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Wikijunior:Big Book Of Cities And Towns/New Zealand/Auckland

Auckland is the biggest city in New Zealand.


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Wikijunior:Big Book Of Cities And Towns/New Zealand/Christchurch

Christchurch is a city of New Zealand on the southern island.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Wikijunior:Big Book Of Cities And Towns/New Zealand/Wellington

Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand.


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The Future of Leadership/Leading Boomerang Employees

Boomerang Employees
A boomerang employee is someone who has previously left an organization for any sort of reason, and has since returned, looking to be hired again. These types of rehires have been on the rise since 2021, and have continually started to become more frequent. The Wall Street Journal reported that 4.5% of all new hires could be accounted for with boomerang employees. In the past, these types of employees may have been looked at as disloyal, for they left the organization once already. However, it appears now that boomerang employees provide a window into a company's strengths and weaknesses, and help you see why employees may have left and then came back.

Effects Boomerang Employees have on an Organization
The obvious benefit of a boomerang employee is the cost savings for the organization. Turnover can be incredibly costly, and hiring a boomerang employee can cost 60-70% less than a new hire. However, the benefits of these boomerangs go much farther. When a boomerang returns to an organization, they often perform better than they did prior to their departure, being able to rely on the previously gained institutional knowledge coupled with the new experience or education they received while away, combining the best of both worlds of internal promotion and an external hire. They also typically have higher overall job satisfaction and loyalty to the company because they see their contributions as valued by the organization. Most boomerangs are recruited back by senior managers or their previous colleagues and feel appreciated in their return. When a boomerang employee returns, it is also an opportunity for an organization to renegotiate the psychological contract with an employee. If done well, an organization can address and even resolve the issues that first led the prior employee to leave, increasing that employee's dedication and loyalty to the firm.

Consideration when Hiring a Boomerang
There are a few things that should be considered when hiring a boomerang employee. It can provide potential benefits for your organization, or could cause potential problems as they re-enter the company. The first thing to consider during the hiring process, is the circumstances of how the employee left prior to coming back. Depending on how they left, can potentially show how they plan on coming back, and the level of respect they have for the company itself. You may also want to consider what the employee's end goal is. Having an open conversation with them about why they left, what made them return, and what their goals are moving forward can help see if there is a strong enough foundation to be built by bringing them back. Finally, it may be useful to consider the current employees at the organization, and the boomerangs past relationship with them. This could be the relationship between them and their past manager, and if they were to be working for that manager again. Any poor relationships could potentially follow with rehiring someone. Overall, many things should be considered when bringing back an employee who has previously left, and by doing so, you can set yourself up for success.

Effectively Leading Boomerangs
Boomerang employees represent a unique portion of any organization. Although boomerangs need less direct supervision, they aren’t a “set and forget” hire and still require a significant amount of attention. In choosing to return to an organization, boomerang employees have reevaluated the psychological contract with their organization, and in doing so their perception of their work has changed. Boomerang employees are more likely to go above and beyond in duties outside of the standard job role than employees who stay at a firm. However, this improved performance by boomerang employees hinges on the organization’s willingness to meet their needs. It is important for an organization to address the issues, both positive and negative, that caused the boomerang to leave in the first place. Boomerang employees have the unique advantage of being part of the in-group of a workplace culturally, while having external perspective. Although many organizations have policies preventing the hiring of previous employees, changes in the labor market make boomerang employees not just an attractive option, but a necessity in hiring practice. Overall, leaders should always strive to make their organizations somewhere employees are happy to return to.


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The Future of Leadership/Understanding the Nature of Deepfakes

What is a Deepfake and How is it Created?
A Deepfake is an AI generated overlay used to swap faces or other items in media. The term Deepfake is a portmanteau of the “Deep Learning” and “Fake” referring to the usual nature of the altered media being used to “fake” a video or audio media of an individual performing actions. One of the more common methods of creating a deepfake is to use a deep learning neural network. To create the deepfake two sets of source data are needed. The first source, which will be referred to hereafter as the “Source Individual’ is photographic, audio, and video media of the individual to be faked. The second source which will be referred to as the “Source Media” is the collected data of the actions that the source individual will be faked to perform. Both sets of data are fed into a neural network encoder that breaks down the movements, audio, and facial data into compressed information. Then, the source individual data is decoded by the source media decoder, which overlays the information from the source individual over that of the source media. This creates the faked media in which the source individual appears to perform actions.

