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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
WORLD FIRST: AI AGENTS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI AND ADA LOVELACE KEYNOTES, + 80 SPEAKERS AS UK HOSTS LANDMARK BUSINESSABC AI GLOBAL SUMMIT
The historic convergence of artificial intelligence and human heritage marks a new chapter in the global technology discourse. The Summit brings together 1300+ global trailblazers from government, industry, and academia to define a human-centric future for artificial intelligence (AI). 80+ confirmed contributors, including Dr Ben Goertzel (co-creator of Sofia Robot), Lord Clement-Jones CBE (UK government), and senior executives from Accenture, Oxford University, Unilever, Google, and Mastercard. Conceptualised by visionary tech-preneur Dinis Guarda, ranked among the top 10 AI thought leaders in the world. The launch of the Businessabc Global AI University Prize across 300+ universities. For the first time, a delegation from the Maharashtra Government of India, comprising officials and scientists, will join the AI Opportunities in Agriculture session during the Summit LONDON, June 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- In an unprecedented fusion of historical genius and contemporary innovation, the Businessabc AI Global Summit 2025 will witness Leonardo da Vinci and Ada Lovelace returning to public discourse through advanced AI agents, delivering keynote addresses that bridge five centuries of human ingenuity with artificial intelligence's transformative potential. The two-day summit, organised by Businessabc / ztudium convening on the 26th and 27th of June at the Royal Kensington Town Hall, represents a watershed moment in global AI dialogue, bringing together over 1,300 international leaders from government, industry, and academia to confront artificial intelligence's most pressing challenges and extraordinary opportunities. AI - THE TRILLION-DOLLAR RADICAL PARADOX At the summit's core lies a striking contradiction that defines our technological age: whilst AI promises £3.5 trillion in annual economic impact and humanoid robotics forecasts £4 trillion by 2050, over 60% of enterprises remain paralysed by fundamental implementation challenges. This chasm between astronomical potential and execution reality forms the battleground where digital fortunes are won or lost. HISTORICAL MINDS MEET ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE For the first time in technological history, LeoAI and AdaAI sophisticated AI agents embodying Leonardo da Vinci and Ada Lovelace, respectively, will address a global summit not as novelty demonstrations but as ethically engineered systems trained on their subjects' original writings, philosophies, and revolutionary thinking. These digital resurrections offer unique perspectives on creativity, innovation, and the intersection of human imagination with artificial capability. The presentations mark a conceptual breakthrough: two minds separated by centuries, united by their pioneering spirits, speaking directly to humanity's next evolutionary leap. Da Vinci's interdisciplinary genius and Lovelace's computational vision provide historical foundation stones for contemporary AI discourse. TRANSATLANTIC ROBOT CONCERT BREAKS NEW GROUND The summit will witness another world first: Desdemona, an expressive humanoid robot created by AGI pioneer and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance CEO Dr. Ben Goertzel. The band "Desdemona's Dream" will make history with the first known simultaneous concert by a humanoid robot streamed in real-time across two continents (with her live performance debut in the UK and simultaneous presence in the USA). Developed by Hanson Robotics and powered by SingularityNET, Desdemona is the younger sister of Sophia, the world's first robot citizen and a widely recognized symbol of AI-human interaction. This event marks the first transatlantic performance by a decentralised humanoid robot, showcasing a new form of real-time collaboration between humans and AI. Through a mix of improvised music, spoken word, and audience engagement, Desdemona helps us explore a new frontier in ethically designed artificial intelligence. LAUNCHING THE WORLD'S NEW AI BUSINESSABC INDEX The summit introduces the Businessabc AI Global Index™, the first live, interactive intelligence platform tracking artificial intelligence's global evolution across business, society, governance, and ethics. This comprehensive data visualisation tool provides real-time insights, rankings, and open access frameworks designed to democratise AI understanding and accelerate informed adoption. The Summit will spotlight several world firsts: For the first time, LeoAI and AdaAI, AI agents with 3D Physical AI spatial computing inspired respectively by Leonardo da Vinci and Ada Lovelace, will take the stage as keynote speakers at a global summit, not as holograms or novelty acts, but as ethically engineered, historically grounded systems trained on their original writings and philosophies. Developed to inspire public dialogue on creativity, ethics, and innovation, and represent a world-first: two digital pioneers from different centuries reimagined to speak directly