Monthly Archives: June 2021

AI Can Bring Objectivity to Recruiting If We Design It Responsibly – Built In

Posted: June 13, 2021 at 12:44 pm

Besides excellent leadership, an airtight business plan and a unique, in-demand product, one of the decisive factors determining a companys success or failure is its talent pool. Skilled teams and a positive work culture make all the difference.

As a result, the recruitment of great talent is one of the challenges companies of all sizes face, regardless of whether theyre a fledgling startup or a mature corporation. Qualified applicants are in such high demand that some speak of a talent war.

Besides their hard skills (like education and previous experience), soft factors often subsumed under culture fit contribute to a candidates ability to perform well in their new role. The competition for qualified applicants and the need to hire the best fit has turned recruiting into a complex and resource-intensive task.

More Expert Commentary From Thomas Falk3 Investment Principles for Life After the Pandemic

In recent years, leaps in artificial intelligence have helped reduce this complexity considerably. Through AI, organizations can rapidly analyze enormous amounts of data and use it to make informed decisions and predictions. In a recruiting application, HR teams can leverage AI to evaluate a candidates fit and aptitude.

Thanks to their immense potential benefits, AI solutions are being adapted at a rapid rate. In Sages recentsurvey of 500 senior HR and people leaders, a third said they are changing how they hire by building better candidate experiences for applicants and new hires. While 24 percent of companies are currently using AI for recruitment, that number is expected to grow with 56 percent reporting they plan to adopt AI in the next year. The pandemic has likely accelerated the pace of change for many of these companies.

Its natural for humans to make sense of the world through biases, preconceived opinions and prejudices, but in the recruiting process they are harmful to all parties. Studies show that when hiring new staff, HR managers are more likely to display an affinity bias by selecting candidates that are like them. Even the notion of culture fit can lead to discrimination, as it also encourages uniformity among the workforce rather than diversity. There are legal implications for not removing bias from the hiring process, as Facebook recently found themselves in hot water over their emphasis on culture fit.

Unconscious bias the preferences and prejudices that we dont realize we have are inherent to all humans. They often come from our background and arent necessarily apparent in day-to-day interactions with others. However, they can negatively inform the decisions we make about the people with whom we surround ourselves. Unless steps are taken to counteract biases, many hiring panels might unwittingly lean toward hiring (or not hiring) candidates based on those implicit prejudices.

There are ways to reduce biases in the hiring process such as reviewing CVs anonymously, asking each candidate the same catalog of questions during the interview and ensuring as diverse a hiring panel as possible. However, eliminating unconscious biases entirely is very difficult.

This is where AI comes in as a valuable tool to reduce time sourcing a diverse pool of interested candidates and contacting them.

AI-based recruiting software is not only able to screen hundreds of candidates in seconds, but it can also assess data points free from the assumptions, biases and mental fatigue that humans are prone to.

While it is important to note thatAI bias can be a problem mostly due to a lack of diversity in the algorithm-writing well-coded tools that counter this issue are able to create candidate profiles based on qualifications alone. For example: AI recruiting software likeFetcher are able to track and analyze teams and hiring needs, thereby providing insight into how many prospects hiring managers need to ensure a hire for every role. By combining AI with a human in the loop, Fetcher also enables hiring teams to train and monitor data, ensuring a diverse pipeline of interested candidates.

AI software can work around the clock, making the sourcing of passive candidates extremely time efficient. By aggregating information on candidates that might be a good fit from across the web including professional and social networks these tools provide comprehensive, up-to-date candidate profiles that are easy to assess.

Even more time can be saved by employing AI software that automatically reaches out to potential candidates by email and sending automated follow-ups and personalized templates without sounding computer-generated. (Fetchers recent $6.5 million Series A shows the tremendous potential waiting to be unlocked.)

While hiring took a dip following the COVID-19 lockdown, it is now stabilizing and the talent war is set to resume. Without claiming to be completely infallible, AI tools can create a major advantage by sourcing a diverse pool of candidates in a competitive market minus the unconscious biases humans are prone to.

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DeepMind researchers say reinforcement learning is the key to cracking general AI – The Next Web

Posted: at 12:44 pm

In their decades-long chase to create artificial intelligence, computer scientists have designed and developed all kinds of complicated mechanisms and technologies to replicate vision, language, reasoning, motor skills, and other abilities associated with intelligent life. While these efforts have resulted in AI systems that can efficiently solve specific problems in limited environments, they fall short of developing the kind of general intelligence seen in humans and animals.

In a new paper submitted to the peer-reviewedArtificial Intelligencejournal, scientists atUK-based AI lab DeepMindargue that intelligence and its associated abilities will emerge not from formulating and solving complicated problems but by sticking to a simple but powerful principle: reward maximization.

Titled Reward is Enough, the paper, which is still in pre-proof as of this writing, draws inspiration from studying the evolution of natural intelligence as well as drawing lessons from recent achievements in artificial intelligence. The authors suggest that reward maximization and trial-and-error experience are enough to develop behavior that exhibits the kind of abilities associated with intelligence. And from this, they conclude that reinforcement learning, a branch of AI that is based on reward maximization, can lead to the development ofartificial general intelligence.

One common method for creating AI is to try to replicate elements of intelligent behavior in computers. For instance, ourunderstanding of the mammal vision systemhas given rise to all kinds of AI systems that can categorize images, locate objects in photos, define the boundaries between objects, and more. Likewise, our understanding of language has helped in the development of variousnatural language processingsystems, such as question answering, text generation, and machine translation.

These are all instances ofnarrow artificial intelligence, systems that have been designed to perform specific tasks instead of having general problem-solving abilities. Some scientists believe that assembling multiple narrow AI modules will produce higher intelligent systems. For example, you can have a software system that coordinates between separatecomputer vision, voice processing, NLP, and motor control modules to solve complicated problems that require a multitude of skills.

