Apple Inc. is wading in to the debate over regulation of self driving cars, declaring it is excited about the potential for automated transportation and calling on U.S. regulators not to restrict testing of such vehicles.

A five-page letter from Steve Kenner, Apple’s director of product integrity, to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is the company’s most comprehensive statement yet about its interest in self-driving vehicle technology. The Nov. 22 letter followed more than a year of industry speculation about the computer and iPhone maker’s plans for expanding into transportation. “The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation,” Kenner wrote.

“Executed properly under NHTSA’s guidance, automated vehicles have the potential to greatly enhance the human experience — to prevent millions of car crashes and thousands of fatalities each year and to give mobility to those without.”

Apple urged regulators not to impose too many restrictions on testing of self-driving cars, saying “established manufacturers and new entrants should be treated equally.” Since software would decide what actions to take in potentially dangerous situations,

Apple said certain areas need special attention. These include the implications of algorithmic decisions for the safety, mobility and legality of automated vehicles and their occupants, ensuring privacy and security in design, and the impact of the cars on employment and public spaces. Some analysts forecast millions of jobs will be lost once self-driving cars largely replace truck, taxi and Uber drivers, and eliminate the need for most vehicle repairs, insurance adjusters and other functions.

Apple’s letter was prompted by its heavy investment in machine learning and autonomous systems, company spokesman Tom Neumayr said in an emailed statement. “There are many potential applications for these technologies, including the future of transportation, so we want to work with NHTSA to help define the best practices for the industry,” he said.

In September, the Obama administration proposed guidelines for the development of self-driving cars in a 15-point “safety assessment,” calling on automakers to voluntarily submit details of their systems to regulators.

Apple executives have been coy about their interest in cars. Chief Executive Tim Cook has suggested that Apple wants to move beyond integration of Apple smartphones into vehicle infotainment systems. But Apple has never confirmed reports last year that it was hiring automotive industry engineers and designers to develop a driverless electric car, or that those efforts have

been sharply scaled back this year. Other companies pursuing self-driving cars include Alphabet Inc’s Google unit, Ford Motor Co, Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG, Tesla Motors Inc and General Motors Co.

Apple has reportedly held talks about investing in British automaker McLaren Technology Group, but McLaren downplayed speculation that Apple had proposed an investment.

Apple joins a range of automakers and tech companies that have raised concerns about the proposed National Highway Traffic Safety Administration policy on self-driving cars,  and plans by California state regulators to make complying with the safety assessment mandatory.

An auto trade group in November urged the incoming Trump administration to conduct a “comprehensive regulatory review” of all regulations and actions since Sept. 1, including the Obama administration’s guidance on self-driving vehicles.

By David Shepardson; Editing by Richard Chang.

 

While president Donald Trump fights his daily political battles, a Northern Virginia doctor – also named Donald Trump – is focused on clinical trials to fight cancer and doing the best he can to avoid conversations about his name or namesake.

The majority of Americans know Donald Trump as the bellicose Republican president and billionaire real estate developer, but there’s another Donald Trump who works about 15 miles from the White House.

Doctor Donald L. (Skip) Trump is the CEO and Executive Director of Inova Schar Cancer Institutue, located in Falls Church, Northern Virginia.

He’s a medical oncologist who has been involved in building and developing cancer centres for his entire career. Dr. Trump says at Inova Health System, his goal is to “develop an outstanding clinical care and clinical translational research facility to enhance cancer care in Northern Virginia and beyond.”

Dr. Trump received his medical education and completed his residency and fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. He is the recipient of several national awards, some of which are on display in his office. He has devoted a lot of time to developing Vitamin D-based treatments for cancer patients.

But for many years, and particularly during the last campaign season, Dr. Trump has had to deal with the fact that his name is Donald Trump.

“People laugh or say ‘oh no that can’t be’ or they’ll accuse me, I think somewhat seriously, of having a fake ID card or credit card. I’ve had people say ‘is that really your credit card’ or ‘is that really your name?’ I even had somebody at TSA ask me that,” said Trump. He also had a story to tell about getting out of a potential traffic ticket, when he made the officer laugh with his namesake.

He says he often goes by his childhood nickname of “Skip.”

“I used to, in professional settings, always introduce myself as Donald Trump but I’ve consciously avoided or shyed away from doing that recently because there’s no reason to invoke, or the potential (of) that segment of the conversation,” said Dr. Trump.