to today's AI age, offering a fresh perspective on the future from the minds that helped shape its roots. The Summit will introduce The Businessabc AI Business Readiness Scorecard, which aims to assess how companies are ready to adopt AI across their sectors. It is designed to strengthen collaboration between universities, industry experts, scientists, and public sector institutions to drive the safe and equitable development of AI. The AI Readiness Scorecard presented herein offers a comprehensive framework for organisations to assess their preparedness for artificial intelligence integration. The Summit will feature a delegation from the Maharashtra Government, India, comprising government officials, academicians, and scientists, exploring the transformative potential of AI in the agricultural sector on the international stage. This visit marks a pivotal moment for integrating cutting-edge technology into one of India's most critical sectors as regional leaders and AI experts come together to explore collaborative opportunities for innovation and growth in agricultural practices. DISTINGUISHED GLOBAL VOICES The summit's intellectual firepower includes: ● Dr Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET and pioneer of artificial general intelligence ● Lord Clement-Jones CBE, Chair of the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI ● Prof. Vijay P. Bhatkar, creator of India's first supercomputer and former Chancellor of Nalanda University ● Baroness Sandip Verma, Former UK Minister for International Development ● Baroness Manzila Uddin, Member of the House of Lords| Co-Chair Digital Identity| leading APPGs on the Metaverse, Web 3, AI, Cyber Security, Activist, Entrepreneur ● Senior executives from Accenture, Audi, Unilever, Google, Mastercard and others; ● Janet Adams, COO at SingularityNET, Board Director of ASI Alliance, Researcher in Ethics and Regulation of AI, Former executive TSB Bank & HSBC ● Katja Iversen, CEO of Museum for the United Nations (UN Live), CEO, Global Health and Wellbeing Advocate, Keynote Speaker, Executive Advisor, Author ● Nick Rosa, Industry Technology Innovation Director for Europe at Accenture, Founder at AI-Da Robot, Director, Innovation Director, Board Member, Founder, Host ● Ghislaine Boddington, Creative Director of body>data>space, Prof University of Greenwich, Director Host of BBC Podcast Show 'Me and my Digital Twin', Associate Editor for AI & Society ● Jeremy Schwartz, Chairman of the Sustainability and Diversity Transformation Practice at Kantar. CEO, Chairman, Consultant, Business Leader, Author, Speaker, and Advocate ● Scholars from Imperial College, MIT, Oxford University, UCL, UCLA, Surrey University, Liverpool University and many others. FOUR PILLARS OF TRANSFORMATION The summit addresses AI integration through four critical themes: AI Bridges for Society: Mobilising collaborative frameworks between academia, industry, and policymakers Sectors of Transformation: Examining AI's revolutionary impact across education, agriculture, finance, urban development, and sustainability Human-AI Innovation Magna Carta: Establishing new accountability frameworks for creativity, inclusion, and policy in the intelligent machine age Reimagining the Future: Defining human-centric approaches to artificial general intelligence deployment and societal reskilling GLOBAL UNIVERSITY ENGAGEMENT The summit launches the Businessabc Global AI University Prize, engaging millions of students across 300+ universities to design AI-powered solutions for climate adaptation, financial inclusion, and digital literacy. This initiative, developed with the upskilling platform Hack2Skill, transforms academic engagement from theoretical study to practical innovation. VISIONARY LEADERSHIP Conceptualised by Dinis Guarda, ranked among the world's top 10 AI thought leaders and founder of the ztudium Group, the summit reflects two decades of advising governments, Fortune 500 companies, and financial institutions on harnessing AI for sustainable value creation. The curator team comprises researchers, industry AI business personalities, academics, and specialists, including Dilip Pungliya, Sonesh Sira, Ghislaine Boddington, Erik Schwartz, Juan Cabrera, and Hirander Misra. "AI has become the nervous system of our institutions, from startups to entire cities," said Guarda. "Yet too many remain trapped between fear and hype. This summit transforms confusion into clarity, strategy, and accessible frameworks that accelerate adoption whilst safeguarding fundamental human values." GLOBAL REACH AND ACCESSIBILITY The Businessabc AI Global Summit 2025 stands as more than a conference. It represents humanity's conscious effort to navigate the transformative power of artificial intelligence with wisdom, purpose, and an inclusive vision. MEDIA CONTACTS: Businessabc / ztudiumEmail: EVENT INFORMATION: Registration: Full details: SOCIAL MEDIA: Official hashtag: #BusinessabcAI2025 EDITOR'S NOTES: About Dinis Guarda: Ranked among the top 10 global thought leaders in AI, fintech, and the metaverse by Thinkers360, Edemlan, and Cointelegraph. Founder of ztudium Group's 13 companies, consultant to UNESCO, UN/UNITAR, European Space Agency, and Fortune 500 companies. His YouTube podcast is recognised globally for AI and blockchain thought leadership About Global digital business platform supporting 400 million SMEs and startups with AI-powered directories, certification, and insights tools for the AI economy. About ztudium: London-headquartered global innovation leader specialising in Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, recognised as one of Thinkers360's Top 50 global thought leadership companies in AI and digital transformation. Member of the European AI Alliance and UN Global Compact. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE
ITV News
a day ago
- Automotive
- ITV News
Dynamic pricing benefits Uber but customers and drivers are worse off, study says
Analysis from Oxford University shows dynamic pricing benefits Uber at the expense of drivers and customers, as ITV News Business and Economics Editor Joel Hills reports 'It doesn't cost them anything to run this vehicle. They don't pay the fuel. They don't pay the insurance. I'm the one paying. So why do they get 40%?' More than 100,000 people in the UK drive for Uber. Some of them, like Abdurzak Hadi, a veteran of 11 years, have spent their careers navigating London's streets. Others share their experiences, good and bad, on social media. '£300 a day, that's £10,000 a month… of course I'm rich,' said one driver on YouTube. For many others, the reality of driving for Uber is different. 'It's minimum wage, it's less than the minimum wage,' said another. In March 2023, Uber changed the way it calculates fares. Known as 'dynamic pricing,' the new system uses algorithms to adjust trip prices in real time based on demand, location, driver availability, and even the weather. The price you pay is no longer just about how far or how long you travel. It's shaped by where you are, what time it is, how many other people are requesting rides, and how many drivers are nearby. If there's a surge, like after a concert or during a deluge, prices can quickly jump. Uber says dynamic pricing helps ensure customers can always get a lift and that higher prices encourage more drivers to log on. But a new study from Oxford University suggests this change came at a cost to drivers and customers alike. Five academics at the University of Oxford's Department of Computer Science analysed 1.5 million trips by 258 Uber drivers in the UK between 2016 and 2024. Their findings are stark. After the introduction of dynamic pricing: The average customer fare per hour rose from £32.82 to £43.50 The average driver pay per hour, adjusted for inflation, fell from £22.20 to £19.06 Drivers are now spending an extra 23 minutes a day waiting for trips Uber's income per driver hour rose from £8.47 to £11.70 Perhaps most strikingly, the study found Uber's 'take rate' - the share of each fare it keeps - has risen significantly. While the company used to take around 25%, the average has increased to 29%, with some trips seeing more than 50% taken by Uber. 'The thing that most surprised me,' said Reuben Binns, Associate Professor at Oxford's Department of Computer Science, 'was that the higher the value of the trip, the more of a cut Uber takes. So the more the customer pays, the less the driver actually earns per minute.' I asked him if this could be considered exploitative. 'I think so,' he replied. Hadi remembers when the company took a flat 20% of every fare and shared that information clearly. Since dynamic pricing was introduced, Uber has stopped disclosing what fee it takes on individual trips. When we compared what Uber charged us for the ride with what it paid Hadi, we found Uber's cut was nearly 40%. After costs like fuel, insurance, and car rental, Hadi says he earns £10 an hour 'on a good day' - below the UK minimum wage. 'I feel cheated,' he told ITV News. 'My hard-earned money is being taken away from me.' The Worker Info Exchange helped drivers obtain their journey data from Uber using GDPR requests. The data was then passed to the team from Oxford University. James Farrarr formed the Worker Info Exchange after his experiences as an Uber driver. Several years ago, Hadi was one of the drivers who took Uber to court over employment rights and won. Today, he's a union member and says he's ready to fight again, this time over dynamic pricing. 'If you don't fight, you won't win. But if you do fight - there's a chance.' He says Uber's strategy of encouraging as many drivers as possible to log on, to keep rides readily available, inevitably creates winners and losers. Crucially, drivers aren't paid for the time they spend waiting between trips. 'We urgently need powers to cap the number of vehicles Uber is allowed to put on the road,' he told ITV News. 