An exploration of art, nature and technology

Caroline Rothwell is a Sydney-based visual artist whose work tackles important conversations about human interactions with nature throughout history — and their lasting effects. In her latest body of work, she hopes to bring attention to the plants around us we so often take for granted.

She wanted to see if technology could help her use botanical data from historical archives to educate people about the natural world. So with the help of Google Creative Lab Sydney, she began exploring how machine learning could interpret archives and datasets to create new art. Together, we built Infinite Herbarium, a web application as well as a participatory art installation, in which users can explore an infinite number of machine-learning-generated plants, creating their own artwork while learning more about the plants in their own backyard.

The installation invites participants to photograph two plants from the world around them. Then, using machine learning, the application classifies the plants and uses them to build a multi-dimensional artwork. The machine learning model is trained on a vast database of botanical illustrations. After learning what the illustrations look like, it starts to generate a “new” hybrid image.

Rothwell exhibited the artwork at The National 2021: New Australian Art exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, where she featured a series of large-scale projections of plant morphs that were created using the Infinite Herbarium web application. At the same time, the work was shown at The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, where visitors were given the chance to create their own plant morphs —  using the rich and varied plant specimens available in the gardens as inspiration.

Caroline’s aim for Infinite Herbarium is to “create a connection to and consideration for our threatened natural world.” For artists like her, Infinite Herbarium demonstrates how machine learning can be a powerful new tool for creativity.

For the Creative Lab team, collaborating with Caroline was a singular opportunity to think about how technology can help bring art to life, capturing people’s attention and imagination. It’s an area rich in potential, and one that we hope to continue exploring with artists across multiple disciplines.

by Jonathan Richards via The Keyword

It’s a hot one: How heat waves have trended over time

I live in the Pacific Northwest, a part of North America known for cooler weather and notoriously gray skies. So imagine my surprise when temperatures hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit over the past few days. And did I mention that, like many other PNWers, I don’t have air conditioning? Every morning lately, my Google Assistant delivers the slightly worrying news that the temperature is ticking up.

The heat wave is all anyone here — and in other affected areas — can talk about. U.S. searches about heat waves and sunscreen reached all time record highs this month, and “air conditioner installation service” spiked more than 2,150% over the same period of time. (To little surprise, search interest in air conditioning peaks every summer — but you can see that they’ve been rising every year.) 

Since many of us are searching for this kind of information, I decided to take a trip down Ngrams lane to see how exactly we’ve talked about (er, I suppose “written about”) extreme summer weather over time. As a quick refresher, Ngrams was launched in 2009 by the Google Books team. The tool shows how books and other pieces of writing have used certain words or phrases over time, so you can see how popular (or unpopular) they’ve been throughout the years. 

I started with the classic “heat wave,” which has steadily risen over time. I also tried “a hot one,” and given how that phrase could apply to so many different use cases (outdoor temperatures but also meals, items, etc.), it’s been relatively steady. 

I decided to try “scorcher” and the more specific “summer scorcher.” 

The semi-consistent dips in “summer scorcher” suggest that the phrase was likely only used much...in the summer. But what about that huge peak in just plain “scorcher” in 1896? Below the graph, there’s an option to choose the time period from 1892 to 1897 and see how the word was used in books that have been uploaded to Google Books vast digital library. To my surprise, “scorcher” at this point in time didn’t refer to a tortuously hot day: In many cases, it was used to talk about someone who raced bicycles. 

So now when you hear someone say “today’s going to be a scorcher,” I hope you’ll also tell them about the word’s past life. As for me, I’m heading back to the search bar to learn more about another trending search that really hits home: “how to stay cool without ac.”

by Molly The Keyword via The Keyword

An update on our progress in responsible AI innovation

Over the past year, responsibly developed AI has transformed health screenings, supportedfact-checking to battle misinformation and save lives, predicted Covid-19 cases to support public health, and protected wildlife after bushfires. Developing AI in a way that gets it right for everyone requires openness, transparency, and a clear focus on understanding the societal implications. That is why we were among the first companies to develop and publish AI Principles and why, each year, we share updates on our progress.

Building on previous AI Principles updates in 2018,  2019, and 2020, today we’re providing our latest overview of what we’ve learned, and how we’re applying these learnings.

Internal Education

In the last year, to ensure our teams have clarity from day one, we’ve added an introduction to our AI Principles for engineers and incoming hires in technical roles. The course presents each of the Principles as well as the applications we will not pursue.

Integrating our Principles into the work we do with enterprise customers is key, so we’ve continued to make our AI Principles in Practice training mandatory for customer-facing Cloud employees. A version of this training is available to all Googlers.

There is no single way to apply the AI Principles to specific features and product development. Training must consider not only the technology and data, but also where and how AI is used. To offer a more comprehensive approach to implementing the AI Principles, we’ve been developing opportunities for Googlers to share their points of view on the responsible development of future technologies, such as the AI Principles Ethics Fellowship for Google’s Employee Resource Groups. Fellows receive AI Principles training and craft hypothetical case studies to inform how Google prioritizes socially beneficial applications. This inaugural year, 27 fellows selected from 191 applicants from around the world wrote and presented case studies on topics such as genome datasets and a Covid-19 content moderation workflow.

Other programs include a bi-weekly Responsible AI Tech Talk Series featuring external experts, such as the Brookings Institution’s Dr. Nicol Turner Lee presenting on detecting and mitigating algorithmic bias.

Tools and Research

To bring together multiple teams working on technical tools and research, this year we formed the Responsible AI and Human-Centered Technology organization. The basic and applied researchers in the organization are devoted to developing technology and best practices for the technical realization of the AI Principles guidance.

As discussed in our December 2020 End-of-Year report, we regularly release these tools to the public. Currently, researchers are developing Know Your Data (in beta) to help developers understand datasets with the goal of improving data quality, helping to mitigate fairness and bias issues.

