dubai, Vancouver, Perth, and London’s Heathrow airport. Chris Keller, vice president of airport and airline operations at Amadeus, says that for the foreseeable future, airports will be able to implement paper backups if there is a technological issue. “We expect increasing numbers of passengers to use biometrics, but there will always be a group, perhaps those that need special assistance or premium passengers, who will choose an agent-assisted experience and prefer a paper document,” Keller said.

Jacobson says that would-be criminals will be thwarted by the fact that their faces will be known in a biometric airport system. “Once the person is known this has a deterrence effect and drives down the risk,” he said. But he also indicated that Musk’s comments lack proper context. “It is not that we are behind, this is an incremental process of growth and development,” he said. “We won’t get there this week. It takes a certain amount of will and proof of concept.”

For example, when PreCheck in was rolled out in 2011 it had taken eight years from proposal to implementation.

“People are uncomfortable with change, anytime you make changes we have to do it more efficiently, more securely and less intrusively,” Jacobson said.

In the U.S., it’ll probably be awhile until getting from terminal check-in to airplane seat involves just showing your face.

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Britain at risk of losing ground to rival fintech and crypto hubs, execs warn

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Britain at risk of losing ground to rival fintech and crypto hubs, execs warn

Workers cross a junction near the Bank of England (BOE) in the City of London, UK, on Tuesday, April 8, 2025. 

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON — Britain is at risk of losing budding fintech and cryptocurrency entrepreneurs to rival hubs if it doesn’t address pressing regulation and funding challenges, according to industry leaders.

Several crypto bosses told CNBC this week that the U.K. has created an unfavorable environment for fintech and crypto. They argued that the local regulator takes too strict an approach to registering new firms, and that pension funds managing trillions of pounds are too risk-averse

Whereas a decade ago the U.K. was seen as being at “the forefront in terms of promoting competitiveness and innovation,” today things “have shifted more towards prioritizing safety and soundness to an extent where growth has been held behind,” according to Jaidev Janardana, CEO of British digital bank Zopa.

“If I look at the speed of innovation, I do feel that the U.S. is ahead — although they have their own challenges. But look at Singapore, Hong Kong — again, you see much more rapid innovation,” Janardana told CNBC. “I think we are still ahead of the EU, but we can’t remain complacent with that.”

Zopa CEO: Fintechs face challenges when it comes to scaling in the UK

Tim Levene, CEO of venture capital firm Augmentum Fintech, said entrepreneurs face challenges attracting funding in the U.K. and could be tempted to start their founding journeys in other regions, like Asia and the Middle East.

“We’re scrambling around looking for pots of capital in the U.K., where currently it would be more fruitful to go to the Gulf, to go to the U.S., to go to Australia, or elsewhere in Asia, and that that doesn’t feel right,” Levene told CNBC.

Lisa Jacobs, CEO of business lending platform Funding Circle, said that the negative impacts of Brexit are still being felt by the U.K. fintech industry — particularly when it comes to attracting overseas talent.

“I think it is right that we’re paranoid about other locations,” she told CNBC. “It is right that we are trying to — as an industry, as government — make the U.K. still that great place to set up. We have all the ingredients there, because we’ve got the ecosystem, we do have this talent setting up new businesses. But it needs to continue. We can’t rest on our laurels.”

Crypto rules unclear

The U.K. is home to a vibrant financial technology sector, with firms like Monzo and Revolut among those scaling to become challengers to traditional banks.

Industry insiders attribute their rapid rise in part to innovation-friendly rules that allowed tech startups to apply for — and secure — licenses to offer banking and electronic money services with greater ease.

Businesses operating in the world of crypto are frustrated that the same hasn’t happened yet for their industry.

“Other jurisdictions have started to seize the opportunity,” Cassie Craddock, U.K. and Europe managing director at blockchain firm Ripple, told CNBC.

The U.S., for example, has adopted a more pro-crypto stance under President Donald Trump, with the Securities and Exchange Commission dropping several high-profile legal cases against major crypto businesses.

The EU, meanwhile, has led the way when it comes to laying out clear rules for the industry with its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

“The U.S. is driving global tailwinds for the industry,” Craddock said, adding: “MiCA came into force in the EU at the end of last year, while Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE are moving full steam ahead with pro-industry reforms,” she added.

The U.K. on Tuesday laid out draft proposals for regulating crypto firms — however, industry insiders say the devil will be in the detail when it comes to addressing more complex technical issues, such as reserve requirements for stablecoins.

Rules on stablecoins unclear

Coinbase UK boss: Crypto industry needs 'smart' regulation

Another issue faced by crypto companies is that of being “debanked” by high street banks, according to Keith Grose, head of U.K. at Coinbase.

“Debanking is a huge issue — you can’t get bank accounts if you’re a company or individual who works in crypto,” Keith Grose, Coinbase’s U.K. head, told CNBC. “You can’t build the future of the financial system here if we don’t have that level playing field.”

