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Monday, May 01, 2023

Erdogan, rival draw vast crowds ahead of May 14 vote

Story by AFP • Yesterday

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan drew huge crowds in opposition-controlled Izmir on Saturday© HANDOUT

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his main opponent staged massive rival rallies on Sunday, setting the stage for a bruising battle in the final two weeks of Turkey's election campaign.

The veteran Turkish leader filled a central Ankara square that can fit a few hundred thousand people with flag-waving supporters, showing no signs of an illness that sidelined him for three days this week.

"Are we ready to come out with a crushing victory?" Erdogan, draped in a scarf of the Turkish capital's main football club, demanded from the enthusiastic crowd.

"On May 14, our nation, God willing, will eliminate them from the political scene," he said of secular leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his six-party opposition alliance.

The 69-year-old president has bounced back strongly from what was described as a digestive problem in the run-up to one of Turkey's most important elections of its post-Ottoman history.

The illness shook Erdogan's strongman image, which he has cultivated over two decades of economic booms and busts, social transformation and crackdowns on dissent.

"As you know I was sick recently, and from every house people were praying for me," Erdogan told the crowd.

"I am trying to be worthy of those prayers."

Kilicdaroglu, 74, and his multi-faceted alliance are posing Erdogan's toughest election challenge since the Turkish leader's Islamic-rooted party first swept to power in 2002.

Related video: Turkey elections: A closely-fought cliffhanger on the cards (WION)
Duration 2:16 View on Watch

Erdogan became prime minister a year later, consolidating control as a powerful president under a new constitution in 2018.

- 'Rebuild our democracy' -

The upcoming vote is too close to call and likely heading to a runoff on May 28.

Kilicdaroglu and his allies have fanned out across the country, holding daily events that are starting to get coverage on pro-government media that dominate Turkey today.

He staged an equally massive rally along the embankment of the opposition-controlled Aegean city of Izmir, where Erdogan drew slightly smaller crowds on Saturday.

"These elections are elections to rebuild our democracy," Kilicdaroglu, a former civil servant told the cheering crowd after walking out on stage with his wife, Selvi.

"We will bring peace to this country, I will bring brotherhood to this country," Kilicdaroglu said.

The massive turnout is a sign of the huge interest Turks have in the election, which has turned into a referendum on Erdogan's rule.

His party is also in danger of losing control of parliament, which it holds through an alliance with an ultra-nationalist group.

Erdogan in 2019 lost landmark municipal votes in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir -- Turkey's three biggest and most economically powerful cities.

But his decision to campaign in all three hints at the close nature of the vote.

"Ankara has a huge responsibility," Erdogan told the crowd.

zak/jm

Workers are secretly using ChatGPT, AI and it will pose big risks for tech leaders

Story by Mikaela Cohen • CNBC

Chief information security officers need to approach generative AI with caution and prepare with necessary cyber defense measures.

Not every company has its own GPT, or generative pretrained transformer, so they need to monitor how workers use this technology.

Even when it's not sanctioned by the IT department, employees are finding ways to use chatbots to make their jobs easier.

Soaring investment from big tech companies in artificial intelligence and chatbots — amid massive layoffs and a growth decline — has left many chief information security officers in a whirlwind.

With OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Bing AI, Google's Bard and Elon Musk's plan for his own chatbot making headlines, generative AI is seeping into the workplace, and chief information security officers need to approach this technology with caution and prepare with necessary security measures.

The tech behind GPT, or generative pretrained transformers, is powered by large language models (LLMs), or algorithms that produce a chatbot's human-like conversations. But not every company has its own GPT, so companies need to monitor how workers use this technology.

People are going to use generative AI if they find it useful to do their work, says Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, comparing it to the way workers use personal computers or phones.

"Even when it's not sanctioned or blessed by IT, people are finding [chatbots] useful," Chui said.

"Throughout history, we've found technologies which are so compelling that individuals are willing to pay for it," he said. "People were buying mobile phones long before businesses said, 'I will supply this to you.' PCs were similar, so we're seeing the equivalent now with generative AI."

As a result, there's "catch up" for companies in terms of how the are going to approach security measures, Chui added.

Whether it's standard business practice like monitoring what information is shared on an AI platform or integrating a company-sanctioned GPT in the workplace, experts think there are certain areas where CISOs and companies should start.

