60 Minutes: Meet Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

Posted on April 30, 2024 by John

We have profiled him recently, but we wanted to point out that 60 Minutes did a great profile on Nvidia and its Taiwanese American CEO (and co-founder) Jensen Huang:

“Jensen Huang leads Nvidia – a tech company with a skyrocketing stock and the most advanced technology for artificial intelligence.”

Huang is doing an excellent job of highlighting Asian American technology and business management when often there is a glass ceiling and when Americans, even Asian Americans, expect their business leaders to be white.

As someone who has lived in Silicon Valley since 1999, Jensen Huang has definitely become a tech rockstar because of the boom in Artificial Intelligence (AI)! As mentioned above, you might want check out our profile of Jensen, which details some other facts not covered by 60 Minutes. We have also covered a number of other Taiwanese CEOs.

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What would happen if TSMC was suddenly destroyed?

Posted on April 29, 2024 by High School Voices

By Darren Chen

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is a Taiwan-based company that makes chips in phones, computers, etc. Started in 1987, it has evolved to be one of the world’s largest chip manufacturers. Used in military and civilian use, TSMC is one of the most important companies now in an era dominated by technology. 

TSMC is a company making 90% of the world’s most advanced chips, building chips for big companies such as Apple, AMD, Nvidia, and many more, according to CNBC, making them vital for modern electronics to function. Additionally, TSMC’s dominant role as an advanced chip manufacturer also makes it a leader in the research and development of future technology. TSMC’s job also comes in geopolitical significance, promoting trade and relations with other countries interested in their products, making it one of the, if not the most important companies in the modern day.

But what if they were suddenly wiped off the face of the world?

Continue reading →

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‘Invisible Nation’ Sells to Abramorama – Premiering May 31

Posted on April 25, 2024 by John

Last October, I was able to screen the documentary Invisible Nation – which I LOVED – about Taiwan at the Mill Valley Film Festival and at a special screening at Stanford University:

“An Intimate Portrait of President Tsai Ing-wen fighting for the survival of Taiwan’s democracy at a time when freedom around the world is under threat from authoritarianism. Learn more at www.invisiblenation.net “

The documentary has been making the film festival circuit and I’ve been helping the filmmaker Vanessa Hope promote the film at various screenings. Now, I’m happy to learn that according to Variety, the film has been picked up by distributor Abramorama:

“Variety’s film critic Richard Kuipers wrote about the film: “The paradox interrogated in ‘Invisible Nation‘ is how such a vibrant, multi-party democracy now finds itself so diplomatically isolated, fighting for its future as a self-ruled country. With a large and impressive roster of Taiwanese and international interviewees surrounding the central footage of Tsai at home and rallying support abroad, Hope and her editors guide viewers clearly through major historical and contemporary events that have made Taiwan such a political hotspot.”

Abramorama will open “Invisible Nation” in New York City on May 31 at the Quad Cinema followed by additional cities nationwide. A multi-theater engagement in Los Angeles will begin on June 20 at the Laemmle Glendale, moving to the Laemmle Royal on June 21. Screenings will be followed by Q&As with the filmmakers and special guests.”

The filmmakers are doing an Oscar qualifying run of Invisible Nation in Encino in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California the week of May 24th.

I’m looking forward to the theatrical release and I’m really hoping for a future Oscar nomination and win for this awesome documentary. As a Taiwanese American, I think this documentary highlights Taiwan’s unique position in the world and why this democracy’s struggle against the threat of China deserves our attention. 

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What if “Gene of AI” became our future?

Posted on April 24, 2024 by High School Voices

By Nathan Lin

 

The Japanese cartoon, Gene of AI, available on Crunchyroll, is set in the future where ten percent of the population are humanoids with artificial intelligence (AI). They are robots that are almost exact copies of real humans. In their world, cybercrime and viruses are enormous problems that not only affect computers but humanoid AI as well. As AI technology progresses, we can expect more and more fictional scenarios such as this to grace our storytelling, and every advancement we make makes copying human consciousness into AI more nonfictional than ever. 

So what would happen if we start downloading our brains into robots?

