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On the morning of February the 24^th Russian troops began the invasion of Ukraine which was stated by the Russians as a special mission for the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine. This has been a horrible war and is still raging on. Technology plays a crucial role in modern warfare (not Call of Duty).

Communication is one of the five categories of the technology of war (Guilmartin, 2020). Elon Musk is the owner of SpaceX next to his most known company Tesla. SpaceX is aimed at designing, building, and launching (non-military) rockets and spacecrafts. Since this Spring Elon Musk and SpaceX have been helping Ukraine in their war against Russia. They have been donating and shipping around 20,000 Starlink satellites to Ukraine (Marquardt, 2022). Starlink satellites offers high-speed internet in rural and remote locations across the world. This has helped Ukraine keep up their military network of communications, which was previously destroyed by Russian forces.

But with these generous donations from SpaceX came financial problems. Elon musk ‘threatened’ to stop donating Starlink satellites to Ukraine (McIntyre, 2022). A statement was made from SpaceX that unless the United States government would help SpaceX financially they would stop delivering Starlink to Ukraine. The Pentagon has been considering aiding SpaceX but Elon musk has already withdrawn his request for financial aid (Theguardian.com, 2022).

It was recently shown how important the Starlink satellites are when Ukraine launched its counterattack and reclaimed some parts of Eastern Ukraine. There were multiple reports of outages of the satellites which were said to have affected the whole frontline in Ukraine (Marquardt, 2022). Elon Musk has a lot of power and responsibility as they are such a crucial provider for Ukrainian forces. Therefore, the EU is looking at a way of financing Starlink activities to make Ukraine less dependent on one supplier (Hofmans, 2022).

Bibliography

Guilmartin, J. F. (2020, November 4). military technology | Definition, History, Advances, &

Weapons. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved October 18, 2022, from

https://www.britannica.com/technology/military-technology

Hofmans, T. (2022, October 18). Europese Unie onderzoekt mogelijke financiering van

Starlink in Oekraïne. HLN. Retrieved October 18, 2022, from

https://www.hln.be/buitenland/europese-unie-onderzoekt-mogelijke-financiering-van-starlink

in-oekraine~ae90ef03/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Marquardt, A. (2022, October 15). Exclusive: Musk’s SpaceX says it can no longer pay for

critical satellite services in Ukraine, asks Pentagon to pick up the tab. CNN. Retrieved

October 18, 2022, from https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex

starlink-ukraine/index.html

McIntyre, J. (2022, October 17). Elon Musk backs off his threat to stop providing free Starlink

internet service for Ukraine’s military. Washington Examiner. Retrieved October 18, 2022,

from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/elon-musk

backs-off-his-threat-to-stop-providing-free-starlink-internet-service-for-ukraines-military

Theguardian.com. (2022, October 18). Pentagon considering paying for Musk’s Starlink

Network in Ukraine. The Guardian. Retrieved October 18, 2022, from

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/17/pentagon-starlink-ukraine-musk funding

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the biggest technological trends of 2022. AI has the possibility to deliver huge amounts of business value for different organizations. One department where AI is increasingly being used, is the recruiting department (HR) (Montesa, 2022). Artificial Intelligence adds value to the recruiters by helping them become more efficient, personalizes the recruitment process, and helps recruiters in making data-informed decisions (Montesa, 2022).

One aspect that has been addressed in the news and through social media platforms is the bias that is present in recruiters and the recruitment process of new employees. People being selected, or deliberately not selected, because of race, gender, or age is a big problem that needs to be fixed. Men are still preferred over women as they are viewed as being more skilled and white-sounding names were 50% more likely to receive an interview request (Hinde, 2021).

AI is now being used to get rid of biased recruitment processes and give all potential new employees an even and fair chance. AI is designed to focus solely on whether or not someone is qualified for the job and not take into account race, gender, or age. AI builds on datasets from which it can make decisions on a potential employee. To design AI to be unbiased, the datasets it builds on should all be unbiased (Innodata Inc., 2022).

But new research shows that the promising AI systems are still failing to reduce recruitment bias or improve diversity within companies (Vallance, 2022). It was discussed by Cambridge researchers that AI cannot be trained to select employees solely on job-related characteristics, as what we believe are essential components of being a good employee are connected to both gender and race (Vallance, 2022). It was also discovered that wearing glasses or wearing a headscarf still led to the applicant being less likely to be selected for the job.

I believe that AI is a very promising digital trend and that it could help (for a big part) solve bias in the recruitment process. But, with the implementation of AI come risks which include risks regarding ethics. Datasets should be built and further improved for AI to function better and further work on eliminating bias in the recruitment process.

We all deserve a fair chance in life after all.

Bibliography

Hinde, G. (2021, May 10). 4 Hiring Bias Study Statistics That May Shock You. IQ PARTNERS. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://www.iqpartners.com/blog/4-hiring-bias-study-statistics-that-may-shock-you/

Innodata Inc. (2022, August 3). Eliminating Bias from Hiring Using Artificial Intelligence. 

Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://innodata.com/eliminating-bias-from-hiring

using-artificial-intelligence/

Montesa, M. (2022, April 11). AI Recruiting in 2022: The Definitive Guide | Phenom.

Phenom | Intelligent Talent Experience. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from

https://www.phenom.com/blog/recruiting-ai-guide

Vallance, B. C. (2022, October 13). AI tools fail to reduce recruitment bias – study. BBC

News. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63228466