Start with the basics of information security

CISOs — already combating burnout and stress — deal with enough problems, like potential cybersecurity attacks and increasing automation needs. As AI and GPT move into the workplace, CISOs can start with the security basics.

Chui said companies can license use of an existing AI platform, so they can monitor what employees say to a chatbot and make sure that the information shared is protected.

"If you're a corporation, you don't want your employees prompting a publicly available chatbot with confidential information," Chui said. "So, you could put technical means in place, where you can license the software and have an enforceable legal agreement about where your data goes or doesn't go."

Licensing use of software comes with additional checks and balances, Chui said. Protection of confidential information, regulation of where the information gets stored, and guidelines for how employees can use the software — all are standard procedure when companies license software, AI or not.

"If you have an agreement, you can audit the software, so you can see if they're protecting the data in the ways that you want it to be protected," Chui said.

Most companies that store information with cloud-based software already do this, Chui said, so getting ahead and offering employees an AI platform that's company-sanctioned means a business is already in-line with existing industry practices.
How to create or integrate a customized GPT

One security option for companies is to develop their own GPT, or hire companies that create this technology to make a custom version, says Sameer Penakalapati, chief executive officer at Ceipal, an AI-driven talent acquisition platform.

In specific functions like HR, there are multiple platforms from Ceipal to Beamery's TalentGPT, and companies may consider Microsoft's plan to offer customizable GPT. But despite increasingly high costs, companies may also want to create their own technology.

If a company creates its own GPT, the software will have the exact information it wants employees to have access to. A company can also safeguard the information that employees feed into it, Penakalapati said, but even hiring an AI company to generate this platform will enable companies to feed and store information safely, he added.

Whatever path a company chooses, Penakalapati said that CISOs should remember that these machines perform based on how they have been taught. It's important to be intentional about the data you're giving the technology.

"I always tell people to make sure you have technology that provides information based on unbiased and accurate data," Penakalapati said. "Because this technology is not created by accident."

Uh Oh, Chatbots Are Getting a Teeny Bit Sentient

Story by Tim Newcomb • POPMECH

Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom believes AI has already started to show small amounts of sentience.© Ole_CNX - Getty Images
Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom believes AI has already started to show small amounts of sentience.
He cautions against the next step in AI, which could grow into the programs beginning to understand their place in society.
A growing body of experts is debating the ramifications of sentience in AI.

The great artificial-intelligence-sentience debate ramps up with leading AI philosopher Nick Bostrom—director of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute—weighing in via a New York Times interview. He claims that AI chatbots have already started the process toward sentience, the capability to experience feelings and sensations.

He's not alone in this line of thinking. Bostrom's voice is loud in the AI-consciousness debate, but it's not the only one, with a host of philosophers and tech experts already saying that AI's qualities associated with sentience are growing.

And if the path has already started, Bostrom claims, it will only continue.

Now, it's important to keep in mind that almost all AI experts say that AI chatbots are not sentient. They're not about to spontaneously develop consciousness in the way that we understand it in humans.

Bostrom's claims do not amount to an opinion that AI is further along than we think it is. Rather, they suggest that we should be thinking about sentience in a different way—more like a spectrum and less like a switch.

Related video: Snapchat Rolls Out Chatbot to All Users (Cover Media) View on Watch

"If you admit that it's not an all-or-nothing thing," the philosopher tells the New York Times, "then it's not so dramatic to say that some of these [AI] assistants might plausibly be candidates for having some degrees of sentience."

That "some degrees" comment is the one worth focusing on. If true that AI chatbots have developed even the slightest degree of sentience, then it stands to reason there's room for continued growth, with Bostrom adding that the large language models (LLMs) "may soon develop a conception of self as persisting through time, reflect on desires, and socially interact and form relationships with humans."

He further claims via the article that the LLMs aren't merely grabbing and showing blocks of text, instead saying, "they exhibit glimpses of creativity, insight, and understanding that are quite impressive and may show the rudiments of reasoning."

Bostrom has called for the awareness of what a sentient AI could mean for society for roughly a decade, including his 2014 example of an advanced AI with the lone goal of making paperclips potentially turning it into a human-erasing machine.

"The AI will realize quickly that it would be much better if there were no humans because humans might decide to switch it off," he said in 2014. "Because if humans do so, there would be fewer paper clips. Also, human bodies contain a lot of atoms that could be made into paper clips. The future that the AI would be trying to gear toward would be one in which there were a lot of paper clips but no humans."