A different approach to creating AI, proposed by the DeepMind researchers, is to recreate the simple yet effective rule that has given rise to natural intelligence. [We] consider an alternative hypothesis: that the generic objective of maximising reward is enough to drive behaviour that exhibits most if not all abilities that are studied in natural and artificial intelligence, the researchers write.

This is basically how nature works. As far as science is concerned, there has been no top-down intelligent design in the complex organisms that we see around us. Billions of years of natural selection and random variation have filtered lifeforms for their fitness to survive and reproduce. Living beings that were better equipped to handle the challenges and situations in their environments managed to survive and reproduce. The rest were eliminated.

This simple yet efficient mechanism has led to the evolution of living beings with all kinds of skills and abilities to perceive, navigate, modify their environments, and communicate among themselves.

The natural world faced by animals and humans, and presumably also the environments faced in the future by artificial agents, are inherently so complex that they require sophisticated abilities in order to succeed (for example, to survive) within those environments, the researchers write. Thus, success, as measured by maximising reward, demands a variety of abilities associated with intelligence. In such environments, any behaviour that maximises reward must necessarily exhibit those abilities. In this sense, the generic objective of reward maximization contains within it many or possibly even all the goals of intelligence.

For example, consider a squirrel that seeks the reward of minimizing hunger. On the one hand, its sensory and motor skills help it locate and collect nuts when food is available. But a squirrel that can only find food is bound to die of hunger when food becomes scarce. This is why it also has planning skills and memory to cache the nuts and restore them in winter. And the squirrel has social skills and knowledge to ensure other animals dont steal its nuts. If you zoom out, hunger minimization can be a subgoal of staying alive, which also requires skills such as detecting and hiding from dangerous animals, protecting oneself from environmental threats, and seeking better habitats with seasonal changes.

When abilities associated with intelligence arise as solutions to a singular goal of reward maximisation, this may in fact provide a deeper understanding since it explainswhysuch an ability arises, the researchers write. In contrast, when each ability is understood as the solution to its own specialised goal, the why question is side-stepped in order to focus uponwhatthat ability does.

Finally, the researchers argue that the most general and scalable way to maximize reward is through agents that learn through interaction with the environment.

In the paper, the AI researchers provide some high-level examples of how intelligence and associated abilities will implicitly arise in the service of maximising one of many possible reward signals, corresponding to the many pragmatic goals towards which natural or artificial intelligence may be directed.

For example, sensory skills serve the need to survive in complicated environments. Object recognition enables animals to detect food, prey, friends, and threats, or find paths, shelters, and perches. Image segmentation enables them to tell the difference between different objects and avoid fatal mistakes such as running off a cliff or falling off a branch. Meanwhile, hearing helps detect threats where the animal cant see or find prey when theyre camouflaged. Touch, taste, and smell also give the animal the advantage of having a richer sensory experience of the habitat and a greater chance of survival in dangerous environments.

Rewards and environments also shape innate and learned knowledge in animals. For instance, hostile habitats ruled by predator animals such as lions and cheetahs reward ruminant species that have the innate knowledge to run away from threats since birth. Meanwhile, animals are also rewarded for their power to learn specific knowledge of their habitats, such as where to find food and shelter.

The researchers also discuss the reward-powered basis of language, social intelligence, imitation, and finally, general intelligence, which they describe as maximising a singular reward in a single, complex environment.

Here, they draw an analogy between natural intelligence and AGI: An animals stream of experience is sufficiently rich and varied that it may demand a flexible ability to achieve a vast variety of subgoals (such as foraging, fighting, or fleeing), in order to succeed in maximising its overall reward (such as hunger or reproduction). Similarly, if an artificial agents stream of experience is sufficiently rich, then many goals (such as battery-life or survival) may implicitly require the ability to achieve an equally wide variety of subgoals, and the maximisation of reward should therefore be enough to yield an artificial general intelligence.

Reinforcement learning is a special branch of AI algorithms that is composed of three key elements: an environment, agents, and rewards.

By performing actions, the agent changes its own state and that of the environment. Based on how much those actions affect the goal the agent must achieve, it is rewarded or penalized. In many reinforcement learning problems, the agent has no initial knowledge of the environment and starts by taking random actions. Based on the feedback it receives, the agent learns to tune its actions and develop policies that maximize its reward.

In their paper, the researchers at DeepMind suggest reinforcement learning as the main algorithm that can replicate reward maximization as seen in nature and can eventually lead to artificial general intelligence.

If an agent can continually adjust its behaviour so as to improve its cumulative reward, then any abilities that are repeatedly demanded by its environment must ultimately be produced in the agents behaviour, the researchers write, adding that, in the course of maximizing for its reward, a good reinforcement learning agent could eventually learn perception, language, social intelligence and so forth.

In the paper, the researchers provide several examples that show how reinforcement learning agents were able to learn general skills in games and robotic environments.

However, the researchers stress that some fundamental challenges remain unsolved. For instance, they say, We do not offer any theoretical guarantee on the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning agents. Reinforcement learning is notoriously renowned for requiring huge amounts of data. For instance, a reinforcement learning agent might need centuries worth of gameplay to master a computer game. And AI researchers still havent figured out how to create reinforcement learning systems that can generalize their learnings across several domains. Therefore, slight changes to the environment often require the full retraining of the model.

The researchers also acknowledge that learning mechanisms for reward maximization is an unsolved problem that remains a central question to be further studied in reinforcement learning.

Patricia Churchland, neuroscientist, philosopher, and professor emerita at the University of California, San Diego, described the ideas in the paper as very carefully and insightfully worked out.

However, Churchland pointed it out to possible flaws in the papers discussion about social decision-making. The DeepMind researchers focus on personal gains in social interactions. Churchland, who has recently written a book on thebiological origins of moral intuitions, argues that attachment and bonding is a powerful factor in social decision-making of mammals and birds, which is why animals put themselves in great danger to protect their children.

