fortune--2020-06-16--She was Morgan Stanley’s first global head of diversity. Now she’s suing the bank for discrimination

She was Morgan Stanley’s first global head of diversity. Now she’s suing the bank for discrimination.

Morgan Stanley was sued by its former head of diversity for allegedly discriminating against Black women who work at the bank.
Marilyn Booker, who joined Morgan Stanley in 1994 and became its first global head of diversity, claims in her lawsuit that senior “White male-centric leadership” refused to adopt her plan to address racial bias at the firm and instead terminated her in December.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, comes as Wall Street and corporate America are facing tough questions about their commitment to diversity in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s death at police hands.
Booker opened her 47-page complaint by describing Morgan Stanley’s response to Floyd’s death, including a large contribution to the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund and the promotion of two Black women to senior leadership committees. She noted that Chief Executive Officer James Gorman had described the present moment as a “turning point in race relations.”
But she cast the bank’s recent statements and actions as hypocritical in light of its alleged past conduct. “Clearly, Black lives did not matter at Morgan Stanley,” she said.
Morgan Stanley didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Booker seeks a judgment that bars the bank from discriminating against her and other Black women at the firm and asks for unspecified damages.
‘Lip service’
Booker, most recently a managing director at the bank, said she repeatedly voiced her concerns about “irrefutable and appalling patterns” in the firm’s hiring, retention and lack of advancement of Black employees. But she claims Morgan Stanley only paid “lip service” to these issues.
“Tirelessly, but to no avail, Ms. Booker tried to force Morgan Stanley’s leadership, including Gorman, to address the systemic racial discrimination rampant at the Firm,” she said.
Morgan Stanley instead hamstrung her efforts by steadily decreasing her budget year over year, according to the complaint, “even though her budget would not amount to a drop in the bucket for Morgan Stanley when compared to the money it threw at other initiatives and the massive revenue the firm generated.”
She claims 14 Black managing directors, out of only a few dozen at Morgan Stanley, left between 2017 and 2019, but the bank made no effort to retain them. Gorman’s attitude, she said, was: “If you don’t like it, then leave.”
There was marked contrast with how White managing directors who threatened to leave were treated, she alleges.
‘Good riddance’
“For Black MDs departing Morgan Stanley, the sentiment at the firm was ‘good riddance’ and ‘glad to see you go,’ rather than, ‘why are they leaving us?’ or ‘how could we do better?’” she said. “In contrast, when White MDs left or sought to leave, the Firm made significant efforts to retain them.”
Booker also alleges that throughout her tenure, Morgan Stanley exploited her as a “token response and symbol of its purported commitment to diversity,” having her make public appearances on its behalf, including a 2008 appearance before Congress.
Morgan Stanley isn’t alone on Wall Street in its underrepresentation of African Americans. Of the more than 80 people now listed on the elite executive teams atop the six largest U.S. banks, only one is Black: Citigroup Inc. Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason. In 2018, JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $24 million to settle a discrimination suit brought by Black financial advisers.
In the wake of the Floyd protests, Gorman announced that a commitment to diversity and inclusion would become one of Morgan Stanley’s five core values. He also named Carol Greene-Vincent, the bank’s global audit head, to its operating committee, the most senior leadership board, and current diversity head Susan Reid to the management committee.
According to Booker, prior to Greene-Vincent’s promotion, 14 of the firm’s 16 operating committee members were White and 14 were men.
(Updates with detail from complaint, adds background)


fortune--2020-06-16--Fortune 500 CEOs praise landmark LGBTQ antidiscrimination ruling

The coronavirus death toll in the U.S. has officially surpassed that of WWI

The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling this week makes it illegal for most employers to discriminate against gay or transgender workers—to the satisfaction of many of those employers.
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-to-3 that LGBTQ Americans are protected under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, or race. Many CEOs of the largest U.S. companies were quick to praise the decision, almost a year after their companies formally expressed support for the employees in the case.
“LGBTQ people deserve equal treatment in the workplace and throughout society, and today’s decision further underlines that federal law protects their right to fairness,” Apple CEO Tim Cook, head of the fourth-largest Fortune 500 company and a gay man, wrote on Twitter.
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Dow’s Jim Fitterling were among other Fortune 500 CEOs praising the Supreme Court ruling. General Motors’ Mary Barra called it “a historic day for the LGBTQ community. Everyone deserves to feel welcomed and valued for who they are; in the workplace and society.”
Yet this widespread celebration of one civil rights victory comes at an awkward time for much of corporate America, which is struggling over how to speak out against racism—and how to fix its own widespread failings to hire and promote black and other nonwhite employees. There are only five black CEOs, all men, on the 2020 Fortune 500 list; only 18 black CEOs in total have made the list since 1999. (There are also few openly gay CEOs on the Fortune 500, a cohort that currently includes Fitterling, Cook, Land O’Lakes’ Beth Ford, and Jeff Gennette of Macy’s.)
The Supreme Court’s ruling protecting gay and transgender workers comes almost a year after many big companies first expressed their support for the employees seeking greater federal protection in the case known as Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga. Last summer, more than 200 major businesses signed an amicus brief arguing that LGBTQ employees should enjoy federal protections from job discrimination. The 206 companies included Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, General Motors, Walt Disney, PayPal, Peloton, Airbnb, and Uber; collectively, they employ over 7 million employees and represent over $5 trillion in revenue.
“Ending discrimination in the workplace is good for business, employees, and the U.S. economy as a whole,” argued their brief. “These businesses are committed to creating workplaces that afford lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) employees the opportunity to earn a living, excel in their professions, and provide for their families free from fear of unequal treatment.”
Other business groups, including the Main Street Alliance and the American Sustainable Business Council, filed another “friend of the court” brief supporting the employees; so did a group of senior women executives, including Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Vice Media CEO Nancy Dubuc, and prominent television producer Shonda Rhimes.
Not all workers will be protected by the Supreme Court’s ruling, as not all employers are required to recognize it. The antidiscrimination law does not apply to small businesses that employ fewer than 15 workers. But in the amicus brief it signed last summer, the Main Street Alliance argued that its 30,000 small-business members would also benefit from greater federal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers.
“At an organizational level, LGBT-inclusive policies lead to increased revenue, lower costs, and growth in customer bases,” that brief argued. “Simply put, businesses with inclusive workforces thrive.”


fortune--2020-06-16--PepsiCo CEO: ‘Black Lives Matter, to our company and to me.’ What the food and beverage giant will d

PepsiCo CEO: ‘Black Lives Matter, to our company and to me.’ What the food and beverage giant will do next

