Princeton, New Jersey--(Newsfile Corp. - December 3, 2019) - NotForgotten Digital Library LLC, creators of the first digital time capsule powered by blockchain, today announced their use of Veritone aiWARE and Digital Media Hub. Veritone's cognitive capabilities will add a new dimension to NotForgotten's current offerings by adding automated video transcription and metadata creation to make large volumes of video content easily searchable. Videos within NotForgotten archives can then be easily accessed through the custom-branded Digital Media Hub and users can discover insights about a set time and place in history. "The new capabilities Veritone is adding to NotForgotten's archives are set to change the way future historians study our present," says Adrienne Liebenberg, co-founder at NotForgotten. "Veritone aiWARE will analyze the videos within the NotForgotten Digital Library and add AI-enabled insights about society and people within a set time and place. This will be the first time we - society at large - will have the framework in place to not only record and research history from a personal perspective, but to also see how these events made people feel."

A new leak of highly classified Chinese government documents has uncovered the operations manual for running the mass detention camps in Xinjiang and exposed the mechanics of the region's Orwellian system of mass surveillance and "predictive policing." The China Cables, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, include a classified list of guidelines, personally approved by the region's top security chief, that effectively serves as a manual for operating the camps now holding hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs and other minorities. The leak also features previously undisclosed intelligence briefings that reveal, in the government's own words, how Chinese police are guided by a massive data collection and analysis system that uses artificial intelligence to select entire categories of Xinjiang residents for detention. The manual, called a "telegram," instructs camp personnel on such matters as how to prevent escapes, how to maintain total secrecy about the camps' existence, methods of forced indoctrination, how to control disease outbreaks, and when to let detainees see relatives or even use the toilet. The document, dating to 2017, lays bare a behavior-modification "points" system to mete out punishments and rewards to inmates. The manual reveals the minimum duration of detention: one year -- though accounts from ex-detainees suggest that some are released sooner. Experts say the platform, which is used in both policing and military contexts, demonstrates the power of technology to help drive industrial-scale human rights abuses. The China Cables reveal how the system is able to amass vast amounts of intimate personal data through warrantless manual searches, facial recognition cameras, and other means to identify candidates for detention, flagging for investigation hundreds of thousands merely for using certain popular mobile phone apps.

In 2010, US authors in top-rated AI journals outnumbered Chinese counterparts by two to one. That ratio has now reversed. Last year, 1,073 AI experts based at Chinese universities were credited in AI journals such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers's Transactions on Neural Networks, compared to 492 US authors. Australia and Israel also do well on this metric. When experts are ranked according to their'H-index' – a metric of productivity and the citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar – Americans occupy 626 of the 1,000 top spots, including all of the top ten spots at the time of our analysis. New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and Finland's AI academics are also highly ranked.

Public-sector CIOs can use this list of strategic technology trends as inspiration and factor them into their organizations' strategic plans. Forward-looking government officials know that, in a digital society, "Policy is the technology and technology is the policy." Any government service delivered at scale is underpinned by a host of technologies. If the success of these business projects is compromised by poor implementation of technology, then the political objectives are compromised too. Implementing a digital government strategy is a journey that will span multiple budget cycles and political administrations.

The Australian Government released its artificial intelligence (AI) technology roadmap during Australia's inaugural AI summit Techtonic, held recently in Canberra. As reported, 'Artificial Intelligence: Solving problems, growing the economy and improving our quality of life' was developed by CSIRO, Australia's national science agency. The roadmap outlines the importance of action for Australia to capture the benefits of AI, which is estimated to be worth AU$ 22.17 trillion to the global economy by 2030. It was developed for the Australian Government in consultation with industry, government and academia. The roadmap is intended to help guide future investment in AI and machine learning, and accompanies Artificial Intelligence: Australia's Ethics Framework, a discussion paper prepared by CSIRO's Data61 and published by the Australian Government in April 2019.

We've been told a million times that texting (or tweeting) while driving is dangerous. However, a lot of folks still do it; putting their and other people's lives in danger. Now, Australia is set out to catch them with a new AI-based system. The government of New South Wales state is setting up cameras specifically made for catching drivers using mobile phones. The state's transport department tested the system with cameras on two spots, and it's now spending $88 million to install them on 45 spots.

Phone use while driving remains a problem in many parts of the world, in no small part due to the difficulty of enforcing laws. How do you catch someone in the act? Australian police might not have that problem. The New South Wales government has started using the first cameras that can automatically detect when drivers are using their phones. The system uses AI to review photos for telltale signs of phone use, with human reviewing the flagged images to prevent any false positives.

Independent watchdog key to monitor artificial intelligence Geoff Maslen 01 June 2019 Nations that increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) devices to assist in decision-making should act immediately and adopt'an independent watchdog' to monitor them for possible risks to the public, according to two senior academics in New Zealand. John Zerilli and Colin Gavaghan have called on their government to establish an independent regulator to monitor "and address the risks associated with these digital technologies". "To protect us from the risks of advanced artificial intelligence, we need to act now," say the two Otago University academics. "The public should know what AI systems their government uses as well as how well they perform. Systems should be regularly evaluated and summary results made available to the public in a systematic format."

In his blog post on artificial intelligence (AI), GovTech Graduate Jonathan Manning draws on the New Zealand Law Foundation: Government use of artificial intelligence in New Zealand (the NZFL report) to discuss the role and effectiveness of explanation tools. As algorithms and AI become ubiquitous we all become'data subjects' to organisations such as governments and businesses. In response, regulations such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation are beginning to emerge. The New Zealand government is currently exploring how governments, business and society can work together to meet the challenge of regulating AI. A part of this challenge is ensuring when things like algorithmic harm arise, we can explain what happened and why so that mistakes can be fixed and not repeated or obscured.

The Marshall Liberal Government will be the first government globally to host a $250,000 crowd sourced open data competition to fast-track the discovery of mineral deposits in South Australia. ExploreSA: The Gawler Challenge partners with open innovation platform, Unearthed, in a world-wide call for geologists and data scientists to uncover new exploration targets in the state's Gawler Craton region. Using the Geological Survey of South Australia's historical records, primary data and research, the competition combines geological expertise with new mathematical, machine learning and artificial intelligence to increase the number of potential drill targets across central South Australia. "This state-of-the-art competition has the potential to unearth the next Olympic Dam or Carrapateena by encouraging global thinkers and innovators to interrogate our open-file data and generate new exploration models and ideas for targeting," said Minister van Holst Pellekaan. "The Marshall Liberal Government is thinking outside the square to drive investment and jobs in South Australia's vital resources sector. "Mining is one of the pillars of the South Australian economy and this competition should add to the pipeline of projects in the resources and minerals processing sector.