In 1997, Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov, the reigning world chess champion. In 2011, Watson defeated Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the worlds best Jeopardy players. In 2016, AlphaGo defeated Ke Jie, the worlds best Go player. In 2017, DeepMind unleashed AlphaZero, which trounced the world-champion computer programs at chess, Go, and shogi.

If humans are no longer worthy opponents, then perhaps computers have moved so far beyond our intelligence that we should rely on their superior intelligence to make our important decisions. Nope.

Despite their freakish skill at board games, computer algorithms do not possess anything resembling human wisdom, common sense, or critical thinking. Deciding whether to accept a job offer, sell a stock, or buy a house is very different from recognizing that moving a bishop three spaces will checkmate an opponent. That is why it is perilous to trust computer programs we dont understand to make decisions for us.

Consider the challenges identified by Stanford computer science professorTerry Winograd,which have come to be known asWinograd schemas.For example, what does the word it refer to in this sentence?

I cant cut that tree down with that axe; it is too [thick/small].

If the bracketed word is thick, then it refers to the tree; if the bracketed word is small, then it refers to the axe. Sentences like these are understood immediately by humans but are very difficult for computers because they do not have the real-world experience to place words in context.

ParaphrasingOren Etzioni,CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, how can machines take over the world when they cant even figure out what it refers to in a simple sentence?

When we see a tree, we know it is a tree. We might compare it to other trees and think about the similarities and differences between fruit trees and maple trees. We might recollect the smells wafting from some trees. We would not be surprised to see a squirrel run up a pine or a bird fly out of a dogwood. We might remember planting a tree and watching it grow year by year. We might remember cutting down a tree or watching a tree being cut down.

A computer does none of this. It can spellcheck the word tree, count the number of times the word is used in a story, and retrieve sentences that contain the word. But computers do not understand what trees are in any relevant sense. They are likeNigel Richards,who memorized the French Scrabble dictionary and has won the French-language Scrabble World Championship twice, even though he doesnt know the meaning of the French words he spells.

To demonstrate the dangers of relying on computer algorithms to make real-world decisions, consider an investigation of risk factors for fatal heart attacks.

I made up some household spending data for 1,000 imaginary people, of whom half had suffered heart attacks and half had not. For each such person, I used a random number generator to create fictitious data in 100 spending categories. These data were entirely random. There were no real people, no real spending, and no real heart attacks. It was just a bunch of random numbers. But the thing about random numbers is that coincidental patterns inevitably appear.

In 10 flips of a fair coin, there is a 46% chance of a streak of four or more heads in a row or four or more tails in a row. If that does not happen, heads and tails might alternate several times in a row. Or there might be two heads and a tail, followed by two more heads and a tail. In any event, some pattern will appear and it will be absolutely meaningless.

In the same way, some coincidental patterns were bound to turn up in my random spending numbers. As it turned out, by luck alone, the imaginary people who had not suffered heart attacks spent more money on small appliances and also on household paper products.

When we see these results, we should scoff and recognize that the patterns are meaningless coincidences. How could small appliances and household paper products prevent heart attacks?

A computer, by contrast, would take the results seriously because a computer has no idea what heart attacks, small appliances, and household paper products are. If the computer algorithm is hidden inside a black box, where we do not know how the result was attained, we would not have an opportunity to scoff.

Nonetheless, businesses and governments all over the world nowadays trust computers to make decisions based on coincidental statistical patterns just like these. One company, for example, decided that it would make more online sales if it changed the background color of the web page shown to British customers from blue to teal. Why? Because they tried several different colors in nearly 100 countries. Any given color was certain to fare better in some country than in others even if random numbers were analyzed instead of sales numbers. The change was made and sales went down.

Many marketing decisions, medical diagnoses, and stock trades are now done via computers. Loan applications and job applications are evaluated by computers. Election campaigns are run by computers, including Hillary Clintons disastrous 2016presidential campaign.If the algorithms are hidden inside black boxes, with no human supervision, then it is up to the computers to decide whether the discovered patterns make sense and they are utterly incapable of doing so because they do not understand anything about the real world.

Computers are not intelligent in any meaningful sense of the word, and it is hazardous to rely on them to make important decisions for us. The real danger today is not that computers are smarter than us, but that wethinkcomputers are smarter than us.

Featured image credit: Lumberjack Adventures by Abby Savage. CC0 via Unsplash.

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AI is dangerous, but not for the reasons you think. - OUPblog

We humans are notoriously bad at predicting the consequences of achieving our technological goals. Add seat belts to cars for safety, speeding and accidents can go up. Burn hydrocarbons for cheap energy, warm the planet. Give experts new technologies like surgical robots or predictive policing algorithms to enhance productivity, block apprentices from learning. Still, we're amazing at predicting unintended consequences compared to the intelligent technologies we're building.

WIRED OPINION

ABOUT

Matt Beane (@mattbeane) is an assistant professor of technology management at UC Santa Barbara and a research affiliate at MIT's Institute for the Digital Economy.

Take reinforcement learning, one particularly potent flavor of AI that's behind some of the more stupendous demonstrations as of late. RL systems take in reward states (aka goals, outcomes that they get points for) and go after them without regard to unintended consequences of their actions. DeepMind's AlphaGo was designed to win the board game Go, whatever it took. OpenAI's system did the same for Defense of the Ancients (DOTA), a fiendishly complex, multiplayer online war game. Both came up with unconventional, in some cases radical, new tactics required to beat the best that humanity had to offer, yet consumed disproportionately large amounts of energy and natural resources to do so. This kind of single-mindedness has inspired all kinds of fun sci-fi, including an AI designed to produce as many paperclips as possible proceeding to destroying the earth, and then the entire cosmos, in an effort to get the job done.