The two Trumps have conversed throughout the years. In 2010, Donald J. Trump (the now-president), called Dr. Trump to ask if the son of a friend could get into a clinical trial at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. The trial had already begun, so Dr. Trump declined. He then asked Donald J. Trump if he would have his head shaved for a cancer fundraising event. It was Donald J. Trump’s turn to decline, but Dr. Trump said he did make a “respectable” cash donation.

“The time I spent with him, it was obvious he was a successful business guy. He knew it and he knew I knew it and he didn’t want me to miss knowing it. I suspect there’s a lot of showmanship and stage presence. And that’s too bad,” said Dr. Trump.

Dr. Trump declined to comment on how he voted and said he stays away from voicing his political views in a professional setting, but said “his views and my views are pretty far apart.”

 

We have a funny family story about a woman who called one of my sisters a “patronizing c*nt” out of the blue. Please excuse the language. My sister was shocked the first time she heard it, and we’ve got in the habit of roaring with laughter at this unseemly expression every time we catch any one of us going too far in helping others. That said, patronizing styles have become all too common in our day.

The patronizing leader is a figure I see every day. Men and women who tend to their subordinates as if they were vulnerable little children in terrible need of guidance, consolation and help. In fact, I saw myself making this mistake when I had my own company too. It got so bad that I got up at four in the morning to answer emails and prepare stuff for the next day, working non-stop until seven or eight that evening. When I walked around the office I got nothing but whining, complaints, ugly, unhappy faces and long-winded emails from staff who blamed me for their lack of motivation. It was hell. It really was.

Like I did then, too many business owners and corporate executives treat their team members like kids. We seem to be caught in a cycle where we try to be better bosses and parents than the adults of our childhood were. So, away with the discipline, the angry telling off, the punishments and restrictions, and hello to the motivational seminars, the cuddly meetings full of positive feedback, and patronizing leadership – that rolls a red carpet of comfort before its employees. We’ve taken positive psychology a bit too far.

It’s not only a thing we do on a personal level with our peers and children. This excess of patronizing attention permeates our entire economic system in ways that we fail to notice. Many of our business models have become invasive – with advice, unrequested favors and exhausting email publicity campaigns. Everybody wants to solve our problems, before we even know they need resolving!

I went to a new, holistic dentist last week because a filling had came out. I was told the protocol was to analyze my mouth with several tests before they could start work. I was there all morning, going through hoops and obstacles before they even looked at the problem. They kept cooing soft instructions in my ear, spreading healthy creams and ointments here and there as they pointed out new problems. I felt smaller and smaller with each patronizing gesture, guilty as judged, helpless and dumb. The perfect victim for the crazy, two-year cost estimate I was elegantly handed before I left. Wow!

Then I walked into one of Spain’s iconic all-in-one stores, “The Corte Inglés” to get some basic dental care products. I had to walk around the cosmetics floor searching for four inexpensive products. The loud music and overpowering perfume scents made me dizzy. Beautiful people wearing too much makeup and dressed in black, kept offering things to me. When I finally found what I wanted to buy, the assortment of choice was unbearable. Too many brands, too many different variations and options for each brand, too many helpers offering advice on what worked – for them. And then the promotions, loyalty cards and other million ways of getting me to come back to spend more money! If I’d been as crass as my sister’s friend I would have insulted them all and stormed out. Whew! When did shopping become so patronizing?

Patronizing marketing and selling has taken over our businesses in the last few years, and I guess I just noticed it last week. It’s excessive, luxuriously expensive and egocentrically irresponsible, given our current environmental challenges. It also makes clients feel helpless, small, ugly and belittled. Like a miserable little lamb surrounded by hungry wolves.

And I’m not so sure it actually works in the longterm. It seems too expensive to maintain. Like a repetitive story where every brand tries to spend more money on advertising than the next, in order to get their spoiled brat clients’ attention one more time. This whole system we’ve created just feels wrong. It feels like the opposite of what things should be: trusting, responsible players negotiating fair deals with each other in a way that makes them feel strong and proud, wanting to come back for more because they appreciate each other.

There is a cute video on twitter showing a mother duck who helps her little ducklings up some steps. Once again an animal demonstrates the qualities of parenthood and leadership we should all pursue. Please take a couple minutes to watch it and ask yourself if this is what you do with your subordinates, clients, friends and kids. Or do you really, really want to run over and lift them all up? 