The Ethics of Deepfakes
Are Deepfakes moral? Many would argue they are not moral. The moral grounds for deepfakes can largely be boiled down to the question of to which degree an individual may be considered to own their own appearance, and furthermore their identity. Movie studios have begun to make use of deepfakes, with a high-profile example being that of Star Wars, which used deepfake technology to digitally recreate Cary Fisher after her passing, and to portray a younger version of Luke Skywalker in media despite the fact that Mark Hamil has aged far beyond the age portrayed in the media. In the case of Mark Hamil, his participation in the creation of, and authorization of the use of the deepfake can be viewed to allow the ethical use of his visual identity. In the case of Cary Fisher, who had passed away prior to the creation of the deepfakes, the issue is murky. At the core, the issue of identity comes into question through the use of deepfakes. Were identity to be fully self-contained, that is to say, completely under the control of the self, then deepfakes would present little moral issue. However, a part of identity can be viewed as interconnected with the views and opinions of others towards us. One may consider oneself a moral person, however if said individual has not behaved morally and is viewed as immoral by their community, then the identity of a moral individual cannot truly be said to belong to them. This is an ethical problem with deepfakes. They represent a means by which the identity of an individual can be tarnished or damaged through no action of that individual.

Ethical Opportunities of Deepfakes
As presented in brief in the paragraph above, the ethical use of deepfakes in media represents a massive opportunity for media creation companies. A beloved actor may license out features, visual or audio, to a movie studio, allowing them to remain a part of the body of work long after age and potentially even death renders them incapable of active participation. A further opportunity created by deepfakes is that of historical learning. When science is able to recreate an estimation of the appearance, voice, and other data from a historical figure, then history can be brought to life. The opportunity to engage students by having them learn “directly” from a historical figure represents an opportunity for far greater engagement than many students would receive from reading a textbook or watching a historian pontificate on a topic. A further opportunity found by individuals online is the use of purposely and openly fake “avatars” in order to create a “virtual youtuber” personality known as a V-tuber. These V-tubers have gained popularity and become a form of job for not only those who create them, but those who portray themselves through the medium.

The Threat Posed by Deepfakes.
While deepfakes represent opportunity for some industries, they represent a far greater threat to others. The primary threat comes from misinformation and disinformation campaigns using Deepfakes to portray false messages as true. With the use of deepfakes, anyone can appear to say anything. From former President Barack Obama engaging in a profanity laden rant against Former President Donald Trump, to a video message appearing to be from Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelinski instructing Ukrainian citizens to surrender and embrace the rulership of Russia, several issues immediately become apparent. For any career which requires a view of integrity, deepfakes represent a method by which bad actors can immediately destroy credibility. A recent scandal involving deepfaked pornography which allowed individuals to order deepfakes of any individual performing pornographic actions raised questions to the legality of created materials. In some countries, such creations are already illegal under “Revenge Porn” laws. However, in many countries there is no such legal recourse. While it may be amusing to see Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler singing pop music from the 90’s across from each other, it is far less amusing to the employees of a German power company who recently transferred a large sum of money on the orders of the company’s CEO, only to find that the video call had been a deepfake.

Potential future effects of Deepfake technology.
As deepfake technology improves it becomes harder and harder to determine what is real and what is fiction. Only a few months ago the adage was “Look at the eyes '' because the generation of neural networks at the time struggled to handle involuntary reflexes like blinking or sneezing, the rapidity and relative complexity of the actions causing the deepfake technology to struggle to mimic them successfully. No sooner had the limitation been pointed out however, than the neural networks were retrained and adapted, and further adjustments made in turn to combat each weakness discovered. Skin tone, blurring around where the faked media is joined with the source media, and hair have all been improved upon to blur the line between fact and fiction.

Assessing potential methods of combating Deepfakes.
A broad reaching alliance of myriad companies have all joined forces to tackle the issue of deepfakes. Experts from companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, news agencies, governments, and more have all stepped into the ring in order to combat the emerging dangers represented by deepfake technology. Their current “best idea” is to tag every image on the internet with a stamp that allows viewers to trace the “genealogy” of that piece of media through each rendition or iteration, and to see what alterations have been done to that piece of media. This unfortunately is not likely to work, as any actor sophisticated enough to produce a convincing and high quality deepfake is likely to be more than capable of producing an altered or falsified “genealogy” purporting the media to be real. Further steps in the hope of combating deepfakes comes from the idea of using a randomly generated alphanumeric sequence that will be required to be read, in the hopes that the deepfake cannot adapt fast enough.