While seemingly innocuous, this win-at-any-cost approach is untenable with the more practical uses of AI. Otherwise we may end up swamped by power outages, flash-trading market failures, or (even more) hyper-polarized, isolated online communities. To be clear, these threats are possible only because AI is delivering amazing improvements on previous best practices: electrical grids are becoming much more efficient and reliable, microsecond-frequency trading allows for major improvements in global market efficiency, and social media platforms suggest beneficial connections to goods, services, information, and people that would otherwise remain hidden. But the more we hand these and similar processes over to AI that is singularly focused on its goals, the more they can produce consequences we dont like, sometimes at the speed of light.

Some within the AI community are already addressing these concerns. One of the founders of DeepMind cofounded the Partnership on AI, which aims to direct attention and effort on harnessing AI to contribute to solutions for some of humanitys most challenging problems. On December 4, PAI announced the release of SafeLife, a proof-of-concept reinforcement-learning model that can avoid unintended side effects of its optimization activity in a simple game. SafeLife has a clear way of characterizing those consequences: increases in entropy (or the degree of disorder or randomness) in the game system. By definition this is not a practical system, but it does show how a reinforcement-learning-driven system can optimize towards a goal while minimizing collateral damage.

This is very exciting work, and in principle it could help with all kinds of unintended effects of intelligent technologies like AI and robots. For example, it could help factory robots know they should slow down if a red-tailed hawk flies in their way. (I've seen this happen. Those buildings house pigeons, and, if big enough, birds of prey). A SafeLife-like model could override its programmed setting to maximize throughput, because destroying living things adds a lot of entropy to the world. But some things that we expect to help in theory end up contributing to the very problems they're trying to solve. Yes, that means the unintended consequences module in next-gen AI systems could be the very thing that creates potent unintended consequences. What happens if that robot slows down for that hawk while a nearby human expects it to keep moving? Safety and productivity could be threatened.

This is particularly problematic when these consequences span significant amounts of space and time. Take the DOTA algorithm. During a match, when it calculates its win probability is above 90 percent, it's programmed to taunt other players via chat. "Win probability 92 percent," you might read as you watch your hard-won forces and devious strategy decimated by a computer program. What effects does that have on players' approaches to the game? And, even further removed, what about their commitment to the game? To gaming generally? Their career aspirations? Their contributions to society? If this seems like armchair speculation, note that Lee Sedolthe world's best professional Go player, a wunderkind who has devoted his entire life to mastering the gamehas just quit the game publicly and permanently, saying that no human can beat the system. It's not obvious that Sedol's retirement is good or bad for the game, for him or for society, but it is a symbolic and significant unintended consequence of the actions of an AI-based system optimizing on its reward function.

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The Perils and Promise of Artificial Conscientiousness - WIRED

With the recent switch of DeepMinds co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to its sister concern Google, researchers are raising questions as to whether this unexpected move will cause a crack between the two companies. Suleyman was termed on leave by this London-based AI company for the last six months, but earlier this month, he confirmed his joining at Google through a Twitter post. In the post, Suleyman portrayed his excitement of joining the team at Google to work on opportunities and impacts of applied AI technologies.

Acquired by Googles parent company Alphabet in 2014, DeepMind was aimed at using machine intelligence to solve real-world problems, including healthcare and energy. While the co-founder Hassabis was running the core artificial intelligence research at DeepMind, Suleyman was in charge of developing Streams, a controversial health app, which gathered data from millions of NHS patients without their direct consent.

However, the relationship between Google and DeepMind has been fairly complicated since last year. After a brawl with Facebook in 2014, Google decided to acquire DeepMind for $600 million. However, it got separated from the tech giant in the year 2015, as a part of the Alphabets restructure, rising tension among Googles AI researchers.

Suleymans key project, Streams has created a considerable suspicion between the three companies Alphabet, DeepMind and Google. Although DeepMind promised to keep a privacy check on all 1.6 million Royal Free data, keeping it independent, its dealings with Google of taking over Streams, formed no legal foundation for this claim. Experts believed that such dealing is breaking DeepMinds promise of encryption. Nevertheless, in an interview, a DeepMind spokesperson mentioned how the company is still committed to its privacy statements and any dealing with Google is not going to affect the acquired data.

Previously Google has gone through several complexities like disenfranchising its employees, creating conflicts with the government, and ignoring its customers and clients. Google has also recently admitted its interest in serving China with the development of a censored search engine. These steps have in turn placed this company in an outrageous position, making it unpredictable and not-so-trustworthy for the mainstream media, privacy experts, giants of the industry, and even for the general population.

On the other side, Google has been wanting to capitalise on owning the highest concentration of AI talent, in the field of deep learning. But, DeepMinds contribution to Googles bottom line has been shocking. The company has been making a significant breakthrough with AI either in terms of diagnosing fatal diseases, engineering a bacteria to eat up plastic, or creating a computer program that plays the board game, called AlphaGo. However, the company turned out to be a big disaster for its investors considering the loss of $571 million last year with a constant debt to its parent company of approximately $1.4 billion. Such concerns added more complexities for DeepMind, which led Google to take over the control of the company contradicting the initial agreement, which allows DeepMind to operate independently.

Why did it come to this? The answer is a big gap in DeepMinds commercialisation research. According to industry experts, the company has been fixated with the development of general intelligence, however, the important aspect should have been working on short term projects which could potentially turn into products to solve real-world problems. Haitham Bou-Ammar, an executive at Cambridge-based AI startup Prowler.io, believed that the company requires a shift in focus, with strategies to make money with deep learning assets rather than creating an education lab.

With a single focus on deep-learning neural networks, DeepMinds AI approach hasnt been inclusive. The company should have rather focused on a multi-segment approach, which would have helped in creating evolutionary algorithms and decision making in a realistic environment. DeepMind has been putting all its eggs in one basket Deep Reinforcement Learning. Many also believe that that company should have been focusing on bridging gaps, instead, it has been dealing with issues related to their apparent independence.

DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis once declined Googles offer of leading their robotics unit. On the other hand, while the companys provided with its WaveNet software to Google for replicating a human voice, the companys leadership totally declined its association with its cloud platform. Such developments showcased a bumpy relationship between the two. Critics started to fear that the change in management will shift the focus from research to products, while the privacy experts are worried about Googles unsolicited access to NHS data.

From a distance, DeepMind looks to have made great progress with built-in software that can learn to perform tasks at a superhuman level, and other strides at the gaming industry, demonstrating the power of reinforcement learning and the extraordinary ability of its computer programs. However, the company has missed a huge aspect that says that DeepMinds program has always been so restricted with no ability to react to changes in the environment, lacking in flexibility.

Another aspect which is hardly been touched by the company is the reward function a signal that allows the software to measure its progress which is directly related to the success of virtual environments. The company has always been focused on developing reward function for AlphaGo, however, in the real world, the progress is never measured with single scores and is usually varied according to the sectors.

Therefore, for now, deep reinforcement learning can now only be used in trusted and controlled environments with few or no changes in the system that works fine for Go games, but real-world problems cannot rely upon the same. The company, therefore, has to focus on finding a large scale commercial application of this technology. So far, the parent company has invested roughly $2 billion on DeepMind with a decent financial return some of which came from applying deep reinforcement learning within Alphabet to reduce power costs for cooling Googles servers.

According to experts and researchers, although the technology works fine for Go, it might not be suitable for real-world challenging problems, that the company is aspiring to solve with AI. Cutting DeepMind some slack, we all have to agree that no scientific innovation turns profitable overnight. However, the company definitely needs to dig deeper and bring in the technology with other techniques to create more stable results.

Even if DeepMinds current strategy is turning out to be less fruitful, nobody can exclude the vision of the company. Although it is taking time to bridge the gap between deep reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence, its impossible to ignore that the company is held by hundreds of PHDs and is also running on good funding. In fact, the success of Go, Atari, and Starcraft has given a promising name to the company.

Meanwhile, the substantial cash burn along with the departure of a high-level executive has caused wreckage, placing the subsidiary in deep confusion. According to the policies, DeepMind is supposed to provide AI-related assets to various companies and products under Alphabet, however, on the other hand, Googles in-house AI management Google Brain already started occupying a similar role within the Alphabets ecosystem. This perplexity is deepening the problems for the company, pushing it to work in silos. In its present condition, DeepMind seems to be in a critical point, where the company is constantly investing in deep learning research and developing AI assets, but not living up to its potential.

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DeepMind Vs Google: The Inner Feud Between Two Tech Behemoths - Analytics India Magazine

Democrats have Andrew Yang. Republicans have Zoltan Istvan.

Both men are running for the presidency as political outsiders and pitching radical, future-focused ideas to voters. For Yang, its universal basic income and a slew of other technocratic policy proposals.

Istvan also supports a form of universal basic income, but his primary focus is even wilder he wants the country to prepare for the transhumanist future.

Istvan defines transhumanism as the movement to upgrade human bodies and lives with technology. He predicts a future in which our bodies will be significantly augmented, such as with robotic arms or computer displays in our eyes.

He expects human life spans will drastically increase and robots will take on more humanlike characteristics, including consciousness.

Outside of science fiction entertainment, these are not ideas most Americans think about as public policy issues.

When I was traveling in Iowa and told people about it, they thought I was on some other space ship, Istvan told me during a phone interview last week.

Istvan ran for president in 2016 under the Transhumanist Party, and ran in the California gubernatorial primary with the Libertarian Party last year. Hes not a traditional Republican, but hopes to find allies among GOP primary voters.

As an entrepreneur Ive always been fiscally conservative. Totally socially liberal. Libertarian to the core when it comes to social ideas, Istvan said.

There is a great deal of disagreement about whether and how soon the huge technological developments Istvan discusses might be achieved. It might be 10 or 20 years as he predicts, but also could be more than 100 years away, or never.

Nevertheless, some form of transhumanism and an increasing level of artificial-intelligence-aided automation already are upon us. Istvan warns that the United States will be ill-equipped to manage social and economic changes.

Im worried were going to wake up in four or eight years and China will be the dominant player in the world both culturally and with innovation and with money and the economy, Istvan said.

To prepare, Istvan suggests several steps that will make many Americans uncomfortable.

As a few examples, the transhumanist campaign proposes mandatory college attendance for most people, licensure testing for parents and merging the United States, Canada and the European Union into a joined partnership.

Istvan wants to partially fund the government through leasing federal lands, vast spaces of which sit mostly unused in the western United States with trillions of dollars of natural resources. He has no affinity for nature, which he sees as antagonistic and immoral.

And Istvan would radically expand the use of police surveillance technology, including facial recognition and tracking devices. He generally wants to rollback privacy norms that inhibit technology.

I think these are ideas whose time might never come, but Istvan predicts the rest of us will eventually come around.

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The transhumanist age will be upon us sometime. People will remember Zoltan has been out there talking about these ideas for a long time, he said.

(319) 339-3156; adam.sullivan@thegazette.com

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GOP candidate pitches robots and immortality to Iowa voters - The Gazette

Transgender ideology wasnt invented in the 2010s, but this was the decade when it gripped our culture in its venomous maw and refused to let go. Heres how trans grew from fringe oddity to a massive force affecting schools, parenting, prisons, policy, academia, sports, law enforcement, language and the arts.

In 2009, Susie Green, who will become Chair of UK gender clinic Mermaids, takes her son to Thailand for vaginoplasty. Jackie Green becomes the youngest person in the world to undergo a sex change operation, at age 16. Meanwhile, trans woman and trans humanist Martine Rothblatt foresees the end of our species as we know it, andclaimsthat transhumanism builds on transgenderism, broadening the driving mindset from a gender ideal to a human development ideal.

Trans began the decadeas an outlier. It became something tolerated out of compassion. It has become a medical-legal monster, with activists claiming to redefine woman as a feeling, with self-identification trumping the basic facts of biological sex.And if you disagree, youre transphobic. Welcome to the 2020s!