'And we need proper transparency from Uber about how drivers are paid.' He added: 'We [also] need to end this kind of algorithm trickery. In dynamic pay systems, everybody's entitled to understand on what basis they're being paid, on what basis they're being paid, on what basis the work is being allocated to them.' Uber declined an interview for this a statement, the company said it 'does not recognise the figures' in the Oxford report and insists that all UK drivers receive weekly earnings summaries, "which shows exactly how much Uber kept across the past seven days'. The company says its take rate 'does vary a bit from week to week and from one driver to another, depending on the trips they took,' but that 'the percentage kept by Uber has remained stable for several years.' However, Uber did not specify what that average is. Uber also says UK drivers collectively earned £1 billion in the first three months of this year and that the company's pricing model ensures a balance between rider demand and driver supply. Uber was once seen as the original disruptor, making travelling by taxi faster, cheaper, and easier. But its treatment of drivers attracted strong criticism. In recent years, the company's reputation has improved, especially after Uber agreed to give drivers more employment protections in the UK. But as dynamic pricing reshapes the experience for drivers and customers alike, new questions are being raised about fairness, transparency, and who's really benefiting. The original bad boy of the gig economy is in hot water again.
Daily Maverick
a day ago
- Daily Maverick
Artificial intelligence – the panacea to all ills, or an existential threat to our world?
'Once men turned their thinking over to the machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.' – Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965 In the early 19th century, a group of disgruntled factory workers in industrial England began protesting against the introduction of mechanised looms and knitting frames into the factories. Fearful of losing their jobs, they smashed machines and engaged in acts of sabotage. They were dealt with harshly through imprisonment and even execution. They became known as the Luddites. At the time, it was not the technology they were most concerned about, but rather the loss of their livelihoods. Ironically, today, the word Luddite has become something of an accusation, a complaint about those who, because they are seen as not understanding a new technology, are deemed to be anti-technology. Even anti-progress. The 2020s have seen rapid progress in the development of a 'new' technology – artificial intelligence (AI). But the history of AI can be traced back to the middle of the 20th century, and so is perhaps not very new at all. At the forefront of the current process has been the release of Large Language Models (LLMs) – with ChatGPT being the most prominent – that allow, at the click of a single request, an essay on the topic of your choice. LLMs are simply one type of AI and are not the same as artificial general intelligence (AGI). Unlike current LLMs, which perform a single task, AGI would be able to reason, be creative and use knowledge across many domains – be more human-like, in essence. AGI is more of a goal, an end point in the development of AI. LLMs have already been hugely disruptive in education, with university lecturers and school teachers scrambling to deal with ChatGPT-produced essays. Views about the dangers of AI/AGI tend to coalesce into the doomer and the boomer poles. Crudely, and I am oversimplifying here, the 'doomers' worry that we face an existential threat to our existence were AI to be designed in a way that is misaligned with human values. Boomers, on the other hand, believe AI will solve all our problems and usher in an age of abundance, where we will all be able to work less without seeing a drop in our quality of life. The 'doomer' narrative originates with Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, who introduced a thought experiment called the ' paperclip maximiser '. Bostrom imagines a worst-case scenario where we create an all-powerful AGI agent that is misaligned with our values. In the scenario, we request the AGI agent to maximise the production of paperclips. Bostrom worries that the command could be taken literally, with the AGI agent consuming every last resource on Earth (including humans) in its quest to maximise the production of paperclips. Another take on this thought experiment is to imagine that we ask an all-powerful AGI agent to solve the climate breakdown problem. The quickest and most rational way of doing this would, of course, be to simply rid planet Earth of eight billion human beings. What do we have to fear from LLMs? LLMs have scraped the internet for every bit of data, stolen the data, and fed off the intellectual property of writers and artists. But what exactly do we have to fear from LLMs? I would suggest very little (unless, of course, you are a university lecturer in the humanities). LLMs such as ChatGPT are (currently) little more than complex statistical programs that predict what word follows the word before, based on the above-mentioned internet scraping. They are not thinking. In fact, some people have argued that everything they do is a hallucination. It is just that the hallucination is more often than not correct and appropriate. Francois Chollet, a prominent AI researcher, has described LLMs in their current form as a ' dead end ' in the quest for AGI. Chollet is so confident of this that he has put up a $1-million prize for any AI system that can achieve even basic human skills in something he calls the abstraction and reasoning corpus (ARC) test. Essentially, the ARC is a test of what is called fluid intelligence (reasoning, solving