The Humane Newsletter #62 and #63
A special treat this week is the two editions of THN here on LinkedIn for all our majestic LinkedIn followers!
But as usual, if you're interested in the the usual Thursday edition, we recommend you check it out, and many other communities, on COSE!
Thursday's edition highlights some old and new news;
Content moderators suffer trauma, Google taps gen-AI to help users in India, and carbon taxes to fight climate change.
Whilst Tuesdays edition focuses on:
Palestine''s growing tech industry blown apart, Amazon and MIT conducting a study on robots impact on jobs, and 3D printing for brain injuries.
'It scars you for life': Workers sue Meta claiming viewing brutal videos caused psychological trauma
To work for Facebook as a content moderator, the only requirement was to know the language - that is the case in Barcelona. And now over 20% of the staff hired to check violent content on Facebook and Instagram are on sick leave due to psychological trauma.
With a salary reaching up to ￡2,400 per month for viewing between 300 and 400 videos, the position seemingly was attractive. However, the images posted on these social networks which the workers were to check showed the worst sides of humanity. From videos of murders, dismemberment, rapes, to live suicides.
Critique has been directed concerning these working conditions by the employees, conditions which have left them exposed to serious mental health problems. And not themselves being able to access psychological support is a well grounded complaint, nor were the workers tested in advance to being hired, to see if they themselves suffered from any prior mental health issues.
Five years on, many of the workers are still suffering and some fear going out on the streets. Meta's policy to force employees to watch the entire videos in order to explain the censorship has been criticised by lawyers, as it aggravates the trauma.
Google taps gen-AI to help users in India search through government welfare schemes
In the coming weeks, users will be able to get summaries of over 100 government-led schemes in India, this being one of several generative AI focused tools the company announced as part of the Google for India event. And this feature will deliver results in both English and Hindi.
The search generative experience will, when searching for local information like events in your city, it will also list useful and relevant user reviews.
Google maps also marks wheelchair-friendly places and businesses on the app, as well as recently launching indications of wheelchair friendly shopping routes.
Africa proposes global carbon taxes to fight climate change
Human rights activist Machel has said that the joint declaration on a global carbon tax regime is a huge step forward. "Africa is not here to be helped. Africa is here to offer opportunities to offer investment, to offer solutions."
Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to the impact of climate change but it only receives about 12% of the $300bn in annual financing it needs to cope. The Nairobi Declaration urged world leaders to rally behind the proposal for a global taxation regime. This would include a carbon tax on fossil fuel trade, aviation and maritime transport.
The idea of a global carbon tax regime has not gained much traction, still around two dozen countries currently impose taxes on carbon. The European Commission's proposal, where conservation groups back in 2011 said money raised from tax should finance environmental priorities never won the approval required from the European Council to become law.
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Palestine's growing tech industry has been literally blown apart by the war between Israel and Hamas
Gaza has always been a tech hub, despite being on of the worlds most economically challenged regions.
And not only for Palestine and Palestinians but for the whole world, as international companies like Nvidia - famed for its role in the AI boom - have been seeking presence there, to collaborate with tech freelancers and startups.
Gaza Sky Geeks is a Gaza based initiative providing pre-seed investments, training and tech resources to Palestinian Gaza population. However,this beacon of entrepreneurship is now gone, and the building for this largest tech hub in Palestine is blown-out.
In 2022, 5,000 coders and developers graduated from the program delivered by Gaza Sky Geeks. Illiana Montauk, co-founder and CEO of the social impact startup Manara and former director of Gaza Sky Geeks, said that "before this escalation, the Gaza tech scene was growing."
Buildings that are key to Gaza's tech industry have been destroyed by the Israeli airstrikes, there is no escaping the consequences of the war for anyone.
Amazon and MIT are partnering to study how robots impact jobs
Everyone seems to be agreeing on one thing within this ever growing tech world, and that is that robotics and AI will have a profound impact on human jobs in the future.
Whilst Amazon argues that machines have to effect of removing physical labour from human employees, critics imply that robots make human jobs more robotic. This would mean that work potentially becomes more repetitive.
There's also the questions regarding more or less jobs, with some saying that automation will increase job opportunities and others claim that existing jobs will be displaced.
However the study which Amazon and MIT have teamed up to conduct doesn't concern itself with the number of jobs available, but with how human employees and the public feel about this inevitable increase of robotics and AI in industrial settings.
How 3D printing technique could help repair brain injuries
The cerebral cortex or the outermost layer of the brain is the part responsible for important functions such as language, memory, reasoning and decision-making.
Researchers from the University of Oxford have been able to 3D print cells to mimic this area of the brain, it's a new technique which could help people who suffer from brain injuries.
Traumatic brain injuries can be caused by contact sports, stroke, trauma and it often results in damage to the cerebral cortex, and even though millions of people suffer from these injuries, there is no treatment.
Even though there have been attempts, like tissue generative therapies where a person's own stem cells are used to repair damaged tissue, there has been no successful attempts where the cells properly interact with the natural tissue of the brain.
By using a technique called "droplet printing" to create two "bioinks" from stem cells to produce two-layered structure, the researchers have experimented on mice brains and found that the brain cells integrate well, communicating with each other.