Goldman Sachs says half of all the junior bankers it hires must be women |
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FRI, MAR 22, 2019
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TECH, TRANSFORMATION AND THE FUTURE OF WORK
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It's been an unusually political week in artificial intelligence. General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, said he plans to meet with Google over concerns that the search giant's artificial intelligence research center in China is indirectly benefitting China's military. On Twitter, President Trump amplified the accusation: "Google is helping China and their military, but not the U.S. Terrible! The good news is that they helped Crooked Hillary Clinton, and not Trump....and how did that turn out?"
Google denies that its A.I. research center helps the Chinese military. But either way, the clear signal: artificial intelligence research is at the center of a geopolitical fight. The way companies and governments position themselves from here could have an impact on how quickly the technology enters the mainstream.
First, a little history: Google opened its "A.I. China Center" just 15 months ago. Fei-Fei Li, then the chief scientist for Google A.I. noted in a blog post at the time that Chinese authors "contributed 43 percent of the content in the top 100 A.I. journals in 2015." Google wasn't going to China to help the country develop A.I. – it was going to find some of the top A.I. talent.
It's a highly competitive space, and China has some important advantages. Kai-Fu Li, former president of Google China and corporate VP at Microsoft, put it this way in an interview with IEEE Spectrum: The important advances in the next stage of artificial intelligence will come from having access to the right data. Chinese companies like Tencent have the broadest set of data about a huge number of users. Feeding that to algorithms is a good way to get bigger and stronger A.I.
Now, back to the geopolitical fight. Artificial intelligence is also a focus in war-fighting technology. Google's Project Maven used A.I. to analyze U.S. military drone footage; many Google employees feared it would be used to direct drone strikes, and the company said it would not renew its contract with the U.S. military for that project.
But those fears from Google employees – and the latest fears raised by the military and the president – might be beside the point.
Google's A.I. work with the military wasn't about dropping bombs on people, Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, told Business Insider. It was more about finding dangerous spots on the ground that U.S. soldiers should avoid.
The problem, perhaps, is in the messaging. Google didn't announce its "set of A.I. principles" until after the Project Maven brouhaha, and didn't explain to employees up front how their work would be used. And the U.S. Department of Defense released its first A.I. strategy last week, promising the technology will be deployed "according to the nation's values."
Unless companies and governments get better at explaining what they're doing with A.I. – and what they're not going to do – the technology's development might be limited by fear.
We're just two weeks away from our @Work Summit! We've added some new exciting speakers to the lineup, including CHROs from The Walt Disney Company and the NBA, plus Amy Lui Abel from the Conference Board, Nancy Reyes from TBWA/Chiat/Day New York and many more. Register now.
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Until next week,
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@Work Talent + HR
Building the workforce of the future
Competition for the right talent is fierce, and rapid advances in AI, machine learning and automation necessitate new thinking on how to build the most effective teams. A new generation of workers have new expectations, challenging human resources executives to think differently about recruitment, development and retention. This edition of the @Work series explores how CHROs can drive success for their company by balancing the needs of the workforce—present and future—with the needs of the company.
Featured speakers include:
Adam Bryant, Merryck & Co.
Jon Cohen, SurveyMonkey
Jason Fried, Basecamp
Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft
Eric Hutcherson, NBA
Francine Katsoudas, Cisco
Amy Lui Abel, The Conference Board
Rita McGrath, Columbia Business School
Jayne Parker, The Walt Disney Company
Ginni Rometty, IBM
Arun Sundararajan, NYU Stern School of Business
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@Work Talent + HR
Tuesday, April 2, 2019 New York City
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