Jacques: Oakland County swings harder to the left – The Detroit News

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Democrats are now calling the shots in Oakland County, and things are starting to look different in this former Republican stronghold.

Case in point: The Oakland County Board of Commissioners meets Wednesday, andone of the first items of businessis adoption of a non-discrimination policy that will apply to all county employees as well as any entity that contracts or subcontracts with the county.

The official "Pope of Pride" Gordon Matson, 58, of Oak Park walks down Nine Mile Road at the Ferndale Pride Festival in Ferndale, MI on June 2, 2018.(Photo: Anthony Lanzilote, Special to The Detroit News)

Some Republicans are concerned that it goes too far.

Democrats this year took control of the county board, 11-10, for the first time in 40 years, and longtime Republican County Executive L. Brooks Patterson died in August after a quarter century in that role. The commission replaced him with former Ferndale Mayor Dave Coulter, a Democrat who recently said he will seek a full four year term in 2020.

So its a new day in county government.

The non-discrimination policy, which has already been approved by the boards Legislative Affairs and Government Operations Committee, states that discrimination or harassment will not be tolerated on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, height, weight, disability, veteran status, familial status, marital status and other factors.

Violators face disciplinary action, termination of a contract or dismissal from county employment.

One of the Republican commissioners told me hes very concerned that the county is overreaching with this policy, in that it would ultimately apply to all villages, cities and townships that contract with the county in addition to many entities outside the government.

By including vague language such as gender expression, this moves the county into territory that goes beyond whats required in state and federal law.

And the policy would allow the county to choose contractors for reasons other than performance and cost potentially placing a higher value on political correctness than fiscal interests.

Such language is becoming pretty standard fare for cities around Michigan dozens of local governments have adopted human rights protections that apply to sexual orientation and gender identity. And Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a directive early this year extending these rights to state employees.

Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter makes announcement that he will run for the full term of Oakland County Executive next year during a press conference at Brass Aluminum Forging Enterprise in Ferndale on October 31, 2019.(Photo: Clarence Tabb Jr., The Detroit News)

Yet there isnt consensus on offering these legal protections. The state Legislature still hasnt expanded the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to include those groups, although the states Civil Rights Commission has spurned lawmakers by investigating claims of discrimination against those individuals anyway. Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel has given the commission the green light to continue its work.

Coulter, in an interview with our editorial board in September, said hes committed to maintaining Oakland Countys enviable business climate and AAA bond rating, while also working toward ensuring the county is perceived as a place that is welcoming and safe and supportive of everyone.

To that end, the county is crafting a new chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer position, which will go before the board next month. That officer, if approved, would make sure the county workforce more closely mirrors the population as a whole.

Bill Mullan, a spokesman for Coulter, says the executive worked closely with the board on the non-discrimination policy, and that most companies already have a corporate policy on file, and we are catching up to these established standards. The county doesnt expect a financial impact oncompanies it works with or on its ownoperations.

You can be both a progressive community that advocates for social issues, but also be mindful of the budget, and respect your business sector, Coulter said.

Now its up to this new crop of Oakland County officials to prove thats true.

ijacques@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques

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Letter: Patrick A. Fayle: Kaepernick takes political correctness to new heights of absurdity – The Providence Journal

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MondayNov18,2019at5:54PMNov18,2019at5:54PM

The "face" of Nike's "Just Do It" program is now ex-NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who inaugurated the practice of kneeling during the National Anthem. One Providence Journal reader referred to Kaepernick's action as a "sign of prayerful respect," though Kaepernick said he took a knee to give voice "to the people that are being oppressed."

Recently, Nike launched a new sneaker line with a logo of the so-called Betsy Ross flag, which consisted of 13 stars and 13 red and white stripes, symbolizing the original 13 colonies and states. Kaepernick said the use of the flag offended him because he considered it a symbol of slavery. Yet, the flag of post-slavery America has also had 13 red and white stripes.

It is hard to fathom how one individual in a nation of 330 million can end the rollout of a new product. This is taking political correctness to its absurd conclusion, which seems de rigueur these days. This is why the Rev. Bill Owens, head of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, has urged Nike to terminate its relationship with him.

Patrick A. Fayle, East Greenwich

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Letter: Patrick A. Fayle: Kaepernick takes political correctness to new heights of absurdity - The Providence Journal

Judd Gregg: Corporations are people too | TheHill – The Hill

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Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenRahm Emanuel: Bloomberg, Patrick entering race will allow Democrats to have 'ideas primary' Feehery: Pivoting to infrastructure could help heal post-impeachment wounds Jayapal hits back at Biden on marijuana 'prohibition' MORE (D-Mass.) says the most amazingly incoherent things.

Or should we just say she speaks in Harvard talk?

She builds her themes around political correctness on steroids, spiced up with limitless arrogance while stirring in a touch of ideological claptrap.

Consider her views on corporations.

Corporations, according to her, are the epitome of evil.

Giant multinational corporationshave no loyalty to America. They have no loyalty to American workers. They have no loyalty to American consumers. They have no loyalty to American communities. They are loyal only to their own bottom line, she said at Octobers Democratic debate in Ohio, captivated by the righteousness of her own pronouncement.

There are approximately 140 million people who have jobs in America.

This number is up by a few million from the number of people who had jobs at the end of the Obama administration.

It is the most people ever employed in our history, with the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years or so.

The vast majority of the people who work in the private sector work for corporations.

Some of these corporations are large. Amazon employs 647,000 people, almost all in America. Walmart employs more than 2 million people again, mostly in America.

Of course, most Americans work for smaller corporations.

Almost half of all private sector employees work for businesses with fewer than 500 staff.

Most of these people have families or others who depend on them and their jobs.

This may come as a surprise to Warren and her college-age followers, but not only do all these Americans have jobs that pay them. Those jobs also often include benefits like healthcare, educational assistance and childcare.

Corporations are, simply put, a lot of people working together.

Of course, there are always government jobs.

Today, there are approximately 22 million people who work either for the federal, state or local government not counting the military.

Warren has no problem with government employment of people. In fact, she wishes to expand that segment of America radically.

This is a touch ironic since the income of government employees depends on the taxes paid by people in America who work for corporations.

Clearly they need to pay more in taxes to support her plans.

As corporations spend more on taxes, they have less to spend on employing Americans, and supporting their benefits and wages.

An equally significant oversight in Warrens diatribes is that, for the most part, American workers actually own the corporations she is attacking.

Who owns most of the stock in American corporations? American workers.

The bulk of stock in American corporations is owned by pension funds and private pension plans like 401ks and IRAs.

Blackrock, the single biggest manager of pension money in the country, looks after more than $6 trillion in all. A very large percentage of this money comes from some form of pension investment.

These Americans, too, constitute corporate America.

They reflect the fact that stock ownership in American corporations is the backbone of almost all American pension plans.

Even public employees who are not subjected to Warrens wrath are heavily invested in corporate America.

The California public employees pension fund, for example the nations largest, with more than $350 billion in investments is primarily invested in the ownership of American corporations.

It is an easy use of language to make corporations out to be the cause of all things evil, as Warren does.

But, as with so much of the pablum that she is promoting, her lines are not meant to be considered in any depth.

She assumes her audiences are so angry or so naive or so poorly informed they will not look beyond her words.

If they were to pull back the curtain and ask obvious questions, they would have to conclude that she is a demagogues demagogue.

In making corporations a political punching bag, she is assuming people will ignore what corporations are a collection of Americans pulling together to accomplish many things, including a better life for themselves.

Her attacks can only be taken in two ways.

The first is that she does not trust or like Americans who get their jobs and benefits from corporations, or who invest in those corporations.

The second is that she believes she can sell her listeners a large container of snake oil wrapped in a paper bag of political fraud that depends for its viability on the gullibility of her followers.

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.

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Judd Gregg: Corporations are people too | TheHill - The Hill

‘What happens after that is out of their control’ Former military leaders and lawyers react to Trump’s war crimes pardons – Task & Purpose

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On Friday, President Donald Trump intervened in the cases of three U.S. service members accused of war crimes, granting pardons to two Army soldiers accused of murder in Afghanistan and restoring the rank of a Navy SEAL found guilty of wrongdoing in Iraq.

While the statements coming out of the Pentagon regarding Trump's actions have been understandably measured, comments from former military leaders and other knowledgable veterans help paint a picture as to why the president's Friday actions are so controversial.

The Army, Navy, and Pentagon all took similar approaches in their official responses to the commander-in-chief's orders: The President of the United States has the power to do this under the Constitution, and we will follow his orders.

The Army's statement which was not attributed to any senior official stated simply that the service would implement pardons of Maj. Matthew Golsteyn and 1st Lt. Clint Lorance.

"The Army has full confidence in our system of justice. The Uniform Code of Military Justice ensures good order and discipline for uniformed service members while holding accountable those who violate its provisions," the statement reads. "The foundation of military law is the Constitution, and the Constitution establishes the President's power to grand pardons."

Navy Rear Adm. Charlie Brown, the Navy's Chief of Information, tweeted that as Commander in Chief, "the President has the authority to restore Special Warfare Operator First Class [Eddie] Gallagher to the pay grade of E-7. We acknowledge his order and are implementing it."

Jonathan Hoffman, chief pentagon spokesperson, told CNN's Ryan Browne that the Department of Defense "has confidence in the military justice system. The President is part of the military justice system as the Commander-in-Chief & has the authority to weigh in on matters of this nature."