Know Your Data, a Responsible AI tool in beta

Product teams use these tools to evaluate their work’s alignment with the AI Principles. For example, the Portrait Light feature available in both Pixel’s Camera and Google Photos uses multiple machine learning components to instantly add realistic synthetic lighting to portraits. Using computational methods to achieve this effect, however, raised several responsible innovation challenges, including potentially reinforcing unfair bias (AI Principle #2) despite the goal of building a feature that works for all users. So the Portrait Light team generated a training dataset containing millions of photos based on an original set of photos of different people in a diversity of lighting environments, with their explicit consent. The engineering team used various Google Responsible AI tools to test proactively whether the ML models used in Portrait Light performed equitably across different audiences.

Our ongoing technical research related to responsible innovation in AI in the last 12 months has led to more than 200 research papers and articles that address AI Principles-related topics. These include exploring and mitigating data cascades; creating the first model-agnostic framework for partially local federated learning suitable for training and inference at scale; and analyzing the energy- and carbon-costs of training six recent ML models to reduce the carbon footprint of training an ML system by up to 99.9%.

Operationalizing the Principles

To help our teams put the AI Principles into practice, we deploy our decision-making process for reviewing new custom AI projects in development — from chatbots to newer fields such as affective technologies. These reviews are led by a multidisciplinary Responsible Innovation team, which draws on expertise in disciplines including trust and safety, human rights, public policy, law, sustainability, and product management. The team also advises product areas, on specific issues related to serving enterprise customers. Any Googler, at any level, is encouraged to apply for an AI Principles review of a project or planned product or service.

Teams can also request other Responsible Innovation services, such as informal consultations or product fairness testing with the Product Fairness (ProFair) team. ProFair tests products from the user perspective to investigate known issues and find new ones, similar to how an academic researcher would go about identifying fairness issues.

Our Google Cloud, Image Search, Next Billion Users and YouTube product teams have engaged with ProFair to test potential new projects for fairness. Consultations include collaborative testing scenarios, focus groups, and adversarial testing of ML models to address improving equity in data labels, fairness in language models, and bias in predictive text, among other issues. Recently, the ProFair team spent nine months consulting with Google researchers on creating an object recognition dataset for physical landmarks (such as buildings), developing criteria for how to choose which classes to recognize and how to determine the amount of training data per class in ways that would assign a fairer relevance score to each class.

Reviewers weigh the nature of the social benefit involved and whether it substantially exceeds potential challenges. For example, in the past year, reviewers decided not to publicly release ML models that can create photo-realistic synthetic faces made with generative adversarial networks (GANs), because of the risk of potential misuse by malicious actors to create “deepfakes” for misinformation purposes.

As another example, a research team requested a review of a new ML training dataset for computer vision fairness techniques that offered more specific attributes about people, such as perceived gender and age-range. The team worked with Open Images, an open data project containing ~9 million images spanning thousands of object categories and bounding box annotations for 600 classes. Reviewers weighed the risk of labeling the data with the sensitive labels of perceived gender presentation and age-range, and the societal benefit of these labels for fairness analysis and bias mitigation. Given these risks, reviewers required creation of a data card explaining the details and limitations of the project. We released the MIAP (More Inclusive Annotations for People) dataset in the Open Images Extended collection. The collection contains more complete bounding box annotations for the person class hierarchy in 100K images containing people. Each annotation is also labeled with fairness-related attributes. MIAP was accepted and presented at the 2021 Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Society conference.

External Engagement

We remain committed to contributing to emerging international principles for responsible AI innovation. For example, we submitted a response to the European Commission consultation on the inception impact assessment on ethical and legal requirements for AI and feedback on NITI Aayog’s working document on Responsible Use of AI to guide national principles for India. We also supported the Singaporean government’s Guide to Job Redesign in the Age of AI, which outlines opportunities to optimize AI benefits by redesigning jobs and reskilling employees.

Our efforts to engage global audiences, from students to policymakers, center on educational programs and discussions to offer helpful and practical ML education, including:

• A workshop on Federated Learning and Analytics, making all research talks and a TensorFlow Federated tutorial publicly available.
• Machine Learning for Policy Leaders (ML4PL), a 2-hour virtual workshop on the basics of ML. To date, we’ve expanded this globally, reaching more than 350 policymakers across the EU, LatAm, APAC, and US.
  
• A workshop co-hosted with the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on the Responsible Use of AI for Social Empowerment, exploring the potential of AI adoption in the government to address COVID-19, agricultural and environmental crises.

To support these workshops and events with actionable and equitable programming designed for long-term collaboration, over the past year we’ve helped launch:

• AI for Social Good workshops, bringing together NGOs applying AI to tough challenges in their communities with academic experts and Google researchers to encourage collaborative AI solutions. So far we’ve supported more than 30 projects in Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa with expertise, funding and Cloud Credits.
  
• Two collaborations with the U.S. National Science Foundation: one to support the National AI Research Institute for Human-AI Interaction and Collaboration with $5 million in funding, along with AI expertise, research collaborations and Cloud support; another to join other industry partners and federal agencies as part of a combined $40 million investment in academic research for Resilient and Intelligent Next-Generation (NextG) Systems, in which Google will offer expertise, research collaborations, infrastructure and in-kind support to researchers.
  
• Quarterly Equitable AI Research Roundtables (EARR), focused on the potential downstream harms of AI with experts from the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, PolicyLink, and Emory University School of Law.
  
• MLCommons, a non-profit, which will administer MLPerf, a suite of benchmarks for Google and industry peers.
  

Committed to sharing tools and discoveries

In the three years since Google released our AI Principles, we’ve worked to integrate this ethical charter across our work — from the development of advanced technologies to business processes. As we learn and engage with people and organizations across society we’re committed to sharing tools, processes and discoveries with the global community. You’ll find many of these in our recently updated People + AI Research Guidebook and on the Google AI responsibilities site, which we update quarterly with case studies and other resources. 

by Kent Walker via The Keyword

Why this Google engineer is teaching students to code

San Francisco-based Googler Ernest Holmes first started coding when he was in high school. “From then on, I was hooked and knew I wanted to become an engineer,” he says. By the time he was a freshman at Morehouse College, Ernest was participating in the Google in Residence program (GIR). That program introduced him to the Google internship program which he took part in for three consecutive summers before joining us as a full-time engineer.