The mother duck waits patiently until every little duckling gets it right. There is no judging, no impatience, and no patronizing, belittling “Oh you poor thing! I’ll do it for you”. This is what parenting and leadership should look like. This is what I learned after painfully closing down my company. And guess what? When I finally ran out of energy and money to keep everybody on the payroll, nobody thanked me or appreciated what I had done. No. They kicked me in the shins. In their helpless, far-too-pampered view, the company’s failure was ALL my fault, and they were the victims!

When we “help” adults who’ve never asked us, we debilitate them. We feel big at the cost of making them feel small. It’s not sustainable. And sure isn’t leadership at all.

 

Greater support from the public, governments and investors is needed to boost the work of entrepreneurs using business for social good, said industry activists and organizers after a Thomson Reuters Foundation poll highlighted these as key issues.

While progress overcoming those obstacles is healthy and growing, they said at SOCAP – the largest annual conference of social entrepreneurs and investors – that more could be done to support what is seen as a new way of doing business.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of almost 900 social enterprise experts in the world’s 45 biggest economies released this week found the vast majority – 85 percent – said the sector was growing.

But nearly 60 percent of experts cited a lack of public understanding, access to investment and selling to governments as the biggest challenges that could hamper growth.

“There’s very limited awareness of what social entrepreneurship is,” said Dr. Asher Hasan, whose Pakistani-based company Docthers works with corporations in Mexico and Chile to provide insurance to suppliers, factory workers and others in their supply chains.

“They understand traditional philanthropy. They understand capitalism. They don’t understand the blend. There’s a lot of market development that needs to be done to help the mainstream understand.”

A social entrepreneur is typically someone who uses commercial strategies to tackle social and environmental problems, combining social good and financial gain.

Attendees at SOCAP said governments are promoting social entrepreneurship and schools are teaching it, while enterprises are finding fresh, creative ways to obtain credit and financing.

Jennifer Kushell, founder of Your Success Now (YSN), which connects youth with educational and career opportunities, said U.S. President Barack Obama had been supportive, promoting so-called entrepreneurship diplomacy, a strategy to find common goals in conflict areas.

YSN is designing a social entrepreneurship curriculum for business schools, she said.

“DON’T MISS THE NEXT THOMAS EDISON”

“You have a billion and a half young people, and they don’t even realize they can be entrepreneurs or realize they can work for entrepreneurial companies,” she said.

“It does need a lot more people to stand up and try to get the word out much more aggressively, like any movement.”

Seeking to support social entrepreneurs, Autodesk, a maker of software for architecture, engineering and other industries, provides free software and licenses, said Pam Henchman, who manages the entrepreneur impact program at the Mill Valley, California company.

“I definitely hear about finance and access to capital being a real problem,” she said.

“We don’t want the next Thomas Edison to walk by, and he didn’t get the software that he needed because he didn’t have enough money to buy a license.”

Banks are training loan officers on the risks involved in lending to social entrepreneurs, said Marina Leytes, a consultant with Impact Alpha, an online media site covering social and environmental business.

“More and more local banks are entering this sector, providing loans to smaller enterprises,” she said. “It’s a way for them to gain more clients and expand their operations.”

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves recently worked with the government of Kenya to eliminate a tax on cookstoves going to women in poor regions, said Stevie Valdez, manager of the Washington-based group’s impact investing and market development.

The Alliance aims to provide cleaner cookstoves and fuel to the 40 percent of the world’s population that uses solid fuel and cooks over open fires, creating severe environmental and health problems, Valdez said.

“We need the entrepreneurs really getting out there with great products, and we need the governments really making an effort to say, ‘You know what? We want healthier products,” she said.

Representatives of YSN, Autodesk and the Alliance were among 2,500 people attending SOCAP this week in San Francisco. The conference brings together investors and entrepreneurs to address issues such as poverty, climate change, job creation and food supplies.

By Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith. c Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, land rights and climate change.

 

Some argue that targeted cyberattacks and acts of cyberterrorism may be over-sensationalized, but with real-life incidents occurring regularly can we afford to ignore it?