But a U.S. defense official also told CNN that there's concern among the department's leadership that Trump's pardons could undermine the military's justice system. CNN and the New York Times also reported that senior Pentagon leadership, including Defense Secretary Mark Esper, urged Trump not to intervene in the three cases.

Several former military leaders echoed the same concerns.

"As President Trump intervenes in war crimes cases on behalf of individuals accused or convicted of war crimes, he ... undermines decades of precedent in American military justice that has contributed to making our country's fighting forces the envy of the world," Gen. Charles Krulak, former commandant of the Marine Corps, said in a statement.

"Disregard for the law undermines our national security by reducing combat effectiveness, increasing the risks to our troops, hindering cooperation with allies, alienating populations whose support the United States needs in the struggle against terrorism, and providing a propaganda tool for extremists who wish to do us harm," he added.

Retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis offered a similar sentiment on Twitter:

While retired Gen. Martin Dempsey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was previously critical of the prospect of Trump's war crimes pardons back in May, he said in a Friday statement that he doesn't know if Trump's intervention truly sends a negative message to current U.S. troops.

"The President has the authority to pardon and provide clemency, but as far as I can tell he hasn't shared his rationale for this particular action," Dempsey said in a statement. "Our military leaders continue to train their men and women on the importance of legal and ethical conduct both in peace and in war. I'm confident those same leaders will hold soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines accountable. What happens after that is out of their control."

When reached for additional comment by Task & Purpose, Dempsey added that the message Trump's pardons send to allies, partners and adversaries "is another question."

"Again, the President hasn't made it clear why he acted as he did. It can't be that combat is simply too hard for the common man," he added. "Our servicemen and women have demonstrated with very few exceptions that they can act with uncommon honor and valor."

While Dempsey was measured in his assessment, former military lawyers took a more dire view of the precedent set by the commander-in-chief's sudden pardons.

"It's just institutionally harmful," Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force JAG and professor of law at Southwestern Law School, told the New York Times. "This isn't about these three individuals, it's about the whole military justice system and whether that system itself is something of value to the operations of the military."

"Trump's pardons put our soldiers in harm's way," Glenn Kirschner, a former Army JAG and NBC/MSNBC legal analyst, wrote on Twitter. "Other countries will assume our soldiers are permitted by the president to commit war crimes w/impunity. It also disregards the victims & insults all law-abiding US troops.

"Mr. Trump's intervention on behalf of those convicted or accused of conduct falling short of the military's crucial legal requirements and moral expectations undermines the training in which the military rightly invests so much effort," Benjamin Haas, combat veteran and former Army intelligence officer, wrote in the New York Times. "It trivializes the values the military spends so much time fostering."

"I can honestly say I have not talked to a single military officer who would be in favor of pardoning any one of these three," Gary Solis, a combat veteran and former military attorney who now teaches the laws of war at the Georgetown University Law Center and the George Washington University Law School, told Military.com. "[Trump[ had a war crime and [Lorance] was convicted, his appeal was rejected and he was serving his time. And the president stepped in and set him free, in essence ratifying his actions."

"Now, those enlisted kids, those Marines, soldiers, SEALs who see a war crime committed are going to think twice about reporting it," Solis added. "You are always going to have somebody who says, 'You dimed on us and put a good friend of mine in the brig,' or something like that ... it's made it much more difficult for those who witness war crimes to report those war crimes."

Despite the appearance of overwhelming disapproval of Trump's Friday interventions, not everyone is upset with the move including Fox & Friends co-host and former reserve military officer Pete Hegseth, who forcefully advocated for Trump to intervene in the Gallagher case. Indeed, Hegseth told Fox News that Lorance's claim that he'd been thrown under the bus by senior Pentagon leaders for political reasons was a "widespread belief" within the enlisted ranks.

"I know this is a feeling that after the Obama administration decided to promote certain people in certain ways, there became no incentive for commanders to ruffle feathers," Hegseth said. "They were incentivized to play the game, the social justice and p.c. games. So you were not getting the military leaders who are willing to take risks for the guys who are doing the heavy lifting."

"President Trump has emboldened the people out there making the impossible calls at impossible moments," he added. "If you look at each of these cases, there's plenty of reasons to question the veracity of these prosecutors. These are not cases where people went into villages with the intention of killing innocent people. These are split-second decisions."

Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Marine Corps veteran and California congressman who also advocated for Gallagher's release, shared this sentiment in his own statement on Friday.

"For years, rampant prosecutorial misconduct, political correctness, and procedures that weight the scales of justice against the accused have personified our military justice system," he said. "Self-serving military bureaucrats have felt empowered in instituting policies that have been damning to our warriors on the front lines."

"Today, thanks to the leadership of President Trump, these Pentagon armchair lawyers are being put on notice,' he added. "The President recognizes that our combat warriors are to be supported in meeting the incredible responsibilities we place on them and I very much appreciate his advocacy for America's warfighters."

Retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West, the former Florida congressman who was himself relieved of command over the improper treatment of a detainee in Iraq, echoed Hegseth and Hunter's statements.

"The travesty of injustice for these men is over ... These men aren't guilty of war crimes, they simply did what combat leaders are supposed to do, engage and kill the enemy," said West. "If our Army could set Bowe Bergdahl and Bradley Manning free, who were guilty of desertion and treason, then no one should raise a contrarian voice in the matter of these pardons. Now, the military JAG officers responsible for withholding exculpatory evidence should be disciplined.

"Islamic jihadists terrorists are non-state, non-uniform belligerents on the battlefield. They seek to blend in with civilian populations and take cover in the midst of non-combatants," West added in a follow-up statement. "These are not 'enemy soldiers.' They are unlawful enemy combatants, and should not be accorded any Geneva Convention rights, certainly not constitutional rights"

According to a poll from the Clarion Project, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit devoted to "exposing the dangers of Islamic extremism while providing a platform for the voices of moderation and promoting grassroots activism," some 77 percent of respondents believed U.S. service members should not be prosecuted for war crimes committed overseas.

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'What happens after that is out of their control' Former military leaders and lawyers react to Trump's war crimes pardons - Task & Purpose

Heres Why the Owner of a Local Comedy Club Shut It Down Mid-Show – Boston magazine

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Comedy

Courtney Pong made the executive decision to end a show early at the Rozzie Square Theater.

The Rozzie Square Theater. Photo courtesy Courtney Pong

The world of comedy, which prides itself on rule-breaking and brutal honesty, is more than a little obsessed with maintaining the status quo. Its notoriously difficult for women and people of color to break into the industry. Audiences have quickly forgiven famous funny men in the wake of their #MeToo moments. And this weekend, when a local theater owner took a stand against the misogynistic jokes fundamental to a certain type of male stand-up, she was met with swift, unrelenting backlash.

Saturday evening, Rozzie Square Theater owner Courtney Pong shut down a series of stand-up sets after the line-up of comedians made persistent racist and sexist jokes. According to Pong, the emcee (who, along with the featured comics, was hired by a separate company that contracts with the theater) kicked off the night by making a joke about how segregated the audience was, attempting to make two black and two white audience members change seats and sit next to each other. After that, Pong says, a string of comics embarked on a stale lineup of jokes, touching on sexual conquest and domestic violence, and often referring to women as bitches. The audience was so quiet throughout the set that Pong had to go over to the sound booth to play background music in an attempt to cut the awkwardness.

What finally sent Pong over the edge? When one of the comics joked that he lost his job as an Uber driver because he made all his female passengers ride in the car trunk. Shortly after, Pong stood up, rang a bell to silence the comedian, walked to the front of the room, and announced she was cutting off the show.

This isnt content that we want in our theater, Pong says she told the crowd, And its not what we want as a community. All paying customers were offered refunds.

The Rozzie Square Theater, Pong says, is meant to be a place for people, especially those who dont feel welcomed in the comedy community, to laugh and feel safe. Comedy can be a dangerous world for women and people of color, who more often find themselves the butt of jokes then onstage telling them. For Pong, this was a moment in which she could affirm to her audience that there is indeed a comedy venue where sexism and racism are not welcome. It wasnt about making a judgment call about whether or not jokes about race and rape are funny, Pong says. Rather, she turned the lights on and sent everyone home because no woman in the world would have felt safe in that room, and that conflicts with the theaters foundational beliefs.

Im creating a space for customers to enjoy a show, Pong says. It was a business decision in the moment. We didnt tell them they couldnt do it ever. This just isnt the space.

The Rozzie Square Theater opened just a year ago. It has a capacity of 49, and fewer than 20 people were in attendance at the show Saturday. But hundreds have now caught wind of the incident and are using it as yet another opportunity to lament the death of humor at the hands of political correctness. In the past two days, Pong has faced a deluge of tweets accusing her of not getting the joke, overreacting, power tripping, virtue signaling, and censoring comics. Kirk Minihane latched onto the controversy and cited it in his latest podcast episode as an example of how woke culture is ruining entertainment. Some have even taken to the Rozzie Square Theaters Facebook page to leave obviously phony 1-star reviews in an attempt to tank the theaters rating.

Its frustrating, Pong says. We spend more time arguing for the right to say sexist things than fighting for the rights of people.

After the Saturday show, Pong and the box office attendantthe only other woman in the room Saturday nightcleaned up and closed up. Pong headed across the street to Napper Tandys bar, where almost everyone from the venue had gone after she shut down the show. The comics were there, but did not acknowledge her. Two of the white male audience members did, however, approach Pong, curious to hear why she did what she did. She explained: That someone needed to show that Its not okay to punch down at women. That any woman watching that set would have felt threatened. That there isnt enough progress being made when it comes to including marginalized people in comedy, onstage or in the audience.