Early exposure to coding helped set Ernest up for success, but some of his classmates weren’t as lucky. During his first computer science course in college, he realized many of the students were only then getting their first coding experience.

“There were some students who, like me, had their interest piqued early on, while others had never coded before in their lives, and they just wanted to take a computer science class to figure it out,” Ernest says. “For that second group, it was like they were starting at a disadvantage because they’d never been exposed to the concepts, and they were entering into college life at the same time. That can be overwhelming.”

Ernest started tutoring sessions for his classmates and quickly learned that if they’d been exposed even just a few years earlier, it could have changed their paths. Inspired by this idea, in 2019 — at the same time Ernest began his career as a full-time engineer at Google — he founded the nonprofit CodeHouse to fulfill his personal goal of bringing the joy of coding to the next generation.

“CodeHouse is a nonprofit that partners with schools across the U.S. to introduce students to careers in tech through exposure to large tech companies, hands-on training and financial assistance,” Ernest says.

The Codehouse team.

CodeHouse brings software engineers, product managers and designers from Google and other tech companies, as well as representatives from colleges and universities around the U.S., to meet with students and share their career stories.

“Throughout the year, we host Tech Exposure Days to make learning about careers and opportunities in tech a fun and engaging experience,” Ernest says. “We want students to leave with more knowledge about what’s out there in the tech industry as well as connect with role models who look like them in careers they hadn’t even considered.”

To date, CodeHouse has worked with more than 2,500 students through its events. With support from fellow Googlers Michelle Asamoah and William Bell, the CodeHouse team continues to grow and so does its mission.

“We started CodeHouse by hosting events to help expose students to tech while they’re in high school, but we want to be a long-term partner for them on their journey through college and into their professional careers,” Ernest says. “To do this, we kicked off our CodeHouse Scholar initiative last year where we’re offering $20,000 scholarships, mentorship, and a technical skills training session for incoming freshmen going to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and majoring in computer science.”

10:25

In the first cohort of scholars, CodeHouse identified 30 students from across the U.S. to be sponsored and receive scholarships. These students will participate in a technical skills workshop that includes an introduction to basic coding languages like Python and they’ll learn about different careers in computer science. Ernest and the CodeHouse team hope to scale this program to additional career fields in tech so students can get even more exposure and skills training before college.

“I fell in love with computer science,” Ernest says. “As an engineer at Google, I know that I can create anything that I can imagine. I want to introduce as many people to that feeling and this field as possible.”

To learn more about CodeHouse, visit thecodehouse.org. You can also follow them on Twitter, Instagram or their Facebook page.

by Christina Carmichael via The Keyword

Nakisha Wynn helps other moms build profitable blogs

Nakisha Wynn was working at a financial services firm when life took an unexpected turn. She thought about starting a blog aimed at other moms, particularly single mothers. “I didn’t see anybody who looked like me doing the blogging thing,” Nakisha notes. “It was either these fabulous girls showing off their fashions or huge bloggers I couldn’t relate to, so I birthed my blog from that.”

In 2016, Nakisha launchednakishawynn.com, where she blogs about single parenting, personal finance, working at home, family travel, frugal living and self-care.

Today, her following extends to social media, including YouTube, Instagram andFacebook. She has developed brand partnerships, participates in affiliate programs and offers her professional services as a content creator, coach and speaker. 

Nakisha describes how “hard work, persistence and dedication” led to her entrepreneurial success as a web creator, blogger and YouTuber. 

How would you start a blog from scratch?

The very first thing I would do is connect with current bloggers that I look up to. Comment on their videos or blog posts and follow them on Instagram and put yourself into that person's community. Study them to see what they're doing and how they're doing, and then just go for it! I would do as much as I can and then I would get mentorship to take me to the next level.

Nakisha draws on her finance background to help other moms become successful bloggers

Could you break down your website sections?

My ”Mom Life” section is where my roots are. That's what really caught the attention of everyone, because I was sharing a very unique story of being a single mom who decided to jump up and leave her corporate job and get out here and just wing it. Motherhood is the foundation of my business. I am passionate about moms pursuing their real-life dreams and going for it. 

I have “Family Finances” because my background is banking. And I have overcome some financial obstacles in my life, dealing with credit issues and learning how to budget and manage finances by myself being single. So I share things around saving money and how to budget and making money on the side, side hustles. One of the biggest things that I learned, which helped me to truly get out here and work for myself, is multiple streams of income is huge.

Mom Life is a core topic on Nakisha’s website and blog.

How do you come up with ideas for your blog? 

I'm often live on YouTube or Instagram, and I use what my audience is asking me. I think it's one of the most amazing ways to come up with content ideas. Because if you are having that ongoing conversation with your audience, they will tell you exactly what they want to see. 

Nakisha vlogs about blogging on her YouTube channel.

Do you keep an editorial calendar? 

For sure! There’s no way I could stay on task and create as much content as I do without one. I posted a video on How to Create a Content Calendar. It's essential — especially if you have other businesses or if you're working other jobs — to stay on task to make sure you're staying up on trends. 

Is blogging still worth it?

Absolutely! I think it's important for people to have a place to go to, to see what you're all about. People will watch you for months before they even reach out. If I only have your social media to go to, I don't really know what your story is. I want to go to your blog. I want to see your website’s “About” section. You need a home and a place to house your information, and to [show] who you are about so that when people are ready to pay you, they can have somewhere to come and knock on the door to give you the check.

You put out so much content. Are you a one-woman show?

This is a one-woman show! Listen, it can be done. It takes hard work, persistence and dedication. You got to really want this, and I really want this. For me, it is such an absolute pleasure and privilege to be able to do something I absolutely love every single day. 

by Chanelle Garcia via The Keyword

Navigating uncertainty with Google Marketing Platform

Season 3 of the ‘Founded’ podcast is here

In October 2020, Women Techmakers, in collaboration with Google for Startups, launched Founded, a podcast highlighting women entrepreneurs from all over the world. This week, the series returns with six new episodes, sharing advice and experiences from women who’ve lived the entrepreneurial journey. Ahead of the new season, we took time to chat with one of our podcast interviewees, Lateesha Thomas.