I have tended to see bonding, and hence other-care, as an extension of the ambit of what counts as oneselfme-and-mine, Churchland said. In that case, a small modification to the [papers] hypothesis to allow for reward maximization to me-and-mine would work quite nicely, I think. Of course, we social animals have degrees of attachmentsuper strong to offspring, very strong to mates and kin, strong to friends and acquaintances etc., and the strength of types of attachments can vary depending on environment, and also on developmental stage.

This is not a major criticism, Churchland said, and could likely be worked into the hypothesis quite gracefully.

I am very impressed with the degree of detail in the paper, and how carefully they consider possible weaknesses, Churchland said. I may be wrong, but I tend to see this as a milestone.

Data scientist Herbert Roitblat challenged the papers position that simple learning mechanisms and trial-and-error experience are enough to develop the abilities associated with intelligence. Roitblat argued that the theories presented in the paper face several challenges when it comes to implementing them in real life.

If there are no time constraints, then trial and error learning might be enough, but otherwise we have the problem of an infinite number of monkeys typing for an infinite amount of time, Roitblat said.

Theinfinite monkey theoremstates that a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time may eventually type any given text.

Roitblat is the author ofAlgorithms are Not Enough, in which he explains why all current AI algorithms, including reinforcement learning, require careful formulation of the problem and representations created by humans.

Once the model and its intrinsic representation are set up, optimization or reinforcement could guide its evolution, but that does not mean that reinforcement is enough, Roitblat said.

In the same vein, Roitblat added that the paper does not make any suggestions on how the reward, actions, and other elements of reinforcement learning are defined.

Reinforcement learning assumes that the agent has a finite set of potential actions. A reward signal and value function have been specified. In other words, the problem of general intelligence is precisely to contribute those things that reinforcement learning requires as a pre-requisite, Roitblat said. So, if machine learning can all be reduced to some form of optimization to maximize some evaluative measure, then it must be true that reinforcement learning is relevant, but it is not very explanatory.

This article was originally published by Ben Dickson onTechTalks, a publication that examines trends in technology, how they affect the way we live and do business, and the problems they solve. But we also discuss the evil side of technology, the darker implications of new tech, and what we need to look out for. You can read the original article here.

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DeepMind researchers say reinforcement learning is the key to cracking general AI - The Next Web

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RISC-V Evolving to Address Supercomputers and AI – Tom’s Hardware

Posted: at 12:44 pm

The open source RISC-V instruction set architecture is gaining more mainstream attention in the wake of Intel's rumored $2 billion bid for SiFive, the industry's leading RISC-V design house. Unfortunately, RISC-V has long been relegated to smaller chips and microcontrollers, limiting its appeal. However, that should change soon as RISC-V International, the organization that oversees the development of the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA),has announcedplans to extend the architecture to high performance computing, AI, and supercomputing applications.

The RISC-V open-source ISA was first introduced in 2016, but the first cores were only suitable for microcontrollers and some basic system-on-chip designs. However, after several years of development, numerous chip developers (e.g., Alibaba) have created designs aimed at cloud data centers, AI workloads (like theJim Keller-led Tenstorrent), and advanced storage applications (e.g., Seagate, Western Digital).

The means there's plenty of interest from developers for high-performance RISC-V chips. But to foster adoption of the RISC-V ISA by edge, HPC, and supercomputing applications, the industry needs a more robust hardware and software ecosystem (along with compatibility with legacy applications and benchmarks). That's where the RISC-V SIG for HPC comes into play.

At this point, the RISC-V SIG-HPC has 141 members on its mailing list and 10 active members in research, academia, and the chip industry. The key task for the growing SIG is to propose various new HPC-specific instructions and extensions and work with other technical groups to ensure that HPC requirements are considered for the evolving ISA. As a part of this task, the SIG needs to define AI/HPC/edge requirements and plot a feature and capability path to a point when RISC-V is competitive against Arm, x86, and other architectures.

There are short-term goals for the RISC-V SIG-HPC, too. In 2021, the group will focus on the HPC software ecosystem. First up, the group plans to findopen source software(benchmarks,libraries, and actual programs) that can work with the RISC-V ISAright out of the box. This process is set to be automatized. The first investigations will be aimed atapplications like GROMACS, Quantum ESPRESSO and CP2K;libraries like FFT, BLAS, and GCC and LLVM; andbenchmarks like HPL and HPCG.

The RISC-V SIG-HPC will develop a more detailed roadmap after the ecosystem is solidified. The long-term goal of the RISC-V SIG is to build an open-source ecosystem of hardware and software that can address emerging performance-demanding applications while also accomodating legacy needs.

How many years will that take? Only time will tell, but industry buy-in from big players, like Intel, would certainly help speed that timeline.

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$1.2 million for two new Stanford research projects on energy/climate AI and environmental justice | Energy – Stanford University News

Posted: at 12:44 pm

Three Stanford University entities will fund two new research projects on using artificial intelligence and machine learning to make energy systems more sustainable, affordable, resilient and fair to all socioeconomic groups.

The projects funded by Stanfords Precourt Institute for Energy, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), and the Bits & Watts Initiative are the first two Precourt Pioneering Projects. The new program aims to fund one new project led by a Stanford faculty member every quarter at a level greater than that provided through the institutes seed grant program. However, in its first round, leaders of the three entities decided to support two related projects. The resulting tools and datasets from both projects will be made available to researchers beyond Stanford.

Yi Cui, director of Stanford's Precourt Institutefor energy, and professor of materials scienceand of photon science

Both research teams proposed really exciting ideas for using massive data to transition our energy system to meet multiple goals simultaneously, said Yi Cui, director of the Precourt Institute, so we decided to support both projects.

In addition to optimizing for climate change, cost and reliability, they incorporate environmental justice and social equity criteria, which Stanford is committed to, said Cui, who is also a professor of materials science in the School of Engineering and of photon science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

SLAC, a U.S. Department of Energy national lab operated by Stanford, will coordinate with Precourt to fund researchers in these two broad research directions. This aligns with the climate and energy research priorities of the current U.S. administration.