We live in a world that has become used to spectacular and daring acts of conventional terrorism. But, as with the world around us, terrorism, and the threat it poses, is constantly evolving. We understand the power of the bullet and the bomb but now we also face exposure to a new, complex and potentially devastating form of terror: cyberterrorism. Increasingly, our societies are becoming wired together beyond national borders through a complex link of information and communication technology (ICT) networks and systems. Utilizing the same links that bind us together globally, a new generation of terrorists is able to strike from virtually anywhere in the world, causing catastrophic social and economic harm to countries thousands of miles away And due to their decentralized nature, these attacks are difficult to detect with traditional detection methods alone. A co-ordinated and sustained cyberattack against Estonia in March 2007 crippled banking and governmental IT systems, disrupting the lives of its citizens.

In 2015, credit-checking company Experian was hacked and 15 million T-Mobile customers had their information stolen. In the last year 300 million records were leaked and over USD1 billion stolen online. Chances are that you or someone you know has been affected by a cyberattack within the last few years, which is why it is essential for governments worldwide to do more than ensure our physical security. There is a need to come together and share the information and resources that will guarantee our cybersecurity. Governments cannot contain the threat of cyberterrorism through domestic measures alone. Without expert collaboration and knowledge sharing individual countries lessen their ability to respond to cyberattacks, as well as exposing other countries to even greater risks as cyber terrorists learn to exploit nations’ ICT weaknesses one-by-one. No single government possesses all the expertise to counter cyberterrorism.

Chances are that you or someone you know has been affected by a cyberattack within the last few years.

The talent pool of experts needed to meet disparate threats is dispersed across the globe, and in most instances, it is to be found in the private sector and academia rather than in government hands. The ability to respond quickly to contain and learn from cyberattacks is critical if damage is to be limited and the threat to other nations reduced. However, governments generally hesitate to collaborate with others on security related matters, thus adding to the challenge. To meet this growing threat, former Malaysian Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, launched a global initiative called IMPACT (the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats). It’s the first global public-private initiative, and allows countries to interact between themselves, the private sector and academia. Inspired by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), IMPACT seeks to offer the global community the best brains and the best facilities to complement the nations of the world to counter cyber threats.

In 2011, IMPACT became the cybersecurity executing arm of the U.N. Many ICT systems – in both the public and private sector – face daily threats from hackers and their bots – networks of zombie computers, millions strong, bombarding scanning and probing their websites with the aim of exploiting the vulnerable ones. For the most part, the probes come from criminal groups intent on stealing identities, credit details, passwords and other information they can turn to financial gain. As well as groups of so-called ‘black hats’ trying to break in simply for the thrill and kudos of breaching multi-million dollar security networks. But as many recent, well-publicized, hacks have shown, these same skills can be used for political purposes, to create a breakdown in a country’s social and economic fabric. These attacks prove very publicly that cyberterrorism is neither a game, nor a hoax, and that these nightmare scenarios are a very real threat. We are all at risk from cyberterrorism. Even those of us who have never touched a mouse or keyboard.

It could be something as simple as disabling the banking networks, halting ATM withdrawals and credit card payments, or manipulating the stock markets and causing banks and other institutions to fail, taking jobs, pensions and savings with them. In an address at the e-Crime Congress in London as far back as 2008, Suleyman Anil, Head of NATO’s Computer Incident Response Capability Co-Ordination Centre, stated that “Cyberdefence is now mentioned at the highest level along with missile defense and energy security. We have seen more of these attacks and we don’t think this problem will disappear soon.” With dozens of international bodies and organizations jostling for position and power in the cybersecurity sector, the problems of legal jurisdiction and national interest are boundless. Yet, as systems and software become ever more complex and connected, allowing hackers to breach so-called ‘soft targets’ and find a back door into more crucial and secure systems, the race to find a coordinating body becomes ever more desperate, and the need to cooperate across borders and jurisdictions becomes more urgent.

 

British sculptor Antony Gormley puts people’s relationships with urban construction at the forefront of his latest exhibition “Fit”, creating a sort of labyrinth in a London gallery space.

“Sleeping Field”, one of the installations at the White Cube Bermondsey gallery, is made up of hundreds of iron sculptures, which at first look like small high-rise buildings but on closer inspection resemble resting bodies.

“Fit” follows the Turner Prize winning artist’s “Model” exhibition with a concept that “considers the degree to which we are measured by and measure ourselves against the scale and density of our built environment”.

Gormley has configured the gallery space into 15 discrete chambers to create a series of dramatic physiological encounters in the form of a labyrinth.

“Fit” runs until November 6.

By Marie-Louise Gumuchian. Editing by Louise Ireland.