When releasing outputs from confidential data, agencies need to balance the analytical usefulness of the released data with the obligation to protect data subjects' confidentiality. For releases satisfying differential privacy, this balance is reflected by the privacy budget, ε. We provide a framework for setting ε based on its relationship with Bayesian posterior probabilities of disclosure. The agency responsible for the data release decides how much posterior risk it is willing to accept at various levels of prior risk, which implies a unique ε. Agencies can evaluate different risk profiles to determine one that leads to an acceptable trade-off in risk and utility.

Causal reasoning is often challenging with spatial data, particularly when handling high-dimensional inputs. To address this, we propose a neural network (NN) based framework integrated with an approximate Gaussian process to manage spatial interference and unobserved confounding. Additionally, we adopt a generalized propensity-score-based approach to address partially observed outcomes when estimating causal effects with continuous treatments. We evaluate our framework using synthetic, semi-synthetic, and real-world data inferred from satellite imagery. Our results demonstrate that NN-based models significantly outperform linear spatial regression models in estimating causal effects. Furthermore, in real-world case studies, NN-based models offer more reasonable predictions of causal effects, facilitating decision-making in relevant applications.

Nubank was founded in 2013 to free people from a bureaucratic, slow, and inefficient financial system. Since then, through innovative technology and outstanding customer service, the company has been redefining people's relationships with money across Latin America. With operations in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, Nubank is today one of the largest digital banking platforms and technology-leading companies in the world. Today, Nubank is a global company, with offices in São Paulo (Brazil), Mexico City (Mexico), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Bogotá (Colombia), Durham (United States), and Berlin (Germany). It was founded in 2013 in Sao Paulo, by Colombian David Vélez, and cofounded by Brazilian Cristina Junqueira and American Edward Wible.

Hundreds of Google workers and their supporters gathered near the company's downtown San Francisco offices Thursday, raising signs that read "No Tech for Apartheid" and filling the air with chants of "Tech from Amazon and Google! You can't claim that you are neutral!" Similar scenes unfolded outside Google and Amazon offices in New York and Seattle, and a Google office in Durham, North Carolina. Google and Amazon employees were joined at the rallies by tech workers from other companies and Palestinian rights organizations. They all convened to protest Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon's cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.

Automation isn't as much of a threat as we have been told. Christopher Butler is a designer living in Durham, NC. "Wouldn't it be better if websites just made themselves?" That was the pitch for The Grid, a so-called website creation service "powered by artificial intelligence" that launched through a crowdfunding campaign in 2014. Less than five years later, after selling many memberships and releasing a very lackluster initial "Version 2" (was there ever a Version 1? some questions are not meant to be answered), The Grid ghosted. They locked their customers out of their own websites. You can still read their parting words on their website if you want to get a feel for a less-than-classy farewell to thousands of people who essentially had money stolen from them.

DURHAM, N.C. - Using drones and artificial intelligence to monitor large colonies of seabirds can be as effective as traditional on-the-ground methods, while reducing costs, labor and the risk of human error, a new study finds. Scientists at Duke University and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) used a deep-learning algorithm--a form of artificial intelligence--to analyze more than 10,000 drone images of mixed colonies of seabirds in the Falkland Islands off Argentina's coast. The Falklands, also known as the Malvinas, are home to the world's largest colonies of black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophris) and second-largest colonies of southern rockhopper penguins (Eudyptes c. chrysocome). Hundreds of thousands of birds breed on the islands in densely interspersed groups. The deep-learning algorithm correctly identified and counted the albatrosses with 97% accuracy and the penguins with 87%.

A research has found that an artificial intelligence tool under development at Duke University can be added to the standard toilet to help analyse patients' stool and give gastroenterologists the information they need to provide appropriate treatment. The research was selected for presentation at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2021. The new technology could assist in managing chronic gastrointestinal issues such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). "Typically, gastroenterologists have to rely on patient self-reported information about their stool to help determine the cause of their gastrointestinal health issues, which can be very unreliable," said Deborah Fisher, MD, one of the lead authors on the study and associate professor of medicine at Duke University Durham, North Carolina. "Patients often can't remember what their stool looks like or how often they have a bowel movement, which is part of the standard monitoring process. The Smart Toilet technology will allow us to gather the long-term information needed to make a more accurate and timely diagnosis of chronic gastrointestinal problems."

Artificial intelligence tool can be used for long-term tracking and management of chronic gastrointestinal ailments. An artificial intelligence tool under development at Duke University can be added to the standard toilet to help analyze patients' stool and give gastroenterologists the information they need to provide appropriate treatment, according to research that was selected for presentation at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2021. The new technology could assist in managing chronic gastrointestinal issues such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). "Typically, gastroenterologists have to rely on patient self-reported information about their stool to help determine the cause of their gastrointestinal health issues, which can be very unreliable," said Deborah Fisher, MD, one of the lead authors on the study and associate professor of medicine at Duke University Durham, North Carolina. "Patients often can't remember what their stool looks like or how often they have a bowel movement, which is part of the standard monitoring process. The Smart Toilet technology will allow us to gather the long-term information needed to make a more accurate and timely diagnosis of chronic gastrointestinal problems."

Over the past year Walmart has started to remove or turn off the 17-foot-tall machines often placed at the front of stores. About 300 machines are being removed from stores, and around 1,300 "hibernated" while Walmart focuses on other services, said Larry Blue, chief executive of Bell & Howell, a Durham, N.C.-based automation services company that installed and maintains the devices for the retailer. "The customer told us they want one pickup spot, and they want that pickup spot to be outside," said a Walmart spokeswoman. The pickup towers act as a vending machine for online orders, holding items inside until they are collected by shoppers. Walmart frequently highlighted the machines in presentations to media and investors in recent years, saying it aimed to offer shoppers a quicker way to pick up online orders at a lower cost.

AI tool turns low-pixel faces into realistic images A photo editing tool designed by a programming team at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, raises prospects for sharper, cleaner images in digital presentations and also promises hours of fun for older-video game fans who can now generate crystal clear faces for low-pixel characters who populated early products. But the tool also unexpectedly brought to the surface concerns about bias in the use of datasets in massive machine learning projects. PULSE, Photo Upsampling via Latent Space Exploration, was created by Duke researchers to create more realistic images from low-pixel source data. In their research paper distributed earlier this year, the team explained how their approach differed from earlier efforts to generate lifelike images from 8-bit imagery. "Instead of starting with the low resolution image and slowly adding detail, PULSE traverses the high-resolution natural image manifold, searching for images that downscale to the original low resolution image," the report stated.