We are excited to partner with Precourt and deepen our existing linkages, said SLAC Director Chi-Chang Kao, who is also a professor of photon science. SLAC has thriving efforts in machine learning and applied energy, and the lab is dedicated to advancing environmental justice and equity.

As Stanford moves to create a new school on climate and sustainability, the leaders of the four entities involved hope that the two new projects and related Stanford research will help recruit new faculty, bridge sustainability research across campus, and attract students of the highest caliber.

Fei-Fei Li, co-director of the Stanford Institute forHuman-Centered Artificial Intelligence and professorcomputer science

At HAI, we believe that artificial intelligence has the power to help with some of the biggest challenges of our time, said HAIs Denning Co-Director Fei-Fei Li, who is also a professor of computer science. Climate and energy certainly top the list of earths most urgent issues. Its truly our pleasure to support the Precourt Institute for Energys Precourt Pioneering Projects grant awards.

One project will build a platform MESMERIZE: A Macro-Energy System Model with Equity, Realism and Insight in Zero Emissions centered on how policies and people shape the needed transition to sustainable energy systems and its distributional/equity consequences. The hub will integrate a modelling effort, data sets, advanced computational algorithms and other tools developed at Stanford to solve energy and climate challenges to deep decarbonization.

The project team will use the hub to build a multidisciplinary, economy-wide decarbonization model that integrates social equity and human health concerns. The platform will be a resource for researchers at Stanford and elsewhere to identify and optimize the most effective technological, financial and equitable solutions for different U.S. regions and energy sectors, including electricity, natural gas, transportation and heating.

The question we want to address is: What are realistic and implementable pathways for sustainable and deeply decarbonized energy systems that include features of real policies, peoples decisions and behaviors, and account for environmental justice?, said Ines Azevedo, associate professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering in Stanfords School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

We want this interdisciplinary simulation and optimization modeling hub to provide resources to others, said Azevedo, whose co-leaders on the project are professors Sally Benson, Adam Brandt, Ram Rajagopal and John Weyant, as well as visiting scholar Jacques de Chalendar. We hope to catalyze more efficient and effective collaborations across campus and beyond by lowering the barriers to sharing knowledge, data, methods and analytical tools.

The other project will build open-source tools to assess, forecast and plan for a human-centered infrastructure system with a particular focus on electricity to meet these criteria: decarbonization, equity, affordability and resiliency to the impacts of climate change, including extreme weather events. The research team, led by professors Ram Rajagopal, Arun Majumdar, and Azevedo, as well as adjunct professor Andrew Ng, will use machine learning and publicly available data sources. Other approaches using machine learning do not optimize those four criteria simultaneously.

The electricity grid is being transformed due to the urgency to decarbonize, improve resilience against climate-induced extreme weather events, and provide affordable, reliable access to at-risk communities, said Rajagopal, who is an associate professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering.

The combination of rapid adoption of renewables, electric vehicles, heat pumps for residential heating and natural gas generation as a transition technology are creating deep interactions among the power grid, natural gas, transportation and information, Rajagopal explained.

The project will develop three tools that enable granular, interconnected analysis of access, reliability, cost and emissions. The first will assess and predict the risks from climate-related extreme events to local communities, and produce climate-risk scores for communities. These risks include energy insecurity, ill health and other social impacts, particularly as they affect vulnerable populations. The second tool will use remotely sensed data and artificial intelligence to create detailed, high-resolution mapping of U.S. energy resources and infrastructure. Stanford researchers have already used this technology to map specific facets of U.S. energy infrastructure. The third tool will evaluate dynamics in demand and supply due to changing grid conditions: from short-term shocks like extreme weather, to longer term transformations like increased adoption of residential solar power.

The research team will share their data with other researchers as an energy data commons on datacommons.org.

SLAC, operated by Stanford for the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Science, explores how the universe works at the biggest, smallest and fastest scales and invents powerful tools used by scientists around the globe. HAI's mission is to advance AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition. The Precourt Institute for Energy is a cross-campus research and education program to make energy more sustainable, affordable and secure for all people. The Bits & Watts Initiative, a Precourt Institute program, finds innovative solutions to power the 21st century electric grid.

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Intentional Communities: Living a Radical Christian Life …

Posted: at 12:43 pm

With the grave worry of many Christians about living in a culture that seems to be antagonistic to Christianity itself, we ought to consider the radical alternative of intentional communities.

In these days of the rise of the nones, said to be the fastest growing religious body in the country, and with the grave worry of many Christians about living in a culture that seems to be antagonistic to Christianity itself, a new book allows us to consider the existence of and tradition behind the radical alternative of Christian intentional communities.

Charles E. Moore, current pastor of the Bruderhof community, one of the modern intentional communities, has produced a book, Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People (2016), which is an anthology of writings about intentional communities by authors who are experienced practitioners. The book is designed as a manual for and self-examination by and for community members. And each of the fifty-two chapters, one per week, has a question for group discussion.

Nevertheless, since the editornotes in the introduction that the book is also addressed to Christians thinking about communal living, those of us who would simply like to know more about the experience of community/communal living are included in its audience as well.

In the modern world, American theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas says in the foreword, we share no common story and no corresponding judgments about what is true, good, and beautiful, and we have confused freedom with the isolation of the self. And as editor Moore says, we live in a post-familial, disconnected culture where self is king, relationships are thin, and individuals fend for themselves. Also cited in the book is the mysterious visitor in Dostoyevskys Brothers Karamazov (1880) predicting the modern world as self-realization arriving at complete solitude.

What is an intentional community? Although the book contains numerous references to reaching out to the poor and marginalized, to social justice and to social action, to socialism, and even has two entries on Christian communism, it is not fundamentally based on a social or political agenda nor inspired by the communes and counter-culturalism of the group living or hippie communes of the 1960s (for those of us who remember that decade). Following Jesus Christ is the inspiration.

The fundamental scriptural reference is to the two passages in Acts (2:42-47, 4:32-37) where it is stated that the first Christian communities held everything in common, and not one of them said that anything he possessed was his own. The new Christians sold their property and placed the proceeds at the feet of the apostles who distributed the property to each as had any need. They had what Charles Moore callsa material life of unity and sharing.

