Ten New Zealanders who downloaded an app on Facebook could have exposed up to 63,714 of their compatriots to the data mining tactics of Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has told the country's privacy commissioner that it is in the process of alerting New Zealanders who were affected by the breach, which occurred when ten users downloaded a personality quiz app. "For New Zealand, we estimate a total of 63,724 people may have been impacted – 10 are estimated to have downloaded the quiz app with 63,714 friends possibly impacted," said Antonia Sanda, head of communications for Facebook in Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand's privacy commissioner, John Edwards, said he was urgently seeking further information from Facebook on how New Zealanders data was used by Cambridge Analytica, and is working closely with his counterparts in the US, UK Australia and Canada to establish the severity and ramifications of the privacy beach. "I think we have some real information deficits that I hope my colleagues in the UK and the US will uncover ... I am not sure New Zealanders were'targeted' but I think there is a level of complacency [in New Zealand]. And when you say we're so far away, we're only one click away really," Edwards said.

They will be "weapons of terror, used by terrorists and rogue states against civilian populations. Unlike human soldiers, they will follow any orders however evil," says Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, Australia. "These will be weapons of mass destruction. One programmer and a 3D printer can do what previously took an army of people. They will industrialise war, changing the speed and duration of how we can fight. They will be able to kill 24-7 and they will kill faster than humans can act to defend themselves."

Campaigners are renewing calls for a pre-emptive ban on so-called "killer robots" as representatives of more than 80 countries meet to discuss the autonomous weapons systems. The use of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) is "a step too far", said Mary Wareham, the global coordinator of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. "They cross a moral line, because we would see machines taking human lives on the battlefield or in law enforcement. "We want weapon systems and the use of force to remain under human control," Wareham said. Wareham spoke to Al Jazeera before Monday's meeting in Geneva, Switzerland on a possible ban on LAWS. This is the fifth international meeting to discuss so-called "killer robots" since 2014, but no formal decisions will be taken yet as countries are still working towards a common definition of LAWS, and have yet to agree on whether they should be outlawed in international law. This is going to be a crucial year. If we do not move swiftly, we could end up in a situation where it's too late and where fully autonomous weapons proliferate to the extent that every country has them," Wareham told Al Jazeera.

Google has launched a new product to the American market, the Google Clip, that uses AI and machine learning to automatically capture photos of what it deems to be "interesting moments". In Australia, the answers appear to be: there isn't and no one. Under Australian law, the author of an artistic work is "the person who took the photograph". The Clip is a machine, not a person, so is not the author (under Australian law). The owner of the Clip did not "take" the photograph, so is not the author.

Annual salaries for data scientists and machine learning engineers vary significantly across the world. Based on a 2017 Kaggle survey of data professionals, countries with the highest paid data scientists and machine learning engineers (in USD) were: US ($120K), Australia ($111K), Israel ($88K), Canada ($81K) and Germany ($80K). Countries with the lowest annual salaries were: Brazil ($35K), Poland ($29K), Ukraine ($25K), India ($14K) and Russia ($13K). In my last post, I compared at annual salaries of different data professionals in the US. Data scientists and machine learning engineers from the US reported some of the highest salaries among different data professionals.

An autonomous sentry freezes an "intruder" during a 2006 test of the weapons system by the South Korean military. Fifty-seven scientists from 29 countries have called for a boycott of a top South Korean university because of a new center aimed at using artificial intelligence (AI) to bolster national security. The AI scientists claim the university is developing autonomous weapons, or "killer robots," whereas university officials say the goal of the research is to improve existing defense systems. A web page that has since been removed by the university said the center, to be operated jointly with South Korean defense company Hanwha Systems, would work on "AI-based command and decision systems, composite navigation algorithms for mega-scale unmanned undersea vehicles, AI-based smart aircraft training systems, and AI-based smart object tracking and recognition technology." Toby Walsh, a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who organized the boycott, fears that the research will be applied to autonomous weapons, which can include unmanned flying drones or submarines, cruise missiles, autonomously operated sentry guns, or battlefield robots.

One person unsurprised by the unfolding data scandals surrounding Cambridge Analytica and Facebook is Cathy O'Neil. In 2016 Cathy published her book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. In the book O'Neil reveals how a silent bureaucracy governed by algorithms and big data is emerging across every corner of society. This new bureaucracy is increasingly deciding who gets a job, who gets credit (and at what rate), who goes to prison and what information people read. Some of these systems may be making accurate decisions. However, Cathy argues that accuracy and efficiency alone are not sufficient metrics for success. Fairness, equity and other social considerations need to be built into the algorithms.

In the two months since Richard Watson strapped 200 remote-control-sized transmitters around his cows' necks, an artificial-intelligence system named Ida has pinged his phone with helpful alerts -- when his cows are chewing the cud, when they're feeling sick, when they're ready for insemination. "There may be 10 animals out there that have a real problem, but could you pick them?" he said one morning, standing among a grazing herd of dairy cattle wearing what he calls "cow Fitbits." But on the neighboring pastures here in rural Georgia, other farmers say they aren't that impressed. When a cow's in heat, they know she'll start getting mounted by her bovine sisters, so they smear paint on the cows' backsides and then just look for the incriminating smudge. "I can spot a cow across a room that don't feel great just by looking in her eyes," said Mark Rodgers, a fourth-generation dairy farmer in Dearing, Ga., whose dad still drives a tractor at 82. "The good Lord said, 'This is what you can do.' I can't draw, paint or anything else, but I can watch cows," he said.

In the two months since Richard Watson strapped 200 remote-control-sized transmitters around his cows' necks, an artificial intelligence system named Ida has pinged his phone with helpful alerts: when his cows are chewing the cud, when they're feeling sick, when they're ready for insemination. "There may be 10 animals out there that have a real problem, but could you pick them?" he said one morning, standing among a grazing herd of dairy cattle wearing what he calls "cow Fitbits." But on the neighboring pastures here in rural Georgia, other farmers say they aren't that impressed. When a cow's in heat, they know she'll start getting mounted by her bovine sisters, so they smear paint on the cows' backsides and then just look for the incriminating smudge. "I can spot a cow across a room that don't feel great just by looking in her eyes," said Mark Rodgers, a fourth-generation dairy farmer in Dearing, Georgia, whose dad still drives a tractor at 82. "The good Lord said, 'This is what you can do.' I can't draw, paint or anything else, but I can watch cows."

Machine Learning algorithms can predict patterns based on previous experiences. The overarching practice of Machine Learning includes both robotics (dealing with the real world) and the processing of data (the computer's equivalent of thinking). These algorithms find predictable, repeatable patterns that can be applied to eCommerce, Data Management, and new technologies such as driverless cars. The full impact of Machine Learning is just starting to be felt, and may significantly alter the way products are created, and the way people earn a living. Machine Learning algorithms are trained with large amounts of data, allowing the "robot" to learn and anticipate problems and patterns.