As people around the world demand justice for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and far too many others, we have been thinking hard about how PepsiCo can help dismantle the systemic racial barriers that for generations have blocked social and economic progress for Black people in this country. We know that the first step toward change is to speak up, so I want to be very clear: Black Lives Matter, to our company and to me.
Even though I wasn’t born in the United States, I am passionate about this issue. Growing up in Spain, my parents raised me to believe that all people are equal, that diversity is a reflection of our common humanity. This is true both in companies and the larger society. Yet despite my parents’ optimistic view, we know that all people are not treated equally and that the problem of systemic racism is very real. The struggle for equality exists in many forms around the world, from religious freedom, to gender equality, indigenous people’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, Latino rights in the U.S., and other racial and ethnic discrimination. After living in Georgia and Connecticut for several years, I have come to better understand the urgent need for racial and social justice in this nation, and I am committed to using my position as CEO to lead this change.
A letter I received recently from a longtime PepsiCo associate expressed some of the pain many of our colleagues feel. She spoke of Black Americans’ struggle with everything from substandard housing, to racial profiling, to underfunded education. She was disappointed in some of PepsiCo’s past decisions and called us to action, saying, “PepsiCo at this time has an opportunity to look at our African-American employees and community with wide open eyes and heart, and to work hand-in-hand to address the plagues many of us all too often face each day.” I couldn’t agree more.
During the past few weeks, the senior leadership team and I have been doing a lot more listening than talking. I met with several different groups of Black community leaders, as well as MOSAIC, our Black employee resource group. These conversations were humbling and enlightening. I came away from them more conscious of the insidious nature of systemic racism and even more committed to using PepsiCo’s resources for good.
The journey for racial equality has long been part of our company’s DNA, going back to our first Black sales team in 1947 and the legacy of Harvey Russell. [Editor’s note: PepsiCo promoted Russell to vice president in 1962; he is believed to be the first black officer of a major U.S. multinational corporation.]
We’ve also been longtime contributors to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and will continue to support their work for social justice. But the recent protests in all 50 states and around the world have called on us to honestly assess our efforts. While there are areas in which we have made progress in the fight against systemic racism and inequality—including pay equity and the diversity of our frontline workforce—we know we cannot keep pointing to what we did decades ago. The promise of our journey remains unfulfilled. We have much work to do going forward, and to echo Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The time is always right to do what is right.”
So today, I am announcing the next step in PepsiCo’s journey for racial equality: a more than $400 million set of initiatives over five years to lift up Black communities and increase Black representation at PepsiCo. These initiatives make up a holistic effort for PepsiCo to walk the talk of a leading corporation and help address the need for systemic change.
Our journey will now focus on three pillars—People, Business, and Communities.
People
When it comes to people, we are focusing on increasing representation; recruitment; and education, internships and apprenticeships. That means dramatically rethinking our approach to talent, starting by:
Expanding our Black managerial population by 30% by 2025 through internal development and recruitment—we will add more than 250 Black associates to managerial roles by 2025, including adding a minimum of 100 Black associates to our executive ranks. While 14% of our U.S. workforce is Black, we know we need to increase representation in leadership.
Accelerating our recruitment efforts with Historically Black Colleges and Universities and increasing partnerships with diverse organizations at our core schools.
Establishing scholarship support for students transitioning from two-year to four-year programs and scaling our existing efforts to support trade/certificate and academic two-year degrees education through community colleges for 400 Black students per year—these funds will also provide wraparound support, including money for books, transportation, housing, and more.
Activating associates to help drive ongoing change in our organization, with a focus on internal mentoring, coaching, and continuous development—we know that many of you want to get involved, and we will need your support to see our journey through.
Mandating companywide unconscious-bias training, followed by continued training aimed at reducing biases in the workplace; including PDR objectives on representation; and requiring diversity on executive candidate slates—we’ll also expand our programs dedicated to supporting Black talent throughout critical career stages.
Business
When it comes to business, we will leverage our scale and influence across our suppliers, marketing agency partners, and customer base to increase representation and strengthen Black-owned businesses. That means step changes in our spending and approach to partnerships, starting by:
More than doubling our spending with Black-owned suppliers, expanding the supplier pipeline through advocacy and outreach, and building supplier capability targeting growth across services, agriculture, sustainable packaging, and operations.
Using our buying power to create more jobs for Black creators at our marketing agencies and making them part of our content development—we will implement a Creative Agency Diversity Policy modeled on our existing policy for the selection of legal services, including an annual audit.
Investing $50 million over five years to strengthen local Black-owned businesses.
Communities
When it comes to our communities, we’re working to drive long-term change by addressing systemic barriers to economic opportunity, investing an incremental $20 million over five years. That means broadly increasing our efforts to create opportunity and advance economic empowerment for Black Americans, starting by:
Accelerating our support for social programs that impact Black communities, including delivering $6.5 million in community impact grants to address systemic issues; investing $1 million to replicate our holistic community support program, Southern Dallas Thrives, in Chicago; expanding our Food for Good initiative providing jobs and access to nutrition to more Black communities; and increasing our contribution to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to support the struggle for social justice.
Supporting Black-owned restaurants as part of our Small Businesses Program, including mentoring, management training, and help obtaining financing.
Investing $5 million to launch a Community Leader Fellowship program for Black nonprofit CEOs. We will provide grants to participants’ organizations, executive education, and connections to PepsiCo leaders and partners.
The bottom line: This moment calls for big, structural changes, and we’re committed to being agents of that progress. As we continue our journey, we are going to keep listening—to leaders, communities, and all of our associates—and we will work to do the right thing. We are committed to this work because we know that American society has placed the burden disproportionately on Black people. Injustice and inequality are problems for us all, and we all must do our part to defeat them. These efforts will also inform and positively impact our broader diversity efforts beyond our Black associates, as we look to be an actor in addressing other types of inequality going forward.
Thank you to everyone who has voiced their opinion fearlessly to advance this important conversation. I hear you loud and clear and, as CEO, I aspire to ensure that all associates are proud to work at PepsiCo. We still have a way to go, but our journey is gathering speed. Together, I am confident we can work to build a stronger, better company that actively supports racial equality, more fully serves our communities, and lives up to our highest ideals.
Ramon L. Laguarta is the chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of PepsiCo.


fortune--2020-06-16--Jimmy Kimmel will host this year’s Emmys—though the exact nature of the show remains a mystery

Jimmy Kimmel will host the first major Hollywood awards ceremony of the coronavirus pandemic — but just how the Emmys will be held remains cloudy.
Kimmel, who is also producing the Sept. 20 ceremony on ABC honoring TV’s best, acknowledged that in Tuesday’s announcement.
“I don’t know where we will do this or how we will do this or even why we are doing this, but we are doing it and I am hosting it,” the ABC late-night host said in a statement.
The network said details on the show’s production will be announced soon. Choosing Kimmel to emcee the ceremony reverses course from last year’s no-host Emmys.
The entertainment industry is just beginning to restart production following a months-long shutdown aimed at curtailing the spread of COVID-19. Orchestrating an awards ceremony during the ongoing pandemic with its crowd of presenters, nominees and guests is a daunting prospect, whether done virtually or otherwise.
While the Emmys are plunging ahead as scheduled, other ceremonies are bowing to the pandemic’s pressures. The 93rd Academy Awards will be held April 25, 2021, eight weeks later than planned, and the British Academy Film Awards is shifting its originally announced February 2021 ceremony to April 11.
The Emmy Awards are considered a kickoff for the new TV season that traditionally begins in September, although virus-caused production delays have raised questions about whether shows will be ready to air as planned.
Nominations for the 72nd prime-time Emmys will be announced by the TV academy on July 28.


fortune--2020-06-16--What are the potential long-term effects of having COVID-19?

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It’s hard to say exactly, because the coronavirus is still so new that scientists don’t know much about long-term effects. The best evidence comes from patients themselves, and some experience a variety of symptoms long after their infections have cleared.
Most people recover within a few weeks. For people who experience longer-term effects, the most common issues are bouts of exhaustion, headaches, anxiety and muscle aches that can last for at least several more weeks.
Patients who required intensive care, including those put on ventilators or kidney dialysis, can experience more serious issues.
Lung scarring can occur in people who developed pneumonia. Heart inflammation, irregular heartbeats, and worsening kidney and liver function have been reported as well. However, it’s too soon to know if those could be permanent problems.
Survivors who had long intensive-care stays sometimes need oxygen therapy or dialysis at home. Some also develop a condition called post-intensive care syndrome, which can include persistent muscle weakness and memory problems. That can happen after any critical illness and may be related to sedation and prolonged bed confinement during hospitalization.
Blood clots can also develop during and after COVID-19 infections, occasionally causing strokes. Even in less serious cases, blood thinners are prescribed and can require lifestyle changes to reduce risks of bleeding.
Most symptoms appear to eventually go away, said Dr. Thomas McGinn of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York, who was involved in one of the largest U.S. studies of COVID-19 patients.
“It’s just a matter of when. For some patients it may take longer than others,” McGinn said.


fortune--2020-06-16--The Coronavirus Economy: The fine dining veterans aspiring to elevate frozen food

