Amazon Scraps Secret AI Recruiting Tool That Showed Bias Against Women

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By Reuters. Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.

The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to five stars – much like shoppers rate products on Amazon, some of the people said.

“Everyone wanted this holy grail,” one of the people said. “They literally wanted it to be an engine where I’m going to give you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and we’ll hire those.” (Read more from “Amazon Scraps Secret AI Recruiting Tool That Showed Bias Against Women” HERE)

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Amazon Built an AI Tool to Hire People but Had to Shut It Down Because It Was Discriminating Against Women

By Business Insider. . .A year later, however, the engineers reportedly noticed something troubling about their engine — it didn’t like women. This was apparently because the AI combed through predominantly male résumés submitted to Amazon over a 10-year period to accrue data about whom to hire.

Consequently, the AI concluded that men were preferable. It reportedly downgraded résumés containing the words “women’s” and filtered out candidates who had attended two women-only colleges.

Amazon’s engineers apparently tweaked the system to remedy these particular forms of bias but couldn’t be sure the AI wouldn’t find new ways to unfairly discriminate against candidates.

Gender bias was not the only problem, Reuters’ sources said. The computer programs also spat out candidates who were unqualified for the position.

Remedying algorithmic bias is a thorny issue, as algorithms can pick up on subconscious human bias. In 2016, ProPublica found that risk-assessment software used to forecast which criminals were most likely to reoffend exhibited racial bias against black people. Overreliance on AI for things like recruitment, credit-scoring, and parole judgments have also created issues in the past. (Read more from “Amazon Built an Ai Tool to Hire People but Had to Shut It Down Because It Was Discriminating Against Women” HERE)

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No, Global Warming Isn’t the End of the World. Here’s Why.

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Environmentalist doomsayers are back again, trying to frighten Americans into radically altering the American economy, supposedly to save the earth.

This week’s Armaggedon proclamation came courtesy of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which released a much-ballyhooed report suggesting that a 2 degree Celsius change in global temperature by 2040 would result in catastrophe. The New York Times quickly amped up the panic, reporting the possibility of “a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.” . . .

There are just a few problems with the reporting on the IPCC report. First off, the actual headline should have been that the IPCC had revised downward its estimate of impending doom since the IPCC’s AR5 report in 2014: according to the report itself, scientists agree that the “remaining carbon budget for 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees Celsius would be larger than the estimates at the time of the AR5.”

Then there’s the question of how much damage will actually be done. While the report states with high confidence that more environmental damage will occur at 2 degrees Celsius than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report is far less confident about the specific damage that will occur by 2040. And the predicted damage isn’t actually catastrophic. Species loss and coral reef bleaching are certainly bad things. But there’s no actual prediction of mass death or hellfire.

So, here’s the real question: even if you believe that environmental consequences from climate change are worth worrying about, we have to determine when intervention is worse than non-intervention. After all, the IPCC is calling for a radical revision of the capitalist system – a system that has raised half the world’s population from abject poverty in the last three decades. One half of the world population is now middle class or richer. That’s thanks to capitalist economics. (Read more from “No, Global Warming Isn’t the End of the World. Here’s Why.” HERE)

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Democrats’ Arizona Senate Nominee Caught on Tape Bashing…Arizona

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The GOP has sought to highlight Democrat Kyrsten Sinema’s past radicalism — she protested the Afghanistan war in a pink tutu, and her organization portrayed American soldiers as murderous skeletons inflicting “US terror” — as well as her biographical…shall we say, enhancements. But in a blue-tinted year, with Democrats highly motivated, Sinema has held onto a modest lead. It will be fascinating to see whether she will maintain that lead post-Kavanaugh, and after this clip makes its way into the bloodstream, via news coverage and inevitable attack ads:

The “crazy” lines aren’t helpful, especially when she attributes her state’s supposed insanity to one factor: “They’re called Republicans,” eliciting laughter and applause from a leftist crowd. Remember, she’s trying to run as a moderate, cross-partisan uniter. Part of her potential victory coalition must include a chunk of Republican voters. But the most brutal line is this one, delivered in an out-of-state speech to liberal activists:

“I want to talk to you about some of the things that I think that you can do to stop your state from becoming Arizona.”