novel problems, and adaptation). Young children do well on ARC tasks. Most adults complete all tasks. Pure LLMs achieve around 0%. Yes – 0%. The $1-million prize does not even require that AGI systems match the skills of humans. Just that they achieve 85%. The prize is yet to be claimed. People are the problem If LLMs are (currently) a dead end in the quest for AGI, what should we be worried about? As is always the case, what we need to be afraid of is people. The people in control of this technology. The billionaires, the tech bros, and the dystopian conspiracy theorists. High on my list is Mark Zuckerberg. The man who invented Facebook to rate the attractiveness of college women, and whose company profited enormously from the echo chamber it created. In Myanmar, this resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in 2017. At the beginning of 2025, Zuckerberg showed the depth of his commitment to diversity and integrity in his slavering capitulation to Donald Trump. Jokes aside about whether Zuckerberg is actually a robot, in recent pronouncements, what he seems to want is a world of atomised and alienated people, who out of quiet desperation turn to his dystopian hell where robots – under his control – will be trained to become 'our friends '. And my personal favourite – Elon Musk. Musk, the ketamine-fuelled racist apologist for the Great Replacement Theory. A man who has committed securities fraud, and accused an innocent man of being a paedophile because the man had the nerve and gall to (correctly) state that Musk's submarine could not negotiate an underwater cave in Thailand. More recently, estimates are that Musk's destruction of USAid will lead to the deaths of about 1,650,000 people within a year because of cuts to HIV prevention and treatment, as well as 500,000 annual deaths due to cuts to vaccines. I, for one, do not want this man anywhere near my children, my family, my community, my country. OpenAI Sam Altman, the CEO of the world's largest plagiarism machine, OpenAI, recently stated that he would like a large part of the world's electricity grid to run his LLM/AI models. Karen Hao, in her recently published book Empire of AI, makes a strong case for OpenAI being a classic colonial power that closely resembles (for example) the British East India Company, founded in 1600 (and dissolved in 1874). Altman recently moved squarely into Orwellian surveillance when OpenAI bought io, a product development company owned by Jonny Ive (designer of the iPhone). While the first product is a closely guarded secret, it is said to be a wearable device that will include cameras and microphones for environmental detection. Every word you speak, every sound you hear, and every image you see will be turned into data. Data for OpenAI. Why might Altman want this? Money, of course. But for Altman and Silicon Valley, money is secondary to data, to surveillance and the way they are able to parlay data into power and control (and then money). He will take our data, further train his ChatGPT models with it, and in turn use this to better surveil us all. And for the pleasure of working for, and giving our data to OpenAI? Far from being paid for the data you produce, you will have to buy the gadget, be monitored 24/7, and have your life commodified and sold. As Shoshana Zuboff said in her magisterial book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 'Forget the cliché that if it's free, 'you are the product'. You are not the product; you are the abandoned carcass. The 'product' derives from the surplus that is ripped from your life.' The problem was never the cotton loom. The Luddites knew this in the 19th century. It was always about livelihood loss and people (the industrialists). Bostrom has it badly wrong when he imagines an all-powerful AGI entity that turns against its human inventors. But about the paperclips, he might be correct. Zuckerberg, Musk and Altman are our living and breathing paperclip maximisers. With their political masters, they will not flinch at turning us all into paperclips and sacrificing us on the altar of their infinite greed and desire for ever-increasing surveillance and control. DM
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Trump administration could impact readers, from DEI to book bans
Hazelwood's tour snag sparked a discussion on book communities about how President Donald Trump's recent policies would trickle down to publishing. Amid book banning, border policies, new anti-DEI sentiments and federal library grant cuts, these are the ways the new administration may impact readers. Trump administration's policies shake author tour plans Hazelwood, who is originally from Italy and now resides in the U.S., was booked for several international appearances before she canceled because "it's not possible for me to safely travel outside and then back inside the US," she wrote on Instagram. Canadian bestseller Louise Penny canceled her American tour stops in March because of Trump and "the threat of an unprovoked trade war against Canada" in regards to tariffs, she wrote on Facebook. It's the first time in 20 years Penny has not visited the U.S. on tour: "There are, of course, other things the American president is doing that