In early April 2022, Elon Musk, Billionaire Space X CEO, was reported on CNBC to have announced that eventually, we may be able to live forever by uploading our minds into robots. Of course, we will be unable to transfer our entire consciousness, but our personalities and memories are preservable. Musk implies this technology will be a gradual evolution of computer memory when he speaks about how phones and computers have amplified communication by a hundredfold, which he compared to magic. 

Michael S.A. Graziano, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Princeton University, in a 2019 Wall Street Journal essay, wrote that two pieces of technology would be required for mind uploading: an artificial brain and a scanner of a brain that measured how its neurons connected to each and the ability to be able to recreate the pattern in the artificial brain. Graziano states that the creation of the artificial brain would be simple but an extremely powerful scanner would be required to process the data of human consciousness in a format that is transferable to an artificial brain. Optimists say mind uploading will be possible within a few decades, but Graziano would not be surprised if it took centuries.

Even if the mind-uploading process becomes possible, what happens if the humanoid AI obtains a virus, or worse, a hacker starts controlling the AI? One possible solution is that society would have evolved the capability of having a specialist able to fix the problem. However, as technology develops, the bugs and glitches that come with it also advance. AV-Test, a well-known IT security institute, registers over 450,000 new malicious programs every day. Currently, the firewalls installed to combat their programs are winning, but what could happen if one slipped through? Furthermore, what unknowns could happen if an experienced hacker invades and ruins the computer inside the humanoid AI? Continue reading →

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CAAMFest 2024 Returns May 9-19: Shining Light on Asian American Stories

Posted on April 23, 2024 by John

The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) recently announced its fully in-person program for CAAMFest 2024, which will take place May 9-19, 2024 in San Francisco and Oakland. This year’s festival will include over 35 programs that will spotlight film, food, music, and ideas.

Last year, the opening night film was Joy Ride. This year, the opening night film will be the documentary, Admissions Granted:

“In the run-up to the landmark Supreme Court case pitting Asian American plaintiffs against Harvard University, controversial legal strategist Edward Blum took direct aim at dismantling affirmative action, energizing activists on both sides. Admissions Granted tracks the case’s emotional, high-stakes journey to the Supreme Court. Directors Hao Wu (76 Days and 2022 CAAM Mentor) and Miao Wang (CAAM-Funded Beijing Taxi) weave interviews, news archive, and verité footage to produce an honest and hard look at the complexity of the affirmative action debate, revealing the divisions within the Asian American community and our nation’s increasing polarization on matters of race and inclusion.

Expected Guests in Attendance: Directors Hao Wu and Miao Wang”

The Opening Night film screening will take place at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre—followed by the Gala at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

Screenings will take place at SFMOMA, the Roxie and the Great Star Theater. The Centerpiece Documentary, Centerpiece Narrative, and SF Closing Night presentations will take place at SFMOMA. The festival will wrap up at New Parkway Theater in Oakland, for a day of screenings and a collaboration with the People’s Kitchen Collective. This year’s food and music programs will be held at various restaurants and venues, including Damansara restaurant and the Yerba Buena Gardens. 

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AI Image Generators have problems with Asian Male White Female Relationships

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Jeff

As AI technology becomes more advanced, the technology can mimic human capabilities.  In addition, AI technology can mimic human biases, as a particular AI image generator has been reported by Mia Sato on The Verge to have problems generating images of couples with Asian Males White Females.  That particular type of couple (aka AMWF) doesn’t seem to happen as often as the reverse, as has been discussed on our site many times. Technology evolves quickly, so I decided to it out for myself as well as try out another AI Image Generator. Note that all of the pictures in this post were generated on April 15, 2024.

The AI image generator in question comes from Meta and can be found at imagine.meta.com.  The above picture is what I got when I tried “asian man with white wife” as a prompt.  Apparently “asian woman with white male” can be conceived but the reverse cannot not. The image generator gave a number of choices, and all of them wrong in the same way. It made me wonder how other prompts would do as well as another AI image generator.

