Colors in France, Erratic Hiring and Remotely There 🇫🇷

In France, black founders pitching investors are often greeted with bafflement. “They are surprised, and they can’t hide it,” says Sheila Sahai, a Black French entrepreneur of the fintech startup We Take Part. 

The French startup ecosystem for Black founders remains largely veiled in secrecy — primarily due to France's universalistic and color-blind approach to economic and social policies.

This approach has resulted in a dearth of data regarding racial and ethnic diversity within the startup industry. Unlike some countries, France does not collect comprehensive metrics on racial diversity (a proposal made by former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was unsuccessful around 14 years ago). As a result, while racism undoubtedly persists in the country, there is a lack of concrete evidence highlighting its presence.

Consequently, many Black founders choose to remain discreet, hesitating to draw attention to themselves because they assume that there aren’t enough black people in the startup system.

Naturally, that isn’t true: 

• Laura Pallier raised a $20 million Series A for her fintech SaaS platform Regate last September 
• Alvyn Severien closed a $13 million Series A for his algae products company Algama in January
• Nelly Chatue-Diop raised $2 million last year for her web3 investment startup Ejara
• Bruno Mendes Da Silva raised $3.5 million last year for his AI-focused data startup Heex Technologies
• Sebastien Luissaint raised $2.4 million last August for Myditek, an agtech startup.

Employers facing the challenge of persuading existing and potential employees to resume in-office work may find themselves in a tough spot. Because search interest for remote work is still hovering around all-time high levels according to Indeed data from June.

This aligns with a Pew Research Center survey, revealing that a significant 71% of US teleworkers expressed how working from home has greatly facilitated the management of their work-life balance. Additionally, 56% reported increased productivity and meeting deadlines more effectively. It's evident that many individuals have embraced the new work arrangements afforded by the pandemic.

However, this persistent preference for remote work may not sit well with some employers who prefer full-time in-person duty. Their concerns might be amplified by a slew of new studies challenging the perceived efficiency of remote work.

Sadly, AI-powered hiring technology has been found to make erratic, arbitrary, and often discriminatory decisions that rule against job candidates.

Examples:

• the algorithmic video software that generated different personality scores when a candidate put on glasses or a headscarf
• the AI interview tool that couldn’t transcribe regional accents in the UK.
• algorithms that have been found to drop women for tech roles 
• ones that rate German speakers as proficient in English
• ones that simply favor candidates named Jared.

Apart from NY, other states are also taking proactive steps to regulate automated hiring technology. Pioneering the way, Illinois and Maryland have already implemented regulations that mandate job candidates' consent to be evaluated by AI video hiring software. Moreover, states such as California, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and even the District of Columbia are actively working on developing laws to govern the utilization of AI in hiring. 

Threads, Meta’s competitor to Twitter, launched globally on July 6 — and within 5 days it hit 100 million users. This despite the fact that a huge chunk of countries - namely those in the EU - haven’t allowed the app launch. Why? Well we know that the EU has really been a stickler for privacy lately, and rightly so. For the EU, and hopefully for the rest of the world as well, Threads raises several red flags. Here’s what kind of data Threads collects about its users. 

🚩 Sensitive personal information

The data collected by the Threads app could include your sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, biometric data, trade union membership, pregnancy status, politics, and religious beliefs.

🚩 Data about your employment

Information about your company, your role on your team, your job history, and your performance evaluations may be collected and sent to third parties.

🚩 Data about your body

Details about your health, diseases, body measurements, fitness, and exercise.

Most importantly, you can’t delete Threads without deleting Instagram altogether. So once you commit to Threads, there is no going back.

💼 The Start of Lawsuits - One of the first—and far from last—copyright lawsuits has been filed against OpenAI

🚥 Meanwhile - ChatGPT monthly traffic has dropped for the first time.

🌱 Taliban wins over Poopy - Experts are calling the Taliban’s poppy production ban the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history - a feat America couldn't achieve in 15 years.