A survey by Startup Coalition, Global Digital Finance and the U.K. Cryptoasset Business Council of more than 80 crypto firms published in January found that half were denied bank accounts or had existing ones closed by major banks.

“I think the U.K. will get it right — but there is a risk if you get it wrong that you drive innovation to other markets,” Coinbase’s Grose told CNBC.

“This is such a fast developing space — stablecoins grew 300% last year. They’re already doing more volume than Visa and Mastercard,” he added. “I think if you deliver smart regulation here, stablecoins can be a foundational part of our payment ecosystem in the U.K. going forward.”

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Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI

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Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) speaks with Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella after posing for a family picture with guests who attend the “Tech for Good” Summit at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on May 23, 2018.

Charles Platiau | AFP | Getty Images

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday said that as much as 30% of the company’s code is now written by artificial intelligence.

“I’d say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software,” Nadella said during a conversation before a live audience with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The pair of CEOs were speaking at Meta’s inaugural LlamaCon AI developer event in Menlo Park, California. Nadella added that the amount of code being written by AI at Microsoft is going up steadily. 

Nadella asked Zuckerberg how much of Meta’s code was coming from AI. Zuckerberg said he didn’t know the exact figure off the top of his head, but he said Meta is building an AI model that can in turn build future versions of the company’s Llama family of AI models.

“Our bet is sort of that in the next year probably … maybe half the development is going to be done by AI, as opposed to people, and then that will just kind of increase from there,” Zuckerberg said.

Microsoft and Meta together employ tens of thousands of software developers, but they’re the latest companies to discuss how AI is replacing some of the work written by human software developers. 

Since OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, people have turned to AI for a number of tasks, including customer service work, generating sales pitches and software development itself. 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai in October said that more than 25% of new code was written by AI. Earlier this month, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke told employees that they will have to prove AI cannot do a job before asking for more headcount. Similarly, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn on Monday announced in a memo that the language-teaching company will gradually turn to AI in lieu of human contractors. 

Earlier this month CNBC and other outlets reported that OpenAI was in talks to acquire Windsurf, a startup with “vibe coding” software that spits out whole programs with a few words of input. The dream is that with machines helping to write code, organizations will be able to produce more and better software.

WATCH: Amazon forms new unit focused on Agentic AI

Amazon forms new unit focused on Agentic AI

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Samsung flags uncertain economic climate after smartphone, chip sales power quarterly results beat

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Samsung flags uncertain economic climate after smartphone, chip sales power quarterly results beat

Photo illustration showing the Samsung Group company logo displayed on a smartphone screen.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Samsung Electronics‘ operating profit and revenue beat analysts’ estimates Wednesday, as sales of its flagship Galaxy S25 smartphones as well as memory chips rose.

The South Korean company posted a record quarterly revenue, up 10% from a year earlier, while its first-quarter operating profit climbed 1.5%.

Here are Samsung’s first-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

  • Revenue: 79.1 trillion Korean won ($55.4 billion) vs. 78.1 trillion Korean won
  • Operating profit: 6.7 trillion Korean won vs. 6.4 trillion Korean won

First-quarter revenue marginally topped Samsung’s forecast of 79 trillion Korean won, while operating profit also came in higher than the company’s expectations of 6.6 trillion Korean won.

Samsung is a leading manufacturer of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers, and is also the world’s second-largest smartphone maker.

The company flagged macroeconomic uncertainties due to trade tensions and a slowdown in global growth. Samsung expects performance to improve in the second half of the year, “assuming that the uncertainties are diminished.”

South Korea-listed shares of Samsung Electronics were trading down about 0.4%.

Memory business

A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month said that SK Hynix had overtaken Samsung in overall DRAM market revenue for the first time, with a 36% global market share as compared to Samsung’s 34%.

The report added that this had resulted, in part, from SK Hynix’s dominance in high bandwidth memory or HBM — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers in which chips are vertically stacked to save space and reduce power consumption.

SK Hynix last week topped quarterly revenue and operating profit estimates on strong demand for its high bandwidth memory offerings.

In its first quarter earnings, Samsung said it experienced deferred HBM demand from customers anticipating the rollout of its latest HBM products.

For the current quarter, Samsung anticipates continued strong demand for AI servers and will seek to strengthen its position in high-value-added products, including HBM. 

Smartphones 

Samsung’s mobile experience and networks businesses, tasked with developing and selling smartphones, tablets, wearables and other devices, reported a increase in sales and profit from the prior year and quarter.

The company credited the growth to the launch of its latest Galaxy S25 smartphone series, which includes AI features.

In the current quarter, the company plans to sustain sales through the launch of a new Galaxy S25 Edge smartphone and said it will continue to expand the AI-powered features offered on its smartphone lineup.

Correction: This story has been revised to reflect that operating profit in the chip segment declined both on a quarter-on-quarter as well as year-on-year basis.

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