Sinema is asking Arizonans to elect her to represent them. She thinks they’re crazy people and that other states should go out of their way to avoid being like her own constituents. And this speech was delivered well after she undertook her ideological makeover project. If Arizona Republican and right-leaning voters are ever going to coalesce around McSally, the Kavanaugh fight should be a clarifying catalyst; both Arizona Senators cast crucial confirmation votes. And now, here’s the Democrat in the race insulting both them specifically, and their state generally. Talk about motivating factors. Bigger picture, if Republicans can lock down either Arizona or Nevada — the two states in which Democrats have the best shot at Senate gains — it’s game over. The GOP will retain control of the upper chamber.

(Read more from “Democrats’ Arizona Senate Nominee Caught on Tape Bashing…Arizona” HERE)

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NBC Tried to Find Young People Motivated to Vote…Things Turned out Poorly

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The Democrats are fired up, they say. I’m sure they are—they’ve been fired up since January 2017. The vicious Supreme Court fight is over. Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed. The GOP won, though the Left thinks he’s a gang rapist, despite those allegations, which thrust the confirmation process into chaos, lacked evidence or corroborating witnesses. It was a circus—and showed how far the Left is willing to go to win.

We had to remain firm, and we did. The Left was willing to pervert the presumption of innocence, due process, and the FBI to get what they want. They partially got that; the Senate delayed the vote for a week until the bureau could investigate the claims and came back with the same conclusion. Democrats weren’t satisfied—no shocker there—because they have this nutty belief that women are incapable of lying, misidentifying, or misremembering events.

Regardless, we won, and the Democrats lost, which made the Kavanaugh win all the more delicious. So, are Democrats fired up? Well, for key voting blocs that need to show up to boot Republicans in competitive races, no one seems to give a crap. NBC News ventured into deep-blue California, where Rep. Mimi Walters (R-CA) in the state’s 45th congressional district could be in trouble if a surge in minority and young voters occurs.

Reporter Jacob Soboroff tried to find young voters who are motivated to vote this November—and found one person. One girl said that she should vote, but that Democrats shouldn’t rely on her to be at the polls on Election Day.

(Read more from “NBC Tried to Find Young People Motivated to Vote…Things Turned out Poorly” HERE)

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White House Arranges Deal for Release of American Pastor

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The White House expects North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson to be released by the Turkish government and returned to the U.S. in the coming days, two years after he was detained, according to two senior administration officials and another person briefed on the matter.

Under an agreement senior Trump administration officials recently reached with Turkey, Brunson is supposed to be released after certain charges against him are dropped at his next court hearing, currently scheduled for Friday, the senior administration officials and a person briefed on the matter said.

The details of the deal are unclear, but those familiar with the discussions said it includes a commitment by the U.S. to ease economic pressure on Turkey.

The Trump administration, however, isn’t fully confident that Turkey will follow through with the Brunson agreement because Ankara was close to a commitment to release him several months ago but did not, one senior administration official said. . .

The Turkish government has accused Brunson of helping terrorist groups, charges he has denied. The Trump administration has aggressively pushed for his release, saying he was wrongfully detained. In July, Turkey released Brunson from prison and moved him to house arrest. He faces a possible sentence of up to 35 years in prison if convicted. (Read more from “White House Arranges Deal for Release of American Pastor” HERE)

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Obama Had a Secret Plan in Case Trump Didn’t Accept 2016 Election Results

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By Daily Wire. Former President Barack Obama had a secret plan in place for what his administration would do if then-candidate Donald Trump lost the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton and refused to accept the results.

Trump warned on the campaign trail that the election could be “rigged,” a notion that Obama scoffed at, saying, there’s “no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections.” . . .

“The Obama White House plan, according to interviews with Rhodes and Jen Psaki, Obama’s communications director, called for congressional Republicans, former presidents, and former Cabinet-level officials including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, to try and forestall a political crisis by validating the election result,” the Intelligencer reported. “In the event that Trump tried to dispute a Clinton victory, they would affirm the result as well as the conclusions reached by the U.S. intelligence community that Russian interference in the election sought to favor Trump, and not Clinton.” (Read more from “Obama Had A Secret Plan in Case Trump Didn’t Accept 2016 Election Results” HERE)

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Obama’s Trump Plan Revealed

By The Intelligencer. The existence of the postelection plan has not been previously reported. A July 2017 op-ed by Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, refers to Obama directing his staff to “prepare possible responses” to claims of Russian interference in the election.

Psaki said the plan was one of a larger set of “red-teaming” conversations to address how the White House should respond to postelection scenarios that did not have any historical precedent. “There was recognition that we had a Democratic president who was quite popular but also divisive for a portion of the population,” she said. “For them, just having him say the election was legitimate was not going to be enough. We didn’t spend a lot of time theorizing about the worst thing that could happen — this isn’t a science-fiction movie. It was more about the country being incredibly divided and Trump’s supporters being angry. Would there be protesting? I don’t want to say violence, because we didn’t talk about that as I recall.”