Continue reading →

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Taiwanese CEOs: Jerry Yang

Posted on April 18, 2024 by High School Voices

By Travis Yen

From modest origins in Taipei, Taiwan, Jerry Yang rose to become a visionary entrepreneur and industry trendsetter, co-founding one of the internet’s pioneering enterprises. His narrative serves as a tribute to tenacity, inventiveness, and the revolutionary potential of the digital era.

Yang was born in Taipei, Taiwan, on November 6, 1968. His early years were influenced by the vibrant cultural landscape and swift economic growth of his own country. Yang was raised in a middle-class home and showed a prodigious mind and a love of learning. His childhood taught him the virtues of perseverance, hard effort, and determination—qualities that would guide him in all of his future pursuits.

Yang traveled to the United States in order to pursue his academic goals, enrolling at Stanford University. He met fellow student David Filo at Stanford, where they struck up a connection that would eventually lead to their ground-breaking partnership. Yang has the skills and knowledge necessary to successfully traverse the rapidly evolving field of technology thanks to his education in electrical engineering and computer science.

Driven by their mutual curiosity and spirit of entrepreneurship, Yang and Filo co-founded Yahoo! in 1994, a web directory that would completely change how people accessed the internet for information.  Yahoo! developed into a comprehensive platform including search, email, news, and more as the internet grew quickly. As Yahoo! became a household name and a symbol of the promise of the internet, Yang’s position as Chief Yahoo catapulted him into the forefront of the dot-com era.
Continue reading →

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Averie Bishop: First Asian American Miss Texas and Candidate for Texas House District 112

Posted on April 15, 2024 by High School Voices

By Angelina Chiang

I stumbled across Avery Bishop during my senior year of high school, and after reading about her interests and accomplishments, she quickly became a role model due to our similar interests.

Averie Bishop grew up in a rural neighborhood in Texas, where she struggled to fit in with her classmates and feel represented by the leaders of her community. Despite these obstacles, Bishop’s drive allowed her to excel academically. After high school, she went on to attend Southern Methodist University, where she graduated with a 4.0, and then studied and graduated from the SMU Dedman School of Law, the first in her family to do so. During her time in law school, Bishop’s passion for advocacy and community service led her to run for Miss Texas 2022. Her platform focused on the goals of helping children feel at home through policy writing, diversity and inclusion in school programs, and digital representation. After a year of hard work and advocacy, Bishop became the first ever Asian American to win Miss Texas.

Now at 27 years old, in addition to being a former Miss Texas and a first-generation law school graduate, she is also an author, the founder of a non-profit organization, an influencer with 1 million supporters across all platforms, and current political candidate for Texas House District 112.

Her campaign platform includes the goals of ​​protecting Texas youth in public schools, ensuring economic and job prosperity for everybody, fighting for affordable and accessible healthcare, combating climate change, and establishing an efficient immigration process.

Continue reading →

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Pew Research Report: Discrimination Experiences Shape Most Asian Americans’ Lives

Posted on April 14, 2024 by High School Voices

 

By Angelina Chiang

In the recent study conducted in 2023 by PEW Research about ongoing racism towards Asians and Asian Americans, there was clear and evident data that show how discriminatory attitudes and behaviors are still ongoing, despite many efforts to promote inclusivity and increase awareness on this matter. Discrimination against many Asian Americans can take on multiple forms–they are not confined to individual incidents.

Discrimination against Asian Americans in the United States has been long-standing throughout history. From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the denial of naturalized U.S. citizenship until the 1940s, to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and targeted racism towards South Asians following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Asian Americans have consistently faced prejudice and exclusion. Whether or not Asian Americans were born in America, they are often being perceived as outsiders.

The outbreak of the Coronavirus in 2020 has led to a concerning rise in discrimination and violence against Asian Americans. In the same research conducted by Pew Research, a survey in 2021 revealed that one-third of English-speaking Asian adults expressed fear of being threatened or physically attacked. An immigrant Korean woman in her early 50s, who claimed that, “It seems that they [white people] can’t distinguish between Korean and Chinese and think that we are from Asia and the onset of COVID-19 is our fault. This is something that can happen to all of us,” The experiences of individuals highlight the lasting presence of racism in our society and the need for education and empathy towards Asian American communities.

