Canada begins process to ratify USMCA trade deal

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally introduced legislation to his country's parliament Wednesday to ratify the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade. Parliamentary action on the deal, which would replace the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, had been held up for months by a dispute between Trudeau's administration and the White House over steel and aluminum tariffs. Trudeau urged Canadian lawmakers to quickly wrap the deal up now that the dispute had been resolved. "The new NAFTA will secure access to a trading zone that accounts for more than a quarter of the global economy,” Trudeau said, according to Reuters. “It is now time for the members of this House to ratify it.”

Trudeau is set to meet with Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday to coordinate strategy on passing USMCA through their respective legislatures. Earlier this month, the Trump administration agreed to restore exemptions Canada and Mexico had on U.S. tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum. The Trump administration initially granted the exemptions last year when it first enacted the tariffs, but removed them during negotiations as a tactic to pressure Canada and Mexico. After a deal was struck late last year, the Trump administration resisted pressure for months to restore the exemptions, prompting Canada and Mexico to refuse to ratify the agreement until it budged.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has yet to commit to bringing the USMCA up for a floor vote, arguing that the trade deal lacks proper enforcement provisions, among other shortcomings. Canada and Mexico have refused to reopen the deal for further negotiations, a position the Trump administration has taken as well. "The reality is that Speaker Pelosi, under the Trade Promotion Authority, has the keys here about when this gets brought up and what the process is," Marc Short, chief staff to Vice President Mike Pence, told CNBC.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/canada-begins-process-to-ratify-usmca-trade-deal

Google Accused Of Running 'White-Collar Sweatshop' To Power 'AI' Assistant

Google Assistant - the company's 'AI' equivalent to Siri or Alexa - can make life easier in all sorts of ways, including setting reminders, controlling smart home devices, booking rental cars and more. And the service - which Google says is on at least a billion devices, is powered by a giant apparatus of underpaid, overworked human subcontractors who manage the entire operation, according to The Guardian's Julia Wong. This 'army' of contractors often work massive amounts of overtime for free in the hopes of becoming a full-time Google employee with all the perks and benefits that come with it.

"It’s smoke and mirrors if anything," said one current Google employee - who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Artificial intelligence is not that artificial; it’s human beings that are doing the work." Current and former employees noted Google's reliance on around 100,000 temporary workers, vendors and contractors (known internally as TVCs), who produce a large amount of the company's work. Those who collect or create data for much of its technology are not directly employed by Google; from the drivers who roam around the earth for Google Maps, or YouTube's content moderators who train the company's filters to catch banned content, to people who endlessly flip pages of physical books to scan into the Google Books libraries. This has created two tiers of workers at Google; highly compensated, full-time employees, vs. low-wage contract workers who are found using staffing firms. The employees said this dichotomy is "corrosive" , "highly problematic" and "permissive of exploitation." "It’s like a white-collar sweatshop," said one Google employee. "If it’s not illegal, it’s definitely exploitative. It’s to the point where I don’t use the Google Assistant, because I know how it’s made, and I can’t support it."

On Tuesday, the New York Times noted that Google's use of underpaid contractors extends far beyond just the Google Assistant team. An 'army' of cunning linguists are teaching their replacements. Much of what is driving modern advancements in computing and user experiences involves the study of language. As the Guardian notes, it's taken decades to go from monotonously programming a clunky VCR - to simply telling your digital assistant what you want, when you want it. In short, Silicon Valley has gone to great lengths to understand natural human speech, in all its variations. And all of this has been developed using a combination of humans feeding massive data sets into machine learning systems.

In order to feed the systems, Pygmalion was created in 2014. The brainchild of longitme Google executive Linne Ha, the division was tasked with creating linguistic data sets required for Google's neural networks to adapt to dozens of languages. Programming is a "painstaking" and labor-intensive process, requiring the careful creation of "handcrafted" data sets in order for the digital systems to function properly. As originally planned, Google employs just a handful of full-time employees in Pygmalion - while outsourcing an "army" of subcontracted linguists around the world, according to documents reviewed by The Guardian. At present, there are 40-50 full time Googlers and around 200 temporary workers contracted through global staffing firms such as Adecco. The workers include associate linguists who annotate data sets, and project managers who oversee that work. "Imagine going from producing PhD level research and pushing forward the state of knowledge in the world to going to an annotation type job, where all you’re doing all day is annotating data; it’s very click, click, click," said one former Pygmalion project manager. "Everyone was trying to prove themselves because everyone was trying to work for Google. The competitive edge that happened among colleagues as TVCs was severe."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-29/google-accused-running-white-collar-sweatshop-power-ai-assistant

>>6622599

Thanks Anon, perfectly said, and I a completely agree. Ignore the drama. We have so much more to uncover. There are many counting on our efforts here. WWG1WGA

>>6622635

The only thing unbearable here is having to have this Sir Name working keep itself relevant in any conversation..as a hero to the People Of the United States. The title Songbird wasn't because it was a beautiful voice, or a fighter for his troops, Songbird was and is a Traitor to these United States of America. That should be front and center and seared in the minds of people every where.