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For the culinary world, one of the most rapid transformations that looks as if it will hold for the foreseeable future is that customers are ordering takeout more than ever.
Nine in 10 consumers are ordering takeout (as opposed to seven in 10 before the pandemic) at least one to two times per week, according to the Zagat Future of Dining study published this month. And as restaurants slowly begin to reopen across the country, diners remain wary of going back. Zagat found most diners plan to wait at least three to four weeks before returning to restaurants, opting instead for more meals at home.
But not all takeout is one and the same. There are more and more grocery and meal subscription kits available, many of which are surging in sales as consumers shy away from long lines at supermarkets.
Founded by veterans of Blue Apron, Chipotle, and upscale restaurants, Ipsa Provisions aims to be a “new kind of frozen food company.” Meals are made from scratch in a small commercial kitchen in New York City, with menu items such as chicken tortilla soup, a butternut squash lasagna, coconut curry, and beef and kimchi stew.
Fortune spoke with cofounders Joshua Brau and Micah Fredman for a new series, The Coronavirus Economy, about how the outbreak has affected their business, their thoughts on the future, and how they have been handling these past fraught few months, both emotionally and financially.
The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Ipsa Provisions cofounders Joshua Brau (left) and Micah Fredman. Frances F. Denny
Fortune: Could you tell me a little bit about your background? What inspired the launch of Ipsa Provisions?
Fredman: I’ve loved food for as long as I can remember. After receiving a rather impractical BA in Humanities from Yale, my five-year plan—to master the craft of cooking—took me through the kitchens of Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, and a number of humbler and wiser kitchens of grandmothers throughout Mexico and Italy.
When Josh approached me to pilot the Ipsa concept, I was enthralled by the challenge of redeeming the American freezer. My travels and knowledge of restaurant kitchen operations had shown me glimpses of the freezer’s possibilities. I love an underdog. I love the challenge of changing people’s minds, and deliciousness is my favorite way of doing it.
Brau: Both of my parents have been in the food industry since before I was born. They helped me see so much of life through the lens of food. On a macro level, there are direct linkages between the food and just about every major global issue. And at the micro level, food obviously plays an essential role in so many aspects of our lives. I’ve spent the better part of the last decade working to build a better food system, and over that time I’ve become convinced that doing so requires rethinking how and what we eat at home.
That said, I never expected I’d be advocating for a wholesale rethinking of the freezer. Before my daughter was born, I spent a good amount of time cooking and freezing large batches of some of my wife’s favorite dishes so we’d have them ready to go during what we correctly predicted was a long cold winter with a newborn. As our homemade stash dwindled, I was surprised to find that I couldn’t find anything comparable in grocery store freezer aisles.
So I approached Micah to see if he was interested in exploring whether there was a market for seriously tasty frozen food made with superb ingredients. Micah and I had known each other for a long time, and I always admired his cooking and his approach to food more broadly. The early pilots we ran aspired to accomplish something that remains at the core of our vision for Ipsa: to deliver an experience that is—dollar-for-dollar and minute-for-minute of active effort—the best meal you can put on your table at home.
“Our concept is focused on elevating what has been a fairly lackluster corner of the food industry,” says Brau. “Meals that are eaten at home, but cooked partially or entirely outside of it.” Dafne Work
For many consumers, grocery shopping has changed dramatically over the past few months. Some consumers might be turning to alternative services, like subscription and delivery programs, to stock up on food and meals for the week. How has demand for Ipsa fared since the onset of the pandemic?
Brau: It’s difficult to untangle demand before and after the onset of the pandemic because we launched Ipsa about four weeks before stay-at-home orders were put in place. What we have seen is demand for our food that far exceeds what we expected for our first few months in operation. There’s no question the pandemic has a lot to do with that.
Our concept is focused on elevating what has been a fairly lackluster corner of the food industry: meals that are eaten at home, but cooked partially or entirely outside of it. This includes restaurant takeout, prepared foods, fresh meal delivery services, and of course, the grocery store frozen food aisle. Despite the massive size of this market, there’s very little out there that’s compelling to the growing ranks of people who want to eat really well all the time. It’s always been the case that the vast majority of meals are eaten at home, but that proportion is as high now as it’s been in a very, very long time. Even people who love to cook don’t want to cook every single meal.
“I trained at some of New York’s finest restaurants, so Ipsa’s kitchen standards for health, safety, and cleanliness were rigorous from the start. These restaurants instill high standards into the core of your being as a young chef,” says Fredman. Dafne Work
There have been some concerns about the safety of food delivery—not only of preventing the transmission of COVID-19 via food packaging but also protecting employees who are providing an essential service. What kind of precautions has your business set up, and have any of those changed during the pandemic?
Fredman: I trained at some of New York’s finest restaurants, so Ipsa’s kitchen standards for health, safety, and cleanliness were rigorous from the start. These restaurants instill high standards into the core of your being as a young chef.
Operating during the pandemic, our health and safety protocols have only become more stringent. Any employee that experienced any hint of a possible symptom was asked to stay home. Our kitchen employees are scanned with a noncontact thermometer upon arrival and provided with gloves (changed frequently) and face masks for use during their shifts. Our kitchen is spacious enough that cooks are able to maintain appropriate distance from colleagues. The kitchen is sanitized by a trained kitchen maintenance person before, during, and after each shift. Strict protocols govern how deliveries are made to the kitchen and how staff treat items when they are received. Fulfillment staff and delivery drivers wear appropriate protective gear during their shifts, and noncontact delivery is our standard.
Looking toward the next few weeks and months, how do you expect consumers will continue to shop for food? Do you expect more interest in delivered meals, even as restrictions lift in some areas? And does Ipsa plan to expand in this economic climate?
Brau: It’s too early to tell how dramatically habits will shift in the long run. But there’s no question that delivered food—groceries, meals, et cetera—will figure more prominently in our routines. The challenge for many food businesses will be to rethink their business models so the economics of delivery are sustainable.
Given the unique ways in which Ipsa’s offering is suited to this particular moment, we’re facing more potential avenues for expansion than we anticipated at this stage of the business. We’re focused on growing intentionally, so we can maintain the quality of the experience we deliver to our customers. We believe it’s critical to build an operational foundation now that can sustain the more aggressive growth we’d like to see in the coming years.
On a personal note, how have you been faring amid all this?
Fredman: These past couple months have been quite the mental-emotional roller coaster—fear, sorrow, drive, loneliness, confusion, hope, and hopelessness—all in the course of a day. I am incredibly grateful to have had this work of feeding people to both ground and propel me amidst all the uncertainty.
Brau: Thank you for asking. Like most people, I experience ups and downs. Sometimes I’m exhausted. But more than anything I’m energized by two things: first, the simple fact that Ipsa is helping make things a little easier and a little more delicious for our customers during a very difficult period in their lives. Second, I’m experiencing a newfound—albeit cautious—optimism. The events of the last few months have made it impossible to ignore the depth of the challenges we face as a society, and I’m excited to see Ipsa participate in any way we can, large or small, to help bring about structural changes that are long overdue.


fortune--2020-06-16--Small businesses: Brace yourselves for a caregiving crisis

All 50 states have started reopening from the economic shutdown and the lifting of stay-at-home orders put in place to combat COVID-19. However, as more small businesses reopen their doors, many of them are going to be faced with the challenge of serving an increasing number of employees who need support as they care for loved ones battling illness or requiring extra help to stay safe and healthy.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 26.5 million Americans were classified as family caregivers who were juggling work and unpaid care for an adult family member or friend. That number was already projected to grow, but now with a protracted public health battle against the coronavirus it is quickly becoming an inevitable crisis for America’s small-business community. Unaddressed, the loss of productivity owing to caregiving costs U.S. businesses an estimated $17.1 billion to $33 billion annually.
Already, one in six working Americans is a caregiver for a parent, spouse, partner, or friend with a chronic, disabling, or serious health condition. And demographic trends suggest there will be a greater share of caregivers in the workplace in the years to come. In fact, Census Bureau population projections show adults over the age of 65 will outnumber children under 18 for the first time in U.S. history by 2034, and many of those older adults will need assistance with chronic conditions. With fewer people available to provide care, many family caregivers will be sandwiched between work responsibilities and care responsibilities. That means caregivers in the workplace will be a new norm.
Despite the increasing demands for support, caregivers want to—and oftentimes must—continue working. That is not a surprise, since caregivers stand to lose a lot if they leave their jobs. Those who disrupt their careers or leave the labor force can face substantial economic risk and both short- and long-term financial difficulties. In fact, MetLife found Americans who provide care for their aging parents have lost, in the aggregate, an estimated $3 trillion in wages, pensions, and Social Security benefits over the course of caring for a loved one.
Fortunately, employers are sympathetic to their employees’ situations. A recent AARP study found that 94% of employers believe supporting caregivers at work is the right thing to do, and many believe it will continue to be an important workplace issue in the next five years.
To tackle this crisis, a new Small Business Caregiving Online Resource Guide, assembled by our respective organizations, offers employers practical solutions with a step-by-step approach to supporting caregivers in the workplace. The guide provides examples of best practices and robust resources, and creates a caregiver-friendly workplace road map. It recommends four steps:
Gather data: Recognize current workplace gaps by understanding how your employees think about caregiving.
Recognize current workplace gaps by understanding how your employees think about caregiving. Build a friendly culture: Create a supportive and inclusive workplace culture around caregiving through open discussions, manager training, and employee education.
Create a supportive and inclusive workplace culture around caregiving through open discussions, manager training, and employee education. Implement specific strategies: Provide caregivers with the flexibility and managers with the support they need by incorporating benefits and programs into your workplace.
Provide caregivers with the flexibility and managers with the support they need by incorporating benefits and programs into your workplace. Connect employees with resources: Help your employees navigate their lives as working caregivers by sharing resources that help them prepare for and provide care.
Employers who adjust to employee caregiving needs are positioned to receive the best from their staff. Employees working for caregiver-friendly businesses are more engaged, productive, and less likely to leave. Business owners with formal policies also say it is easier for them to accommodate adjustments, such as schedule changes or leave requests.
As small-business owners reopen, developing a caregiving-friendly workplace can no longer be an afterthought. Between changing demographics and a virus that will be with us for the foreseeable future, now is the time to take action and create a small-business community where both businesses and families thrive. The small-business owner who prepares for this emerging crisis today will be better positioned to tap the full potential of their greatest assets—their employees—tomorrow.
Nancy LeaMond is executive vice president and chief advocacy and engagement officer at AARP. Rhett Buttle is a former adviser to the White House Business Council and founder and principal at Public Private Strategies.