They seemed to understand, Pong says, which was what she set out to accomplish in closing down the show in the first place. A dialogue was always the goal. And, even as she stares down an army of trolls, Pongs belief that everyone deserves a comedy venue where they feel safe is unwavering.

In order to create a more diverse and inclusive environment, Pong says, We need to try harder.

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Heres Why the Owner of a Local Comedy Club Shut It Down Mid-Show - Boston magazine

‘Office Ladies’ Podcast Honors The Era Of Politically Incorrect Comedy – The Federalist

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15 years after the hit show The Office aired, two of the shows characters kickstarted a podcast called Office Ladies. The podcast stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, who played Pam Beasley and Angela Martin respectively, as they dish behind-the-scenes tidbits while breaking down each episode of The Office.

The podcasts delivers fun-facts and points out the odd manner in which The Office was created, comparative to a typical television show. It answers fan questions and allows listeners to delve into the real life friendship between Fischer and Kinsey, which is not seen between their characters in the show.

Watching The Office back 15 years later, its now obvious how the show defies the political correctness that dominates television in 2019. In the first season alone, which constitutes all of six episodes, there is consistent racially-insensitive banter and stereotyping, by todays standards. Not meant to harm anyone, simply created in an era where humor was taken as it was humorous.

While Office Ladies isnt the comic relief many were hoping for, we can appreciate how the hosts only point out the humor and avoid political correctness as they re-watch a show that would be considered deeply problematic if pitched in 2019.

The podcast, thus far, has featured the first five episodes of the show. One episode, Diversity Day, deals with racial insensitivity in an office setting. Michael Scott (Steve Carell) had used the n-word while mocking a Chris Rock routine and sentenced the office to mandatory diversity training, which the employees viewed as a drag. In the same episode, Dwight (Rainn Wilson) makes a pass at women for their bad driving. In another episode, Basketball, Michael calls the only African-American employee his secret weapon for his upcoming basketball game.

These jokes would never be accepted by the 2019 woke-scolds, and its surprising The Office has escaped the pitfalls of cancel culture thus far. Where are the diversity training officers to remind us what a joy diversity training is? Where is the feminist left to remind us all, women arent bad drivers?

Nowhere, thanks to the commentary by Fischer and Kinsey, which focuses listeners attention on the purpose of the show. These episodes are about ridiculous office scenarios and humor, not divisive political issues in 2019.

Despite the political posture of todays society, Office Ladies delivers the fun-facts and recaps an episode without delivering a leftist-fueled scolding of the politically incorrect comedy. The podcast truly reminds us of the good ole days when political incorrectness was king.

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'Office Ladies' Podcast Honors The Era Of Politically Incorrect Comedy - The Federalist

Polish Premier Wins Confidence Vote on Pledge to Boost Welfare – Yahoo News

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(Bloomberg) -- Polands prime minister won a vote of confidence in his cabinet after vowing to build a patriotic welfare state and win a culture war to defend traditional Catholic values.

Mateusz Morawiecki said hell continue the budget handouts that helped his nationalist Law & Justice Party clinch a new four-year term in last months elections and protect the central European nation from what he called the social experiments of gay rights activists.

The lower house of parliament voted 237 to 214 with 3 abstentions in favor of his cabinet late on Tuesday, giving him a mandate to take power. The Sejm, where Law & Justice has a majority, also passed bills intending to boost excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco as well as on sanctioning an extra monthly pension payout for further works by lawmakers.

The ruling party backed out of its most controversial legislative plan, to remove a cap on social security contributions for high earners, after failing to win support for the measure within its ranks. Morawiecki said hes optimistic about keeping a balanced budget next year even without the measure.

His policy speech came just hours after the European Unions top court issued a verdict on Tuesday against a key component of Law & Justices criticized efforts to overhaul Polands courts. The clash over the judicial reform has laid bare a struggle by EU officials to confront member states, particularly in the blocs east, that are challenging its multicultural and rule-of-law standards.

Being Normal

If there are those who will seek to wage a culture war, then we will win it, Morawiecki said in an 80 minute speech in parliament. The family will win it. Being Polish means being normal.

For Law & Justice, normalcy means fighting for ordinary citizens at the expense of corrupt and self-serving elites and opposing the Wests agenda of political correctness, especially when it comes to granting rights to same-sex couples and promoting sex education in schools.

Morawiecki vowed to keep the $586 billion economy growing faster than the euro zone -- an achievement it has fulfilled for decades -- while proposing investment incentives, the prospects of huge publicly funded projects and a continuation of policies aimed at nationalizing companies to boost the role of the state.

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Doubling down on the confrontation with the EU over courts, Morawiecki said the judicial overhaul will continue and warned the bloc against preaching to Poland about values.

EU of Equals

We entered an EU of equals, not one where there are students and a separate teachers room, he said.

Over the past four years, Law & Justice has transformed Poland from being a model of shift from communism to democracy since the 1989 fall of the Iron Curtain into one of the EUs biggest headaches, raising concerns over the safety of investment.

Morawiecki embodies the shift, having morphed from the successful head of one of Polands largest foreign-owned banks to an ideologist firebrand. He now promotes economic patriotism and said that he seeks to extend a policy of re-Polonization, or having state-run companies buy assets held by private or foreign investors.

That has boosted his popularity within ruling circles and shored up his position as premier, even though most policy is still set by the partys leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

State Projects

The premier wants to keep Polands economy growing at a pace thats 2-3 percentage points faster than that in the euro area, while boosting pensions and maintaining family subsidies his party has created since returning to power in 2015. To help growth, the government will increase investment incentives for small companies.

Morawiecki said he seeks to spend tens of billions of zloty on state-funded mega-projects, including building one of Europes biggest airports, digging a waterway through a peninsula on the Baltic Sea, boosting rail connections, and constructing a pipeline to carry Norwegian gas to break the dependency on Russian supply.

(Updates with details from overnight votes)

--With assistance from Piotr Bujnicki and Konrad Krasuski.

To contact the reporters on this story: Marek Strzelecki in Warsaw at mstrzelecki1@bloomberg.net;Adrian Krajewski in Warsaw at akrajewski4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, ;Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey, Wojciech Moskwa

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Polish Premier Wins Confidence Vote on Pledge to Boost Welfare - Yahoo News

Why ‘Harriet’ doesn’t mention the $20 bill – NBCNews.com

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In Harriet, directed and co-written by Kasi Lemmons, Cynthia Erivo plays Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery, joined the Underground Railroad and then freed more than 70 people from slavery. (Spoilers about the movie ahead.) Though Tubman died in 1913 at age 91, the movie ends during the Civil War, with Tubman leading a troop of black soldiers for the Union Army.

A chyron then appears that reads:

Harriet Tubman was the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, leading over 70 slaves to freedom.

During the Civil War, Harriet became a spy for the Union Army.

She led 150 black soldiers in the Combahee River Raid, freeing over 750 slaves.

Harriet remains one of the few women in U.S. history to lead an armed expedition.

The Morning Rundown

Get a head start on the morning's top stories.

She later remarried and dedicated her life to helping freed slaves, the elderly and Womens Suffrage.

She died surrounded by loved ones on March 10, 1913, at approximately 91 years of age.

Her last words were, I go to prepare a place for you.

Tubmans accomplishments are, of course, hard to summarize. But audience members might well wonder why Lemmons didnt end Harriet by mentioning that someday though not in 2020 as originally scheduled Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

Lemmons told Variety that in one draft of Harriet, Tubman-on-the-$20 was indeed the films kicker. But she chose to end with her famous final words instead.

We chose the words carefully, and there was a message there. And it was a message of leadership and deep spirituality, and beauty and grace that went with her to the very last words of her life, Lemmons says. I mean, I think thats just incredibly beautiful. And a beautiful way to to sum up her life, you know?

During the Obama administration, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew decided that Tubmans image would replace Jacksons on the $20 in 2020. It would mark the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

But earlier this year, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the bills need new security features, and wont be ready until 2026 at the earliest. Jackson, who owned slaves, happens to be Donald Trumps favorite president, and during Trumps campaign, he called the switch to Tubmans image pure political correctness.

Harriet faced a difficult journey to the screen, but producers Debra Martin Chase and Daniela Taplin Lundberg always believed that the film would succeed with audiences. Focus Features, which eventually signed on to make the movie, told Variety before its release that the company was bullish on its prospects, citing extremely strong testing.

That confidence has borne out. Through two weekends of release, Harriet has been a box office success, collecting more than $23 million across 2,186 screens.

In that same spirit, Lemmons isnt worried that the delay of Tubman on the $20 is permanent.

I think its inevitable, she says with a confident laugh. I think its been postponed for various reasons. But I think its happening.

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Why 'Harriet' doesn't mention the $20 bill - NBCNews.com

Margaret Cho Won’t Be ‘Intimidated Into Invisibility’ – The Daily Beast

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Margaret Chos tiny chihuahua Lucia makes her presence known exactly once over the course of our hour-long podcast taping, letting out a quick yelp that startles the comedian. Shes been around media for a long time, Cho says of her exceptionally well-behaved pet.