make visiting the USA unpalatable. Oh, dear. It is so painful to say that," she wrote. But Curtis Chin, the Detroit-based author of "Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant," decided to move his tour abroad after several U.S. colleges canceled book talks with him, citing funding cuts from federal arts grants. "Asian American Heritage Month is May, right? So I'm usually booked giving speeches," he says, but not this year. Around the same time, the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam invited him to talk about his book and being a writer of color in the U.S. during the Trump administration. Then, he got booked at Oxford University and the British Library. Soon, he had 21 events abroad in just one month. "Maybe in America we're not ready to talk about these things, but maybe there are other places," Chin says. Still, it comes with a steep financial loss for Chin. He's losing two months of income because his European stops are unpaid opportunities. With U.S. events, he often makes thousands of dollars per event, occasionally up to $10,000. Authors worry about impact of Trump, DEI backslide In Chin's mind, it's not a coincidence that May was the first AAPI Month he wasn't fully booked with speaking engagements. He also worried about June's Pride Month, another typically busy month for him. His shift to international engagements, he says, feels reminiscent of historical movements of artists of color to Europe to evade discrimination, like James Baldwin and Josephine Baker. "In some small way, I'm in that same tradition where the things that we're writing, the things that we're creating are facing these extraordinary scrutiny and challenges," Chin says. Trump has not issued a proclamation for Pride Month, instead starting June with several actions undermining gains for LGBTQ+ Americans. And though Trump did formally recognize AAPI Month as past presidents have, his efforts to purge DEI practices led major companies like Disney, IBM and Goldman Sachs to publicly scrap DEI initiatives. The majority of organizations have "simply gone quiet" on DEI, according to past reporting from USA TODAY. And in early May, Trump fired longtime Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first Black American and first woman to head the library, because of her "pursuit of DEI." Hayden had been leading the "Of the People" initiative to bring more works from Black, Indigenous, Hispanic or Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander and other communities of color into the library's collections. Books typically take between two and three years to publish. If publishers follow in the suit of major companies turning away from - or staying silent - on DEI, we may not see the effect until years down the line. "It actually occurred to me, maybe I should hold off and wait until Trump is out of office before I try to sell my book because I don't know if publishers are afraid of publishing books by people of color. Because maybe there's a perception that these books may be banned, these books may not be bought by libraries," Chin says. "But then I thought to myself, I can't be afraid." Grant cuts threaten libraries, public spaces for readers In March, Trump issued an executive order that terminated dozens of federal grants held by libraries, archives and museums. The Institute of Museum and Library Services, one of those agencies, distributes millions of dollars in congressionally approved funds to libraries across the country. A federal judge has since blocked the Trump administration, but uncertainty about the state of funding means some libraries have already abandoned programs and implemented hiring freezes. The administration's termination of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts also impacts authors and academics. Michigan Humanities, the state affiliate of NEH, was left with a $900,000 budget loss after the cuts, according to the Detroit Free Press. One shuttered program is Great Michigan Read, which "engages 300 organizations in all 83 counties," according to the organization's president and CEO. This year, Chin was the recipient of the annual grant, which would normally buy around 6,000 copies of Chin's book and send him on a 15-city tour of the state. Then he got word that the program could not proceed because of the funding cuts. The rollback is particularly devastating to Chin because, growing up in Detroit and Ann Arbor, he didn't see himself represented in the books in his classrooms and libraries. "That's why we write, because we want to be seen and we want to help other people navigate their lives, right?" Chin says. "They're denying us an audience because they don't like what we have to say. They don't like our vision of the country. But, I would argue that our vision of the country is a loving vision of America. It's an open, embracing vision of America." The publishing world's most influential voices are also speaking out. Before the judge blocked Trump's executive order to eliminate IMLS funding, four of the Big Five publishers - Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster - as well as Sourcebooks, called on Congress to reject the order. And at this year's PEN America Literary Gala, actress and SJP Lit