Lateesha Thomas, Founder of Onramp

What were you doing before launching Onramp?

I spent several years working in the coding bootcamp industry, where I saw thousands of graduates complete intensive programs with the promise of a new career at the end of that journey. But I learned that even if candidates managed to acquire a baseline set of technical skills that should give them a competitive edge in the job market, they still faced significant bias due to hiring practices in the industry. Companies have spent years scaling traditional hiring methods like industry and university recruiting, and those processes filter out a lot of capable candidates from non-traditional backgrounds. And  it's within these non-traditional pipelines where more diverse candidates can be found. 

I realized that if we wanted to make meaningful inroads on this problem, we needed to build the bridge backward from the company to the candidates and encourage businesses to invest in workforce development and candidate upskilling. My co-founder and I saw a gap in the market, so we decided to fill it.

Tell us more about Onramp.

Onramp is a workforce development platform connecting companies, candidates and employees and education providers more holistically. We grow talent pools and onboard candidates for companies while also increasing the racial and gender diversity of those talent pools by helping underrepresented candidates be more competitive in the recruiting process. We're not the first to say this, but the diversity pipeline problem truly is a myth. We've seen the depth of diverse talent, and we know access to opportunities grows when there’s a willingness to maximize the potential of these candidates. So the solution isn't as simple as "let's find more Black, Latinx, Women, Non-Binary, etc., candidates and teach them to code," it's fixing broken hiring processes that lock the door to candidates who have the skills. 

How can we elevate the voices of women founders? 

Storytelling is a great way to introduce new ideas to people. Sharing my story on the Founded podcast will hopefully show other women who are thinking of launching products or businesses that it can be done. I don't have the pedigree of most successful founders. I didn't learn to code at an early age and hack and tinker for fun. I didn't study computer science in college. I didn't go to Harvard or Stanford business school. My resume isn't stacked with name-brand tech companies or startups to give me credibility. I worked hard to carve a niche for myself in an industry that spoke to my personal experience and built something to solve a problem I personally experienced. And now I run a venture-backed company. I think it's important for aspiring entrepreneurs to know that there's no one right way to start this journey and that there's a path for them if they're willing to do the work to pave it.

What more needs to be done to level the playing field for women founders? 

Funding. Only2.3% of venture capital (VC) funding went to women-founded companies in 2020, a decrease from the previous year. Things are getting worse, not better. Black founders receive around 1% of VC funding, and as you can imagine being at the intersection of those two groups, things are abysmal. I think everyone wants to talk about progress, and don't get me wrong, there are definitely exciting things happening for Black and women founders. But we're still pushing a boulder up a mountain, and it's exhausting.

What advice do you have for founders?

I think the sooner you can tap into a community to support you on your journey, the easier it will be for you. Whether that's a social network like Elpha or Hello Alice or an accelerator program (we did the Bridge to Success program with Juvo Ventures last winter, another Black/women-led VC), you need somewhere to go for advice, resources, mentorship and commiseration. 

You can hear more from Lateesha in the latest series of Founded on Google Podcasts or wherever you listen.

by Jen HarveyCo-founder of Founded via The Keyword

Working together to transform journalism training

Ignoring vowels, removing connecting letters and recording up to 150 words a minute. It’s not the latest algorithmic advance, but instead something many U.K. journalists will recognise as Teeline: a shorthand transcribing skill which forms part of a formal journalism qualification.

Two decades ago, as a journalism student in London, I was taught the importance of law, ethics and editorial values, as well as the technical skills required to be a journalist. While the fundamentals of journalism may not have altered since, it’s clear technology has radically changed how journalists work, not to mention the changing habits of their audiences.

Alongside the shifting landscape, we’re announcing our support for the  Journalism Skills Academy (JSA): an e-learning platform from the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ). This will help digitally transform the way they provide assessments, qualifications and workshops, while also helping how they overhaul their approach to learning and education. 

NCTJ’s CEO, Joanne Butcher, says the new platform means distance learners no longer need to receive materials in the post, but instead can access them with a few mouse clicks. “It’s the latest move to ensure our work remains compelling, relevant and innovative,” she says. The organisation plans to develop a range of new courses and resources over the next 18 months. 

The Journalism Skills Academy website

In addition, for the fifth consecutive year, we’re also supporting the Journalism Diversity Fund to help the next generation of journalists. As lead sponsor of the fund, we join 20 associations, broadcasters and publishers to provide bursaries to people from underrepresented backgrounds who need help funding their NCTJ journalism training. 

Joanne says the NCTJ is “absolutely delighted that we will be able to strengthen further the relationship between our organisations in the years ahead, as we grow these key areas of the NCTJ’s work.”

Recipients of the Journalism Diversity Fund attending an event in London.

Training never stops when you become a qualified journalist. For a second year, the Google News Initiative is supporting the University of Central Lancashire to deliver the Journalism Innovation & Leadership Programme to provide postgraduate training opportunities for mid-career journalists from the U.K. and abroad.

Academics will select experienced journalists who apply to take part in an intensive 30-week course seeking to develop leadership, operational and product thinking skills, helping to connect people and build lasting relationships across the industry. The curriculum is grounded in industry insights tracking emerging trends and relevant themes. 

“It's perhaps never been more critical for those committed to the sustainability of journalism to take time out of the newsroom to think and learn from others as they assess new opportunities and ways of working,” says Dr François Gilson from UCLan. 

At the Google News Lab, we provide online resources on a range of digital tools, and in recent years we’ve trained 14,000 U.K. journalists and journalism students. We’re continuing to work with partners around the world, to find new ways to support personal development, both for staff journalists and freelancers.

by Matt CookeGoogle News Lab via The Keyword

The history of the Pride flag

On June 4th 2021, a piece of LGBTQIA+ history that we thought was long lost resurfaced: the original rainbow pride flag that was first raised on June 25, 1978 in San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza. The Gilbert Baker Foundation uncovered this priceless artifact in 2019 and donated it to the GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco to make it accessible to all.  Today, 43 years after the flag was first raised, we are partnering with Google Arts & Culture - along with 12 other cultural institutions - to make stories about this iconic rainbow flag available to anyone, anywhere in the world. 