Trump’s blurring of the lines between the illegal, the unfair, and the merely unfavorable has continued with his rhetoric around the ongoing probe into his campaign, which he has called a “hoax,” “one of the great scandals in the history of our country,” and “truly a cancer in our country.” He has described Robert Mueller’s investigation as “illegal” and a “Witch Hunt … in search of a crime … not allowed under the LAW!” (Read more from “Obama’s Trump Plan Revealed” HERE)

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Lisa, Kavanaugh and Abortion

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Forty-one years in Alaska and two runs for the U.S. Senate myself against Ted Stevens and Mark Begich have provided me abundant opportunity to see what is at play with our politics. Even as we speak, many Alaskan legislators and most citizens are unaware of the betrayal by our congressional delegation in the statehood act’s mandate for a 90/10 split in federal oil royalties, selling our birthright for a mess of 50/50 pottage. They have not read about Ted Stevens’ role in deforming our birth prior to statehood as an Interior Department lawyer, then his “heroic” rescue of our state through titanic infusions of federal monies. Not surprisingly, this continued the same dependency and control by the federal government from whose liberation was the entire reason behind statehood. Ernest Gruening certainly knew that in his famous 1955 speech.

Lisa Murkowski, part of this betrayal, was already a suspected RINO while in the state legislature, a reliable and scandalous vote for abortion “rights” that was never addressed by Alaska’s Catholic bishops, whom have always toed the line of the left wing of the Church. The Murkowski Family Fix that was perpetrated by Governor Frank Murkowski, appointing his daughter to his own seat, provided a bad taste in Alaskans’ mouth that even the Republican legislature tried to address shortly thereafter.

When Lisa was on the hook to keep that seat against Tony Knowles in a race that every pollster knew would be close, the media packed itself outside the headquarters of Alaska Right to Life for more than three hours. That supposedly uninfluential group of right wing extremists had to weigh the bad options. “No endorsement” was what emerged, with a statement that while Knowles would certainly never vote for any future Republican supreme court nominee, Lisa might. Alaska RTL’s prescience was spot-on, as Lisa voted for Neil Gorsuch, whose seat would not change the balance of abortion votes on the court, but certainly knew on what side her bread was buttered when it came to Kavanaugh. The sexual accusations were a mere red-herring for the real issue at play.

For Alaskans wondering about the true reason for Lisa’s “No Vote” for Judge Kavanaugh, it was abortion first and foremost. While I myself might not have voted for Kavanaugh (see below), and his commitment to returning states rights and overturning Roe v. Wade is utterly suspect, Lisa was not taking any chances, which apparently Maine RINO Susan Collins was willing to do.

Part and parcel of this mess have been Alaska’s Catholic bishops, past and present. They have never uttered one word of either admonishment or explanation regarding Lisa, her fellow Catholic Mark Begich, or any other local “Catholic” legislator who panders to the Crown Jewel of the radical left: abortion-on-demand all nine months of pregnancy. Head-patting assurances that they have been working behind the scenes ring as hollow as their commitment to rooting out the homosexual mafia that is increasingly seen as controlling the Catholic hierarchy worldwide.

But just how committed to Constitutional principles is Kavanaugh? It certainly is not from his non-defense of the 4th Amendment, which the Patriot Act flies in the face of, nor in his dutiful work for the Clintons in the Vince Foster “suicide” case. The proper questions to have directed at Kavanaugh should have gone there, as well as the following: “Where in the constitution does the federal government derive its power to interfere with the states in regards to legislating social issues? What is your opinion on the legitimacy of the 14th Amendment’s passage in 1868? What is your opinion regarding the expansive use of the 14th as it interferes with freedom of religion?”

Lisa owes her seat to a controversial appointment from Daddy, a non-endorsement from the prolife movement in the face of someone even more radical than herself, and a suspected Machiavellian write-in election whose legitimacy has never been properly investigated, an investigation that might have turned the integrity of Alaska’s election system on its head. Alaskans would do well to pressure her to resign if Dunleavy is elected this fall.

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Bob Bird is a radio talk-show host for KSRM radio.

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FBI Director Reveals Terrifying Detail About Possible U.S. Terrorist Attacks

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By The Daily Caller. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Wednesday that the odds of terrorists using civilian drones in the U.S. to attack “mass gatherings” is “steadily increasing.”

