Hackers have taken over more than 1,200 Roblox accounts, flooding the popular children's video game with Trump 2020 campaign propaganda. Initially, a handful of players reported that they were receiving strange messages in game supporting Donald Trump's reelection campaign, and later other players began noticing avatars wearing Trump-inspired apparel. This included donning red pants, a white shirt with an American flag and bald eagle graphic, and a red baseball cap with white lettering. In the'About' field of each hacked player's main profile page, the message'Ask your parents to vote for Trump this year!#MAGA2020' has replaced the original biographical information. 'Why is my avatar this?' one hacked player posted, according to a report from BBC'I'm not even American.'

A European privacy body said it "has doubts" that using facial recognition technology developed by U.S. company Clearview AI is legal in the EU. Clearview AI allows users to link facial images of an individual to a database of more than 3 billion pictures scraped from social media and other sources. According to media reports, over 600 law enforcement agencies worldwide are using the controversial app. But in a statement Wednesday, the European Data Protection Board said that "the use of a service such as Clearview AI by law enforcement authorities in the European Union would, as it stands, likely not be consistent with the EU data protection regime." The body issued the statement after MEPs raised questions regarding the use of the company's software.

The year is 2030. It's been 10 years since the coronavirus pandemic closed down the planet. The world has moved on. It has innovated, adapted and progressed. Things are familiar, yet different. Is it a better world or is there just more shiny gadgets distracting us from cracks in the foundations?

The Montreal AI Ethics Institute, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to defining humanity's place in an algorithm-driven world, today published the inaugural edition of its State of AI Ethics report. The 128-page multidisciplinary paper, which covers a set of areas spanning agency and responsibility, security and risk, and jobs and labor, aims to bring attention to key developments in the field of AI this past quarter. The State of AI Ethics first addresses the problem of bias in ranking and recommendation algorithms, like those used by Amazon to match customers with products they're likely to purchase. The authors note that while there are efforts to apply the notion of diversity to these systems, they usually consider the problem from an algorithmic perspective and strip it of cultural and contextual social meanings. "Demographic parity and equalized odds are some examples of this approach that apply the notion of social choice to score the diversity of data," the report reads.

Mayra Leiva of Reseda, California, knew her eight-year-old son was a little interested in history. But she was surprised when all at once he became a walking encyclopedia, spouting dates and pretending every tire swing was a time machine. "It happened after he saw Night at the Museum," she says. I've had to do a lot of Googling to keep up!" Not many children will tell you that their favorite school subject is history. Memorizing dates and learning long-ago facts that don't seem relevant isn't exactly high on their fun list. Perhaps that's why pop culture--movies, music, television, and even video games and comic books--can be such useful teaching tools. "Teaching through pop culture helps students relate history to their own background and experiences," says Gail Hudson, a fifth-grade teacher and 2020 Nevada Teacher of the Year. "It's tying into something that's already caught their interest." Take the movie version of the Broadway show Hamilton, which releases on Disney July 3.

Level Ex, a Chicago startup that makes medical-training video games for doctors, has been acquired by Berlin-based medical-technology company Brainlab, the companies announced today. The companies did not disclose the terms of their deal, although Level Ex CEO Sam Glassenberg told MobiHealthNews that his company would continue to operate under the new ownership as an independent entity. "We're a bunch of game developers that have been parachuted into the healthcare industry, and we're constantly seeing technology that is, like, two decades behind what we're doing in the entertainment industry," he said. If you go to their offices and see their tech, it's incredibly forward looking. Learn on-demand, earn credit, find products and solutions.

Sarah Burnett, Vice President at Everest Group, Computer Weekly top 30 influential women in IT, chair of BCS Women and founder of WISE members, BCSWomen AI Accelerator In March this year, I launched the new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Accelerator for WISE members, BCSWomen to make AI more relevant to women and encourage more females into computing. Just … Continue reading "Artificial intelligence – the greatest opportunity for women?"

Consider the artificially intelligent voices you hear on a regular basis. Are any of them men? Whether it's Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa, or virtually any GPS system, chances are the computerized personalities in your life are women. This gender imbalance is pervasive in fiction as well as reality. Films like "Her" and "Ex Machina" reflect our anxieties about what intelligent machines mean for humanity.

Former Vice President Joe Biden defends his cognitive capabilities amid criticism. Joe Biden, at his first press conference in three months, defended his cognitive ability and said he "can hardly wait" to compare it to President Trump's as the general election matchup heats up. "I've been tested, I'm constantly tested," Biden said in response to a question from Fox News' Doug McKelway. "Look, all you've got to do is watch me and I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capability to the cognitive capability of the man I'm running against." While Biden's press conference in Delaware was ostensibly about how he would respond to the coronavirus pandemic, the former vice president also slammed the current White House occupant for his response to reports that Russian intelligence operatives offered to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants who killed U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

[Courtesy of Microsoft] SEOUL -- The South Korean branch of U.S. tech company Microsoft has kick-started an artificial intelligence-based elderly mental health care service using various sensors and wearable devices to prevent mental illnesses such as geriatric depression, depression in older a...