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Cho, who turned 50 last December, has also been in and out of the spotlight for much of the past three decades, starting with early TV stand-up performances on The Arsenio Hall Show that ultimately led to her starring role in All-American Girl. That show, which premiered on ABC in 1994, ran for just one season and has the distinction of being the first-ever sitcom to focus on an Asian-American family. It took another 20 years for Fresh Off the Boat to become the second.

I actually appear in the first season. Theyre watching me on television, which I think is a great thing, she says on this weeks episode of The Last Laugh podcast. Im really proud of them and Im so excited that the show has had such a great long life and that all of these stars have emerged from it.

Asked if she sees more opportunity for Asian-American comedians now than when she was starting out, Cho says, I think so, I hope so. But shes not holding her breath, adding, I would love to see more and I have seen some more, but I think theres still some way to go in terms of diversity.

Unlike Jerry Seinfeld or Ray Romano or the many other (mostly white, male) comedians who got big sitcom deals out of their stand-up acts, Cho did not receive a writing or producing credit on All-American Girl. They never opened that door for me, I would have had to force it open, she says. I just didnt have the knowledge or capacity to know I should demand that.

Coming up in the early 90s, Cho straddled the club and alternative-comedy worlds, both opening for comics like Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres on tour and performing in the back of smoky coffee houses with Janeane Garofolo. I was a rare breed of comedian who could somehow manage to talk my way into both worlds, she says. There was me, maybe Patton Oswalt and not many others who were welcome in stand-up comedy clubs and then also welcome in the alternative spaces.

These days, Cho is still out on the road performing stand-up shows as well as hosting her own podcast called The Margaret Cho, on which she interviews friends and fellow comedians like Kathy Griffin and her former hair stylist-turned-Queer Eye co-host Jonathan Van Ness from the comfort of her home. Its kind of like Whoopi Goldbergs old talk show, she says, way before The View.

Most recently, she was unveiled as the Poodle on Foxs semi-dystopian reality-competition show The Masked Singer. Asked why she decided to take that gig, Cho says, I love singing. And it looked fun to me. And ooh, they give you a lot of money! So it was all of the things that I love.

Highlights from our conversation are below and you can listen to the whole thing right now by subscribing to The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, the Himalaya app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

It was all very new, this idea of comedians being on television and doing sitcoms. Of course, that led to Roseanne and Tim Allen and quite a few comedians who were headlining their own sitcoms. But it was weird because my comedy was very much geared towards nightclub comedy. I think I was much more raunchy because I was trying to convince audiences that I was older than I was. But when youre hired by Disney and they brought me into their fold and tried to make a show for me, it was really a strange thing. It was like trying to make a pickle into a cucumber. Now I look back and go, I should have made a deal with HBO and had a lead-in like Arli$$ or Dream On. But I didnt really know and I had a lot of people who were working with me who were just like, Take the money. I just didnt really get it. But I learned. I think I should have handled things a little bit better, but I also didnt know who I was as a performer and an artist. Actually, being canceled really helped me become the stand-up comedian that I was supposed to be. So I became a better comedian for it. Maybe if I had had that early success as a TV personality, I wouldnt have felt the need to go back and develop as a stand-up comedian.

Quentin and I were dating at probably the craziest time for him, which was in between Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. He was always around. I dont know if he had suggested it or we had suggested it, but he wanted to be on an episode of the show. He loves sitcoms. We had both done episodes of Golden Palacenot together, but we had each done episodes of The Golden Girls spinoff. He played an Elvis impersonator. And hes very appreciative of the multi-cam genre, so he really wanted to be a part of it. At that time, we were hanging out all the time. So the writers pitched it and we did an episode that followed the pattern of Pulp Fiction and had a lot of fun. Im really appreciative that we did that. Its so 90s. Its like the most 90s thing ever.

Its his truth. And I think there is a hidden truth in there. I think there is a lot of prejudice against bisexuals, even within the LGBTQIA community.

Its his truth. And I think there is a hidden truth in there. I think there is a lot of prejudice against bisexuals, even within the LGBTQIA community, because bisexuality, sometimes its an identity that we claim when were not quite ready to be who we are. That is sometimes peoples prejudice to it, because its assumed that its a lie. Also its assumed that its convenient, that we can choose. And then it sort of justifies this idea that being gay is a choice, which is something thats been used against us for so long. So theres a lot of biases that are hard to put words to because it lends itself to your own homophobia that exists within the queerness that I am. I really try to exempt myself from homophobia but I realize that it exists within me. I welcome the criticism, because Ive already been through it. Its the one part of the gay community where theyre kind of like, eh, they could do without us. I dont think theres ever going to be a time when I walk away from being bisexual, that I identify solely as a lesbian or solely as heterosexual. But I also dont think there are two genders, so there are inherently problems with thinking we are binary. Theres no such thing. Everybody is degrees of gender. So theres a lot of problems with the B.

John Travolta and I would eat lunch in his trailer and one time he ate an entire boysenberry pie, a nine-inch boysenberry pie, with a fork, didnt even cut it in slices. This is following a Beef Wellington. So I would be doing that same kind of eating. Being in his presence is like being in the presence of a king, so you sort of want to do what he does. I ate so much they had to put an elasticized panel in the back of the suit that I wore. And half of the movie, Nicolas Cage was in character, so he really hated us because we were all in the FBI. If youre in a movie with Nicolas Cage and youre not on his side then hes really shitty to you because hes in character. So half of it he was really shitty to me. He was kind of mean anyway, but I think it was because of the character. He really yelled at me in one scene. He was just lashing out as his character, which I think is OK. I dont mind.

It was kind of the early days for cancel culture, so I probably would have been canceled if they put words to it. But we hadnt codified cancelation yet so I got in right before cancelation was a thing. But I didnt understand, because I am Korean. They were like, How could you portray a Korean? I dont know. And it was mostly white people [who were offended], which was pretty sad. So I think cancel culture doesnt help us or political correctness doesnt help us when it serves to try to intimidate you into invisibility. If an Asian person is doing an Asian character, the accent is acceptable. If its who you are, its kind of OK. Its very weird when people get agitated about it. But I had fun.

Next week on The Last Laugh podcast: Stand-up comedian Mike Birbiglia, whose latest show The New One, premieres on Netflix Tuesday, November 26th.

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Margaret Cho Won't Be 'Intimidated Into Invisibility' - The Daily Beast

Food for Thought: How can brands show diversity in an authentic way? – CMO

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In our latest series on leading issues in and around customer experience, we ask two brand marketing leaders and an industry expert to share their thoughts on the ways to ensure authentic, diverse marketing.

Adriane McDermott

Chief marketing officer, Seafolly

We are at a tipping point in Australia, where diversity and inclusivity can no longer dismissed as political correctness, they are the norm. Simply put, diversity means representing differences and inclusivity means seeking out these differences and treating them with equality and respect.

As marketers, our task is to listen and respond to the needs, wants and desires of our audiences; it is no surprise that brands in the US and Europe, and now in Australia are being held more accountable for diversity. People are caring more about what how they self-identify and whether they see themselves represented in a brands marketing.

The most admired brands embrace diversity and inclusivity as part of their purpose, culture, product strategy and positioning. US brand, Third Love, has grown largely because of its mission to create a bra for every woman. Its advertising famously features 78 women of various shapes and sizes, ages, skin colours and ethnicities, representing every style it offers. In its experience, the more diverse it is in its marketing, the greater the respect and response from its customers.

In Australia, there are some great examples of brands embracing diversity, but we still have a long way to go. It is less about like-minded individuals deciding what looks good to them and running with it. Its about bringing in and representing more diverse perspectives, from our teams, our audiences and our communities.

If it is done as a tokenistic gesture, it can do more harm than good. To authentically demonstrate diversity and inclusivity, it starts with being less single-minded about the messaging, visuals and the context you use in your brand communication, both internal and external. To sharpen up the focus, it also involves understanding what aspects of diversity are most important to your audience, then actively representing, recruiting and inviting these points of view into the mix.

Diversity cannot be bolted onto your marketing plan. It is not just adding ethnically diverse talent into a campaign and calling it inclusive. Its creating concepts to represent diverse target audiences and their experiences. Through diversity and inclusivity, we will not only be leading our brands, we will lead cultural change for the better.

Read more: Seafolly CMO on embracing more inclusive marketing

Tamara Howe

Chief marketing officer, Kellogg

It has often been said marketers should be the voice of the consumer, so it follows that Australia being one of the most multicultural nations in the world, brands should reflect this diversity.

The 2016 Census reveals a fast-changing, culturally diverse nation nearly half (49 per cent) of Australians had either been born overseas (First Generation Australian) or one or both parents were born overseas (Second Generation Australian). While England and New Zealand are still the most common countries of birth after Australia, the proportion of people born in China and India has increased since 2011 to 8.3 per cent and 7.4 per cent respectively. Of the more than 6 million people born overseas, nearly one in five have arrived since the start of 2012.

Diversity also extends beyond culture to gender (Roy Morgan data from 2014, albeit a bit old, indicates 62 per cent of grocery shoppers are women) age like most developed countries, Australias population is ageing, resulting in proportionally fewer children and a proportionally larger increase in those aged 65 and over (ABS, 2016) and gender identity.

At Kellogg, weve celebrated this through our My Perfect Bowl Campaign which uses real Australians, not actors, and is a dynamic mix of a mermaid, bikies, a crane-driver and a state gymnastics team. The documentary-style ads feature groups of real families and friends, all genuine Kelloggs fans, debating their version of their perfect cereal bowl.