Dealing with a thought-creating AI requires a level of oversight different than dealing with basic technology. "If an AI showed sins of sentience, it plausibly would have some degree of moral status," Bostrom tells the New York Times. "This means there would be certain ways of treating it that would be wrong, just as it would be wrong to kick a dog or for medical researchers to perform surgery on a mouse without anesthetizing it."

This echoes earlier thoughts Bostrom has shared about issues of governance and moral status of AI, if cognitively capable systems do become a reality.

If we're measuring AI sentience in degrees, hopefully someone out there is watching to see how fast these degrees grow.

A doctor’s new sidekick? How ChatGPT may change the role of physicians

Story by Katie Dangerfield • Yesterday

Doctor diagnose human brain© Getty Images

Can AI and ChatGPT help healthcare?View on Watch

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots has opened up new possibilities for doctors and patients — but the technology also comes with the risk of misdiagnosis, data privacy issues and biases in decision-making.

One of the most popular examples is ChatGPT, which can mimic human conversations and create personalized medical advice. In fact, it recently passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam.

And because of its ability to generate human-like responses, some experts believe ChatGPT could help doctors with paperwork, examine X-rays (the platform is capable of reading photos) and weigh in on a patient's surgery.

The software could potentially become as crucial for doctors as the stethoscope was in the last century for the medical field, said Dr. Robert Pearl, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

"It just won't be possible to provide the best cutting-edge medicine in the future (without it)," he said, adding the platform is still years away from reaching its full potential.

"The current version of ChatGPT needs to be understood as a toy," he said. "It's probably two per cent of what's going to happen in the future."

Video: Canadians split on ChatGPT, but it depends on knowledge of software: poll

This is because generative AI can increase in power and effectiveness, doubling every six to 10 months, according to researchers.

Developed by OpenAI, and released for testing to the general public in November 2022, ChatGPT had explosive uptake. After its release, over a million people signed up to use it in just five days, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The software is currently free as it sits in its research phase, though there are plans to eventually charge.

“We will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering,” Altman said online on Dec. 5, 2022.

Although ChatGPT is a relatively new platform, the idea of AI and health care has been around for years.

In 2007, IBM created an open-domain question–answering system, named Watson, which won first place on the television game show Jeopardy!

Ten years later, a team of scientists used Watson to successfully identify new RNA-binding proteins that were altered in the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), highlighting the use of AI tools to accelerate scientific discovery in neurological disorders.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from the University of Waterloo developed AI models that predicted which COVID-19 patients were most likely to have severe kidney injury outcomes while they are in hospital.

What sets ChatGPT apart from the other AI platforms is its ability to communicate, said Huda Idrees, founder and CEO of Dot Health, a health data tracker.

"Within a health-care context, communicating with clients — for example, if someone needs to write a longish letter describing their care plan — it makes sense to use ChatGPT. It would save doctors a lot of time," she said. "So from an efficiency perspective, I see it as a very strong communication tool."

Its communication is so effective that a JAMA study published April 28 found ChatGPT may have better bedside manners than some doctors.

The study had 195 randomly drawn patient questions and compared physicians’ and the chatbot’s answers. The chatbot responses were preferred over physician responses and rated significantly higher for both quality and empathy.

On average, ChatGPT scored 21 per cent higher than physicians for the quality of responses and 41 per cent more empathetic, according to the study.

In terms of the software taking over a doctor's job, Pearl said he does not see that happening, but rather he believes it will act like a digital assistant.

"It becomes a partner for the doctor to use," he said. "Medical knowledge doubles every 73 days. It's just not possible for a human being to stay up at that pace. There's also more and more information about unusual conditions that ChatGPT can find in the literature and provide to the physician."

By using ChatGPT to sift through the vast amount of medical knowledge, it can help a physician save time and even help lead to a diagnosis, Pearl explained.

It's still early days, but people are looking at using the platform as a tool to help monitor patients from home, explained Carrie Jenkins, a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia.

"We're already seeing that there is work in monitoring patient's sugars and automatically filing out the right insulin they should have if they need it for their diabetes," he told Global News in February.

"Maybe one day it will help with our diagnostic process, but we are not there yet," he added.

Previous studies have shown that physicians vastly outperform computer algorithms in diagnostic accuracy.