fortune--2020-06-16--Square’s head of lending thinks the PPP still needs more changes to help the smallest businesses

Small businesses recently got a big extension to use funds for the Paycheck Protection Program to help them stay afloat amid the crisis—but even that might not be enough time for America’s tiniest businesses.
Many small businesses and sole proprietors are still struggling to reopen and rehire employees as states reopen across the country, and people like Jackie Reses, who heads up PPP loans as head of Square Capital, wonder if the extended 24-week time frame to use funds for the program may not be enough.
“I think over the long term, even though forgiveness was made easier with the 24 weeks of time to count, I still hope that’s enough time for small businesses,” Reses said at the CB Insights Tech Conference on Tuesday. “I hope that forgiveness takes into account a technically broader set of use cases for what the capital is needed, and potentially even say, ‘You know what, this business, this tiny micro business—that plumber is still in business, and it might be slower, and he might need more than the 24 weeks, but we’re going to make loans that are really small forgivable because we see this is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy.'”
Reses has seen small businesses that use Square try to pivot amid the crisis, setting up online stores and using curbside pickup to make ends meet. But many Main Street businesses are still trying to manage issues with reopening, she said. “Small businesses are struggling to manage their cash flow. Typically small businesses have less than 28 days of cash flow in their savings,” Reses noted. “I still think the purpose [of the program] needs to appreciate that very small businesses, micro businesses across the United States, have been hurt in lots of different ways,” she said. And while many small businesses in various states are beginning to reopen (there’s been a “pretty significant” boost in activity in recent weeks, she said), there are still categories that are “weaker,” she said, noting health, beauty, and restaurant businesses among them.
Meanwhile, the businesses taking these PPP loans from fintechs are minute compared to many large companies that took loans from banks. Of the roughly 76,000 loans Square has facilitated through the PPP, the average loan size is just $11,000, and two-thirds have gone to sole proprietors, Reses says.
But in addition to possibly needing more than 24 weeks to use funds, Reses suggests the 11-page forgiveness application is too complicated for those smallest businesses, who likely don’t have accountants or CFOs to help. “It requires a math degree to understand,” she said.
To help ease some of the strain, Congress recently passed a bill that extended the time frame to use funds from eight to 24 weeks, and gave businesses more flexibility to use funds on non-payroll expenses. For some small businesses, getting full forgiveness of the loans should be a lot easier. “Assuming [your business is] functioning, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that you’ll have enough payroll to absorb the whole loan, and it basically should make the administration of processing loan forgiveness that much easier,” William McDevitt, a CPA based in the New York area, recently told Fortune.
But senators have also asked the Small Business Administration and Treasury to make the forgiveness process easier. In a letter on June 12, Senate Democrats called the application “burdensome, time-consuming, and costly for very small and underserved businesses.”
And as forgiveness looms for businesses, lenders from big banks like Bank of America to regional banks and fintechs like Square have even put their support behind a proposition to automatically have loans under $150,000 forgiven.
Meanwhile, Congress has indicated more help needs to go to businesses in more targeted ways.
And Reses, for one, said at the conference she hopes forgiveness will be more lenient. “‘This plumber is still back in business, or this tiny restaurant or the five-chair hair salon, or the coffee shop. If they’re still in business and they’re still serving our community, how do we make forgiveness easy?’ I’m hoping that happens,” she said.


fortune--2020-06-16--Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in almost 50 years

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Spoiler alert: 2020 has been rough on the American psyche. Folks in the U.S. are more unhappy today than they’ve been in nearly 50 years.
This bold—yet unsurprising—conclusion comes from the COVID Response Tracking Study, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. It finds that just 14% of American adults say they’re very happy, down from 31% who said the same in 2018. That year, 23% said they’d often or sometimes felt isolated in recent weeks. Now, 50% say that.
The survey, conducted in late May, draws on nearly a half-century of research from the General Social Survey, which has collected data on American attitudes and behaviors at least every other year since 1972. No less than 29% of Americans have ever called themselves very happy in that survey.
Most of the new survey’s interviews were completed before the death of George Floyd touched off nationwide protests and a global conversation about race and police brutality, adding to the feelings of stress and loneliness Americans were already facing from the coronavirus outbreak — especially for black Americans.
Lexi Walker, a 47-year-old professional fiduciary who lives near Greenville, South Carolina, has felt anxious and depressed for long stretches of this year. She moved back to South Carolina late in 2019, then her cat died. Her father passed away in February. Just when she thought she’d get out and socialize in an attempt to heal from her grief, the pandemic hit.
“It’s been one thing after another,” Walker said. “This is very hard. The worst thing about this for me, after so much, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Among other finding from the new poll about life in the pandemic:
— The public is less optimistic today about the standard of living improving for the next generation than it has been in the past 25 years. Only 42% of Americans believe that when their children reach their age, their standard of living will be better. A solid 57% said that in 2018. Since the question was asked in 1994, the previous low was 45% in 1994.
— Compared with surveys conducted after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans are less likely to report some types of emotional and psychological stress reactions following the COVID-19 outbreak. Fewer report smoking more than usual, crying or feeling dazed now than after those two previous tragedies, though more report having lost their temper or wanting to get drunk.
— About twice as many Americans report being lonely today as in 2018, and not surprisingly given the lockdowns that tried to contain the spread of the coronavirus, there’s also been a drop in satisfaction with social activities and relationships. Compared with 2018, Americans also are about twice as likely to say they sometimes or often have felt a lack of companionship (45% vs. 27%) and felt left out (37% vs. 18%) in the past four weeks.
What is surprising, said Louise Hawkley, a senior research scientist with NORC at the University of Chicago, was that loneliness was not even more prevalent.
“It isn’t as high as it could be,” she said. “People have figured out a way to connect with others. It’s not satisfactory, but people are managing to some extent.”
The new poll found that there haven’t been significant changes in Americans’ assessment of their families’ finances since 2018 and that Americans’ satisfaction with their families’ ability to get along financially was as high as it’s been over nearly five decades.
Jonathan Berney, of Austin, Texas, said that the pandemic — and his resulting layoff as a digital marketing manager for a law firm — caused him to reevaluate everything in his life. While he admits that he’s not exactly happy now, that’s led to another uncomfortable question: Was he truly happy before the pandemic?
“2020 just fast forwarded a spiritual decay. When things are good, you don’t tend to look inwards,” he said, adding that he was living and working in the Miami area before the pandemic hit. As Florida dealt with the virus, his girlfriend left him and he decided to leave for Austin. “I probably just wasn’t a nice guy to be around from all the stress and anxiety. But this forced an existential crisis.”
Berney, who is looking for work, said things have improved from those early, dark days of the pandemic. He’s still job hunting but has a little savings to live on. He said he’s trying to kayak more and center himself so he’s better prepared to deal with any future downturn in events.
Reimagining happiness is almost hard-wired into Americans’ DNA, said Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside.
“Human beings are remarkably resilient. There’s lots and lots of evidence that we adapt to everything. We move forward,” she said, adding that she’s done happiness studies since the pandemic started and found that some people are slightly happier than last year.
Melinda Hartline, of Tampa, who was laid off from her job in public relations in March, said she was in a depressed daze those first few weeks of unemployment. Then she started to bike and play tennis and enrolled in a college course on post-crisis leadership.
Today, she’s worried about the state of the world and the economy, and she wonders when she can see her kids and grandkids who live on the West Coast — but she also realizes that things could be a lot worse.
“Anything can happen. And you have to be prepared,” she said. “Whether it’s your health, your finances, whether it’s the world. You have to be prepared. And always maintain that positive mental attitude. It’s going to get you through it.”
___
The survey of 2,279 adults was conducted May 21-29 with funding from the National Science Foundation. It uses a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.


fortune--2020-06-16--North Korea blows up liaison office with South Korea in most serious provocation in years