The unscripted testimonials show the many ways Aussies enjoy their cereal. From Dane, who works on a crane and eats his Just Right while watching the city wake up 30 storeys above, to Colin, whos been a fan of Corn Flakes for 65 years and Annie Mation, a drag queen who loves her Rice Bubbles after doing a late-night show. All true stories that celebrate individuality, are entertaining and, at times, touching. We built on this by releasing additional content that represents the diversity of Aussie families in all their glorious chaos and mess, yet with a common love for Corn Flakes.

Authenticity is the key so our diverse consumers feel they are being represented in culture and in a category (cereal) that has almost 90 per cent penetration. This is critical to ensure we are consistently recruiting more households. What enabled authenticity in this campaign was leveraging real characters (not actors) and the unscripted, documentary style ad.

As an industry, we will no doubt make mistakes in this space; however, Id rather we try, learn and get better to show diversity in all forms.

Anne Miles

Managing director, Suits & Sneakers

Diversity is getting to be big news as it is proven that the public out there want a more accurate reflection of our society in marketing. According to Kantar, 83 per cent of marketers in APAC think they are doing a good job with gender stereotypes, yet 63 per cent of the population disagree. Imagine what that means were doing across the wider and less known aspects of diversity if we cant even get gender right?

Any brand has the power to represent a true reflection on our society makeup without trying to be overly politically correct but only if they refer to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and see that we dont have an excessive population of mixed races as much as we think we do. Tourism can cloud our judgment if we stand in the street and measure how many people from other cultures are around us at any one time.

As a result, we have a biased view of how many migrants we have in the country and therefore over-represent them in casting or communications can just reinforce the wrong balance and this can have an impact on become more racist, not less in fact.

Many argue that advertising and marketing simply is the voice of the culture around us, but the influence we have is epic and we must respect that privilege and drive change. Given we have so many different types of people, diverse cultures, diverse thinking styles, diverse genders, diverse abilities, even personality types and psychosocial ability, these all form part of our colourful community out there and we need to be reflecting the population accurately.

Lets just be inclusive and diverse in a natural and realistic way and stop talking (even ranting) about it. To be able to create content inclusive of all people takes skills in linguistics and psychology in order to communicate to the masses without polarising.

Follow CMO on Twitter:@CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn:CMO ANZ,follow our regular updatesvia CMO Australia's Linkedin company page, or join us on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia.

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Food for Thought: How can brands show diversity in an authentic way? - CMO

How To Get Your Rsum Past The Artificial Intelligence Gatekeepers – Forbes

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By Jeff Mills, Director, Solution Marketing at SAP SuccessFactors

Its no longer a secret that getting past the robot rsum readers to a human let alone land an interview can seem like trying to get in to see the Wizard of Oz. As the rsums of highly qualified applicants are rejected by the initial automated screening, job seekers suddenly find themselves having to learn rsum submission optimization to please the algorithms and beat the bots for a meeting with the Wizard.

Many enterprise businesses use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools to screen rsums when recruiting and hiring new employees.Even small to midsize companies who use recruiting services are using whatever algorithm or search-driven automated rsum screening those services utilize.

Why dont human beings read rsums anymore? Well, they do, but usually later in the process after the initial shortlist by the bots. Unfortunately, desirable soft skills and unquantifiable experience can go unnoticed by the best-trained algorithms. So far, the only solution is human interaction.

Despite the view from outside the organization, HR has good reason for using automated processes for screening rsums. To efficiently manage the hundreds or even thousands of applications submitted for one position alone, companies have adopted automated AI screening tools to not only save time and human effort but also to find qualified and desirable candidates before they move on or someone else gets to them first.

Nobodys ever seen the Great Oz!

The wealth of impressive time-saving and turnover reduction metrics equates to success and big ROI for organizations who automate recruiting and hiring processes. Most tales of headaches and frustration go untold for many thousands of qualified applicants whose rsums somehow failed to tickle the algorithm just right.

This trend is changing, however, as the bias built into AI and machine learning algorithms unintentionally or otherwise becomes more glaringly apparent and undeniable. Sure, any new technology will have its early adopters and zealous promoters and apologists as well as the naysayers and skeptics. But when that technology shows promise to change industry and increase profit, criticism can be drowned out and ignored.

The problem of bias in AI is not a new concern. For several years, scientists and engineers have warned that because AI is created and developed by humans, the likelihood of bias finding its way into the program code is high if not certain. And the time to think about that and address it as much as possible is during the design, development, and testing process. Blind spots are inevitable. Once buy-in is achieved and business ecosystems integrate that technology, the recursive and reciprocal influences of technology, commerce, and society can make changing course slow and/or costly.

Consider the recent trouble Amazon found itself in for some of its hiring practices when it had been determined that their AI recruiting tool was biased against women. AI in itself is not biased and performs only as it is instructed and adapts to new information. Rather, the bias comes from the way human beings program and develop the way machines learn and execute commands. Or if the outputs of the AI are taken at face value and never trained by ongoing human interaction, they can never adapt.

Bias enters in a few ways. One source is rooted in the data sets used to train algorithms for screening candidates. Other sources of bias enter when certain criteria are privileged, such as growing up in a certain area, attending a top university, or certain age preferences. By using the data for existing employees as a model for qualified candidates, the screening process can become a kind of feedback loop of biased criteria.

A few methods and practices can help correct or avoid this problem. One is to use broad swaths of data, including data from outside your company and even your industry. Also, train algorithms on a continual basis, incorporating new data, and monitoring algorithm function and results. Set benchmarks for measuring data quality and have humans screen rsums as well. Management of automated recruiting and screening solutions can go a long way in minimizing bias as well as reducing the number of qualified candidates who get their rsums rejected.

Bell out of order, please knock

As mentioned earlier, change takes time once these processes are in place and embedded. Until widespread acceptance that problems exist, and steps are taken to address them, the best job seekers can do is adapt.

With all of the possible ways that programmers biases influence the bots screening rsums, what can people applying for jobs do to improve their chances of getting past the AI gatekeepers?

The good news is that these moves will not only help eliminate false negatives and keep your rsum out of the abyss, but they are likely to make things easier for the human beings it reaches.

Well, why didnt you say so? Thats a horse of a different color!

So, what are they looking for? How do you beat the bots?

In the big picture, AI is still young, and we are working out the kinks and bugs not only at a basic code and function level, but also on the human level. We are still learning how to navigate and account for our roles and responsibilities in the overall ecosystem of human-computer interaction.

The bottom line is that AI, machine learning, and automation can eliminate bias or reinforce it. That separation may never be pure, but its an ideal that is not only worth striving for, it is absolutely necessary to work toward. The impact and consequences of our choices today will leave long-lasting effects on every area of human life.

And the bright side is that were already beginning to see how those theoretical concerns can play out in the real world, and we have an opportunity to improve a life-changing technological development whose reach and impact we can still only dimly imagine. In the meantime, job seekers looking to beat the bots are not entirely powerless, but can do what human beings have done well for ages: adapt.

Interested in how to deliver a great candidate experience? Read our guide on how to Transform the Candidate Experience.

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How To Get Your Rsum Past The Artificial Intelligence Gatekeepers - Forbes

Highlights: Addressing fairness in the context of artificial intelligence – Brookings Institution

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When society uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help build judgments about individuals, fairness and equity are critical considerations. On Nov. 12, Brookings Fellow Nicol Turner-Lee sat down with Solon Barocas of Cornell University, Natasha Duarte of the Center for Democracy & Technology, and Karl Ricanek of the University of North Carolina Wilmington to discuss artificial intelligence in the context of societal bias, technological testing, and the legal system.

Artificial intelligence is an element of many everyday services and applications, including electronic devices, online search engines, and social media platforms. In most cases, AI provides positive utility for consumerssuch as when machines automatically detect credit card fraud or help doctors assess health care risks. However, there is a smaller percentage of cases, such as when AI helps inform decisions on credit limits or mortgage lending, where technology has a higher potential to augment historical biases.

Policing is another area where artificial intelligence has seen heightened debateespecially when facial recognition technologies are employed. When it comes to facial recognition and policing, there are two major points of contention: the accuracy of these technologies and the potential for misuse. The first problem is that facial recognition algorithms could reflect biased input data, which means that their accuracy rates may vary across racial and demographic groups. The second challenge is that individuals can use facial recognition products in ways other than their intended usemeaning that even if these products receive high accuracy ratings in lab testing, any misapplication in real-life police work could wrongly incriminate members of historically marginalized groups.

Technologists have narrowed down this issue by creating a distinction between facial detection and facial analysis. Facial detection describes the act of identifying and matching faces in a databasealong the lines of what is traditionally known as facial recognition. Facial analysis goes further to assess physical features such as nose shape (or facial attributes) and emotions (or affective computing). In particular, facial analysis has raised civil rights and equity concerns: an algorithm may correctly determine that somebody is angry or scared but might incorrectly guess why.

When considering algorithmic bias, an important legal question is whether an AI product causes a disproportional disadvantage, or disparate impact, on protected groups of individuals. However, plaintiffs often face broad challenges in bringing anti-discrimination lawsuits in AI cases. First, disparate impact is difficult to detect; second, it is difficult to prove. Plaintiffs often bear the burden of gathering evidence of discriminationa challenging endeavor for an individual when disparate impact often requires aggregate data from a large pool of people.