For example, a 2016 research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine, showed that physicians were correct more than 84 per cent when diagnosing a patient, compared to a computer algorithm, which was correct 51 per cent of the time.

More recently, an emergency room doctor in the United States put ChatGPT to work in a real-world medical situation.

In an article published in Medium, Dr. Josh Tamayo-Sarver said he fed the AI platform anonymized medical history of past patients and the symptoms that brought them to the emergency department.

"The results were fascinating, but also fairly disturbing," he wrote.

If he entered precise, detailed information, the chatbot did a "decent job" of bringing up common diagnoses he wouldn't want to miss, he said.

But the platform only had about a 50 per cent success rate in correctly diagnosing his patients, he added.

"ChatGPT also misdiagnosed several other patients who had life-threatening conditions. It correctly suggested one of them had a brain tumor — but missed two others who also had tumors. It diagnosed another patient with torso pain as having a kidney stone — but missed that the patient actually had an aortic rupture," he wrote.

Its developers have acknowledged this pitfall.

"ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers," OpenAI stated on its website.

The potential for misdiagnosis is just one of the fallbacks of using ChatGPT in the health-care setting.

ChatGPT is trained on vast amounts of data made by humans, which means there can be inherent biases.

"There's a lot of times where it's factually incorrect, and that's what gives me pause when it comes to specific health queries," Idrees said, adding that not only does the software get facts wrong, but it can also pull biased information.

"It could be that there is a lot of anti-vax information available on the internet, so maybe it actually will reference more anti-vax links more than it needs to," she explained.

Idrees pointed out that another limit the software has is the difficulty in accessing private health information.

From lab results, and screening tests, to surgical notes, there is a "whole wealth" of information that is not easily accessible, even when it's digitally captured.

"In order for ChatGPT to do anything ... really impactful in health care, it would need to be able to consume and have a whole other set of language in order to communicate that health-care data," she said.

"I don't see how it's going to magically access these treasure troves of health data unless the industry moves first."

— with files from the Associated Press and Global News' Kathryn Mannie

MAY DAY SOLIDARITY OF LABOUR

Buried treasure, including nearly 200 Roman coins, found in Italy

Story by Taylor Nicioli • CNN

Archaeologists in Livorno, Italy, are putting together the pieces of a great mystery that began with a stunning find.

While hiking in a cleared area of a Tuscan forest northeast of Livorno, a member of the Livorno Paleontological Archaeological Group spotted a few glimmering coins in the dirt in November 2021. Upon closer inspection and excavation, researchers determined that the find included 175 silver Roman denarii coins. Nearly all were in good condition, making this one of the few hoards of ancient coins found intact, according to the group.

But the discovery prompted a number of questions: Whose treasure was it? Who were they hiding it from? And why didn’t they come back for it?

The coins were dated to 157 or 156 BC, and the latest up to 83 or 82 BC.

- Alberto Cecio/Soprintendenza Archeologia

The archaeological group, along with the archaeologist official for the provinces of Pisa and Livorno, Dr. Lorella Alderighi, has spent more than a year measuring, weighing and documenting the coins, according to a news release posted on its Facebook page. Now, the researchers think they have some answers.

“This treasure is about a person’s life, the savings of a soldier’s life and his hopes for building his farm,” Alderighi said via email. “However, it also tells a sad story: (T)he owner of the coins died before he could make his dreams come true using his savings. The coins tell his story.”

The hoard will soon be on display in an exhibition at the Museum of Natural History of the Mediterranean in Livorno from May 5 to July 2, Alderighi said.

Mysterious past of the coins

It’s impossible to know exactly who buried the coins, Alderighi said, but the coins would most likely have been the treasure of a former soldier who served during Rome’s Social War from 91 to 88 BC and during the civil war between Sulla and the Marians from 83 to 82 BC.

Almost all 175 coins were intact and in good condition, except for two that were fragmented but can be restored. - Alberto Cecio/Soprintendenza Archeologia

The owner of the hoard buried it in a terra-cotta pot, which served as a sort of piggy bank. The earliest coins in the stash dated to 157 or 156 BC, and the latest up to 83 or 82 BC, according to the archaeological group’s release.

During that time, 175 denarii would have been a soldier’s salary for about a year and a half, Alderighi said. Now, the treasure has a value of around 20,000 to 25,000 euros, she added.