Continue reading →

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Review of Netflix Japan’s “Our Secret Diary”

Posted on April 13, 2024 by tinabot

Directed by Kentaro Takemura, the main character of Japanese teen romance movie Our Secret Diary, high schooler Nozomi Kuroda (Hiyori Sakurada), is your classic Japanese shy girl next door who also adorably happens to be a bit of a closet metal head. Following all the cliches of Japanese teen love stories, this one starts off with Nozomi receiving a love confession note in her desk from a popular boy in school, Jun Setoyama (Fumiya Takahashi), and being both timid and prudent, she agrees to correspond with him to get to know him better as friends before considering going out with him. As they exchange messages in a notebook, she soon finds out that his confession note was actually intended for her best friend, not her, but it’s too late–she’s already started to develop feelings for him.

Fair warning before I begin my analysis of the film: I watched it entirely in Japanese with no English subtitles while still being an intermediate level language learner, but I estimate I understood at least 75% of the story. I chose a simple teen romance specifically expecting a predictable plot and not too much vocabulary out of my range of comprehension precisely because I watched this 2023 film on Netflix in Japan, where English subs weren’t even an option.

Needless to say, I had very low expectations. This bubble gum genre in any culture or language is usually rife with outlandish, eye-rolling extremes, the challenge of language learning the only thing I expected to be engaging. The first sign that this film might be a cut above the rest was, right at the start, some skillful editing to present some pieces of the story in non-chronological order, strategically building suspense and giving the plot momentum moving forward, a technique that served to effectively enhance the reveals in the end.

Continue reading →

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Amanda Nguyen and Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights

Posted on April 12, 2024 by High School Voices

By Angelina Chiang

Amanda Nguyen is a well-known figure in the field of sexual assault advocacy. As the CEO and founder of Rise, a non-profit organization that focuses on supporting survivors and changing laws to protect their rights, she dedicates her life to protecting millions of girls and women around the world. 

Nguyen herself is a survivor of rape and claims the most difficult part of what happened was not the rape itself, but how she was treated by the justice system after. She found that the justice system was not protecting individuals and carrying out justice but rather retraumatizing survivors and denying them basic rights. In response, she founded Rise in 2014, a nonprofit organization that provides support and resources to survivors and works to pass laws to better protect their rights.

With the help of Nguyen, volunteers, and legislators, Congress unanimously passed the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights in 2016. The law guarantees basic rights to survivors of sexual assault, such as the right to have their rape kit expenses (up to $2,000) paid for and preserved for the duration of the entire investigation. Rise has additionally passed 65 laws and one United Nations resolution, helping more than 100 million people. 

Nguyen’s work with Rise has gained widespread recognition. She has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Time’s 100 Next list, and many more. Her strong and ongoing advocacy has not only changed laws but has also changed lives, giving survivors hope and a sense of empowerment. Through her work with Rise, Nguyen has shown that you can take your trauma and turn it into something positive to help others.

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Pew Research Center: Asian Americans & Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation

Posted on April 10, 2024 by John

The Pew Research Center recently published a report, Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation, and to no surprise to me, Asians Americans overwhelmingly skew more Democratic than Republican. As the report states:

“The balance of partisan association among Asian voters has changed little over the last few years.”

There have been more recent reports than Asian Americans are becoming more independent or even a little bit Republican, but not a major shift that one can see. In the nineties, many Asian Americans were Republicans or Independents.

What is interesting to see is in the context of the larger picture when it comes to partisanship:

As also noted in the report, college educated Asian Americans are even more Democratic leaning:

“Two-thirds of Asian voters with a college degree align with the Democratic Party; 31% associate with the Republican Party. The partisan balance among Asian voters with a college degree has remained largely the same over our last two decades of surveys. (Asian American voters without a college degree are a smaller group, and sample sizes do not allow for reporting trends among this group.)”

Given 2024 is a presidential election year, I’m sure we’ll be reading more and more about the Asian American electorate, especially as to how we might be the swing vote in certain states, like in Georgia.

 

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