Because algorithmic bias is largely untested in court, many legal questions remain about the application of current anti-discrimination laws to AI products. For example, under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, private employers can contest disparate impact claims by demonstrating that their practices are a business necessity. However, what constitutes a business necessity in the context of automated software? Should a statistical correlation be enough to assert disparate impact by an automated system? And how, in the context of algorithmic bias, can a plaintiff feasibly identify and prove disparate impact?

Algorithmic bias is a multi-layered problem that requires a multi-layered solution, which may include accountability mechanisms, industry self-regulation, civil rights litigation, or original legislation. Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Rep. Yvette Clark (D-NY) introduced the Algorithmic Accountability Act, which would require companies to conduct algorithmic risk assessments but allow them to choose whether or not to publicize the results. In addition, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) introduced the Justice in Forensic Algorithms Act, which addresses the transparency of algorithms in criminal court cases.

However, this multi-layered solution may require stakeholders to first address a more fundamental question: what is the goal that were trying to solve? For example, to some individuals, the possibility of inaccuracy is the biggest challenge when using AI in criminal justice. But to others, there are certain use cases where AI does not belong, such as in the criminal justice or national security contexts, regardless of whether or not it is accurate. Or, as Barocas describes these competing goals, when the systems work well, theyre Orwellian, and when they work poorly, theyre Kafkaesque.

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Highlights: Addressing fairness in the context of artificial intelligence - Brookings Institution

Newsrooms have five years to embrace artificial intelligence or they risk becoming irrelevant – Journalism.co.uk

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A new report published this week (18 November 2019) looking at the intersection of AI and journalism has issued a warning to global newsrooms: collaborate with your competitors or face extinction.

The study, 'New powers, new responsibilities. A global survey of journalism and artificial intelligence' is a joint project between Polis, the international journalism think-tank at London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Google News Initiative, who has funded the research.

It surveyed 71 international news organisations on their on use of artificial intelligence for editorial purposes across a seven-month period, showing that just 37 per cent of them have a dedicated AI strategy.

Charlie Beckett, director, Polis, London School of Economics and Political Science, said that newsrooms have between two and five years to develop a meaningful strategy, or risk fading out of the digital landscape.

"This is a marathon, not a sprint - but theyve got to start running now," he said.

"Youve got two years to start running and at least working out your route and if youre not active within five years, youre going to lose the window of opportunity. If you miss that, youll be too late."

Even by the lowest possible trajectory, the rate of which natural language processing, translations, text generations and deep-fakes are developing means that newsrooms cannot afford to drag their heels, as the knowledge gap will only widen.

"Deepfakes have already accelerated in the last six months from a something in lab to something kids in Macedonia can churn out. Im not trying to panic people - the report stresses the positivity of AI - but there is a real sense of urgency here," he explained.

"Its really clear if you look at other industries that AI is shaping customer behaviour. People expect personalisation, be that in retail or housing, for production, supply or content creation. They use AI because of the efficiencies that it generates and how it enhances the services or products it offers.

"So if we, as journalists, are going to be living in that world, journalism is going to look very dumb if it doesnt have those capabilities. If journalism doesnt get its act together, worse than looking antiquated, it won't be looked at at all."

Despite these alarm bells, integrating AI into editorial process can have a range of benefits, including taking the burden out of long-winded tasks and sifting through large databases to produce local stories.

While many global newsrooms like Reuters News are quite advanced in this field, integrating significant cultural and operational changes is challenging for cash-strapped local and regional newsrooms.

The report details that many newsrooms struggle because of those financial limitations, but also because of lack of expertise, managerial strategy and time to prioritise AI, as well as scepticism around the technology. Some of these concerns touch on established arguments around algorithmic bias, filter bubbles and the influence of machine learning over editorial decisions.

The report also offers an eight-step pathway to integrating AI in newsrooms, even for those starting from scratch. It starts with assessing readiness of AI right through to creating task-specific roles with AI resources.

But dialogue and exchanging best practices from those in similar circumstances are also important.

Networking is not just a nice idea though, it can be a commercial arrangement.

"It could be a developing a good machine learning program, saying 'Can we benefit by selling this onto other newsrooms, so others can also benefit?' Or sharing data so you can train data better to develop better newsroom tools.

"When you train natural language processing you need a big dataset of images. One newsroom may not have that - are there opportunities for newsrooms to get together and share these tools and benefit? Its not altruism, its called benign self-interest."

Not co-operating, he argues, will lead to mutual self-destruction. But he is already seeing early signs of co-operation, recognising that competitors face common issues. Only by tackling the problem together can they resume their rivalry.

"To have healthy competition, you need healthy business," said Beckett.

"Get the tech right, then that will allow you to focus much harder on what you do differently and best, and how your editorial product is different to your competitors."

Ultimately, he said that AI will be neither the saviour nor the demise of journalism. But it will at least allow local journalists to leave their newsdesk more often and do more field work.

"If youve ever worked in a local newsroom, you know there are people who cant leave the office because they are churning out stories.

"They are losing the very idea of being local, which is going out into the streets, to meet people and to interact with your community. This is to augment and to power-up journalism, its not about journalism turning into a bland robotic product, its about getting back to distinctive journalism."

Want to know how to use breaking news to grow your audience? Find out how at Newsrewired on 27 November at Reuters, London. Head to newsrewired.com for the full agenda and tickets

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).

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Newsrooms have five years to embrace artificial intelligence or they risk becoming irrelevant - Journalism.co.uk

4 Reasons to Use Artificial Intelligence in Your Next Embedded Design – DesignNews

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For many, just mentioning artificial intelligence brings up mental images of sentient robots at war with mankind and mans struggle to avoid the endangered species list. While this may one day be a real scenario for when (perhaps a big if?) mankind ever creates an artificial general intelligence (AGI), the more pressing matter is whether embedded software developers should be embracing or fearing the use of artificial intelligence in their systems. Here are five reasons why you may want to include machine learning in your next project.

Reason #1 Marketing Buzz

From an engineering perspective, including a technology or methodology in a design simply because it has marketing buzz is something that every engineer should fight. The fact though is that if there is a buzz around something, odds are it will in the end help to sell the product better. Technology marketing seems to come in cycles, but there are always underlying themes that are driving those cycles that at the end of the day do turn out to be real.

Artificial intelligence has progressed through the years, with deep learning on the way. (Image source: Oracle)

Machine learning has a ton of buzz around it right now. Im finding this year that had industry events, machine learning typically makes up at least 25% of the event talks. Ive had several clients tell me that they need machine learning in their product and when I ask them their use case and why they need it, the answer is just that they need it. Ive heard this same story from dozens of colleagues, but the push for machine learning seems relentless right now. The driver is not necessarily engineering, but simply leveraging industry buzz to sell product.

Reason #2 The Hardware Can Support It

Its truly amazing how much microcontroller and application processors have changed in just the last few years. Microcontrollers which I have always considered to be resource constrained devices are now supporting megabytes of flash and RAM, having on-board cache and reaching system clock rates of 1 GHz and beyond! These little controllers are now even supporting DSP instructions which means that they can efficiently execute inferences.

With the amount of computing power available on these processors, it may not require much additional cost on the BOM to be able to support machine learning. If theres no added cost, and the marketing department is pushing for it, then leveraging machine learning might make sense simply because the hardware can support it!

Reason #3 It May Simplify Development

Machine learning has risen on the buzz charts for a reason. It has become a nearly indispensable tool for the IoT and the cloud. Machine learning can dramatically simplify software development. For example, have you ever tried to code up an application that can recognize gestures, handwriting or classify objects? These are really simple problems for a human brain to solve, but extremely difficult to write a program for. In certain program domains such as voice recognition, image classification and predictive maintenance, machine learning can dramatically simplify the development process and speed-up development.

With an ever expanding IoT and more data than one could ever hope for, its becoming far easier to classify large datasets and then train a model to use that information to generate the desired outcome for the system. In the past, developers may have had configuration values or acceptable operation bars that were constantly checked during runtime. These often involved lots of testing and a fair amount guessing. Through machine learning this can all be avoided by providing the data, developing a model and then deploying the inference on an embedded systems.

Reason #4 To Expand Your Solution Toolbox

One aspect of engineering that I absolutely love is that the tools and technologies that we use to solve problems and development products is always changing. Just look at how you developed an embedded one, three and five years ago! While some of your approaches have undoubtedly stayed constant, there should have been considerable improvements and additions to your processes that have improved your efficiency and the way that you solve problems.

Leveraging machine learning is yet another tool to add to the toolbox that in time, will prove to be an indispensable tool for developing embedded systems. However, that tool will never be sharpened if developers dont start to learn about, evaluate and use that tool. While it may not make sense to deploy a machine learning solution for a product today or even next year, understanding how it applies to your product and customers, the advantages and disadvantages can help to ensure that when the technology is more mature, that it will be easier to leverage for product development.

Real Value Will Follow the Marketing Buzz

There are a lot of reasons to start using machine learning in your next design cycle. While I believe marketing buzz is one of the biggest driving forces for tinyML right now, I also believe that real applications are not far behind and that developers need to start experimenting today if they are going to be successful tomorrow. While machine learning for embedded holds great promise, there are several issues that I think should strike a little bit of fear into the cautious developer such as:

These are concerns for a later time though, once weve mastered just getting our new tool to work the way that we expect it to.

Jacob Beningo is an embedded software consultant who currently works with clients in more than a dozen countries to dramatically transform their businesses by improving product quality, cost and time to market. He has published more than 200 articles on embedded software development techniques, is a sought-after speaker and technical trainer, and holds three degrees which include a Masters of Engineering from the University of Michigan. Feel free to contact him at [emailprotected], at his website, and sign-up for his monthly Embedded Bytes Newsletter.