As part of the “Beyond the Rainbow'' hub, everyone can dive back into the history of the LGBTQIA+ movement through the colors of the iconic Pride flag whose design and many iterations led it to become a symbol that would represent the full spectrum of the LGBTQIA+ community and carry the memory of the fights for LGBTQIA+ rights and a better representation of all the LGBTQIA+ identities around the world, until today. 

You will learn how, created in 1978 by Gilbert Baker with a team of artists under the impulsion ofHarvey Milk’s iconic speech, the original flag displayed 8 colors and for each, a specific meaning. For example Red represents Life, Orange means Healing, and Pink represents Sex.

Queer British writer, Jake Hall, author of "The Art of Drag," will further explain each detail you need to know about thedifferent Pride flags and the communities they represent - including the Bisexual Pride flag and Trans Pride flag,  while the artist Rigel Gemini’ shares his reflection about what it means to be a non-binary mixed artist in the music industry.

We at the GLBT Historical Society hope that these online resources will help everyone in the world better understand the historical significance of the rainbow flag and feel welcome to see it in real life within our walls in San Francisco!

• A person arranging a colorful flag hanging from a pole

  Volunteers hoist one of the two original rainbow flags created for San Francisco Gay

• A rainbow with words associated to each color

  Graphic with the flag's symbolism

• A group of people marching along a street carrying a colorful flag over their heads

  Gilbert Baker wearing a white sequined dress (right)

• A person dressed in red standing under 2 colorful flags that flow in the wind

  The two original eight-color rainbow flags flying at United Nations Plaza during San Francisco Gay Freedom Day 1978

• An eight-color segment handing in a warehouse

  Segment of one of the original eight-color rainbow flags.

  
  

• Bird perspective on a New York City street through which people are marching with a sevel-block long pride flag

  The mile-long rainbow flag being carried down First Avenue in New York City

Want to learn more? Visit g.co/beyondtherainbow, or download Google Arts & Culture’s Android or iOS app. Happy Pride to everyone!

by Terry Beswick via The Keyword

Cause and effect: The outlook for American news media

The outlook for American news journalism has significantly shifted over the years. To shed light on what caused this shift, my team at Accenture recently completed an analysis of newspaper revenues over two decades. And while some suggest that tech companies like Google have taken the ad revenue from news publishers, our analysis reveals a more complex story. 

Smartphones and high-speed broadband brought the wonders of the internet to our fingertips. With technological advances have come tremendous volumes of content from around the world — academic sources, specialist and topic-specific news and other content — offering consumers choice about how, where and in what format they access content. 

This availability of digital news and other content has fragmented audiences and, in turn, advertiser revenue and balance sheets shrunk. Thousands of American journalists have been laid off, and the industry has consolidated as publishers cut costs. 

Now, with a growing debate about how tomorrow’s news industry should be shaped, it’s important to consider how digitization brought change to the news business of today. 

Americans are deepening their engagement with news

In our report, we found the underlying consumer demand for news is growing. A quarter of Americans report a significant increase in the amount of news they consume and more Americans are paying for news.

Total newspaper readership grew to 62 million paying readers and, between 2015 and 2018, 17 million more American readers purchased an online subscription. This mimics the global trend of growth in digital news circulation far exceeding any print readership decline.

Pew Research also reports readers are increasingly turning to local news outlets, with one in four Americans becoming more engaged with local content through the pandemic.

Publisher revenues in decline

As readers become more attuned to digital devices and digital news, advertisers have followed, with corresponding impacts for news publishers. 

Newspaper revenues peaked ahead of the 2005 global financial crisis, but fell by more than 52% to $27.4 billion over the 15 year period to 2018 in nominal terms. Display advertising revenues earned by news publishers fell to $13.4 billion over this period but the majority of the decline in total newspaper revenues resulted from the loss of classified revenue — which fell more than 86% to $2.6 billion.

Of course, classifieds didn’t simply disappear. We still seek out used cars, jobs and homes on Craigslist, Zillow, eBay and other sites, and classified advertising revenues have continued to grow, but more than $15.8 billion in classifieds revenue has gone from publisher balance sheets and is no longer available to subsidize newsrooms.

Online advertising revenues drive overall ad market growth

Our research did not find a single category of media advertising that declined materially in absolute value since 2003 in a way that is attributable to online search. The growth in online advertising, which includes digital classifieds, display and search ad revenues, reflects the consumer shift to the online world, and themore cost-effective nature of online ads. 

Spending on search advertising has reached $55 billion in annual revenue, almost three quarters of which came from overall market growth, not from classifieds. In other words, search advertising has attracted new advertising dollars that would not otherwise have been directed to other categories. 

The outlook ahead

While news publisher revenues have come under significant strain since advertising revenues peaked in the early 2000s, we can be reassured that Americans continue to engage with and value news.

We shouldn’t downplay the challenges, including the open questions about the role of journalism in modern society and related issues of trust in the media. But as the economy recovers, there are reasons for optimism. Some publishers report that ad revenues have fully rebounded from pandemic-induced lows and stronger revenue growth is expected in 2021 than at any time in the past 40 years. 

A study from the association of Local Independent and Online News publishers (LION) identified “tremendous growth” in the number of digital native, local news organizations in North America. Perhaps most encouraging - while media jobs are still being lost, hundreds of media jobs are starting to be added.

Without doubt, the outlook for news journalism remains a complex story — one that deserves careful attention and fact-based debate. I hope this study helps contribute to the conversation. 

by Andrew CharltonAccenture Australia via The Keyword

Further measures to help fight financial fraud in the UK

As part of ongoing cross-industry efforts to help tackle the issue of financial fraud, we recently announced that we were the first major technology firm to join Stop Scams UK. We also pledged $5 million in advertising credits to support public awareness campaigns in the UK, helping to ensure that consumers are better informed about how to spot the tactics of scammers both online and offline.