At 10 years old,Jazz Jenningsis already out as trans.

Children become the subject ofmedical experimentation. Britains National Health Service approves medical experiments which will chemically castrate gay children in attempt to correct gender-nonconformity.

We now being told that affirmation of trans individuals is all about compassion. We need to knowwhat trans gender meansand how important surgery is.New York magazinesays that it takes a powerful act of imagination to understand what a transgender child, in his perfect little body on the changing table, might be feeling, or why he might become terrified as adolescence approaches.

The American Psychiatric Associationupdates its manual, to replace gender identity disorder with gender dysphoria.

Now 13 years old and wearing dental braces as well as female dress, Jazz Jennings isparadedon ABC News.

In Britain, the gender clinic at theTavistock Clinic gives 12 year-olds hormone blockers to prepare for transition. The treatment halts the onset of puberty preventing children from developing the sexual characteristics of the gender they were born.

Trans woman Parker Molloy writes amissive:I am a woman, but on such a frequent basis, Im told this is not true. Im told that Im genetically or biologically male. Im told that Im not a real woman. I have to ask: What constitutes a real woman? How am I not one? Is it because of my chromosomes? I dont think thats fair

The splendidly surnamed trans actress Laverne Cox, the first trans person to grace the cover ofTIMEmagazine, explains that most of us are insecure about our gender.

IntheNew Yorker, Michelle Goldberg sits on the fence: Trans women say that they are women because they feel femalethey have womens brains in mens bodies. Radical feministsbelieve that if women think and act differently from men its because society forces them to.

Facebook offers56 gender optionsfor users to choose from.

Susie Greens trans daughter Jackie is now 21, and Green speaks out against those who call her parentingabusive. She claims that even before she could speak my daughter had made her preferences clear.

Bruce Jenner becomes Caitlyn, and graces the cover ofVanity Fair. Trans MMA fighterFallon Foxdefeated her opponent, Tamikka Brents, by TKO at 2:17 of the first round of their match. Brents eye injury resulted in a damaged orbital bone that required seven staples. Now thats equality.

Michelle Goldberg is back. InSlate, she reminds us that, Most progressives now take it for granted that gender is a matter of identity, not biology, and that refusing to recognize a persons gender identity is an outrageous offense.

In the UK, theParliamentary Women and Equalities Committee Reportremoves sex-based protections.My Transgender Kidappears on the BBC. Itsreported that the Tavistock and Portman gender clinic has seen referrals increase by 50 percent every year since 2009.

Rachel Dolezal claims to betransracial.Trans abledturns out to be a thing.

Teen girls protest trans girls use of girlslocker room.

The year of the bathroom. A North Carolina law ispasseddisallowing trans people from using the bathroom of their choice. The State issuedby Obamas Department of Justice, whichtellsevery public school district in the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

The director of the ACLU in Georgialeaves her postrather than fight for trans bathroom rights.

Male bodied trans studentscompeteagainst girls in high school sports. Female bodied transpregnant personsare lauded as the first male mothers.

The National Institute of Healthlaunchesthe largest-ever study of transgender youth, but also only the second to track the psychological effects of delaying puberty. Its notable that theres no control group.

Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy speaks out against the lack of debate. Because representation matters, a call goes outnot to castcis women as trans.

Jill SollowaysTransparentcomes underfirefor not being woke enough.

A male to female detransitionerspeaks. TheNew York Timesadmitsthat scientists have no conclusive explanation for what causes some people to feel dissonance between their gender identity and aspects of their anatomy.

Philosopher Slavoj iek gets called out for his claimthat the vision of social relations that sustains transgenderism is the so-called postgenderism: a social, political and cultural movement whose adherents advocate a voluntary abolition of gender, rendered possible by recent scientific progress in biotechnology and reproductive technologies.

The Womens March takes to the streets in Washington, DC, wearingtransphobic, pink pussy hats. Bill Maher and Milo Yiannopoulos misgender Jenner and are slammedby Dan Savage.Neuterbecomes a thing, so does drilling down into biology to determine that sex is not binary in otherspecies. Which it is, really.

Stonewall UKs Rachel Steinconfirmsthat being trans is about an innate sense of self. To imply anything other than this is reductive and hurtful to many trans people who are only trying to live life as their authentic selves.

Thegender spectrumemerges.

Trans advocatessuggestthatprevious restrictions on transing kids be eased so that children under 16 years old can begin hormone therapy in order to physically transform their bodies.

Teachers socially trans kidswithout parents consent. Jazz Jenningss book I Am Jazzis acontroversialpick for kindergarten story time.

Radical feministsspeak outagainst transing kids. One lady istrans species.And trans affirmation is noweveryones job.Topshopopensfitting rooms to trans women. Theres money in them there trans.

The Department of Justice reverses the Obama era directives andsaysthat sex means only biologically male or female.

Katie Herzogwritesabout detransitioners, and gets intense heat for it. Debra Sohsaysthat the entire gender conversation has brain science wrong.

We will change our bodies however we want, theTrans Health Manifestoinsists. We will have universally accessible and freely available hormones & blockers, surgical procedures, and any other relevant treatments and therapies.

The real question is: how does a female bodied gay mannavigate Grindr?

Who could have guessed, even a decade ago, that in 2018 the word woman would be treated as an expletive? asks Joanna Williams in Britains PC-bible theNew Statesman.

The Gender Recognition Act allows for self-ID in the UK. The NHSmust offerfertility services to those looking to remove their genitals.Britain;s Labour party alienates gender-critical feminists by stating that self-ID is all thats required to be on Laboursshort listof women candidates. Women try to meet and talk about this mess, but their events arecanceleddue to trans protests.