Wray offered the dire warning in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

“The FBI assesses that, given their retail availability, lack of verified identification requirement to procure, general ease of use, and prior use overseas, [unmanned aircraft systems] will be used to facilitate an attack in the United States against a vulnerable target, such as a mass gathering,” Wray testified.

Wray said terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda, as well as Mexican drug cartels and MS-13, have made “repeated and dedicated efforts” to use commercial drones as weapons. (Read more from “FBI Director Reveals Terrifying Detail About Possible U.S. Terrorist Attacks” HERE)

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‘22 July’ Reveals Pain of Norway Terror Attack

By Boston Herald. Writer-director Paul Greengrass, of “United 93,” “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” fame, returns to a real-life event in the gut-wrenching “22 July,” a fictionalized account of the 2011 lone wolf terrorist bombing of a government building in Oslo and follow-up mass shooting on a nearby island, resulting in 77 fatalities, many adolescents, by the neo-Nazi gunman Anders Behring Breivik (actor, musician and medical doctor Anders Danielsen Lie).

This a ticking bomb movie, a countdown to events you are probably familiar with and probably dread re-experiencing. Using his you-are-there hand-held camera technique and a Norwegian cast speaking English, Greengrass methodically takes us back to the hours before the attacks, when a pseudo-military-like Breivik can be seen making a fertilizer bomb in some idyllic yet spooky woods near Oslo. At the same time, we see nearby Utoya Island, a property in a lake near Oslo associated with the liberal Norwegian Labor Party. The island is the location of a yearly summer camp. Breivik, who lives with his frightened mother in a small Oslo apartment, plans to kill as many of the children of “the elite” and cause as much pain as possible. (Read more from “‘22 July’ Reveals Pain of Norway Terror Attack” HERE)

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If Liking Dresses Makes a Boy Transgender, Half the Men in History Were Trans

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This month, the drama “Butterfly” will air in the United Kingdom on ITV, about a boy deciding that he needs to live as a girl. Interviewed for YOU Magazine about her role in the show, actress Anna Friel said, “Imagine how confusing it must be to get to the age of four and realise you’re a boy but you like girls’ dresses; being told that you’re not to do this or that, but you have this desperate need. And imagine how many people must have gone through that before transgender was something we talked about openly.”

As if being a girl is liking dresses. Girls don’t always like dresses, and some of us strongly dislike them. If liking dresses is enough to make a boy “really” a girl, is disliking them enough to make a girl “really” a boy? At what age should such an interest be counted as life-determining? . . .

Yet why is it considered a particularly miserable life for a boy to like dresses? Why is this treated as such a bizarre interest for a boy to have?

Is it the attraction to the sorts of finer textiles that have appealed to many of the wealthiest people of both sexes throughout history? Was it an unheard gender identity message that caused Joseph-Marie Jacquard to be so fascinated with producing elaborately patterned fabrics that he invented what later came to be hailed as a critical computer history milestone, the Jacquard loom?

Is it the interest in wearing a garment that’s shaped like a single tube below the waist, instead of a separate tube for each leg, connected at the hip? Consider this painting of Henry VIII, and think about why we shouldn’t describe him as a trans-feminine person in a fetching, gray silk minidress ensemble with leggings. It makes exactly as much sense as thinking that a little boy who likes trying on dresses at home probably needs chemical castration, using drugs prescribed to convicted sex offenders to manage their urges. (Read more from “If Liking Dresses Makes a Boy Transgender, Half the Men in History Were Trans” HERE)

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Eric Holder to Democrats: ‘When They Go Low, We Kick Them’

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Barack Obama’s former attorney general Eric Holder told a crowd over the weekend that Democrats should “kick” Republicans.

“It is time for us as Democrats to be as tough as they are, to be as dedicated as they are, to be as committed as they are,” he told a crowd in Georgia. “Michelle [Obama] always says, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. When they go low, we kick them.”

“That’s what this new Democratic Party is about,” Holder said next, while campaigning for Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. “We’re not in this just to make a statement, we’re in this to win.”

Holder seems to be taking a play out of former President Obama’s handbook. In 2008, then-candidate Obama told his supporters: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

Democrats have been ramping up calls for intimidation, harassment, and violence over the past couple of months, particularly after Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court. In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton called for liberals to stop being civil until Democrats take control of the House and Senate.

(Read more from “Eric Holder to Democrats: ‘When They Go Low, We Kick Them’” HERE)

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