North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border, in an explosive rebuke to Seoul that appeared designed to draw maximum global attention with little immediate risk of war.
The move represented North Korea’s most serious provocation in years and follows an escalating series of threats against South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s government. The state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a statement that the office — the most concrete achievement from a series of summits between the two Koreas in 2018 was — was “tragically ruined with a terrific explosion.”
South Korea’s Unification Ministry called the demolition of a 18 billion won ($15 million) facility that served as a de facto embassy for the two countries a “senseless act” that had “destroyed the hopes of those who wished for peace on the Korean Peninsula.” The country’s National Security Council warned North Korea of a strong response if it took further actions, but gave no indication of imminent retaliation.
The destruction of the building comes about a week after Kim Jong Un’s regime abandoned its operations at the South Korea-funded facility, which allowed officials from both sides to communicate around the clock. North Korea has been seeking to raise pressure on Moon in frustration over Seoul’s continued support for the U.S.-led sanctions campaign that’s hobbled its economy.
While it wasn’t immediately clear how the allies would react, Kim’s target seemed chosen to embarrass Moon without provoking a military response from South Korea or U.S. President Donald Trump. Moon has spent much of his presidency seeking better ties with Pyongyang, sometimes putting himself at odds with more hawkish voices in the Trump administration.
“We can expect Pyongyang will continue with similar military acts, but not enough that would force Seoul to retaliate in kind with force,” said Duyeon Kim, a senior adviser for Northeast Asia and Nuclear Policy at the International Crisis Group. “We should remember that the liaison office was essentially already dead, so, if there’s a real problem, then it’s for South Korean taxpayers.”
The initial U.S. response was muted, with a senior administration official saying the American government was aware of the North Korean move and that the U.S. was in close coordination with its South Korean allies.
Onshore markets had finished trading when reports of the attack first emerged at around 3:30 p.m. local time, and Kospi 200 futures ended the session up 5.6% after rallying almost 7%. Foreign investors pulled a net 727 billion won from the contracts.
Shares of Top tech firms Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. dropped more than 1% in after-hours trading, according to data from brokerage Mirae Asset Daewoo. One-month dollar-won non-deliverable forwards rose 0.3% to 1,211.41, suggesting that the South Korean currency will weaken when trading resumes Wednesday.
The incident was among the most serious provocations since 2010, when North Korea was suspected of torpedoing a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors, and a few months later shelling a South Korean island, killing two soldiers and two civilians. The attacks threatened to spill into open fighting, but tensions were defused amid concerns about the devastation from another war.
Trade between the two Koreas has dropped to virtually zero from $2.7 billion in 2015, or about 10% of North Korea’s economy. The regime took a further hit this year when it sealed off its borders in January at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which slammed the brakes on other trade with countries like China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a daily briefing soon after the incident that the country hoped for peace on the Korean Peninsula, without mentioning the liaison office. China is North Korea’s main political backer and trading partner, giving it a key role in implementing international sanctions against North Korea.
The liaison office, opened two years ago, was part of moves to reduce threats along the border as Kim also engaged Trump in talks about his nuclear weapons program. The office allowed for constant communication between the two sides for the first time since the start of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Earlier Tuesday, North Korea said it was reviewing plans to send troops into some areas of the Demilitarized Zone, without citing specific parts of the heavily fortified border area. The statement appeared to be referring to a region near the office on the western side of the peninsula and a closed joint resort in the east around Mount Kumgang, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
Moon has recently pushed to restore some of the frozen economic ties with North Korea and repeatedly called for North Korea to hold talks. Pyongyang has ignored his calls for dialogue and chastised him for being meddlesome in his attempts to serve as a bridge between Kim Jong Un and Trump.
Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Centre for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute, said the latest action illustrated North Korea’s “strong will” to “completely shut off” relations with the South.
“North Korea is working toward re-militarization of the Kaesong industrial complex,” Cheong said. “And blowing up the liaison office in the complex would just be the first step on their road map.”
North Korea continued to lay the blame on anti-Kim leaflets flown across the border by South Korean-based activists, saying the country was compelled to “force human scum, and those who have sheltered the scum, to pay dearly for their crimes.” The regime went ahead with the move, even though Moon’s government last week revoked the licenses of two groups involved and urged a criminal investigation into their leaders.
Millions of leaflets have flown across the border for more than a decade bearing messages critical of North Korean leaders. The latest came as Kim Jong Un made fewer public appearances over the past several weeks than normal, leading to global speculation about his health.
Over the years, North Korea has often threatened military action — saying it would turn Seoul into a “sea of fire” and sink the Japanese archipelago — but has taken few steps that could escalate into open conflict with the U.S. and its allies.
“It often bluffs, and we have seen lots of that before,” said Zhang Baohui, a professor of political science and director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “However, when it comes to concrete actions North Korea has been prudent as it understands the huge costs associated with imprudent actions.”(Updates with Trump administration acknowledgement in seventh paragraph.)
–With assistance from Jing Li, Chester Yung, Tan Hwee Ann, Jihye Lee, Shinhye Kang and Josh Wingrove.


fortune--2020-06-16--U.S. retail sales surge in May but remain well below normal levels

American consumers began returning to the national pastime in May—going shopping and spending much more money than economists had expected.
The U.S. government’s report on Tuesday morning buoyed Wall Street, which surged 4% on the upbeat news. The 17.7% growth was more than double what economists had forecast and the biggest monthly surge in nearly three decades.
Still, the dramatic increase in retail sales last month over April was largely the result of the cratering in consumer spending that occurred in April, the worst decline on record when, at the height of the lockdowns, most stores were closed across the country. Even with the jump in spending in May, retail sales were 6.1% below May 2019 levels, a sober reminder of how troubled much of the industry remains.
The Commerce Department’s data shows that the retailers that were struggling heading into the pandemic and recession—and were hit the hardest by the lockdowns—saw little relief, particularly clothing stores and department stores.
Clothing stores’ sales rose 188% in May compared with April, and department stores’ sales grew 36.9%, but compared with May 2019, the accurate reference point, they were down 63.4% and 25.8%, respectively. To be fair, much of that decline resulted from many of their locations still being closed last month, but the data shows how low a priority their wares are for U.S. consumers now and how much they have had to cut prices to entice shoppers.
“Even where stores have reopened, trade is building slowly and…consumers are reluctant to purchase. Extensive discounting, designed to clear down inventory, has also dampened sales values,” GlobalData Retail wrote in a research note.
Electronics were also way down from year-ago levels. Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer, has ended appointment-only shopping and will allow more shoppers into stores, so that trend may change in June.
Still, despite unemployment at decades-long highs, there were clear signs shopping for non-grocery items and other essentials was coming back to life. Sales at stores for sporting goods, musical instruments, and books surged—and were above May 2019 levels. Dick’s Sporting Goods recently reinstated its dividend because of how quickly business has bounced back. Furniture stores’ sales nearly doubled in May, and even though they remain 21% below 2019 levels, it’s still a good sign given those are big-ticket items consumers worried about the economy don’t typically make a priority.
And home improvement retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s continued to thrive in May, with garden items surging as homebound consumers focused on their houses.
Food stores’ sales were about on par with April but way above May 2019 levels as Americans continued to eat at home rather than dine out. That could change this month with many major markets beginning to allow limited in-restaurant dining and more small restaurants offering curbside pickup. (McDonald’s on Tuesday said its U.S. comparable sales were down 5% last month, a much gentler drop than in March or April.)
And of course the big winner in this pandemic, e-commerce, continued to surge: What the U.S. government calls non-store spending, which is online shopping, was 31% above year-ago levels. That is not surprising given the surges reported by the likes of Amazon, Wayfair, Chewy, and Shopify merchants.
While certain big pockets of retail remain in jeopardy, the overall resilience of shoppers is an encouraging sign, said Moody’s vice president Mickey Chadha. He called the May figures “an astonishing feat, considering most of the nonessential retailers were still shut for a good part of May.”


fortune--2020-06-16--NYPD must release body-cam footage within 30 days of a use-of-force incident

The New York Police Department must now release body-camera video within 30 days of any gun discharge or use-of-force incident, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday.
The footage can no longer be withheld at the commissioner’s discretion, and will be published online after it’s shared with the family, the mayor said.
“This is another step that will build trust between the NYPD and the people,” de Blasio said at a press briefing.
The 36,000-officer department has been dealing with nights of protests and looting after the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. It’s now facing demands from the City Council that it slash $1 billion from its $5.6 billion operating budget. The mayor, who has agreed to move some funds from the police to youth programs, said his policies would bring change more effectively than budget cuts.
“A lot of the most important things we can do is change how we approach policing,” he said. “We need to focus on what will keep us safe, but also what will lead to fairness and equality.”
On Monday, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said the department would disband its precinct anticrime teams, deploying about 600 mostly plainclothes officers to its detective, intelligence and counterterrorism bureaus.
Shea described the move as “closing one of the last chapters” in reforms begun by reducing stop-and-frisk street tactics six years ago. Police activists have complained that officers disguised as civilians engender distrust of the department, and interfere with efforts to gain residents’ cooperation.


fortune--2020-06-16--Privacy-preserving A.I. is the future of A.I.