The coins were preserved well in their buried state. Only two are fractured, but they can be reassembled, the release noted. Studying them could provide scholars with more background on the history of coins and how people used them and could even lead to changes with the fundamental typology — created in 1974 and still used today — to identify and date Roman coins, she added.

“It is one of the very few hoards of ancient coins found intact and provides a lot of numismatic, historical and social information,” Alderighi said.

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Social audio app Clubhouse layoffs more than 50 percent of its staff

Story by MobileSyrup •

In this photo illustration the Clubhouse logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen

Clubhouse has made some major changes to staff, with over 50 percent of employees having been laid off. The decision was announced by Clubhouse founders Paul Davison and Rohan Seth in an email to employees.

The note to staff read, “We’re scaling back our org by over 50% and saying goodbye to many talented, dedicated teammates in the process.” It’s been reported that impacted members of Clubhouse were sent invitations to a one-on-one meeting with managers from their respective departments.

The company’s decision stems from problems as a result of the pandemic, with the company admitting that it became harder for people to find friends on the app and to fit those conversations into their daily lives.

Founders Davidson and Seth would go on to state that in order for Clubhouse to find its role in the world, the product needs to evolve. Evolution requires what they describe as a “period of change.”

Despite the bad news, the company did provide some resources to those impacted. Firstly, salaries will be paid for the rest of April, plus four months of additional severance for all departing employees. Employees will also continue to receive full healthcare coverage for themselves and their families until the end of August.

The remaining workers who were unaffected by the changes were sent an invite for a brief team meeting, most likely to be debriefed on the company’s new directions.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Clubhouse

GM lays off several hundred full-time contract workers - WSJ

Story by Reuters •

(Reuters) - General Motors Co has laid off several hundred full-time contract workers at its engineering hub in suburban Detroit over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing a company spokesperson.

The Detroit automaker did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. GM shares were up about 2.5% to $33.86.

GM said in April that about 5,000 salaried workers had opted for buyouts to leave the company, bringing it closer to its cost-cut target of $2 billion by the end of 2024.

Reuters in March reported that GM was cutting hundreds of executive-level and salaried jobs.

Price hikes and demand for vehicles have helped automakers counter inflationary headwinds. GM posted better-than-expected first-quarter earnings last week and raised its full-year profit and cash-flow forecasts.

(Reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

GM Will Invest $200 Million In New Parts Factory For Upcoming Silverado EV

Story by Iulian Dnistran •

Ultium Cells LLC Battery Plant in Warren, Ohio© InsideEVs

The new plant will be built on the site of the former Detroit Pistons Arena in Auburn Hills.

General Motors plans to build a new, $200-million parts factory that would support the assembly of the upcoming Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra electric pickup trucks, according to Automotive News.

The new project is set to be constructed on the former Detroit Pistons Arena in Auburn Hills, Michigan, which was demolished in 2020, covering 87.3 acres.

According to documents filed with the city, the new plant will consist of 1.05 million square feet of space for EV parts assembly and distribution, plus approximately 50,000 square feet for office space. The Auburn Hills planning commission will consider the proposal this week, as per Automotive News.

The EV parts plant will create about 1,000 new jobs, with around 350 workers per shift, serving GM’s nearby Orion Assembly plant where the Chevrolet Bolt EV is currently built but is getting upgraded and modified for electric pickup assembly to begin next year when the Bolt will be retired.

"General Motors has identified the former Palace of Auburn Hills site as a potential location for a supplier park to support its Orion Assembly Plant, which will be expanded to produce electric pickup trucks," GM said in a statement. "The company is still determining the scope of work and which supplier will have operations in support of the plant."

Related video: General Motors Drop Chevy Bolt, Retool factory for electric pickups (Benzinga) Duration 0:30 View on Watch

GM's plan: Employee buyouts, not job cuts, a step to cut $2 billion in costs | World Business News
2:03

GM proposes $200M Auburn Hills EV facility at former Palace site
2:26

AutoNET2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV Towing
1:01

Before going into production at the Orion plant, General Motors will begin making the Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV at its Factory Zero in Detroit this year. Together, the two factories will be able to produce as many as 600,000 electric pickups per year at full speed.