Today, we are announcing a significant additional measure to protect users and legitimate advertisers, and help prevent scammers exploiting our platforms. The Google Ads Financial Products and Services policy will be updated from 30th August to introduce new certification requirements for financial services advertisers targeting the UK.

Financial services advertisers will be required to demonstrate that they are authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority or qualify for one of the limited exemptions described in the UK Financial Services verification page. This new update builds on significant work in partnership with the FCA over the last 18 months to help tackle this issue.

Today’s announcement reflects significant progress in delivering a safer experience for users, publishers and advertisers. While we understand that this policy update will impact a range of advertisers in the financial services space, our utmost priority is to keep users safe on our platforms — particularly in an area so disproportionately targeted by fraudsters.

Here’s what you need to know about the policy update:

• The policy will be updated on August 30, 2021, and enforcement will begin seven days later, on September 6, 2021.
• Advertisers must successfully complete the updated verification process by the time enforcement begins in order to show financial services ads to UK users. This will include showing ads to UK users who appear to be seeking financial services.
• As part of the verification process, advertisers must demonstrate that they are authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority or qualify for one of the limited exemptions described in the UK Financial Services verification page. 
• This requirement covers financial services products both regulated by and not regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority.

This new policy update is only the latest step in our commitment to tackling online financial crime in the UK. Our teams continue to use a mixture of machine learning and human review to analyse user experiences and take action. 

For the last 18 months, we have worked with the FCA to receive notifications when additions are made to the FCA warning list. Based on feedback from the FCA, we have also updated policies, such as our unreliable claims policy. This update restricted the rates of return a firm can advertise and banned the use of terms that make unrealistic promises of large financial return with minimal risk, effort or investment.

Globally, we have also introduced new advertiser identity verification which requires advertisers to submit personal legal identification, business incorporation documents or other information that proves who they are and the country in which they operate. 

We are committed to adapting and collaborating with industry and government organisations to lead on necessary changes to help fight evolving tactics by scammers.

by Ronan Harris via The Keyword

Nest’s commitments to privacy and security

Two years ago Nest shared our commitments to privacy to give you a better understanding of how our products work in your home. Today, we’re publishing new security commitments and putting it all in one place: Nest’s new Safety Center. The Safety Center is meant to give you a clear picture of the work we do each day to build trustworthy products and create a safer and more helpful home.

Our new security commitments include standards Google has long held as well as updates that are specific to Nest’s connected home devices and services. Finally, we want to acknowledge the way this technology is evolving — for example, our recent announcements on Matter and our work on Project Connected Home over IP ). That’s why we’ve updated a small section in our privacy commitments to better reflect our focus on openness. Here are the details:

1. We will validate our Google Nest devices using an independent security standard. Google Nest connected smart home devices introduced in 2019 or later are now validated using third-party, industry-recognized security standards, like those developed by the Internet of Secure Things Alliance (ioXt). And we publish the validation results so you can see how our products hold up according to those standards. Before new products launch we’ll assess them against these standards to make sure they’re meeting or exceeding them.
2. We invest in security research to keep raising our standards.Google Nest participates in the Google vulnerability reward program. This provides monetary rewards for security researchers outside of Google who test our products and tell the Nest Security team about any vulnerabilities they find. This helps the Nest Security team learn about and get ahead of vulnerabilities, keeping Nest devices in your home more secure for the long run.
3. We help protect your account security as the first step in safety.Your Google Account is your way into your Nest devices, and we take account security seriously. That’s why we help keep your Google Account secure with tools and automatic protections like suspicious activity detection, Security Checkup and two-step verification.
4. We issue critical bug fixes and patches for at least five years after launch. We work hard to respond to the ever-changing technology and security landscape by building many lines of defense, including providing automatic software security updates that address critical issues known to Google Nest.
5. We use verified boot to protect your devices. All our devices introduced in 2019 and after use verified boot, which checks that the device is running the right software every time it restarts. This helps make sure that no one has access to your account or control of your devices without your permission.
6. We give you visibility into which devices are connected to your account.All the devices that you’re signed into will show up in your Google Account device activity page. That way, you can make sure your account is connected only to the devices it should be.

A helpful home is a safe home, and Nest’s new safety center is part of making sure Nest products help take care of the people in your life and the world around you.

by Ryan CampbellGoogle Nest via The Keyword

9 lessons from our 2021 commerce partner summit

What is the future of retail media? Earlier this month, Google hosted more than 100 leaders from nearly 50 global retailers to discuss how e-commerce platforms are transforming digital advertising. The two-day session featured inspiring talks from Google’s retail partners as well as industry experts from Forrester, Tinuiti, Merkle and eMarketer/Insider Intelligence. Here are nine of the most important lessons from the event:

1. Retail media has gone mainstream

Ad spend on e-commerce properties is expected to double over the next four years. Retail ad spend grew nearly 50% in 2020 and will reach more than $40 billion by 2024, per Nicole Perrin at eMarketer. It’s the fastest growing sector of the digital ad market, exceeding even connected TV.

2. Retail media benefits brands, merchants and consumers

Merchants can monetize their traffic and generate incremental income with minimal investment. Brands can sell more by reaching shoppers as they’re making purchase decisions. Consumers are exposed to relevant products without having to surrender more personal information. It’s a win-win-win, says Forrester’s Sucharita Kodali.

3. Post-pandemic e-commerce and ad spend will continue to grow

eMarketer projects that U.S. e-commerce sales in 2021 will grow 18% to $933 billion. By 2024, more than 20% of all retail sales will be transacted online. As retail sales increase, ad spending is expected to follow.

4. Retail media is grabbing a bigger slice of the marketing pie

Retail media started with search placements, such as Sponsored Products, but advertisers are starting to incorporate a full funnel experience, driving conversion, consideration and awareness through display ads. Marketing budgets initially earmarked for other purposes are shifting to paid media, bought programmatically, using data at scale to reach audiences and measure results.