imprint founder Sarah Jessica Parker said she was "enraged" at threats to libraries and librarians across the country. "To censor books is to limit imagination, curiosity, connection, empathy and inspiration. Libraries aren't just buildings with shelves, they are a beacon," Parker said. "They are warm in the winter and cool in summer, and they are sanctuaries of possibility. They are the heartbeat of a neighborhood." Book banning continues in libraries, classrooms A late March order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth led to 400 books being removed from the U.S. Naval Academy's library to "comply with directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president," according to a statement from a Navy spokesperson reported by The New York Times. Most of the banned titles - a ban is any restriction on access, according to the American Library Association - discuss race, gender or sexuality. Books embraced by white supremacists, like "Mein Kampf," "The Camp of Saints" and "The Bell Curve" remained on the shelves. One ongoing Supreme Court case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, appears likely to rule that parents can opt their children out of classroom books that include representations of gender and sexuality that go against their religion. The Trump administration agrees with the parents. PEN America has filed an amicus brief in support of Thomas W. Taylor, the respondent in the case representing Montgomery County Public Schools. In a press release, the organization warned a ruling in favor of the parents could "turbocharge the already dire state of book bans and educational censorship." "An opt-out would chill freedom of speech for students, teachers and authors and would constitute viewpoint discrimination, raising core First Amendment concerns," PEN America's Chief Legal Officer Eileen Hershenov said in the release. "Both legally and practically, this would deny students access to diverse literature that spurs empathy, understanding and prepares them for lives in a pluralistic society." Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you're reading at cmulroy@
Daily Maverick
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Maverick
SA's new labour migration policy — critics doubt its effectiveness, say it does not strike a balance
In a new policy white paper, the government makes several far-reaching proposals to restrict the employment of foreign citizens. Critics warn that instead of protecting jobs, the policy will do damage. South Africa has finally put forward a coherent plan to manage labour migration. The White Paper on National Labour Migrant Policy, which the Cabinet approved on 29 May, marks the government's first comprehensive attempt to define who gets to work here, and under what conditions they will be allowed to do so. It arrives as the unemployment rate remained stubbornly high at 32.9% in the first quarter of 2025. In this climate, political pressure to prioritise South African jobs has grown, as evidenced by rising xenophobia and misinformation about migrant numbers, the white paper states. Immigrants made up 8.9% of employed workers in 2022, largely in sectors where local participation is low, such as construction, agriculture, logistics and informal trade. The proposed policy is trying to prioritise South African workers while acknowledging regional and sectoral reliance on foreign labour. Whether it succeeds is another matter. 'What might create South African jobs in the short term may ultimately harm the country's ability to recruit skilled workers, attract investment and promote trade,' said Professor Loren Landau, a migration researcher based at Oxford University and the University of the Witwatersrand. The policy is designed to inform proposed amendments to the Employment Services Act (ESA), with the aim of imposing stricter control on how foreign nationals are hired in South Africa. The crux of the reform is sector-specific quotas that will cap the number of foreign nationals employers can hire in certain industries and occupations once the amendments have been passed by Parliament. 'Internationally, the practice of reserving the right of occupational choice is not uncommon in democracies,' said Sashin Naidoo, employment law lawyer at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr. Employers will also need to prove that no suitably qualified South African was available for the job, submit a skills transfer plan and pay foreign and local workers on par. The ESA did not set out the practical requirements for these skills transfer plans, said Taryn York, senior associate employment lawyer at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr. 'However, it does say the minister may make regulations setting out these requirements.' Failure to comply could result in fines of up to R100,000, a prospect that has employers on edge. 'Although a drive to increase employment of local workers is admirable, the task of skills transfer and upskilling of employees should not also be placed at the feet of the private sector,' said Jaco Swart, national manager of the National Employers' Association of South Africa. The proposed changes will introduce more uncertainty for migrant workers. Mandla Masuku, president of the Migrant Workers Union of South Africa (Miwusa), said most migrants were not in the country by choice but because of unforeseen circumstances in their home countries. 