Draft plans for the project were submitted to the city in July, with the Mayor of Auburn Hills, Kevin McDaniel, saying in a statement that the city has been planning and preparing for this day for the last seven years. "This would be a significant project and would represent a tremendous strategic investment in our community. It would also build on our reputation as being a 'hub' of electric vehicle development and manufacturing," he added.

Based on GM’s Ultium platform, the Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV offer up to 754 horsepower and up to 785 pound-feet of torque, with a maximum estimated driving range of 400 miles. The Silverado EV RST is slated to arrive in fall 2023, while the Sierra EV will become available in “early 2024.”

Read More EV Stories

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Rivian Software Executive Talks About Features And Upgrades In Q&A

Source: Automotive News

Stellantis Shrinking US Workforce, Offers Buyouts To 33K Employees: Report

Story by Christopher Smith •

Stellantis Logo With Ram Truck© Motor1.com
The voluntary buyouts are aimed largely at hourly workers in a bid to make the company more efficient.

In a move to make reductions to its US workforce, Stellantis is reportedly offering voluntary severance packages to 33,500 employees. Details of the package aren't known, though it largely targets hourly workers. Approximately 2,500 salaried workers with more than 15 years on the job will also receive an offer, according to Reuters. Some Canadian employees could also receive buyout offers.

The buyouts were reportedly sent to employees in an email today from Stellantis Chief Operating Officer Mark Stewart, citing a need for the company to become more efficient by streamlining operations. At this time, there's no official word on how many jobs Stellantis may cut, though a United Autoworkers (UAW) unit allegedly stated 3,500 buyouts were targeted. Motor1.com contacted the automaker seeking additional information but a reply wasn't immediately returned. We will provide an update should new details emerge.

This news comes nearly two months after the Jeep Cherokee plant in Belvidere, Illinois was idled, much to the dismay of UAW officials and state representatives. Similarly, Reuters reports UAW President Shawn Fain as calling today's buyout offer "a slap in the face" to employees, families, and Americans in general. Rising costs for EV research and production were cited by Stellantis as reasons for closing the Belvidere facility. Apparently, the motivation behind this recent buyout offer is the same.

The closing of the Cherokee plant resulted in approximately 1,350 layoffs, though Jeep pledged that the shutdown was not the end of the Cherokee. In an email to Motor1.com, a Jeep representative said there were "plans for that important vehicle in that important segment, which we will reveal in due time." Beyond that, the plant may not stay closed as there's a strong push from Illinois to reopen the facility, possibly as a location for production of the Ram 1500 Revolution electric truck.

Stellantis News:
Stellantis Asking Factory Employees To Work As Truck Drivers To Deliver Cars

Stellantis Hires Natalie Knight To Replace Richard Palmer As CFO

As this news breaks, Stellantis shares word that the company earned the Best Employers: Excellence in Health and Well-being Award from the Business Group on Health.

Source: Reuters

SLAVERY: INDENTURED SERVITUDE

Are au pairs to become a thing of the past?

Máté Horváth looks back on his time working as an au pair in Edinburgh as a life changing experience.

By Jane Bradley
Published 30th Apr 2023,

Au pair schemes were originally set up to be cultural exchange programmes.

“I really enjoyed the experience, and the different culture,” he says. “It was safe, it gave me another culture and new friends. This experience opened my view, and changed the way I think about the world.”

Mr Horváth, who, ten years later, is now married with three children of his own and settled in his native Hungary, spent a year living with a Scottish family, where he looked after their two children in return for food, board and a small salary.

"At school, I learned English and Latin,” he says. “So I had just one option to travel abroad: Great Britain. I wanted to try to improve my language skills.”

Máté Horváth, from Hungary, was an au pair in Edinburgh ten years ago.

Working as an au pair is often seen as a rite of passage for young people, like Mr Horváth, looking for an opportunity to experience culture abroad – and a useful source of live-in childcare for busy, working families. Around 20 countries in the world from China to France, the US and Canada have an au pair scheme.

From the French “au pair”, meaning “at par”, the term was used to describe the economic parity between the employee and employer – an exchange of work for a cultural experience.

Now, however, the numbers of people living in a foreign country in exchange for childcare and light housework has fallen, amid changes to immigration rules – and politicians’ fears that au pairs, who are often not subject to the same employment rules and rights as regular workers, could be being exploited.