The core view here is that we are bodily creatures. We are not angels. Thus, the bodily and material aspects of our daily lives should be more closely integrated with what is in our hearts and minds. Christoph Blumhardt, a German nineteenth-century pastor, is quoted as denigrating the idea of mere spiritual communities, which, he maintained, do not last. There must be community in the flesh, and only such a bodily community will result in a spiritual community. Community is an embodiment, several chapter authors maintain, and that is the founding principle of intentional communities. Or, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer is quoted, it was the Word made flesh which had called them and created their bodily fellowship with Jesus Christ. Wherever we are, whatever we do, everything happens, in the body, in the church, in Christ. An intentional community, as distinguished from a church or parish community, means living together.

Editor Charles E. Moore has assembled twenty-one different passages from the Epistles in which he quotes the Epistles authors as repeatedly maintaining that people in community live for one another. As in Romans, 12:25, that there may be no disunion in the body, but that the members may have care for one another. And he points out that almost all of the epistles are written to churches, not to individuals. Another author points out the several references in Acts to houses, such as Acts 21:8, the house of the evangelist Philip. Another argues that the new thing that happened on Pentecost is the new community.

So, what is the requisite state of mind for forming communities? Communion is not mere collaboration, it is not visionary dreaming or romantic visions and fantasies. Three of the included authors specifically regard community as a divine call.

Bonhoeffer called it a gift of God which we cannot claim. Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof community, emphatically held that Christian communities cannot be based on human relationships and goodwill; it must be a calling by God to live in love and unity. Bonhoeffer, again, from his book Life Together: True Christian brotherhood is different from some wishful idea of religious fellowship and from the natural idea of the devout heart for community. Several of the authors directly or indirectly point out that community can be a place of pain; the price of community is a turning away from self-centeredness.

A most informative chapter traces the history of Christian communities from the time of St. Anthony of the desert to St. Benedict and his Rule, still probably the foundational document on the idea of Christian community. In the modern world, there are community movements like Taize and LArche, both founded in France, and the Bruderhof community in Germany. And current leaders of such communities are featured.

References are made to the American experiences of the Pilgrims, and the Hutterites and Mennonites of this country and Canada. The book is ecumenical, based on no specific church or denomination. Bonhoeffer and the founders and leaders of the Bruderhof community predominate. Although no leaders of exclusively Catholic communities are included, there are chapters excerpting the writings of St. Benedict, Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day. No mainline Protestant pastors or ministers are included.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity, begins Psalm 133. This review has concentrated on the basics and has omitted numerous issues and questions raised in the book with regard to, for example, hospitality, social action, the inevitable personal conflicts, and the psychology and emotions evoked by communal living, as well as the different kinds of participation in intentional communities by married couples, single persons, and children.

Republished with gracious permission ofAleteia (March 2017).

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politicswe approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please considerdonating now.

The featured image is Laborare est Orare, by John Rogers Herbert and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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These big banks were the least likely to serve Bay Area communities of color with PPP loans – San Francisco Chronicle

Posted: at 12:43 pm

The economic crisis triggered by COVID-19 pummeled small businesses across the nation, especially those without safety nets and access to credit. To alleviate those struggles, Congress established the Paycheck Protection Program, designed to provide forgivable loans to needy businesses at no interest.

The federal government intended the program, which started in March 2020 and sunset last month, to prioritize businesses in underserved markets, including socially and economically disadvantaged areas.

But the initial rollout neglected the neediest of small businesses, especially those in underserved communities, with many lenders hurrying first to aid their wealthier customer base. The U.S. Small Business Administration introduced reform measures in response, which led to more businesses in lower-income and diverse neighborhoods getting loans in subsequent rounds of funding.

The damage, though, had already been done, said Paulina Gonzalez-Brito, executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit group advocating for banking equality and accountability. Many minority-owned businesses had shuttered, unable to weather the storm without help.

That first phase was critical, and unfortunately, the government and banks did what they have been doing for a long time, which is redlining, she said, referring to the historical and systematic denial of services, including banking and housing, to certain communities through discriminatory tactics.

The same disparities were apparent in the Bay Area, according to a Chronicle analysis of more than 100,000 PPP loans. It showed some lenders processing a much larger share of PPP loans to businesses in higher-income neighborhoods or predominantly white Census tracts, when compared to areas that are lower-income or had a higher percentage of Black and Hispanic residents.

The review was based on the records of 66 lenders who administered 100 or more Bay Area loans and granted at least one loan to a business in each of the Bay Areas nine counties. These top lenders accounted for more than 90% of all loans in the Bay Area. Census tracts are small geographical areas that generally have a population between 1,200 and 8,000 people. The Chronicle designated higher-income tracts as areas with a household income of $150,000 or higher, and lower-income tracts as those with an income of $75,000 or lower.

The data offer a glimpse into which businesses these banks typically serve, as firms with existing banking relationships tended to be prioritized by banks for PPP loans, according to analysts and economists across the country. This was especially true in the early stages of the program, before many of the reform measures were instituted.

Experts say the data reflects generational failures of certain banks and their regulators to tighten the ever-widening gaps in lending and credit inequality, which the pandemic only served to exacerbate. Solutions to the disproportionate ways in which businesses were helped and not helped through PPP lie far beyond understanding this one program, but navigating the complexities of the root causes, they say.

I dont think any of us who have studied this issue for a long time were surprised (at) what happened with the banks, Gonzalez-Brito said. The banking industry has historically discriminated against people of color, she said, and the pandemic exacerbated these inequities.

The lenders who administered the greatest share of loans to higher-income Census tracts were Silicon Valley Bank at 37% and First Republic Bank at 34%, compared with 22% for all banks.

Silicon Valley Bank is a specialty bank that works with innovation economy entrepreneurs, investors and the premium wine industry, said spokesperson Eileen Nolan. We are not a retail bank and we work almost exclusively with companies in the tech and life sciences industries.