UK Schools policy comes underfirefor insisting that all kids have a gender identity. Girl Guides inclusion policycalled outas anti-girl. Amother of fouris interrogated by the police for referring to male to female trans surgery as castration on Twitter. The mere concept ofdebating trans becomes transphobic.

Jess Bradley, the first elected Trans Officer in the UK National Union of Student, says I self-identify as a non-binary woman, I dont believe there is such a thing as a real woman. Male bodied trans person Rachel McKinnonwinsa womens cycling race.

Bill B-16 isadoptedin Canada. This effectively redefines what it means to be a woman from something biological to something defined by external appearance. A Toronto womens shelter admits a male bodied trans person, and an abused womansues.

In academia, Camille Paglia says sex change is impossible. Jordan Peterson is almost fired from the University of Toronto for refusing to go along with compelled speech for pronouns. There are callsfor colleges to let trans athletes play on their chosen gender.

Heather Brunskell-Evans and Michele Moores bookTransgender Children and Young People: Born In Your Own Bodyisrejectedby trans activists. Oxfordbansgender critical voices. Lisa Littmans academic paper on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is pulled from Plos One for being transphobic. Jesse Singal writes about gender confused youth inthe Atlantic, and takes masses of abuse for it. Reports emerge on the danger in the drugs used tocastratechildren, and concerns thattransing is homophobia.

TheParis Reviewadvocates for atrans literary canon. No one buys theParis Review.

Trans surgeries dont always have an amazingresult.YettheAmerican Academy of Pediatriciansasserts thattransgender kids know their genderas clearly and consistently as their developmentally equivalent peers and that theres no need for watchful waiting.Trans toyscome to market.

TheNew York Timessayssex doesnt have anything to do with reproductive organs. Researchclaimsthat gender dysphoric kids show functional brain characteristics that are typical of their desired gender.

US prisonsopposetrans inmates in womens prisons. Canadian prisonsallowprisoners to be housed according to gender identity.

How much longer must transgender people continue to participate in public conversations about whether or not we know our own souls? Jennifer Finney Boylanasksin theNew York Times equating gender to a religious belief. Quillettemakes a splash by publishing opposition to the trans agenda, even fromtrans persons.

The question of how tofuck trans lesbiansis a thing. So isgirldick,how to eat out a non-op trans woman, andrewriting gay historyto be trans. Andrea Long Chu says shewont be happywith her new coochie, but she should get one anyway. Andtrans lesbiansreally have trouble dating.

Cis women areasked to do more for trans women, becauseit costs you zero dollars to be nice. Cis peoplewont date trans people, and lesbians decide to get the L outof LGBT.

Twitterprohibitsmisgendering and deadnaming to curtail anti-trans abuse. Meghan Murphy isbanned from Twitter for misgendering Jessica Yaniv, a male-bodied trans woman a transvestite, in traditional terms who wants to force immigrant women to wax her balls.

Trans English arrives, withtonsof new words for gender.Trans kidsknowwho they are, and its eitheraffirmationor death if you disagree.

Self-IDcomes to New Hampshire. Trans model Munroe Bergdorf ischosento speak by the London chapter of the globalWomens March. New York goesall-inon bathrooms and the abolition of women only spaces. South Dakotasayslet trans kids compete in sports

The Vancouver Rape Relief and Womens Shelterloses municipal funding after refusing to accept trans women. Morgane Oger wins a Human Rights Tribunal againstChristian activist Bill Whatcott after he distributedflyers disparaging herfor being a trans woman. A woman isarrestedfor referring to a transgender woman as a man online.

Liberal womenspeak on trans issues atthe Heritage Foundation, because they have beenabandonedby the left.

Butfacial recognitiondoesnt get trans. Neither dostraight men. Tennis legend Marina Navratilovaopposesmen in womens sports.

Even though thequick transingof kids is obviously a terrible idea, itsnot OKto talk about detransitioning. But girls start pushingbackon the locker room thing. So dograndmothers.

Students in the English town of Brighton are issued with stickers on which they write their preferredpronouns. Transtoolkitsarrive. Experts say that there has been aglobal surgein young people presenting to gender clinics. This mirrors the huge rise in referrals to the Gids, up from 94 to 2,519 since 2010.

Cosmopublishes a detailed account ofbottom surgery.

Trans advocatesdecrymental health screening prior to accessing cross-sex hormones. Trans offendersseek rightto remove crimes committed under previous gender. Hayden Patterson, held in womens prison in Canada, doesnt think she should have toact femaleto stay.Womb transplantsso men can bear children might be a thing. Elizabeth Warrenstatesher pronouns.

The firsttrans prison unitopens in the UK. In the US, a trans sex offender ismovedto womens prison. The World Health Organizationreclassestrans as not actually a mental health condition. Jessica Yaniv brings acasein Human Rights Tribunal against independent aestheticians who wouldnt wax her balls. She loses.

The winners of womens high school track and fieldcompetitionsin Connecticut are male bodied. In Australia, newguidelines encourage sporting organizationsto permit transgender and non-binary athletes to compete against members of the opposite sex. Laurel Hubbard wins gold in womens weightlifting in the Pacific Games, to the dismayof the president of Samoa.

The International Olympic Commissionconsidersrule changes to allow men to compete as women, but hits asnag. Womens rugby is toodangerousfor women once men get involved. A male runner is the female NCAAathlete of the week. But girlsspeak out: Female athletes around the globe feel that womens sports is no longersustainable.

Trans employment case goes to theSupreme Court. Trans guides come out for kids inQuebecandNew York City, as well as thegender unicorn. As domedical riskson chest binding, and thepushbackagainst that. Parental rights are chucked byAustralia, and courts in the US fromArizonatoTexastoVermont.

Puberty blockers arenota panacea. But kids are still beingfast trackedin the UK. Gender cliniciansrevealthey have tried to raise the alarm. Detransitioners start to make somenoise. Parents areaskedto resist the doctors.