This is the web version of Eye on A.I., Fortune’s weekly newsletter covering artificial intelligence and business. To get it delivered weekly to your in-box, sign up here.
I spent part of last week listening to the panel discussions at CogX, the London “festival of A.I. and emerging technology” that takes place each June. This year, due to Covid-19, the event took place completely online. (For more about how CogX pulled that off, look here.)
There were tons of interesting talks on A.I.-related topics. If you didn’t catch any of it, I’d urge you to look up the agenda and try to find recordings of the sessions on YouTube.
One of the most interesting sessions I tuned into was on privacy-preserving machine learning. This is becoming a hot topic, particularly in healthcare, and especially now due to the interest in applying machine learning to healthcare records that the coronavirus pandemic is helping to accelerate.
Currently, the solution to preserving patient privacy in most datasets used for healthcare A.I. is to anonymize the data: In other words, personal identifying information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers is simply stripped out of the dataset before it is fed to the A.I. algorithm. Anonymization is also the standard in other industries, especially those that are heavily regulated, such as finance and insurance.
But researchers have shown that this kind of anonymization doesn’t guarantee privacy: There are often other fields in data, such as location, age, or occupation, that might allow you to re-identify an individual, especially if you are able to cross-reference it with another dataset that does include personal information.
Privacy-preserving machine learning, by contrast, promises much more security—in fact, most methods offer mathematical certainty that the individual records cannot be re-identified by the person training or running the A.I. algorithm. But it’s got advantages and disadvantages. (One of the big disadvantages is that some privacy preserving methods are less accurate. Another is that some privacy preserving methods require more computing power or take longer to run.)
Last week, Eric Topol, the cardiologist who is both a huge believer in the potential for A.I. to transform healthcare and a notable skeptic of the hype so far about A.I. in healthcare, took to Twitter to highlight a paper published in Nature on the potential use of federated learning, a privacy-preserving machine learning technique, to build much larger and better-quality datasets of medical images for A.I. applications.
As the CogX panelists noted, the ability to draw insights from large datasets without compromising critical personal information is of potential interest far beyond healthcare: It could help industries create better benchmarks without compromising competitive information, or help companies serve their customers better without having to collect and store vast amounts of personal information about them.
Blaise Thomson, who is the founder and chief executive officer of Bitfount, a company creating software to enable this kind of insight-sharing between companies (and who sold his previous company to Apple), went so far as to say that privacy-preserving A.I. could strike a blow against monopolies. It could, he argued, help reverse A.I.’s tendency to reinforce winner-takes-all markets, where the largest company has access to more data, cementing its market leadership. (He didn’t mention any names, but ahem, Google, and, cough, Facebook.) Thomson is a fan of a privacy-preserving method called multi-party computation, where random noise is added to data before it is used to train an A.I. algorithm.
M.M. Hassan Mahmoud, the senior A.I. and machine-learning technologist at the U.K.’s Digital Catapult, a government-backed organization that helps startups, explained federated learning. It functions as a network, where each node retains all its own data locally and uses that data to train a local A.I. model. Aspects of each local model are shared with a central server, which uses the information to build a better, global model that is then promulgated back down to the nodes.
The problem: Coordinating all that information sharing requires specialized software platforms, and right now, the different software systems for running federated learning from different vendors (Google has one, graphics chip giant Nvidia has one, and China’s WeBank has another) are not compatible. So Mahmoud’s team built, as a proof of concept, a federated-learning system that could function across all these softwares. “It’s a great time to, as a community, build a common, open, scalable core that can be trusted by everyone,” Mahmoud said.
The final panelist was Oliver Smith, the strategy director and head of ethics for Health Moonshot at Telefonica Innovation Alpha. That’s a branch of Telefonica, the Spanish telecommunications firm, that works on transformative digital projects, including, in this case, mobile apps to help people with mental health. Smith said his group had investigated six different techniques for implementing privacy-preserving A.I. “My dream that we could take one technology and apply it to all of our uses cases is not really right,” he concluded. Instead, each use case was probably best suited to a different technique.
But Smith was clear about the potential of the whole field: “All of these techniques hold the promise of being able to mathematically prove privacy,” he said. “This is much better than anonymization and that is where we need to get to.”
It’s clearly a trend that anyone implementing an A.I. system —especially one that deals with personal information—ought to be thinking hard about.
With that, here’s the rest of this week’s A.I. news.
Jeremy Kahn
@jeremyakahn
jeremy.kahn@fortune.com
A.I. IN THE NEWS
Amazon and Microsoft join the bandwagon to stop selling facial recognition software to U.S. police—at least for now. Amazon said it would stop selling facial recognition software to U.S. police departments for at least a year. Microsoft announced it would not sell such systems to U.S. law enforcement until "until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology." The moves follow IBM's decision to exit the market for "general purpose" facial recognition technology. The protests for racial justice following the killing of George Floyd have brought renewed scrutiny to police use of facial recognition software—which research has shown is less accurate for darker-skinned people—and the ways in which it can exacerbate already biased law enforcement.
Microsoft's robot editor confuses two mixed-race Little Mix singers. Microsoft is in the process of replacing many of the human editors who select stories, choose images and write headlines for its MSN News service with A.I. software. But rollout of the new A.I. editors hit a snag, The Guardian reported, when the software chose to illustrate a story about Little Mix singer Jade Thirlwall's reflections on racism with a photograph of fellow group member Leigh-Anne Pinnock, who is also mixed race. The mistake, which Microsoft says it corrected as soon as it became aware of it, highlights issues around potential bias in A.I. algorithms. (In another twist on how A.I.-driven systems can go wrong, Microsoft also had to intervene to stop its robot editor from featuring news coverage about its own mistake on MSN.com.)
OpenAI launches its first commercial product. The San Francisco A.I. research group launched its first commercial product since standing up a for-profit arm last year. The product is a software interface that lets customers use OpenAI's new GPT-3 natural language processing algorithm. The algorithm can generate long passages of coherent text in almost any style, answer factual questions and perform a number of other language-based tasks. The first companies trialing the software include legal software company Casetext, Reddit, Middlebury College, and video-game maker Latitude. My Fortune Eye on A.I. colleague Jonathan Vanian has more here.
Idemia wins the contract for EU biometric i.d. program. The French security company won a European Union contract to run the algorithms that match biometric data, including facial imagery, when people present passports at the bloc's ports of entry and borders, technology site OneZero reported. The contract covers a program for about 400 million people who were born outside EU but work inside the zone for non-EU based companies. The contract makes Idemia, which already has contracts to process biometric identification for many parts of the U.S. government, among the world's largest custodians of facial and other biometric data, the site says.
U.K. farmers are testing fruit-picking robots amid Covid-19 picker shortage. With coronavirus-related travel restrictions making it harder for British farmers to bring in seasonal workers from Eastern Europe, some growers have joined a consortium to trial new robots that can harvest vegetables and even delicate fruit, such as strawberries, Bloomberg News reports.
Facial recognition was used to figure out who was watching outdoor advertising at the Rose Bowl. An A.I. startup from Philadelphia called VSBLTY surreptitiously scanned the faces of about 30,000 people who attended this year's Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, back in January, according to a report in OneZero. The company's software tracked whether—and for how long—those attending the game looked at advertising displays on screens at the stadium and also tried to determine their age and gender. This information can be used to help the stadium's marketing teams sell advertising. The same system also tried to spot anyone carrying weapons or who were on watch lists of "suspicious people" to help the venue with security.
Chinese researchers play a vital role in U.S. A.I. success. That's the conclusion of a New York Times investigation that examined the contribution Chinese-educated students make to American leadership in artificial intelligence. Many of these students come to the U.S. for graduate school, where they participate in cutting-edge research, and many then stay on in the U.S. to work for big U.S. technology companies and A.I. startups, the Times discovered. The story comes amid increasing calls among some China hawks, including several prominent Republican lawmakers, to bar Chinese nationals from studying computer science and other STEM subjects in the U.S.
Microsoft finds some machine learning servers were hijacked to mine cryptocurrency. The software giant said it had discovered several server clusters running its Kuberflow machine learning framework had been infected with malware that turned the servers into zombie cryptocurrency mining machines, according to a story in technology publication The Register. Kuberflow is popular because it allows developers to use Google's machine learning programming language, Tensorflow, combined with Kubernetes, the open-source development and management platform for containerized applications. Machine learning workloads make attractive targets for crypto mining hackers, The Register noted, because they frequently tap a lot of computing power, including graphic processing units and other accelerators—which are pretty useful for crypto miners too.
Facebook touts the use of its object detection algorithms in mineral mining application. The company said in a blog that two Australian companies took its open-source Detectron2 algorithm, which is a computer vision system that can be trained to recognize various kinds of objects in images, and used it create a system to analyze drill core samples. The system, called DataRock, makes determinations about rock strength, fracture risk and other calculations essential to the mining and energy sectors. It was created by DiUS, a technology company, and Solve Geosolutions, a data science consultancy that caters to the mining sector.
EYE ON A.I. TALENT
Sharktower AI, a company in Edinburgh, Scotland, that makes A.I.-enabled project management software, has appointed Brendan Waters as chief financial officer, according to the trade publication Business Cloud. Waters previously served as CFO of Wilson Design Source Supply and earlier in his career had been CFO at gaming company FanDuel.
Signal AI, a technology firm in the U.K., has appointed Georgie Weedon as head of communications, according to PRWeek. She had previously worked as a communications strategist for the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
EYE ON A.I. RESEARCH
Facebook reveals winners of its contest to detect deepfakes. The social media company ran a competition for machine learning experts to create software able to automatically detect deepfakes, those pernicious fake videos created through clever machine learning algorithms, which some fear will soon be used for political disinformation. The competition showed just how difficult this problem is, with the winning algorithm only able to detect about 65% of real deepfakes it encountered. Nonetheless, Facebook said such a system might help the platform deter less sophisticated bad actors and could help lessen the work load on its human content reviewers. I reported on the results for Fortune here.
FORTUNE ON A.I.
George Floyd protests, coronavirus face masks pose challenges for facial recognition—by Jeremy Kahn
Snap wants machine learning experts to make more animated messages—by Jonathan Vanian
Microsoft follows IBM and Amazon in barring police from using its facial-recognition technology—by Jonathan Vanian
Buzzy research lab OpenAI debuts first product as it tries to live up to the hype—by Jonathan Vanian
BRAIN FOOD
Facebook thinks language models can be used for fact-checking. Researchers at Hong Kong University and Facebook AI Research have proposed, in a paper posted to the research repository arxiv.org, that state-of-the-art language models, which are frequently pre-trained on vast data sets, will suck up enough factual knowledge during this training that they could reliably serve as fact-checkers for online content such as social media posts.
They took a factual claim—such as "Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia"—and masked, or hid, a key word in that claim, like the word Virginia. Then they asked the algorithm for its best prediction for the missing word. If the prediction matched the missing word, the system marked the claim as true. If it didn't, it judged the claim false.
The system is much simpler than other fact-checking software that has been developed, which has tended to rely on separate components for finding the best source of information on a subject and then retrieving evidence from that source to back up or refute a claim.
In tests, the language model approach performed OK—about as well as a simple evidence-retrieval system—but not great. The best accuracy the researchers obtained on a test set was 57%, which is far behind the best state-of-the-art fact-checking system built the traditional way, with about 77% accuracy.
Even larger language models—such as OpenAI's new GPT-3, which is more than 500 times bigger than BERT, the model the researchers used—might yield slightly better results. In fact, OpenAI seems to suggest that this kind of factual question answering might be a good commercial use for GPT-3.
But I think there's an inherent deficiency with this approach compared to the traditional ones that rely on a trusted knowledge base (like the Encyclopedia Britannica). These massive language models are pre-trained on text from all over the place. They ingest the complete works of Shakespeare, but they also gorge on threads from Reddit and other corners of the Internet not known for being particularly scrupulous with the truth. As a result, they ingest a lot of rubbish.
Ask GPT-2, OpenAI's previous state-of-the-art language model, to complete the sentence, "Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by..." and the algorithm generates the text, "a hit team of CIA operatives on November 22, 1963 in Dallas." Prompt it with, "The link between man-made carbon dioxide emissions and climate change is..." and it completes the sentence with "...still very much debated, and the science is murky on the point."
Given that automatic fact-checking tools are being touted as a defense against rampant disinformation on social media, these do not seem like auspicious results. Worse, if you knew large pre-trained language models were going to be used in this way, you could easily fool future systems by posting deliberate fictions to Reddit or elsewhere on the Internet. The language-based models would ingest these fictions during pre-training and then, when they encountered the claims again, judge them to be true. But, of course, no one would ever want to do such a thing, would they? (Here's looking at you, Vladimir.)