January 28-30:North America's largest chip, board, and systems event,DesignCon, returns to Silicon Valleyfor its 25th year!The premier educational conference and technology exhibition, this three-day event brings together the brightest minds across the high-speed communications and semiconductor industries, who are looking to engineer the technology of tomorrow. DesignCon is your rocket to the future. Ready to come aboard?Register to attend!

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Colorado at the forefront of AI and what it means for jobs of the future – The Denver Channel

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LITTLETON, Colo. -- A group of MIT researchers visited Lockheed Martin this month for a chance to talk about the future of artificial intelligence and automation.

Liz Reynolds is the executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future and says her job is to focus on the relationship between new technologies and how they will affect jobs.

Colorado is at the forefront of thinking about these things, Reynolds said. All jobs will be affected by this technology.

Earlier this year, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., created an artificial intelligence strategy group to take a closer look at how AI is being used in the state and how that will change in the future.

We need a national strategy on AI that galvanizes innovation, plans for the changes to our workforce, and is clear-eyed about the challenges ahead. And while were seeing progress, workers and employers cant wait on Washington, said Sen. Bennet in a statement. Colorado is well-positioned to shape those efforts, which is why weve made it a priority to bring together Colorado leaders in education, business, nonprofits, labor, and government to think through how we can best support and train workers across Colorado so they are better prepared for a changing economy."

MIT recently released a 60-page report detailing some of the possibilities and challenges with AI and automation.

One of the major challenges the group is considering is how the technology will affect vulnerable workers, particularly people who do not have a four-year degree.

The MIT team is looking for ways to train those workers to better prepare them for the changes.

Were not trying to replace a human, thats not something youre ever going to do with eldercare. For example, youre going be looking for ways to use this technology to help, Reynolds said.

Despite recent advances in AI, Reynolds believes the changes to the workforce will happen over a matter of decades, not years.

We think its going to be a slower process and its going to give us time to make the changes that we need institutionally, she said.

Beyond that, projections suggest that, with an aging workforce, there will be a scarcity of people to employ in future and technology can help fill some of those gaps.

The bigger question is how to ensure that workers can get a quality job that results in economic security for their families.

I think theres really an opportunity for us to see technology not as a threat but really, as a tool, Reynold said. If we can use the right policies and institutions to support workers in this transition then we could really be working toward something that works for everyone.

Lockheed Martin has been using artificial intelligence and automation in its space program for years. The companys scientists rely on automation to manage and operate spacecrafts that are on missions.

However, the technology is also being applied closer to home. The AI Lockheed Martin has created is already being applied to peoples day-to-day lives, from GPS navigation to banking. Now, the company is looking for more ways to make use of it.

Even though its been around for some time, we want to think about how we can use it in different, emerging ways and apply it to other parts of our business as well, said Whitley Poyser, the business transformation acting director for Lockheed Martin Space.

One of the areas in particular Lockheed Martin is looking to apply the technology is in its manufacturing, not only to streamline processes but to use data the machines are already collecting to predict potential issues and better prepare for them.

Poyser understands that there are some fears about this technology taking over jobs, but she doesnt believe thats the case.

Its not taking the job away, its just allowing our employees to think differently and think about elevating their skills and their current jobs, Poyser said. Its actually less of a fear to us and more of an opportunity.

The true potential of artificial intelligence is only beginning to be unleashed for companies like Lockheed Martin. Reynolds is hoping that predicting for the possibilities and challenges now will help the country better prepare for the changes in the decades to come.

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Colorado at the forefront of AI and what it means for jobs of the future - The Denver Channel

Artificial intelligence has become a driving force in everyday life, says LivePerson CEO – CNBC

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2020 is going to be a big year for artificial intelligence, that is.

At least, that was the message LivePerson CEO Robert LoCascio delivered to CNBC's Jim Cramer on Friday.

"When we think about 2020, I really think it's the start of everyone having [AI]," LoCascio said on "Mad Money." "AI is now becoming something that's not just out there. It's something that we use to drive everyday life."

LivePerson, based in New York City, provides the mobile and online messaging technology that companies use to interact with customers.

Shares of LivePerson closed up just more than 5% on Friday, at $38.32. While it sits below its 52-week high of $42.85, it is up more than 100% for the year.

It reported earnings last week, with total revenue at $75.2 million for the third quarter, which is up 17% compared with the same quarter in 2018.

More than 18,000 companies use LivePerson, including four of the five largest airlines, LoCascio said. Around 60 million digital conversations happen through LivePerson each month, he said.

"You can buy shoes with AI on our platform. You can do airlines. You can do T-Mobile, change your subscription with T-Mobile," he said. "That's the stuff in everyday life."

The world has entered a point where technology has transformed all aspects of communication, LoCascio said.

"Message your brand like you message your friends and family," he said, predicting a day where few people want to pick up the phone and call a company to ask questions. "We're powering all that ... for some of the biggest brands in the world."

LoCascio said LivePerson, which he founded in 1995, now uses AI to power about 50% of the conversations on its platform.

"We're one of the few companies where it's not a piece of the puzzle. It's the entire puzzle," he said.

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Artificial intelligence has become a driving force in everyday life, says LivePerson CEO - CNBC

Two-thirds of employees would trust a robot boss more than a real one – World Economic Forum

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Have you ever commiserated with your colleagues that your boss acts like an automaton?

This soon might be more than just a figure of speech and some employees don't necessarily think that would be a bad thing.

By 2030, up to 800 million workers around the world could be replaced by machines. The fear of rampaging robots isnt just restricted to jobs. Leaders in emerging technology, such as Elon Musk, have suggested artificial intelligence (AI) is a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization.

But a new survey shows some workers have much friendlier views toward AI. Oracle and Future Workplace found 82% of workers believe robot managers are better at certain tasks such as maintaining work schedules and providing unbiased information than their human counterparts.

And almost two-thirds (64%) of workers worldwide say they would trust a robot more than their human manager. In China and India, that figure rises to almost 90%.

Almost two-thirds of workers worldwide trust a robot manager more than a human manager.

Image: Oracle/Future Workplace

The use of robotics in Asia is growing rapidly. Sales of industrial robots in India jumped by 39% in a year, while China is aiming to become one of the worlds most automated nations by 2020.

The implementation of AI technology, including robots, is expected to add as much as $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Automating routine tasks and administration will free employees up to focus on more complex work, while product development will become more agile as machines learn rapidly about what customers want.

The research recognizes that robots can bring complementary skills to the workplace. More than half of those surveyed by Oracle/Future Workplace say they're excited about having robot co-workers. Millennials are particularly enthusiastic.

There is growing enthusiasm for human-robot work partnerships.

Image: International Federation of Robotics

Our workplaces are changing and not necessarily for the worse. A World Economic Forum report on the future of work suggests that while 75 million jobs may be lost to automation by 2022, another 133 million additional new roles will be created.

The World Economic Forum was the first to draw the worlds attention to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the current period of unprecedented change driven by rapid technological advances. Policies, norms and regulations have not been able to keep up with the pace of innovation, creating a growing need to fill this gap.

The Forum established the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network in 2017 to ensure that new and emerging technologies will helpnot harmhumanity in the future. Headquartered in San Francisco, the network launched centres in China, India and Japan in 2018 and is rapidly establishing locally-run Affiliate Centres in many countries around the world.

The global network is working closely with partners from government, business, academia and civil society to co-design and pilot agile frameworks for governing new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, blockchain, data policy, digital trade, drones, internet of things (IoT), precision medicine and environmental innovations.

Learn more about the groundbreaking work that the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network is doing to prepare us for the future.

Want to help us shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Contact us to find out how you can become a member or partner.

Those new roles as well as stable occupations such as human resources specialists and university lecturers are likely to play on our creativity and ability to empathize with colleagues.

AI is redefining not only the relationship between worker and manager, but also the role of a manager in an AI-driven workplace, says Dan Schawbel, Research Director at Future Workplace.

Managers will remain relevant in the future if they focus on being human and using their soft skills, while leaving the technical skills and routine tasks to robots.

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Two-thirds of employees would trust a robot boss more than a real one - World Economic Forum

Artificial intelligence engines have implicit biases – The Daily Titan

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Technology has found a way to seep into every nook and cranny of the human experience. Throughout this digital shift, there has been one universal language that moves society toward an upward trajectory and lets humans live in an easier manner: coding.

Computer science is an increasingly important area of study, as the digital and physical world blends seamlessly together, like a beautifully choreographed dance. But like all things that humans touch, the mathematical sequences that create our digital existence are flawed by the systems of inequality that thrive within the physical world.

Each person, regardless of their background, has inherently adopted a set of subconscious biases. The prejudice that each person holds can come across in both superficial and significant ways, and when an engineer is creating an algorithm for a new system of artificial intelligence, those biases will undoubtedly affect the outcome.

This is not to say that humans are intentionally or deliberately ingraining their biases into these systems, but traces of their preferences break through from the data that is fed into these new creations.

Take, for instance, the AI software ImageNet.

In September, thousands of people uploaded their photos to a website called ImageNet Roulette, which used the AI software to analyze a persons face and describe what it saw.

This seemingly amusing game churned out a plethora of responses from nerd to nonsmoker. However, when Tabong Kima, a 24-year-old African American man, uploaded his smiling photo, the software analyzed him as an offender and wrongdoer, according to the New York Times.