It turns out the rhetoric about the trans murder epidemic isnot exactly true. Trans is apony tail. Not onlywomenget periods. Theresno such thingas biological sex. And not dating trans people isdiscriminatory.

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The 2010s were the decade of trans - The Spectator USA

Information is now easily and rapidly accessible. It is possible to say that being indifferent to new information is actually a success. However, knowing how we can actually use the information, well, that is the challenging part. Jason Silva, who gained millions of followers with his "Shots of Awe" video series seven years ago, when there was no "influencer" concept on social media, has managed to do this very well today, especially as a familiar "face of screens and internet influencer" widely known by young people.

As the world transforms with technology, Silva is turning everyone's heads with his unique, characteristic and literary expression style. Describing the relationship between technology and philosophy, Silva transforms himself in the meantime. As the star of National Geographic's Brain Games series, Silva takes his curiosity, which is his greatest motivation, everywhere he travels, adding depth to his "journey" that he started in 2012 as a storyteller on social media. Silva is now a futurist speaker answering the question "how?"

We talked to Silva in Qatar at the 2019 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), which was held in November under the theme "Unlearn, Relearn: What it means to be human." Silva focuses on "futurism and disruptive innovation, the physical and psychological effects of awe on the human body, and leaving the mind to the flow." What Silva wants to arrive at is to discover ways to maintain mental and physical health and to find out how the issues he contemplates stimulate creativity to tell people "how."

Silva has been invested in consciousness and staying in the flow lately. When asked if there was a particular reason, he said one of things he is passionate about is people's capacity to overcome limitations.

Silva said sometimes these limitations can come down to technical or practical reasons, but they can sometimes also just be our own minds. Pointing out that the number of suicide-related deaths nowadays is higher than the number of deaths due to natural disasters or conflict, he said the issue of mental health is a pressing matter.

Staying in the flow

When asked how he protects his sanity and looks after his mental health, Silva said: "I take care of myself. I rest and sleep very well. Sleep and exercise have a great place in my life."

"Besides that, I am actively meditating. Staying in the flow is an active type of meditation. So is going for a walk, swimming, traveling, making art, reading and watching movies," he added.

"If you have watched my videos, I describe them as a 'free flow of consciousness without written text.' I get into a flow while making videos. When you are in the flow, your brain tries to guess what you are going to say, while being completely insecure on the other hand," he said, adding that the beauty of this state of mind is that it silences your inner critic.

He said brain scans of free-flowing rappers and jazz musicians have revealed that parts of their brains shut down when they are really "in the flow."

He stressed that people often have the misconception that to get into a flow is to let it go, but it actually has a lot to do with planning and discipline.

"You have to surrender after you have worked on it," he added.

Advising everyone to find their own flow path, he said: "Flow brings focus. You need to find out what hinders your focus, what distracts you and what draws you in. This may be sports or music for some. For me, it is making videos and being on stage."

Are we living in a simulated universe?

The idea that the world around us is not real and that we are trapped inside some video game or computer like The Sims or The Matrix has become the subject of serious academic debate. SpaceX chief Elon Musk has been one of the many high-profile proponents of the "simulation hypothesis" a theory that proposes the Earth and the universe, and all reality is actually an artificial simulation and he recently explained his thoughts on the subject in a podcast.

Silva said he agreed with Musk to a degree, but in a different way.

"I think we live in an environment where everything is virtual. It is like you are in a perception field. What you think and your identity stand in virtual reality. None of this is physical or unchangeable. If you look at our planet from space, you do not see lines separating countries. These lines are our virtual reality," he said.

"(Yuval Noah) Harari, in his book Sapiens, says that society cannot exist without useful stories. A dream that only one person has is a dream, but a dream that everyone has becomes a reality. So, in a simulation where everyone moves together, these dreams are practically real," he added.

On the topic of transhumanism, Silva called it "an extension of natural life."

"We can extend and expand our capacity in natural life, just like tools. We came from Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, and we used the tools to reach something physically. If we could not reach fruit, we got sticks, for example. Thanks to sticks, we were able to extend our arm. This process of extension was the extension of our intentions and our brains. From this point of view, I believe that being human is trans-human."

With the rapid development of technology, a lot of people fear the new and unknown. Silva said he believed people weren't exactly afraid of technology but rather afraid of change and resistant to it.

"It's because change brings uncertainty, which in turn spurs this biological effect of the uncertainty (our ancestors felt) thousands of years ago when we thought a lion would come out and eat us," he said.

He said this feeling of uncertainty should be embraced as it "allows us to dream and build the life we want."

According to Silva, this is very much in line with Wise's theme, which suggests that we are in an era, a process of "unlearning what we already know and relearning it."

What we want to do in the future and what we want to reveal is to inspire people to think bigger than ever.

Tips to overcome anxiety

Silva said he likes to think of himself as a software program with "bad coding." "Sometimes I have a lot of anxiety. I know what triggers this situation and I find where my bad programming is," he said.

"Sometimes I stop while reacting to something, I watch my reaction and try to figure out how I feel. Then, I decide how I want to move forward. When I react to something, there is always an element I take into account."

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From Brain Games to the philosophy of the future: Jason Silva - Daily Sabah

Sales enablement technology provider doubles employee count, revenue and partnerships

Mediafly, a provider of sales enablement technology, content management and advisory services that create interactive, value-based selling experiences, announces significant company growth in 2019, additions to its newly formed Advisory Board and plans for additional expansion in 2020.

In 2019, Mediafly made its second acquisition in company history by acquiring UK-based sales enablement pioneer, iPresent. With iPresents capabilities, Mediafly increased its addressable market to meet the needs of companies of any size while also expanding its global footprint. In addition to the acquisition, Mediafly announced several product updates, including a brand new platform interface and Mediafly Workspaces, Story Mapper and Tool Builder, allowing users to customize in-app experiences on their own, without incremental coding resources, including custom ROI calculators. Earlier this month, Mediafly introduced Mediafly Insights, its next generation content usage reporting and analytics capabilities. Mediafly also announced its partnership with Mindtickle and Lessonly to introduce Mediafly Readiness, providing users with one central location for real-time contextual online sales training and coaching.