fortune--2020-06-16--Working While Black: Stories from black corporate America

After George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white police officer in May, protests against systemic racism have geared up again across the country, prompting companies to speak out in support of racial justice. They’re sharing lengthy statements declaring “black lives matter” to staff and the public, pledging millions to social justice organizations, and marking Juneteenth as a company holiday. Leaders are apologizing and resigning over problematic company culture.
But systemic racism within the workplace won’t be resolved in one news cycle. Over half of black employees have felt racism at work, one study shows. Only 3.2% of executives and senior manager–level employees are black, and only five Fortune 500 CEOs are. Black men are paid 13% less than white men; black women are paid 39% less than white men and 21% less than white women, according to another study. They ask for promotions and raises at about the same rate as white women, but get worse results.
Fortune put a call out for black employees to share their experiences in the workplace. We received responses from executives, middle managers, and entry-level staffers; we heard from people working in tech, finance, media and entertainment, insurance, nonprofits, fashion, health, and more. Altogether, they reveal the humanity behind the numbers. And they reveal that no matter what companies are saying right now, there is much work to be done.
We’re not done documenting experiences. If you have an anecdote to share, please submit your thoughts here. For more stories, subscribe to raceAhead, our newsletter on race in corporate America.
The responses have been lightly edited. We’ve published only first names to respect the privacy of the contributors.
A seat at the table
For many years, I’ve worked in corporate America. As I slowly moved up the corporate ladder, I began to notice there were fewer black employees until I was the only one. I live in a major city with one of the largest percentages of African-American college graduates, so the talent pool is there. I watched as the CEO of our company systematically forced out women and African-Americans in leadership. Eventually, I myself resigned because I learned I was being paid less than half of what my white colleagues earned. When I confronted HR and my manager about it, they blatantly lied to me. —Bryan, 51
I’m a nonprofit executive. The issues of bias and racism are as pervasive here as in the corporate world. The top of nonprofits is predominantly white and male, as it is within the private sector and government; most worker bees are women (of color). We need to hold the mirror up to ourselves in this sector and start adopting the same actions we call on the private sector and government to take by doing the work to make inclusivity visible at the decision and leadership levels. —Sanaa, 39
There’s a major difference between diversity and inclusiveness. We want to not only be in the room, not only be at the table, but also contribute to the decision-making process. Especially black women! We have a unique ability of turning the impossible to possible. Taking what others see as useless and finding purpose. It’s a by-product of simply being a black woman in this world, and something that should be recognized and celebrated. —Rachael, 36
The only one in the room
I want you to know how it feels to be the only one that looks like you in a conference room, in a meeting, at a networking event or happy hour. I want you to know what it feels like to constantly have to assimilate and ingratiate yourself in to another group’s culture and way of doing things even though you’re citizens of the same country. I want you to know what it feels like to not be able to stand up for yourself or correct someone’s assumption about you or your culture or community for fear of losing your job. I want you to know what it’s like to be effective in your role and have the same or more credentials as your peers, but be passed over for promotions because you’re “too serious” or because there’s a lack of connection. I want you to know what it feels like to desire to move up the ladder and see there are no other examples like you that you can follow. I want you to know what it feels like to see investments made, grace extended, sponsorship provided, risks taken, and opportunities given to and for others but not you. I want you to know the pressure that comes with trying to be perfect and represent your race well because if you make a mistake, the odds of you being given another opportunity are slim. I want you to know what it feels like to live, work, and raise your children in a world where you don’t have the complexion for the connection or the protection. —Dee, 49
In my professional life, my race always feels like an exercise in others’ conveniences. I am white enough that people are comfortable with me, as long as I don’t call too much attention to my blackness. I am seen as black when they need me to shed insight and speak to the “black experience”—as if my voice could possibly explain all thoughts and opinions on what an entire race of individuals and business owners want or need. While in the work setting, I am actively aware and reminded that I do not have the privilege of fitting in just by sheer existence. —Kelli, 42
Diversity and inclusivity in the workplace doesn’t mean having a set quota and feeling satisfied at the bare minimum because you have two people of color in your office of 50-plus employees. In fact, it feels insulting when you’re hired by a company that repeatedly shouts diversity but only one other person in the office actually looks like you. It becomes alienating as there’s a constant reminder that we are not equal. I have to work harder than my white counterparts just to get equal respect all while suppressing my big personality in order to dispel the “angry black woman” stereotype or not be called “sassy.” If you want to create a truly diverse and inclusive workspace, you have to stop thinking that a splash of color here and there is the best you can do. —Azizza, 30
Actively recruit, hire, and promote black people, particularly into leadership positions. Hold annual, high-quality diversity and inclusion training on-site through a reputable third-party vendor. Actively hold job fairs and recruit talent from metro areas with significant black populations. Actively visit and hold job fairs and recruit talent from HBCUs. Hold special events on-site during Black History Month; invite professional speakers. —Martin, 52
Grabbing beers
People are simply not doing enough of the critical self work to unpack their biases (nonblack people of color included), so it makes it soul crushing to attempt to be friendly, beyond the fact that I have rarely seen coworkers care to befriend or mentor people who don’t look like them. People can acknowledge that I do good work, but if they don’t want to “grab beers” with me, it’s incredibly limiting for my progress, not to mention how that translates when it’s time for promotions and raises. It also makes me especially paranoid about who I can trust, because I am unsure of who might exploit my labor. The best allies I’ve met have stuck their necks out for me, helped me climb, and gave me rare opportunities, mentoring and sponsoring my growth (and paycheck). —Kimani, 22
When policies regarding hair and clothing were relaxed, we were finally able to be ourselves at work. This led to compliments and conversations. We don’t all fit one mold; allowing expression allowed our culture to shine. —Arelle, 30
I have held executive positions at various blue-chip companies. I have hidden my black culture all my life because I thought it was the “corporate” thing to do. The stress of being a black man in corporate America means we can’t have the full range of emotions. We can only be happy—never angry. No mentors, so we just have to figure it out. And by the time that we do, the great opportunities have passed us by, as we weren’t part of “the network.” —Bernard, 57
Walking the walk
I’d like the white folks at my office to know: We see you. We see through all the insincere words that are never followed by action. We see that you talk the talk of “diversity and inclusion,” but we know that you don’t walk the walk. You allow inexperienced white girls and guys to “try” new positions and advance in their careers because you intrinsically trust them to fail forward. We see that you pay the black people less than the white people for same work.