In Norway, the government has this month put forward a proposal to scrap its scheme to permit foreign workers to enter the country as au pairs, amid fears that they are being exploited by the families who employ them.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the number of au pairs has plummeted since Britain left the European Union. Now, only people who already have the right to work in the UK can be taken on as an au pair, removing potential applications from most people from the 27 EU member states, unless they already had leave to remain in Britain. A separate visa pathway for au pairs was scrapped by the Home Office in November 2008 and despite a campaign led by the British Au Pair Agencies Association to re-establish a similar scheme after Brexit, the idea was not taken up by the UK Government.

Even in countries still operating a working au pair scheme, controversy is rife. An Australian study published in 2018 found the majority of foreign au pairs working in Australia, where they can be employed on a working holiday visa, were being asked to do housework on top of their childcare duties by families taking advantage of cheap labour, while au pairs from South America living in the US have complained of being exploited.

Mr Horváth had a good experience, taking the children of his employers to school and to extra curricular activities. He is concerned that fewer young people will be able to have the cultural opportunity he had.

“The family I lived with was very kind, patient, and lovely,” he remembers. “Before I moved, we talked around three or four times and the duties were clear. Sometimes, it was not easy to live in a family, because everything was totally different: the language, the weather, the rules, the people. But this was the reason why I wanted to travel.

"I really loved Edinburgh, it is so different to home. At my time, it was easy to travel, and easy to start working as an au pair. If it is not easy to travel and work now, less young people will be able to have that opportunity.”

In Norway, the decision to scrap the scheme has come following a string of court cases relating to situations where some people employed under the au pair scheme – many of them young women from the Philippines – were exploited by their employer.

In 2017, wealthy Norwegian investor Ragnar Horn and his wife, Joey Shaista Horn, were jailed for five months for fraudulently and illegally using two young women from the Philippines as au pairs at the same time, and putting them to work as their low-paid household help.

This came a year after Norway’s state immigration agency UDI ruled that 45 Norwegian families should be prohibited from having au pairs in their homes, because of the families’ alleged violations of the programme.

Peggy Hessen Følsvik, head of Norway’s largest labour confederation, LO, has branded the practice a form of “slavery”.

"Unfortunately, the scheme has given us many examples of gross exploitation of women. I am simply relieved that this scheme has now been put to an end,” she said.

Norwegian labour minister Marte Mjøs Persen last month submitted a proposal to end the au pair residence permit scheme. The plan is now out for consultation, which will run until the end of June, although it is likely to be approved.

“It is a system that does not work as intended. It is no longer a cultural exchange scheme as it once was. The scheme is used to obtain cheap labour in the home, either for childcare or housework,” she told Norwegian media.

“Even though many au pair live well with their host families, the program has also become a loophole to get cheap workers. The time when the au pair program was seen as a cultural exchange is over.”

One mother, from Edinburgh, says she was careful to do everything “by the book” when she employed an au pair to look after her three children. UK regulations state that au pairs should be given time to study and practise their English with the host family, as well as attending language lessons – and should not be expected to work for more than 30 hours a week.

She has taken in four different au pairs at different times – all from France, where the family has previously lived.

"We always gave the au pairs the opportunity to eat with us, although we were lucky that we have a sort of granny flat, so they had their own space if they wanted it,” she says.

"We did our best to teach them about Scottish culture, and we also paid for them to go to a language school while they were here if they wanted to.

"It gave the children an opportunity to keep up their French, but they’re not here to be nannies, they were more like a big sister and that was really nice for the kids. We’re older parents and the younger au pair can run around in the garden and jump on the trampoline a bit more than we can.

"We have stayed in touch with some of them and they have come to visit us again.”

How can au pairs work in the UK and other countries?

Au pairs wanting to live with a family in the UK need to already have permission to work here, meaning that since Brexit, the number of potential employees has greatly reduced. No specific pathway has been created for au pairs to enter the UK separately, since the Home Office scrapped a previous visa pathway in 2008.

Outside of those who already have a UK working visa, nationals who are eligible to apply under the Youth Mobility Scheme Visa – from Australia, Canada, Monaco, New Zealand, San Marino and Iceland – also have the opportunity to look for work as an au pair.

Au pairs usually live with the family they work for and are unlikely to be classed as workers or employees. They are not entitled to the National Minimum Wage or paid holidays.

