Joy Buolamwini is a graduate researcher at the MIT Media Lab and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League – an organisation that aims to challenge the biases in decision-making software. She grew up in Mississippi, gained a Rhodes scholarship, and she is also a Fulbright fellow, an Astronaut scholar and a Google Anita Borg scholar. Earlier this year she won a $50,000 scholarship funded by the makers of the film Hidden Figures for her work fighting coded discrimination. How did you become interested in that area? When I was a computer science undergraduate I was working on social robotics – the robots use computer vision to detect the humans they socialise with.

We are aware of the devastating effect HIV can have on the immune system, but a new studysuggests the virus may also adversely affect brain development. In groundbreaking research, scientists have found young HIV positive patients with limited or no treatment for their condition had significant disruptions in brain structure, poorer strength and efficiency of connections, and lessened cognitive performance, when compared to their peers without the virus. A new study published online in Brain Connectivity found that limited-treated or untreated HIV infections in young adults may affect their brain connections, which in turn compromises their cognitive abilities. The study found that, in addition to having visible structural and connectivity differences from uninfected peers, HIV positive young adults performed worse on cognitive tests involving tasks such as learning and recalling information. "The most interesting aspect of this study was that it was performed in young adults with limited or no history of HIV treatment."

In a recent post about Deep Learning applications, platforms, limitations and quantum computing we have announced a panel discussion on "How Artificial Intelligence is disrupting Industries" which took place on 25 May 2017 in Cape Town. This event was hosted by Far Ventures, a start-up studio and incubator that aims to foster technology entrepreneurship in Africa by founding and growing start-ups that can positively impact people's lives through technology. It was also supported by the Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa (MIIA), an innovative community and accelerator for Machine Intelligence and Data Science Research and Applications to help transform Africa. This post includes the links to the introductory presentation as well as the video of the panel discussion. Photos of the MIIA event can be found here. Photos of the MIIA event can be found here.

Jane Wang started out as an applied physicist modeling the complex network dynamics of memory systems in the brain before moving into experimental cognitive neuroscience as a postdoc at Northwestern. Since joining DeepMind two years ago, her non-machine learning background has equipped her with a unique set of tools and perspectives for tackling the hardest AI problems. "It's exhilarating to formulate theories of human brain function as powerful deep reinforcement learning models that can solve similarly complex tasks," she shares. Though Wang has been successful without a formal AI background, she's concerned the steep learning curve and hypercompetitive atmosphere of AI research can discourage diverse participation. "Although competitiveness drives the field forward, it also discourages those who wish to work in more inclusive, cooperative environments," she warns.

A stunning new animation reveals the moment the moon crosses in front of the sun during a partial solar eclipse. The phenomenon was captured on May 25 by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), during a lunar transit that lasted nearly an hour. During this time, scientists say the moon covered roughly 89 percent of the sun, revealing a'crisp' view of the lunar horizon. The phenomenon was captured on May 25 by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), during a lunar transit that lasted nearly an hour. The animation reveals the moon's path as it crossed in front of the sun NASA has revealed a plan to send a robot to the sun in 2018 to help understand space weather. This will bring it seven times closer to the sun's surface than any spacecraft before it.

In the wake of the recent Manchester terrorist attacks, in which 22 people--mostly parents, teenagers, and children as young as eight years old--were murdered by a suicide bomber, the question that lingered on so many people's minds is, "how?" How could he, the bomber, do it? It's a question that many people have found themselves asking too often, not just after highly publicized attacks in the U.S., but also in countries like Kenya and Nigeria where terror attacks by militant groups such as Boko Haram and al-Shabaab attract less global attention but are no less deadly, or heart-wrenchingly awful. And yet, despite behaviors that many would label immoral, terrorists often couch their activities in moral terms--invoking concepts such as "social cleansing" and "moral purification," attacking people and symbols that they believe are representative of moral failings. But how can people allegedly motivated by morality engage in behaviors that, from the outside, appear to be so clearly immoral? Agustín Ibáñez, a cognitive science researcher at Argentina's Ineco Foundation at Favaloro University, and Adolfo Garcia, a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), took an interesting tact towards understanding how the mind of a terrorist differs from the mind of, well, people who don't commit acts of terror.

The developmental trajectory of future apps will be heavily influenced by AI and machine learning, says a new report by F5 Networks, released ahead of the annual EMEA F5 Agility conference in Barcelona, Spain. The Future of Apps study, commissioned to The Foresight Factory, says developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning are likely to include more personalised, predictive services in areas such as cognitive health and finance. EMEA is already poised for the next wave of advances in AI, says the report. Nearly a third of surveyed respondents across Europe and South Africa say they use voice commands on their mobile devices. Already, some 10,000 third-party voice enabled apps are available for use with Amazon's Alexa at the end of Q1 2017.

You'd be forgiven if, settling into the fall 2003 "Literature of the 16th Century" course at University of California, Berkeley, you found the unassuming 70-year-old man standing at the front of the lecture hall a bit eccentric. For one thing, the class syllabus, which was printed on the back of a rumpled flyer promoting bicycle safety, seemed to be preparing you for the fact that some readings may feel toilsome. "Don't worry," it read on the two weeks to be spent with a notoriously long allegorical poem; it's "only drudgery if you're reading it for school." Phew! you thought, then, Wait a second... You might have wondered what you had gotten yourself into. Then again, if you had enrolled in Stephen Booth's class, chances are that you already knew. By this time, Booth had been teaching Shakespeare to Berkeley undergraduates for decades and had earned the adulation of thousands of students.

Drones have been the focus of many security initiatives, like the "sky fence" in the Channel Islands that jams pilot signals to stop drones from bringing contraband into the prison. Remotely piloted aircraft can also be a force for good, like in Africa where drones are being used to stop poaching. In the US, you may not have to register your personal drones with the FAA anymore, but you might not want to fly them where they're not allowed. New draft legislation from the Trump administration would authorize the government to track, take control of, and destroy drones that the government thinks pose a threat to specially designated areas. In addition, courts would be unable to hear lawsuits arising from such activity.

Congratulations! You've just accomplished something I never managed to do-earn a college degree. Between your commencement speaker and every aunt and uncle at your graduation party, I am sure you are getting a lot of advice. At the risk of piling on, I thought I would share a few thoughts. New college graduates often ask me for career advice. I was lucky to be in my early 20s when the digital revolution was just getting under way, and Paul Allen and I had the chance to help shape it.