'Some have been here for many years,' Masuku said. 'They've got families, they've got properties. If they are going to be affected by these policies, it is not going to affect them alone.' He also raised concerns that migrants might not fully grasp how the policy would be enforced or what their rights would be under a new system. When quotas clash A legal showdown may be brewing between the Employment Equity Act and the ESA. Although recent proposed amendments to the former included sectoral transformation targets, the ESA's amendments go a step further, granting the minister of labour the authority to impose hard quotas on the hiring of foreign nationals. 'We've got these two pieces of legislation, one having a quota and one having a sector target,' said Imraan Mahomed, director of employment law at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr. 'There is already existing authority in the Constitutional Court that has found that the imposition of quotas is unconstitutional. 'The minister distances himself from any consideration that sectoral targets are quotas. It's not going to be a sectoral target in relation to foreigners, it's going to be a quota. I suspect there's going to be a legal challenge when it comes to these quotas.' The policy is presented as a dual-purpose tool: to promote local employment and safeguard migrant rights. As with most of the government's ambitions, the execution is where reality starts to wobble. 'The government has typically based its policies on a relatively poor reading of the true economy or the impact of immigration on it,' Landau said. 'While dramatically underestimating the positive impacts of immigration, it dramatically overpromises on its capacity to regulate labour conditions and migration.' Masuku, too, was sceptical of the policy's effectiveness. 'I suspect that it will be just another policy that is there, maybe for the purpose of proving a point to citizens. But, in terms of practicality, I don't think it will have a huge impact.' Swart echoed these doubts: 'The issue is not that employers are unwilling to appoint South African citizens, it is simply that the skills are not locally available, a consequence of a failed education system. 'The current proposal does not strike a balance, nor will it assist the unemployment crisis or ensure a skills transfer in the country.' A regional vision One of the policy's more progressive features is its regional outlook. It aligns with AU and Southern African Development Community frameworks and proposes the introduction of SADC visas, which are intended to ease cross-border work and allow for portable social protections. Lee Masuku, senior associate lawyer in employment law at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, said these would include a special work visa in the SADC region, special traders' visas and SADC small and medium enterprise visas. The policy also calls for updated labour agreements with neighbouring states like Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Mozambique, but Landau views these gestures as superficial. 'The existing policies may or may not reshape the labour market, but they do send a clear message to the region that South Africa is now more unilateral than ever. Given how much of its market is regional… this will likely hurt business and job creation,' he said. The policy also largely ignores where most migrant workers actually operate: in the informal sector, undocumented and unprotected. Asked whether the policy protected informal migrant workers, Landau answered: 'Simply put, no.' He added that it lacked mechanisms that recognise or protect the humanity and labour rights of migrant workers outside formal employment. Masuku warned further that employers might exploit undocumented migrants more if fewer legal work routes existed. For all its talk of order and oversight, the white paper admits that the policy is based on sparse and outdated data, and promises a better information system. The scattering of administrative data, the policy's lack of alignment to international standards, missing indicators and minimal use of both administrative and statistical data by policymakers are some of the key challenges the white paper identifies. 'A more robust reading of the regional economy which includes informal trade, fast fashion, small and unregistered business development in and through South Africa might suggest that national employment and regional obligations are complementary, not at odds,' Landau said. York gave a warning to employers operating in the agriculture, hospitality, tourism and construction sectors, saying they should prepare for the introduction of quotas on hiring foreign nationals. According to Masuku, Miwusa has a close relationship with the labour union federation Cosatu and consulted with it to better understand the policy. 'We must work together to ensure that workers, regardless of their nationality, are not [negatively] affected by these kinds of policies,' he said. DM This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