To add insult to injury, the software also analyzed the man with him, another person of color, a spree killer.

At first glance, some may write this flawed social media trend as unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but that is far from the truth.

ImageNet is one of many data sets that have been extensively used by tech giants, start-ups and academic labs when they train new forms of artificial intelligence. This means that any flaws in this one data set, such as the racist labelling in Kimas case, have already spread far and wide throughout the digital realm of existence.

As engineers increasingly drift toward the production of AI software, with the goal of lifting tedious responsibilities from the shoulders of busy individuals, it is important to ensure the footprint of systemic inequality that has historically permeated throughout the world does not find a way into the powerful realm of software.

Software has progressively impacted each persons ability to thrive in the world. Whether thats through applying for credit cards or jobs, there continues to be less of a hands-on approach when these applications are reviewed.

This past week, Apple came under fire for their credit cards alleged sexist algorithms.

The conversation first surfaced when David Hansson, a prominent software engineer, tweeted about the issues he and his wife were having with Apples credit card.

The @AppleCard is such a f sexist program. My wife and I filed joint tax returns, live in a community-property state, and have been married for a long time. Yet Apples black box algorithm thinks I deserve 20x the credit limit she does. No appeals work, Hansson tweeted.

Not long after, Apples co-founder Steve Wozniak weighed in on the issue, stating that he and his wife experienced a similar issue with the Apple credit card.

To explain simply, a black box algorithm is a system where the inputs and outputs can be viewed by an observer, but without any knowledge of the internal system works. Meaning that although theres an output of data, no one knows how the system created that information.

In response to the deeply unsettling prospect of Apple limiting users in a way which hints at sexist black box practices, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) tweeted, The risks of unaccountable, black box algorithms shouldnt be underestimated. As companies increasingly rely on algorithms to handle life-changing decisions and outcomes, federal regulators must do their part to stamp out discrimination before its written into code.

Goldman Sachs, the financial company that handles the credit limit for Apple Cards, has denied the use of black box algorithms, an even more important issue has surfaced from their response.

Even if black box algorithms are not in place, and a credit card application is not explicitly asking for the applicants gender, these refined machine-learning algorithms can still analyze the information its being fed and describe what gender they are analyzing. This is then applied to determine credit limits.

For instance, the machines could learn that applicants who have credit cards open at a particular womens clothing store are a bad financial risk. It could then provide lower credit limits for those who carry these cards, which results in women receiving lower credit limits than men, according to Forbes Magazine.

Another instance of gender-biased algorithms occurred in 2018, after Amazon engineers created an AI engine with the sole purpose of vetting through over 100 resumes to help choose the top candidates to be hired.

The tech giant realized that the engine was not rating women software engineer applicants in a fair way, because the resume patterns that the engine had been taught to replicate illustrated the stark gender gap within the tech industry.

In a male-dominated industry, Amazons system taught itself that male applicants were preferred over women.

Even after the engineers reprogrammed the system to ignore explicitly gendered words, like womens, the system still picked up on implicitly gendered words and used that to rate its applicants.

As these new systems are trained to learn from historical decisions made by humans, it must come as no surprise that the race and gender-based inequality that has plagued society for so long has now found a new home within the digital realm.

Discrimination is entangled in our private lives, thats just the truth. The tango of privilege continues to strut across all facets of human existence, and as this experience dives deeper within the world of artificial intelligence, engineers must ensure that they are not dipping further into the discrimination that minority communities have historically been shown.

Were all beginning to understand better that algorithms are only as good as the data that gets packed into them, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in an interview with Bloomberg News. And if a lot of discriminatory data gets packed in, in other words, if thats how the world works, and the algorithm is doing nothing but sucking out information about how the world works, then the discrimination is perpetuated.

Theres no easy fix to this problem. The way in which bias affects the livelihood of individuals, and how to combat that in a fair manner, has long been a question for social scientists and philosophers. Expanding that issue into technology, where concepts have to be defined in mathematical terms, illustrates the hard work that must be done to create a truly fair digital environment.

While fixing these computing errors will rely on an extreme amount of trial and error, its the responsibility of software engineers to ensure that these new technologies will not cause more harm and discrimination toward people.

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Artificial intelligence engines have implicit biases - The Daily Titan

Microsoft Aims to Bring AI to Mainstream Collaboration with Project Cortex – Channel Futures

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Project Cortex will let partners build knowledge networks for customers.

Microsoft intends to significantly simplify how people find organizational information through internal knowledge networks. Its via new technology set to appear next year, revealed as Project Cortex.

If Project Cortex works as Microsoft envisions, it will streamline, or in many cases eliminate, the need for individuals to interrupt their work to search for internal information. Project Cortex, introduced at this months Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida, was a stealth effort in the works for more than two years.

Project Cortex also promises to give Microsofts vast partner ecosystem much to digest going into 2020, particularly as customers look to utilize it to enhance their collaboration and employee productivity efforts and Microsoft begins offering training and enablement for partners.

Company officials described Project Cortex as the first major new productivity and collaboration service planned for Microsoft 365 since the launch of Microsoft Teams three years ago. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella underscored the notion of bringing more seamless access to knowledge in context of whatever application a user is working in is a critical next step forward for the Microsoft 365 platform.

Project Cortex takes what is data today inside of your organization and converts it into knowledge, Nadella said during his Ignite keynote session.

Under development by the Microsoft SharePoint team alongside adjacent Office groups including Teams, Yammer and Outlook, Project Cortex uses the companys AI, advances in Microsoft Search and its Graph APIs to create organizational knowledge networks that will enable customers to automatically surface collective information.

Project Cortex is scheduled to appear in Office, Dynamics and other connected applications in the first half of 2020. Its not a product itself; rather, Project Cortex will apply its advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, drawing on the Microsoft Graph APIs.

A topic card with resources appears when a user hovers over an acronym.

Using the Microsoft Graph, individuals will be able to find organizational information contextually, without switching applications. For example, Microsoft demonstrated at Ignite how a user can scroll over an acronym in any Office app to get a definition of what that acronym means through a topic card that appears without interrupting the readers flow, which inevitably occurs when searching for it in some other application.

You now have AI-driven topics, so essentially you have AI creating topic wikis inside the enterprise, Nadella said. You have that ability now, in the context of any document or any email. More interestingly, you can find the experts who know something about that acronym, and you can really integrate and interact with them.

Project Cortex will automatically use metadata that resides in distributed repositories in what Microsofts SharePoint team described as the next generation of core enterprise content management (ECM) services.

Chris McNulty, Microsofts senior product manager for Project Cortex, who works on the SharePoint team, underscored that Project Cortex is not a new platform, but rather building on the existing Microsoft 365 and SharePoint platforms.

Were able to reach left to right across the suite to be able to invoke the best on top of our platform [by] doing things with security, doing things with compliance [and] doing things with search, McNulty said during an Ignite session that provided an overview of Project Cortex.

McNulty noted that all of these capabilities will bring together and invoke the metadata within those specific services. For instance, with Microsoft Information Protection, Project Cortex will extract key metadata that can attach and invoke policies based on the value of a contract, he said.

Microsofts Seth Patton earlier this month at Ignite 2019.

Seth Patton, general manager of Microsofts Office 365 marketing group, said during a briefing at Ignite that the company spent time with 25 customers in the development of Project Cortex, and 13 organizations are testing it a private technical preview. Patton said Project Cortex is centered around a common problem facing organizations knowledge drain the consequence of those with expertise leaving an organization.

That knowledge is walking out the door, Patton said.

While acknowledging thats a problem that has long faced all organizations, Patton said the need for making internal knowledge more readily available with the appropriate controls to protect it is becoming more critical. Whats driving that acceleration, he noted, is

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Microsoft Aims to Bring AI to Mainstream Collaboration with Project Cortex - Channel Futures

Scientists used IBM Watson to discover an ancient humanoid stick figure – Business Insider

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Artificial intelligence has helped archaeologists uncover an ancient lost work of art.

The Nazca Lines in Peru are ancient geoglyphs, images carved into the landscape. First formally studied in 1926, they depict people, animals, plants, and geometric shapes. The formations vary in size, with some of the biggest running up to 30 miles long. Their exact purpose is unknown, although some archaeologists think they may have had religious or spiritual significance. Local guides believe the lines relate to sources of water.

Some Nazca lines span miles of Peruvian countryside. Flickr/Christian Haugen

New geoglyphs are still being discovered and can be hard to spot due to changes in the landscape, with natural erosion and urbanization breaking them up.

A research team from Yamagata University recently announced it had discovered 142 new Nazca formations, including images of birds, monkeys, fish, snakes, and foxes.

The team partnered with IBM to try and train its deep-learning platform Watson to look for hard-to-find geoglyphs.

They fed the AI with aerial images to see if it could spot any more Nazca outlines. Watson threw up a few candidates, from which the researchers picked the most promising. Sure enough, their field work confirmed the AI had found an ancient Nazca artwork.

The find was a relatively small depiction of a humanoid figure spanning just 16 feet. The researchers estimate the figure dates from roughly 100 BC to AD 100, making it at roughly 2,000 years old.

The project's success has prompted Yamagata University to announce a more prolonged partnership with IBM, and will create a full location map of the geoglyphs to help future archaeologists.

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Scientists used IBM Watson to discover an ancient humanoid stick figure - Business Insider