5. Non-endemic budgets are becoming increasingly important 

Non-endemic ads — ads run by brands whose products are not sold in the online stores in which they’re advertising — have been purchased by more than half of all CPG brands, according to Merkle. These advertisers are finding retail sites an effective way to reach potential customers, especially as third-party cookies are phased out. Even then, some retailers still must be convinced that accepting non-endemic ads is the right move, says Merkle SVP Janine Flaccavento.

6. Display and video formats can help build brand loyalty

Retail media networks’ display and video ad formats are growing faster than Sponsored Products, per eMarketer’s Nicole Perrin. Brand advertisers prefer these display formats because they can highlight multiple products, getting customers interested in more options and building loyalty.

7. First-party data activation is critical

As cookies are deprecated, first-party data becomes crucial to a brand’s ability to make meaningful connections with customers and drive measurable outcomes, notes Best Buy’s Director of Ad Platforms Strategy, Mark Heitke. Using ads driven by first-party data, Best Buy boosted conversion rates up to 45% and delivered a ten-times return on ad spend for the consumer electronics retailer.

8. Agencies play a vital role

Dealing with multiple retail media networks adds complexity for brands. Agencies can help manage that complexity, but they could benefit from tools that make it easier to execute across multiple networks. 

9. Retailers need to take action

• Stop: Watching and waiting. If you’re a retailer not yet involved in this space, it’s time to offer brands options for formats and personalization.
• Start: Developing audience insights. Understand which insights might be interesting to particular brands, both endemic and non-endemic.
• Continue: Focusing on ad experiences that are a win for advertisers and consumers. Consumer attitudes towards ads on retailer sites tend to be more positive, especially when they are helpful and relevant. Make sure your ads are appropriately targeted. 

The time for retailers to take action on retail media is now. To learn which considerations should be included in your strategy or to find out how Google can help power your retail media offering, download our Building a Retail Media Business with Google report.

by Jenny Presser-KrollPartnershipsGoogle via The Keyword

How MUM improved Google Searches for vaccine information

Soda, pop; sweater, jumper; soccer, football. So many things go by different names. Sometimes it’s a function of language, but sometimes it’s a matter of cultural trends or nuance, or simply where you are in the world. 

One very relevant example is COVID-19. As people everywhere searched for information, we had to learn to identify all the different phrases people used to refer to the novel coronavirus to make sure we surfaced high quality and timely information from trusted health authorities like the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A year later, we’re encountering a similar challenge with vaccine names, only this time, we have a new tool to help: Multitask Unified Model (MUM).  

Understanding searches for vaccine information 

AstraZeneca, CoronaVac, Moderna, Pfizer, Sputnik and other broadly distributed vaccines all have many different names all over the world — over 800, based on our analysis. People searching for information about the vaccines may look for “Coronavaccin Pfizer,” “mRNA-1273,” “CoVaccine” — the list goes on. 

Our ability to correctly identify all these names is critical to bringing people the latest trustworthy information about the vaccine. But identifying the different ways people refer to the vaccines all over the world is hugely time-intensive, taking hundreds of human hours. 

With MUM, we were able to identify over 800 variations of vaccine names in more than 50 languages in a matter of seconds. After validating MUM’s findings, we applied them to Google Search so that people could find timely, high-quality information about COVID-19 vaccines worldwide.

Surfacing trustworthy information about COVID-19 vaccines in Search.

Transferring knowledge across languages

MUM was able to do a job that should take weeks in just seconds thanks to its knowledge transfer skills. MUM can learn from and transfer knowledge across the 75+ languages it’s trained on. For example, imagine reading a book; if you’re multilingual, you’d be able to share the major takeaways of the book in the other languages you speak -- depending on your fluency -- because you have an understanding of the book that isn’t language- or translation-dependent. MUM transfers knowledge across languages much like this. 

Similarly, with its knowledge transfer abilities, MUM doesn’t have to learn a new capability or skill in every new language — it can transfer learnings across them, helping us quickly scale improvements even when there isn’t much training data to work with. This is in part thanks to MUM’s sample efficiencies -- meaning MUM requires far fewer data inputs than previous models to accomplish the same task. In the case of vaccines, with just a small sample of official vaccine names, MUM was able to rapidly identify these variations across languages.  

Improving Google Search with MUM

This first application of MUM helped us get critical information to users around the world in a timely manner, and we’re looking forward to the many ways in which MUM can make Search more useful to people in the future. Our early testing indicates that not only will MUM be able to improve many aspects of our existing systems, but will also help us create completely new ways to search and explore information.

by Pandu NayakSearch via The Keyword

Safer learning with Google for Education

When the Google for Education team designs products, we put the safety, security and privacy needs of our users first. This means keeping schools’ data safer with built-in security features that provide automated protection, compliance visibility and control, to ensure a private, safe and secure learning environment. We aim to support and protect the entire education community, and particularly teachers and students, so they can focus on what matters most: teaching and learning.

Everything we build is guided by three important principles:

1. Secure by default: Protecting your privacy starts with the world’s most advanced security. Even before you set up security controls for your school’s digital environment specific to your needs, our built-in security is automatically protecting you from threats, like ransomware. 

2. Private by design: We uphold responsible data practices designed to respect your privacy. Our products can be used in compliance with the most rigorous data privacy standards, including FERPA, COPPA and GDPR.  Google does not use data from Google Workspace for Education Core Services for advertising purposes, and users’ personal information is never sold.

3. You’re in control: You own your data in Core Workspace Services, which means that you retain full intellectual property rights over your customer data, and you control who can download it, and when. You can get real-time alerts so you can act immediately if an incident occurs, and customize the security dashboard to get reports on your security status at any time. 

Introducing new features to provide more visibility and control

To help admins and teachers as they build safe digital learning environments, we’re adding additional features to provide more visibility and control. We are also updating ourprivacy notice to to make it easier for teachers, parents and students to understand what information we collect and why we collect it. Nothing is changing about how your information is processed. Rather, we’ve improved the way we describe our practices and privacy controls with a simpler structure and clearer language.