I’d like the white folks in leadership to know that if you are going to have employee resource groups, have some funding for them. Stop lumping all the nonwhite people into one group—the multicultural group. Stop the BS about how “diversity is not about having different-color faces around a table, but about diversity of thought.”
Stop trying to convince us that you are inclusive and just be inclusive. That would require you all to acknowledge your privilege and acknowledge the actions you’ve deliberately taken to elevate your white counterparts for no other reason than that they look like you. Ask yourselves, what is it about black people that makes you so uncomfortable? Ask yourselves, why do you go out of your way to hold black people back—by paying them less than their white counterparts, by not promoting them? Ask yourselves, if all the black people at your company decided to never come to work again, how would that affect your bottom line?
Do the work to unlearn the ways that are currently ingrained into the fabric of who you are. Read books. Learn from those that are doing the anti-bias work. Stop asking black people how you can be not racist or antiblack; that’s your job to figure out. —Adrienne, 50
Make everyone accountable for their words and actions in the workplace. Inclusion is every employee’s responsibility. I overheard a racist conversation and was offended by what was said. First response of HR: “I’m sure they didn’t mean any harm.” Really? Were you there? Did you actually hear what was said? Stop protecting people and hold them accountable. —Charlene, 37
Support black faculty when we call out biases in hiring, admissions, retention and promotion policies, rather than deferring to “faculty governance.” Formally acknowledge the hidden work that black faculty perform to care for our students. Actually live up to the inclusion values that you espouse. —Lynette, 55
Senior leadership can be the worst perpetrators of discrimination and will be protected by HR. I’ve had a VP be vocal about diversity on stages worldwide, yet be reported to HR for their dislike of black women. When this was reported to HR by someone on the VP’s team, the reporting member was removed to another part of the organization. This same leader had a friend in need of a job. I was told that this friend (a white woman with no experience in the field) would be reporting to me and that I couldn’t complain to HR or I would be blackballed by the VP. —Sacha, 40
I work within an environment where they say all the right things as it relates to diversity and inclusion; heck, I work in D&I. But I have been privy to conversations around hiring diverse talent that would make your skin crawl. It’s obvious that not everyone in my organization believes in diversity and inclusion and the role they play. We struggle with having diversity at all levels, and they are walking out the door just as fast as we are able to hire. I have doubted my own abilities to be able to move up as I continue to face bias during performance reviews and promotion opportunities.
Now my white colleagues are showing an interest in understanding their black colleagues because it’s been a directive from our senior leader. I’m finding the newfound attention a little insincere. —Tamara, 46
For companies to be authentic allies and support diversity and inclusion for black professionals, a thoughtful approach to instilling change is needed. More investments need to be made towards racial equality instead of knee-jerk reactions like “kumbaya” listening sessions. It’s a step in the right direction, but what’s next? Companies need to be accountable by committing to diversity hiring at all levels, talent development, and building action plans to eliminate systemic racism built into corporate cultures and leadership. —Katherine, 39
Don’t touch my hair
With the microaggressions and microinequities in the workplace, I feel strangled and die a little bit every single day. I cannot bring my whole self to work when I have to cover up the skin that I’m born with to fit in. —JP, 40
Don’t put your hands in my hair. Stop using excuses such as “convenience” for the fact that you only represent white children in your publications for children. Stop mixing us up—just because my colleagues and I are black does not mean we look alike. It’s hard to feel hopeful for a promotion, even with the right diploma and experience, because I literally do not see women who look like me in higher positions. If you’re going to accept and give an equal chance to black women, please make sure it’s not just the ones who conform to your standard when it comes to physical appearance—I shouldn’t have to look like a model for you to respect me like you respect my white counterparts who certainly do not look like one, and most importantly, to give me the same chances as them. —Marion, 25
A senior white male leader expressed his allyship after George Floyd’s death. The irony is he previously made a joke about my being able to afford my luxury vehicle because I must be “moving kilos.” That undertone that black people must be engaged in illegal activities to have nice things is the same way of thinking that lead to George Floyd’s and countless other murders by police. —Monica, 37
I have been subjected to years of microaggressions and even racist comments. My first manager said that I was too direct, aggressive, and just scary. Another colleague said that I looked like a gorilla because of a jacket. Sadly, these statements were made by colleagues who believe themselves to be allies of black employees. How can you accomplish real change in diversity and inclusion when even the “allies” for D&I hold prejudiced views? —Charlotte, 37
The Amy Coopers everywhere
There are Amy Coopers everywhere, in male and female form. The passive-aggressive critiques, the whispers about “tonal” and “emotional” black women and men. The outward liberalism but actual fear and perceived threat of black professionals. They wield their power to stop growth, advancement, and exposure of black talent. It feels like combat each day to do the dance while their bias goes unchecked. —Christina, 34
I have several stories, but will share the one that almost took my entire life away from the rest of the world. I was accused of stealing a check from another manager. She later found the check. Corporate office fired me without investigating. I took action and sued them. If I was wiser, like I am now, I would have not settled out of court and would have publicly spoken on the way I was treated. —Maggy, 50
Ask how I am
I work in the IT field, which is dominated by white men. As a black woman, it is exhausting to work alongside colleagues who are so blind to the toxic world they create for anyone nonwhite. They create a venomous environment where a black person is always required to interview for their job due to microaggressions. You are so alone with no one to trust, watching every open senior-level position be filled with less-than-qualified white men or women. The needle is always moving for black employees.
I watch as my white colleagues move with fluidity within the organization with zero concerns about fitting in or being accepted. A black man was murdered by police and my white peers just move through life like absolutely nothing happened. Meanwhile, I’m fighting back tears to push through meetings. They are more hurt and pained by broken glass and a few scratches to a building than by a man’s life. Meanwhile, I’m sickened by all the continuous injustices and inequalities that we face everyday. The pain is in my throat, and I breathe slowly to try and say my words without anger and rage. I constantly walk on eggshells; I don’t want to be labeled as the “angry black woman.” I desperately want just a small fraction of empathy and compassion from my white peers. Instead, they ask me about a project status. My quietness is viewed as a lack of engagement. When I don’t laugh at the dry jokes, I’m viewed as being aloof. This insidious culture is never blatant with its racism but extremely methodical in letting you know that your life, education, and experience does not matter and will never be enough. It’s death by a billion paper cuts. —Qwen, 42
We took a harder journey to get to this desk, office, lab, stadium, post. I’m a mother, father, sister, brother. I am intelligent, kind, and resilient. I am human. Respect our journey. Help don’t hinder. Be an ally. —Tarshia, 52