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This year, Mediafly doubled its employee count, revenue and partnerships, and tripled its customer base, surpassing 125,000 active users on the platform. The continued growth led to the companys sixth consecutive appearance on the Inc. 5000 List of Americas Fastest-Growing Private Companies.

In 2019 we worked on piecing together the building blocks for Mediaflys significant growth. For us, this means evaluating and assessing where our strengths and weaknesses lie to improve our teams across the organization while ensuring were not only meeting but exceeding the demands of our customers, said Carson Conant, CEO and founder, Mediafly. This year weve seen our revenue double quarter over quarter, and our teams are performing at an all-time high. Ive never been more excited about the future of Mediafly than I am right now. 2020 is the year we bring sales enablement to the masses.

Mediafly also appointed three new additions to its Advisory Board, including Jason Lovelace, Chief Sales Officer at SPINS, Latane Conant, Chief Marketing Officer at 6sense, and Sanjay Kini, Chief Customer Officer at 6sense. Each member will provide valuable guidance and insights in growing Mediaflys sales, marketing, customer success and teams.

Jason Lovelace, Chief Sales Officer, SPINS, will provide his veteran sales experience to Mediafly by working directly with the companys sales teams. Previously, Lovelace served in a variety of executive roles during his 18-year tenure at CareerBuilder, including President of Enterprise Sales, President of CareerBuilder Healthcare and VP of Corporate Marketing. As CMO of 6sense, Latane Conant empowers marketing leaders at companies like Aprimo and Impartner with effective ABM technology, predictive insights and thought leadership to help ensure marketing programs result in deals, not just leads. Prior to 6sense, she was CMO at Appirio. Kini brings 20+ years of experience previously working for Responsys/Oracle, Intellibank and more, building customer rosters and leading solutions consulting teams. Now as the CCO of 6sense, Kini leads the customer success team in ensuring customers achieve their business objectives.

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Mediafly is taking the necessary steps to accelerate its business while ensuring each customer has the level of support they need, regardless of where they are on their sales enablement journey, said Jason Lovelace, Chief Sales Officer, SPINS. While other companies in the space seem to be convinced sales enablement is a complex and high risk commitment best suited for enterprise, Mediafly uniquely understands the opportunity to make enterprise-grade sales enablement easy and accessible to every company regardless of revenue or employee count. Under the strategic direction of Mediaflys executive leadership team, the limits to what this team can achieve simply do not exist.

While rapid growth sometimes comes at the cost of culture, Mediafly received recognition from Crains Chicago as a Best Place to Work in 2019 for the second consecutive year. According to a 2019 Mediafly employee survey, 98% of respondents agree Mediafly is a great place to work and 96% of respondents have strong relationships with their colleagues. Transparency and purpose also ranked high in the survey, with more than 94% of employees understanding the strategic direction of Mediafly and their teams role in the companys strategic direction.

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Mediafly Boasts Record Year With Remarkable Customer Growth, Appoints Three New Advisory Board Members - MarTech Series

Allego, the modern sales learning and readiness platform, announced today it has won a coveted Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology award in the Best Advance in Sales Training Online Application category. Allego was recognized with a bronze award for its success in elevating sales readiness with its modern learning solution. This is the second year in a row that Allego has been recognized in the same category.

@Allegosoftware recognized by Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology Awards for Best Advance in Sales Training Online Application for the second consecutive year!

The industry recognitions that Allego has received from prestigious organizations like Brandon Hall Group during the past 12 months validates our employees hard work and commitment to driving innovation at every level of the organization, said Yuchun Lee, CEO and co-founder of Allego. Since the beginning, our top priority has been to make it easier and more efficient for customers to empower their sales teams so reps are more confident during every customer conversation. We are extremely optimistic about furthering this mission as we head into 2020.

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This recognition from Brandon Hall Group is yet another testament to Allegos commitment to investing in technology that promotes the kind of agile learning needed to succeed in todays fast-moving world. Earlier this month, Allegos modern sales learning and readiness platform was recognized by Best in Biz Awards as an Enterprise Product of the Year Sales Software for the second consecutive year. Prior to that, the company was selected by Chief Learning Officer magazines 2019 Learning in Practice Awards for demonstrating Excellence In Technology Innovation. Additionally, Allego prides itself on providing an enjoyable and meaningful work environment for its employees, which was validated when it was named a Boston Business Journal (BBJ) Best Places to Work honoree in 2019.

Winners of Excellence in Technology Awards are at the forefront of technology innovation. Our program evaluates not just the solution itself, but the benefit to the human capital management function, the business and the customer. That is the ultimate differentiator whether the technology has a positive business impact. Technology Award winners pass that test with flying colors, said Rachel Cooke, Chief Operating Officer of Brandon Hall Group and head of the awards program.

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An Excellence Award also validates the vision of the technology development team, the wisdom of the companys investment in the solution, and the value the technology brings to the end-user, said Mike Cooke, Chief Executive Officer of Brandon Hall Group.

Allegos modern sales learning and readiness platform combines training, practice, coaching and knowledge sharing into one app, using mobile, video, and peer collaboration to reinvent traditional learning for the dynamic needs of todays sales teams. With Allego, sales teams onboard faster, deliver the right messaging, rapidly adopt best practices, coach, practice and learn more effectively and frequently, and collaborate with peers and the home office. More than 200,000 sales professionals across financial services, technology, life sciences and other industries use Allego to ensure they have the skills and timely knowledge needed to make the most of each selling situation.

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Allego Wins 2019 Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology Award for Best Advance in Sales Training Online Application for the Second Year in a Row...