When PPP first became available, the bank surveyed its clients to determine need and eligibility, and extended loans based on that analysis, she said. It also invited non-clients to become clients and apply for a PPP loan. However, We recommended companies work with their existing banks for speed.

Nolan said the banks own analysis of PPP data from 2020 showed that 64.5% of loans in the Bay Area were made to businesses in predominantly minority Census tracts. Similar trends can be observed in The Chronicles analysis, which shows the bank was one of the top lenders to businesses in predominantly Asian tracts.

Because our technology and life science clients in the Bay Area tend to be based in higher-income Census tracts, we are actively working to expand our support to more diverse audiences and geographies within and beyond the sectors we serve, Nolan said.

Major national banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, also awarded loans at disparate rates. Bank of America was responsible for the most loans in the Bay Area, processing more than 20,000 for $1.8 billion. The bank, the data show, delivered a higher-than-average percentage of loans to businesses in higher-income Census tracts, but a lower-than-average share of loans to predominantly white tracts.

In their efforts to reach underserved communities, though, these and other major banks lent their borrowing power to Community Development Financial Institutions, or CDFIs, which are smaller financial institutions dedicated to helping disadvantaged communities but dont have the same capacity. These efforts dont show up in their PPP data.

The way that the (PPP) program was structured, you could almost predict that ... those outcomes would have happened, at least initially, said Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. With banks put in charge of quickly disbursing an enormous amount of federal dollars, he said, People didnt know how to access them or they just didnt have the connections to really make the process easy.

A Bank of America spokesman, Bill Halldin, said the company provided more than $800 million in lending power to CDFIs. He noted that the bank was the first major one in the country to accept PPP applications and received 100,000 online on the first day.

Christina Della Buono, a Chase spokesperson, said that more than 32% of the banks PPP loans nationwide in 2020 went to small businesses in communities of color. The bank did Spanish-language marketing to boost applications, including in the San Francisco-based El Reportero.

David Kennedy, a Wells Fargo spokesperson, said that in addition to the banks PPP participation, it engaged in philanthropic efforts in the Bay Area to support underserved small businesses, including by contributing to Mayor London Breeds Give2SF Fund in March 2020.

What weve learned from the pandemic is how important it is for the entire financial system to work together to reach those in need the larger banks, the nonprofit lenders, and nonprofits that serve small businesses all have a role to play in helping owners stay open and we can scale up to meet the need if we collaborate, he said.

Existing banking relationships, which low-income and minority business owners are far less likely to have, played a key role in which communities were served by certain banks and which werent, economists and analysts said.

You almost needed to have an existing banking relationship in order to really have good access to the initial tranche of available loans, Bellisario of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute said. It was incumbent on the banks to get the dollars out. So many of those initial dollars went into entities that had initial existing banking relationships.

Meanwhile, the federal agencies charged with overseeing the process the Small Business Administration and the Department of the Treasury failed to issue meaningful guidance to lenders on prioritizing underserved markets until the first round of the program was almost over, the congressional subcommittee investigation found.

Without that guidance, many lenders served bigger loans to wealthy customers first, in some cases at more than twice the speed of smaller loans for the neediest of businesses, according to the investigation. As a result, small businesses that were truly in need of financial support during the economic crisis often faced longer waits and more obstacles to receiving PPP funding than larger, wealthier companies.

At San Francisco-based First Republic Bank, managing relationships with customers has been a crucial and celebrated part of its success. The private bank and wealth management company caters to a high net-worth clientele, providing concierge-style services.

In 2020, First Republic Bank sent about $913 million in PPP loans to more than 4,500 Bay Area businesses, 34% of which went to Census tracts with a median household income of $150,000 or more second-highest of the 66 banks The Chronicle analyzed.

First Republic was also among the lenders to have sent the largest percentage of loans to predominantly white areas and the smallest share to areas where more Black, Hispanic and low-income residents live. Data show the businesses that received the most loans through First Republic Bank were lawyers offices, software publishers, real estate agents and brokers, and consultants.

Through a spokesperson, the bank declined to comment.

Some other lenders stood out in the data for having sent a significantly larger-than-average share of their PPP loans to the least diverse Census tracts. These include San Rafael-based Westamerica Bank and Redwood Credit Union of Santa Rosa.

Both banks regional banks with locations in less diverse counties sent 65% of their Bay Area loans to Census tracts where 60% or more residents are white, compared to an average of 30% among all PPP lenders serving the region.

A Westamerica Bank spokesperson, Rob Thorson, told The Chronicle that the Federal Reserve has found the banks lending practices in general to be satisfactory. He said that through internal compliance reviews, Weve concluded that our PPP lending improved the level of our community development loans.

Redwood Credit Union approved nearly all of the eligible PPP applications it received, Tracy Condron, a spokeswoman, said in a statement. Our loan approval process was the same for all applicants and all communities, she said, And the vast majority of applicants did not state their ethnic background.

From the beginning, the complexity of applying for PPP loans was not matched by the outreach necessary to make the process accessible and understandable for underserved businesses, said Jacob Denney, economic justice policy director for SPUR, a nonprofit policy research organization based in San Francisco.

Every time we go through these economic shocks, whether its the pandemic or the Great Recession, whats exposed over and over again is the fact that the whole country takes a step back, and in communities of color that are exposed to the greatest economic harm, they take 10 steps back, he said.

Losses were felt across the board during the early stages of COVID-19, but Black businesses were hit the hardest, according to research by UC Santa Cruz economist Robert Fairlie. The number of Black-owned businesses dropped by 41% nationwide, while Latinx-owned businesses fell by 32%, compared with a 17% drop in white-owned businesses.

These findings of early-stage losses to small businesses have important policy implications and may portend longer-term ramifications for job losses and economic inequality, the report said.

The Small Business Administration said it has taken many measures to increase disadvantaged communities access to the Paycheck Protection Program, some of which have resulted in improvements.