Tailor access based on age

We’re launching a new age-based access setting to make it easier for admins to tailor experiences for their users based on age when using Google services like YouTube, Photos and Maps. Starting today, all admins from primary and secondary institutions must indicate which of their users, such as their teachers and staff, are 18 and older using organizational units or groups in Admin Console. After September 1, 2021, students who are under 18 will see changes in their experience across Google products. 

For example, after September 1, students designated as under 18 in K-12 domains can view YouTube content assigned by teachers, but they won’t be able to post videos, comment or live stream using their school Google account. Administrators should ensure that Google Takeout is turned on so that end users can download their data, like previously uploaded videos, using Google Takeout.

If admins don’t make a selection by September 1, primary and secondary institutions users will all default to the under-18 experience, while higher-education institutions users will default to the 18-and-older experience. These age-based settings are not locked and admins can always adjust them according to the age of their users.

New default experiences for Chrome users in K-12 institutions

Many schools already have policies in place for SafeSearch, SafeSites, Guest Mode and Incognito Mode, and we are updating their defaults to ensure a safer web browsing experience for K-12 institutions. Now, SafeSearch and SafeSites will be on by default, and Guest Mode and Incognito Mode will be off by default. Admins can still change each of these policies on Chrome OS for individual organization units, for example allowing the use of Guest Mode for users in their domain. 

The Google for Education team is committed to creating tools and services that are secure by default and private by design, all the while giving you complete control over your environment. 

by Jennifer Holland via The Keyword

Douglas Coupland fuses AI and art to inspire students

Have you ever noticed that the word art is embedded in the phrase artificial intelligence? Neither did we, but when the opportunity presented itself to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) inspires artistic expression — with the help of internationally renowned Canadian artist Douglas Coupland — the Google Research team jumped on it. This collaboration, with the support of Google Arts & Culture, culminated in a project called Slogans for the Class of 2030, which spotlights the experiences of the first generation of young people whose lives are fully intertwined with the existence of AI. 

This collaboration was brought to life by first introducing Coupland’s written work to a machine learning language model. Machine learning is a form of AI that provides computer systems the ability to automatically learn from data. In this case, Google research scientists tuned a machine learning algorithm with Coupland’s 30-year body of written work — more than a million words — so it would familiarize itself with the author’s unique style of writing. From there, curated general-public social media posts on selected topics were added to teach the algorithm how to craft short-form, topical statements.

Once the algorithm was trained, the next step was to process and reassemble suggestions of text for Coupland to use as inspiration to create twenty-five Slogans for the Class of 2030. 

“I would comb through ‘data dumps’ where characters from one novel were speaking with those in other novels in ways that they might actually do. It felt like I was encountering a parallel universe Doug,” Coupland says. “And from these outputs, the statements you see here in this project appeared like gems. Did I write them? Yes. No. Could they have existed without me? No.”

A common theme in Coupland’s work is the investigation of the human condition through the lens of pop culture. The focus on the class of 2030 was intentional. Coupland wanted to create works that would serve as inspiration for students in their early teens who will be graduating from universities in 2030. For those teens considering their future career paths, he hoped that this collaboration would trigger a broader conversation on the vast possibilities in the field and would acquaint them with the fact that AI does not have to be strictly scientific, it can be artful.

Unveiled today, all 25 thought-provoking and visually rich digital slogans are yours to experience on Google Arts & Culture alongside Coupland’s artistic statement and other behind-the-scenes material. This isn't Douglas’ first collaboration with Google Arts & Culture; in 2019 Coupland’s Vancouver art exhibition was captured virtually. In 2015 and 2016, he joined theGoogle Arts & Culture Lab residency in Paris where he collaborated with engineers to develop many works including theSearch book andthe Living Internet. 

In an effort to celebrate local talent and culture, multiple venues across Canada have signed on to project the slogans, for a limited time, on larger-than-life digital screens allowing curious minds to experience them in an immersive way. The screens include the Terry Fox Memorial Plaza at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver B. C., the TELUS Len Werry building in downtown Calgary, TELUS Harbour in downtown Toronto and select Pattison digital screens across Canada.     

Technology has always played a role in creating new types of possibilities that inspire artists — from the sounds of distortion to the electronic sounds of synths for musicians for example. Today, advances in AI are opening up new possibilities for other forms of art and we look forward to seeing what the crossroads of art and technology bring to life. 

by Chris HenryGoogle Canada via The Keyword

Connecting people to food support in their community

The COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis that followed exacerbated hunger for millions of people. Feeding America estimates that the number of those without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable food grew to 45 million people in 2020, including 15 million children. That equates to one in seven Americans and is a nearly 30% increase from 2019. 

Connecting people to community food services

We know people are looking for ways to get help, including on Google Search. Over the past year, searches for "food bank near me", "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)", "food stamps application" and "school lunch pick up" reached record highs. 

Starting today, you can find free food support all in one place on our new Find Food Support site. The site features a Google Maps locator tool to help you find the nearest food bank, food pantry or school lunch program pickup site in your community. We worked with No Kid Hungry, FoodFinder and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to capture 90,000 places with free food support across 50 states — with more locations to come.

Helping people know they aren’t alone

Food insecurity impacts people from all walks of life — especially since the start of the pandemic. Mass school closures made food insecurity five times worse for children who previously relied on free school lunch programs. Black and Latino communities, disabled Americans and those without a college degree have been disproportionately impacted. And according to a recent survey of military families from the Military Family Advisory Network, one in five families reported experiencing food insecurity.

Still, the stigma associated with getting help can be a barrier for many. We want people to know they’re not alone. Find Food Support features stigma-busting videos demonstrating that food insecurity impacts all kinds of people, and highlights volunteers and organizations from around the country who have stepped up to feed their communities.

The site also provides links to food support hotlines, state-by-state benefit guides, and information for specific communities, such as seniors, families and children, and military families. You can also find information about how you can donate food, time and money to support those in need.

There’s a long way to go to fully solving the hunger crisis in the U.S. and around the globe, but we hope Find Food Support helps connect people in the U.S. to free food and assistance in their time of need. 

by Emily Ma via The Keyword