Instead, they are treated as a member of the family they live with and get “pocket money” instead - usually at least £90 a week. However, depending on how much pocket money” they earn, they may have to pay Income Tax and National Insurance. They are also expected to be given time to study and practise their English with the host family, as well as attending language lessons.

Some countries have a separate route for those wanting to work as an au pair – while others require applicants to hold a working holiday visa, or be paid full salaries in accordance with minimum wage requirements.

In Spain, for example, applicants have to fulfil certain criteria, such as not being married, not having children of their own and having experience in childcare. They also need the right to live and work in the country – such as EU citizenship or an existing working visa.

Childcare is broken in the US, work-from-home won’t fix it

Sarah Green Carmichael

NEW YORK – It seems people can go hardly a week without a viral video clip from a virtual all-hands meeting.

In one of the most recent, Mr James Clarke, chief executive officer of media company Clearlink, is trying to justify a return-to-office mandate at the digital marketing and technology company when he suddenly suffers an acute case of rapid-onset foot-in-mouth syndrome.

In the section of the video that has ruffled the most feathers, he seems to be speaking to employees who want to continue to work remotely because they have been unable to find childcare.

“Only the rarest of full-time caregivers can also be a productive and full-time employee at the same time,” he says.

The comment has sparked outrage – and confusion. I don’t know any mum or dad who considers themselves a “part-time” parent. And plenty of working parents consider themselves primary caregivers, even if their child is in daycare 50 hours a week.

But in the context of his larger comments, it seems to me that Mr Clarke is worried about employees who say they need to keep working remotely because they do not have other daycare arrangements and their children are too young to go to school.

And I am sorry to say that, however clumsy his words, he is not wrong.

It is generally not a good idea to work full-time from home without some form of daycare for young children. For evidence, look no further than the first 18 months of the pandemic.

I spoke with Ms Jill Koziol, CEO of Motherly, a fully remote content company that requires all employees to have childcare.

“To cut out the commute time is such a gift to your employees and to families – and frankly, brings you more loyal and committed and productive employees,” she says.

But operating as a fully remote company requires openness and transparency – from both managers and employees.

Ms Koziol says they ask employees about their childcare arrangements as part of one-on-one conversations and in the context of the company’s flexibility benefits.

Employees are expected to work eight hours a day, at least six of which should be between 9am and 5pm in their local time zone. Approaching childcare conversations this way helps balance expectation-setting with empathy.

Data on how many remote employees are trying to get by without any outside childcare are hard to come by.

An estimate from Motherly’s annual survey of thousands of mothers suggests it could be about 7 per cent of full-time remote working mums.

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Although that is a small share, it has not stopped employers from worrying about it – or from making assumptions about what mothers are doing when they are working remotely. (And I am specifically using the word “mother” here because no one seems to make these assumptions about dads with remote jobs.)

For months now, when I have interviewed experts and leaders about the return to office and I bring up the challenges faced by parents, some of the men I spoke to have left me with the distinct impression they think mums (always mums) want to keep working remotely not to save time on commuting, but to simultaneously care for young children.

As a toddler mum myself, I cannot imagine anything more hellacious. Yes, during the height of Covid-19, when families were isolating and schools and daycares were closed, many parents did have kids at home during working hours.

But families found this excruciating.

Kids were on screens all day, partners were parenting and working in alternating shifts, and days were long – a patchwork of Zoom calls and Elmo marathons stretching from dawn to midnight.

A FlexJobs survey from spring 2021 shows the toll: 21 per cent of working parents had to reduce their hours; 16 per cent had to quit their jobs; and 40 per cent said they worked too long and could not unplug.

As daycare centres and schools reopened, and vaccines became available for everyone but infants, parents gratefully put this chaos behind them.

Yet, isolated anecdotes make it clear that there are likely still some parents who are trying to work remotely with children at home.

For these outliers, there are probably challenges of availability and access – but the main challenge is likely cost.

In Utah, where Mr Clearlink is based, the average annual cost of infant daycare is US$16,572 (S$22,105).

Utah also has the highest number of children in a family, with about 2.32 kids each household. Daycare for one baby and one toddler would cost about US$28,608. The average salary for women in the state is only US$23,000.

I cannot blame families for wanting to keep exorbitant daycare costs down. But remote jobs are not the answer to America’s broken childcare system.

Ms Koziol has advice for employees who want to keep working remotely: Combat any unspoken employer fears by being explicit that you have full-time, outside-the-home daycare.