One of the biggest ways in which the Small Business Administration and lenders sought to lessen disparities was by empowering and giving lending capacity to Community Development Financial Institutions. An example from the Bay Area is Opportunity Fund Community Development, which distributed 32% of its loans to areas with a higher concentration of Black residents tracts where 7% or more of the residents are Black and 36% to Hispanic 30% or more of the residents are Hispanic areas, compared with averages of 19% and 20%, respectively.

Supporting CDFIs helped, but they are but a small part of the ecosystem, experts said. Short-term lump sum investments into those institutions do not help address structural inequalities in the banking system. Whats needed are meaningful long-term investments in programs to help reverse generations-long trends, explained Denney of SPUR.

There isnt a silver bullet to this, because what were talking about is generations of exclusion and harm of really intentional economic harm that has deprived communities of color from accessing resources and achieving economic stability, he said. And you cant fix that with one program.

Methodology: The Chronicle analyzed data from Geocodio, a geocoding service, that geocoded business addresses from the PPP loan data provided by the Small Business Administration, as of Dec. 1, 2020.

We filtered this dataset to businesses located in the nine Bay Area counties, and further filtered to analyze lenders that distributed 100 or more loans to Bay Area businesses and to businesses in each of the nine counties. This resulted in 66 lenders.

Yoohyun Jung and Nami Sumida are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: yoohyun.jung@sfchronicle.com, nami.sumida@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @yoohyun_jung, @namisumida

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United Way conducts study to learn the well being of children in McLennan County – KXXV News Channel 25

Posted: at 12:43 pm

WACO, TX Children are our future and their well-being is vital to their roles in the community. United Way Waco-McLennan County conducted a Child Well-Being report to support the improvement of life for children and families in the area.

The year-long study found that a third of children live in poverty, looking between the ages of 0-5.

"Were at 29% of children under the age of 5 who are living in poverty," said Tiffani Johnson, Senior Director of Impact and Engagement.

Looking at those at a young age, Johnson says it's important to enhance their quality of life at an early age and you have to help the entire community to help them.

"We know that we ensure that resources are getting to communities that really could use them and that we are providing greater resources to those areas we will see greater outcomes," Johnson said.

There are many organizations working to fight for our children, one of them being Caritas, a non-profit food pantry that gives pounds of food to families daily.

"One in four kids have the potential of going to bed hungry tonight," said Alicia Jallah, Co-Executive Director.

20% of their clientele are children, with the pandemic, it's made finding food for families even harder. Their numbers have gone down since the height of the pandemic but there are still many in need.

"All of the food is going out to meet that need who are having a hard time right now with our families," Jallah said.

Texas is near the bottom of the list, at number 43 when it comes to overall child well-being. The state's even worse in regards to family and community well-being ranked 47th.

The United Way is working to improve those rankings in a few different ways. That includes; engaging the community, focusing on equity and intersectionality, emphasizing a two-generation approach to support families and being more intentional about cross-sector community involvement.

Johnson says it's about listening to those in need, hearing their stories and trying to make a change.

"When we better understand what the experience is we can understand also what the community's aspiration is for change and that's where we want to go," Johnson said.

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Provo Juneteenth event to feature Black businesses, history in Utah – Daily Herald

Posted: at 12:43 pm

Juneteenth is a day that commemorates the ending of slavery, more specifically the liberation of enslaved peoples in the state of Texas on June 19, 1865.

The day also will be celebrated in Utah with numerous Juneteenth celebrations, including ones in Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo.

Tamu Smith, the Utah County Juneteenth coordinator, is looking forward to the upcoming celebration in Provo, but was quick to point to the history of Juneteenth in Utah as a whole. She credited Betty Sawyer with bringing Juneteenth to Utah, hosting a celebration in Ogden for over 20 years.

The Ogden event has since expanded, making its way into Salt Lake City and now into Utah County and Provo.

Smith said that this years event will be history-based while also spotlighting Black businesses in the community. The history aspect will revolve around Black pioneers from the state of Utah, as well as some global Black pioneers.

Some of that history includes Green Flake, an enslaved Latter-day Saint who came to Utah with Brigham Young and would prepare homes for those on their way to the Salt Lake Valley, according to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints website.

With Brigham Young ill, Flake would drive the first wagon through Emigration Canyon, and by the time Young made it to the valley, Flake had already planted crops to help feed the pioneers.

Other historical Black people from Utah will be portrayed at the event, including a historical selfie booth. Smith said it is all in an effort to establish that Black people helped settle the state of Utah.

Its important that we start to marry our history by sharing these unknown stories regarding Utahs history," said Smith. "Were creating opportunities for the community to become aware of the contributions that Blacks made here. And, considering the social turbulence that others were dealing with during that time Utah felt like a fairly safe place to raise a black family."

With this focus on Black history, Smith said it is especially for the Utah County event because the Black community is separated by location.

After raising six children in Utah County, and being a resident for 20 years, Smith said she had to be intentional about having her children involved in the Black community.

Having this opportunity to bring the community together, having opportunities for kids to be in the community with each other and see each other is important and valuable, Smith said.

For the business aspect, the event is aimed to be an amazing opportunity to highlight businesses that have been unrecognized. Smith added that people in Utah are beginning to see how important it is to maintain some of those Black-owned businesses.

While the Black community knows these businesses, according to Smith, people need to be intentional in helping those businesses stay open. This platform for the businesses will make them better competitors, evening the playing field to some extent.

I hope that people will come here and walk away wanting to learn more about communities that have been marginalized, not just the Black community but other communities, Smith said. I want them to walk away with more information, more knowledge, and also with more of an open heart and seeing who is a part of their community, not just what people look like but seeing who is actually a part of their community, what they have to offer, and how they can support.

There will be performances, speakers, an art exhibit, an African-American museum bus, and more at the event on Saturday. Smith expects it to be a fun event where people are lending their names, time and talents to help the event come together.

While there have been Juneteenth barbecues in the past, this will be the first large event to commemorate the day in Utah County. With that, Smith said that the city of Provo has been supportive of the celebrations.