MENOMONEE FALLS, Wis. (CBS 58) -- Gov. Tony Evers, alongside senior leaders of Milwaukee Tool, local government officials, and region economic development officials announced Tuesday, Dec. 17, the company will expand its footprint in southeast Wisconsin with a new campus in Menomonee Falls.

Gov. Evers also announced Milwaukee Tool will expand itsImperial Blades manufacturing operation in Sun Prairie.

According to a news release from Evers' office, the expansion will create 870 new jobs by 2025. Milwaukee tool expects to invest over $100 million to construct and outfit the Menomonee Falls location, which will complement thecompanys current Global Headquarters campus in Brookfield.

Milwaukee Tool will also invest $7.5 million to expand its Imperial Blades subsidiary in Sun Prairie.

Our state is extremely grateful that Milwaukee Tool continues to expand and invest in Wisconsin, said Gov. Evers. From the companys name to the quality of its tools, Milwaukee Tool demonstrates that Wisconsin products and Wisconsin workers are the best not only in the nation but in the world.

About Milwaukee Tool

A Wisconsin-based subsidiary of Techtronic Industries Co. Ltd., Milwaukee Tool was founded in 1924 and is a global leader in delivering innovative solutions to the professional construction trades that offer increased productivity and unmatched durability.

The company moved from Milwaukee to Brookfield in 1965, and over the last decade has redeveloped 190,000 square feet of former manufacturing space to accommodate research and development, product development, proto-typing, packaging design, marketing, sales, training facilities, and administrative offices. In 2017, Milwaukee Tool completed construction and took occupancy of a new 200,000 square foot, four-story office building on its Brookfield campus, and will take occupancy of a new 116,300 square foot building across Lisbon Road in January 2020. The company has grown employment at its Brookfield campus from just over 300 jobs in 2011 to over 1,400 this year.

Milwaukee Tools global leadership continues to make a big impact on jobs growth within not only Wisconsin, but also the rest of the United States. The company currently employs over 4,100 people nationwide.

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Milwaukee Tool expanding in Menomonee Falls; will hire 870 workers by 2025 - WDJT

Rob Ellerman

In the early 2000s, Rob Ellerman, already an established REALTOR, began building his real estate team.

His first four hires? Still on the team today.

My slogan is, Train them so everybody wants them, and treat them so theyll never leave,' Ellerman explains. Our retention rate is probably the best in our city.

Probably the best understates things. As a group of 110 professionals, The Rob Ellerman Teamaffiliated with ReeceNichols Real Estate, based in the Kansas City metrohas little to no turnover. According to Ellerman, his culture is made to retain. The Rob Ellerman Teams structure and support, for example, allows for the growth of teams within the team, as well as access to comprehensive, in-house training, so agents have the knowledge and skills to succeed.

Its working. In 2018, The Rob Ellerman Team garnered $338 million in sales volume and 1,119 transactions, and is consistently one of the countrys leading real estate teams.

Members of The Rob Ellerman Team

Suzanne De Vita: Rob, how did you establish your real estate team? Rob Ellerman: I started in real estate right out of college in 1996, and worked by myself for 7-8 years. I saw things falling through the cracks, so I hired a buyers agent. Shes still with me today, which is something Im pretty proud ofIve got my first four hires still with me. My slogan is, Train them so everybody wants them, and treat them so theyll never leave. Weve got about 110 people total, including staff. We have an office manager, who is our transaction coordinator; we have a director of Marketing, and she oversees two others in marketing; and we have a lead coordinator and a trainer, and a director of Expansion. We have offices in Lees Summit, On the Plaza, North of the River, Overland Park and Leawood, Kan.; in Springfield, Mo.; and in Pensacola, Fla., and Des Moines, Iowa.

SD: How do you determine who fits with the group? What criteria do you look for? RE: Culture is a big thing for us, and reputation. We dont want to take on part-time agents; we want full-time agents that can go through our 13-day training process. Im proud that we have great people on our team. Our retention rate is probably the best in our citywe just dont have people leave that often. Im happy to take care of my agents. Weve done things for agents that a lot of team leaders do not in order to help them be successful or get through bumps in life. Everything I do is agent- and client-focused. If I can break-even on Zillow, for instance, and give all my agents a bunch of business, its worth it for me.

SD: How did you develop your training? RE: Every year, I look at my business and ask, Where am I weakest? For a long time, I could always point to something that I was in charge of, because I was in charge of everything! I knew I needed a trainer. I had a process, but it wasnt nearly as elaborate as what my trainers come up with. The hard thing about training a team is you spend an enormous amount of time trying to teach them everything thats involved in real estatefrom contracts to dotloop and e-signature, to opening a lockbox, to sales training. To start a team on your own, it takes hours and hours of one-on-one time, which can lead to flat or lower sales for that persons business. On our team, we bring people in and send them to our trainer. Our team leads can focus on their business while we train.

SD: You have teams within your team. How does that work? RE: I allow the agents to form their own groups underneath the team, so instead of having an agent grow out of the team, I let them start their own. My agents run their business under our umbrella, so they can list, sell, get a builder and a development, etc.they can do it all.

SD: What are your goals for 2020? RE: Its hard to say We want to do $370 million next year and for me to break that down over 110 agents, so were looking at growth and expansion. I look at profitability of each area. My goal for next year is to have our expansion offices do super well. In Des Moines, were going to be building homes with our builder, Summit Homes, and I expect that to be very successful. In the Kansas City metro area, we still have a shortage of home inventory, and I dont see that changing a whole lot next year. Our new-construction developments are going to help with that shortage.

SD: Having led a team for 20 yearswhat did you wish you knew when you started? RE: I would have started off differently. Instead of the first buyers agent, I would have gotten a paperwork assistant to handle the transaction coordinator piece of things. I would also know how to leverage my time better, so I could step out of selling quicker and grow the team, versus trying to keep going on the sales side.

Suzanne De Vita is RISMedias online news editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at sdevita@rismedia.com.

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Power Teams: Focused on Retaining and Training - RisMedia.com