It can be a daunting experience to have to do this and put this together without support but when you know that you have support from your city in doing something like this, it definitely makes walking uphill a lot easier, Smith said.

While Provo and Orem have been listed as two of the least diverse cities in the country for 2021, according to a WalletHub report, Smith said that while the cities lack diversity, they are willing to have difficult discussions. That lack of diversity has not stopped the two cities from having difficult conversations, according to Smith.

To learn more about the Utah County Juneteenth celebration, or the Salt Lake Juneteenth celebration, visit saltlakejuneteenth.org.

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Bexley charter amendments headed to November ballot – ThisWeek Community News

Posted: at 12:43 pm

Chris Bournea| ThisWeek USA TODAY Network

A series of recommended updates to Bexleys city charter is headed to the November ballot after City Council voted 7-0 on June 8 to approve an ordinance which outlines updates.

The proposed changes include the appointment and removal process for city officials, the composition of city boards and commissions, and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in city operations and the community at large.

This has been the work of a 15-member charter review commission that has suggested amendments to our council, said Monique Lampke, chair of councils strategic and judiciary committee.

In early 2021, the commission completed more than a year of work to review every section of the city charter and submitted its recommendations to council. Over the past few months, a council subcommittee that consisted of Lampke, council President Lori Ann Feibel and council member Matt Klingler evaluated each of the commissions recommendations.

At councils two previous readings of the ordinance, city officials discussed the proposed charter updates. At the third reading June 8, council discussed the wording of the first section of the ordinance, titled Recognition and Intent, which addresses the citys efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

The section begins with a sentence that says the city recognizes that institutional racism and discrimination exist and have a painful, historic legacy in our community and in this country, the effects of which continue to place the health and well-being of minority residents at risk.

Council member Richard Sharp introduced an amendment that would have changed the wording of the Recognition and Intentsection to: It is the intent of the city of Bexley to value and serve all its residents equally and as such, seeks to work with community groups, organizations and individuals to confront institutional racism and discrimination in order to promote diversity, equity, expression of thought, and inclusion.

Sharp said hes concerned that the original language could leave the city open to legal liability.

There are activist organizations around the country that like to pick communities such as Bexley to be shining stars for their agenda, Sharp said. Because the words are not defined institutional racism isnt really defined - it can be subject to whatever people feel that means to them.

Chelsea Avenue resident Bethany Hahn-Ambrosius said she served on the charter review commission but addressed council on her own behalf in reference to the Recognition and Intent section.

I promise you all of the language in section one was thoroughly researched, thoroughly debated and very intentional, Hahn-Ambrosius said. Recognition of our past horrific indiscretions, not just in Bexley but as a nation, is crucial in moving forward to a more equitable future.

Council member Jessica Saad said she appreciated Sharp encouraging council members to give serious thought to the Recognition and Intentsectionswording, butsaid conversations with community members led her to believe the original language should remain.

This work that the ... commission did to put in the Recognition and Intent,these are words that are very powerful, Saad said. Its a powerful message to the history of where weve been and where were going.

Lampke said she sat in on some of the commissions meetings and is confident that the members painstakingly chose the wording of the section.

By adopting the language as the commission wrote it, I think that we are saying in a very significant and meaningful way to our community that this council supports all residents of our community, including and especially our minority population, Lampke said.

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@ThisWeekNews

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Face Masks Optional at Disney World Starting NEXT WEEK! – Inside the Magic

Posted: at 12:43 pm

The time has come Disney World is officially ending its face mask requirement for fully vaccinated Guests beginning on June 15.

Just last month, Disney World had recently changed their outdoor face mask policy, saying theme park Guests would not be required to wear their face masks at outdoor locations, but Disney Worlds newest mandate update allows park Guests to remove their face masks indoors as well.

Disney has been closely following the updates from the CDC Centers For Disease Control and Prevention and local health authorities, and the company made the following update on its website regarding the face mask policy at their Florida theme parks.

Within our communities, were encouraged that COVID-19 guidelines have been adjusted and eased by public health and government officials, paving the path for many businesses and industries to take positive steps forward. As we have done since reopening, weve been very intentional and gradual in our approach to our COVID-19 health and safety protocols. Based on recent trends and guidance, Walt Disney World Resort will be making more adjustments to these measures, including physical distancing and face coverings. Beginning June 15, you will start to notice the following changes:

FACE COVERINGS Face coverings will be optional for fully vaccinated Guests in most areas. Face coverings will still be required of all Guests on Disney transportation, including Disney buses, monorails and Disney Skyliner. While we will not require proof of vaccination, we expect Guests who are not fully vaccinated to continue wearing face coverings in all indoor locations, and upon entering and throughout all attractions and transportation. Guests must observe current policies on face coverings until June 15.

PHYSICAL DISTANCING We will be relaxing physical distancing guidelines for Guests. This will be visible in places like queues, shops, restaurants, attraction boarding, transportation and our theaters. Its important to remember that some experiences and entertainment may still be operating with limited capacity or may remain temporarily unavailable. Were not quite ready to bring back everything yet, but we are optimistic and look forward to the day when Disney pals and princesses are able to hug once again.

CLEANING We will continue the high standards for cleanliness and sanitation weve always set for ourselves. Cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer stations will still be available.

We encourage people to get vaccinated.

While Disney World may be eliminating its face mask requirement for Guests, the theme parks are still encouraging Guests to maintain proper physical distancing and use enhanced touchless experiences, such as Mobile Ordering and Disneys new Magic Mobile.

It is important to note that Disney is allowing fully vaccinated Guests to remove their face masks in most indoor and outdoor theme park locations with mask mandates remaining in place for all Disney transportation. Face masks are expected to be worn by Guests who are not fully vaccinated, though Disney is not requiring proof of vaccination.

Are you excited to see Disney World eliminate its mask mandate for fully vaccinated Guests? Let us know in the comments!

To get started booking your Disney World vacation with our friends at Academy Travel, CLICK HERE!

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