VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican joined forces with tech giants Microsoft and IBM on Friday to promote the ethical development of artificial intelligence (AI) and call for regulation of intrusive technologies such as facial recognition. The three said AI should respect privacy, work reliably and without bias, consider human rights and operate transparently. Pope Francis, who has raised concerns about the uncontrolled spread of AI technologies, gave his backing in a speech read on his behalf at a conference attended by Microsoft president Brad Smith (MSFT.O) and IBM (IBM.N) Executive Vice President John Kelly. The pope is ill and could not deliver the address himself. Calling for the ethical development of algorithms, known as "algor-ethics", Francis warned about the dangers of AI being used to extract data for commercial or political ends, often without the knowledge of individuals.

Radiologists getting an assist from artificial intelligence can detect more breast cancer--with a reduced rate of false positive incidents--from mammography images. A new study, published late last week in the Lancet Digital Health online journal, contends that AI can boost the accuracy of diagnosis by radiologists, compared with the results they achieve by just examining images from mammography exams. The study was conducted by Korean academic hospitals and Lunit, a Seoul-based medical AI company working in radiology and oncology. It draws on large-scale data of more than 170,000 mammogram examinations from five healthcare organizations in South Korea, the U.S. and the U.K. The set of data includes more than 36,000 cases found positive for cancer and verified by biopsies. That data trained the AI models, and the sensitivity of the model was compared with how radiologists perform without any technological assistance with diagnosis.

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As a part of ProgrammableWeb's ongoing series of on-demand re-broadcasts of presentations that are given at the monthly Washington, DC-Area API meetup (anyone can attend), this article offers a video recording, and audio-only podcast, and a full transcript of the Feb 4, 2020 discussion given by Capital One's director of API and Event Streaming Platform Services Matthew Reinbold. As of late, Reinbold has been investing a significant amount of his time into learning more about the application and implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the enterprise. As Reinbold points out in his presentation (embedded below), the subject of AI covers and expansive waterfront with dozens of new papers being published about the topic on a nearly daily basis. It's far too much for any one human to consume and so it helps to narrow one's studies down to a one or more specialized niches. Given his enterprise roots, Reinbold's area of interest naturally drifted towards machine learning (ML).

In 2020, it's safe to assume that any photo uploaded and made public to the internet will be analyzed by facial recognition. Not only do companies like Google and Facebook apply facial recognition as a feature, but companies like Clearview AI have been discreetly scraping images from the public internet in order to sell facial recognition technology to police for years. Now, A.I. researchers are starting to think about how technology can solve the problem it created. These algorithms aren't the solution to privacy on the web -- and they don't claim to be. But they're tools that, if adopted by online platforms, could claw back a little of the privacy typically lost by posting images online. Fawkes is an anti-facial recognition system based on research from the University of Chicago.

The developers of the dating app Tinder recently announced that new safety features would be added to its app throughout 2020. These updates include a means to connect users with emergency services when they feel unsafe and more safety information provided through the app. Given that many users, especially women, experience harassment, sexism and threatening behaviour on Tinder, these appear to be positive steps to addressing such issues. Tinder also mentioned app updates will incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to validate profile photos. "The [AI] feature allows members to self-authenticate through a series of real-time posed selfies, which are compared to existing profile photos using human-assisted AI technology."

Disease outbreaks like the coronavirus often unfold too quickly for scientists to find a cure. But in the future, artificial intelligence could help researchers do a better job. While it's probably too late for the fledgling technology to play a major role in the current epidemic, there's hope for the next outbreaks. AI is good at combing through mounds of data to find connections that make it easier to determine what kinds of treatments could work or which experiments to pursue next. The question is what Big Data will come up with when it only gets meager scraps of information on a newly emerged illness like Covid-19, which first emerged late last year in China and has sickened more than 75,000 people in about two months.

Few topics in the recruitment sector have proved to be more controversial than the use of artificial intelligence (AI). On one hand, everywhere you turn there are endless statistics about how AI is infiltrating business processes. According to LinkedIn, an overwhelming majority of recruiters and hiring managers agree that AI accelerates their ability to source and screen candidates. What's more, 70 per cent of recruiters believe their current process would be more effective if it were more data-driven and used AI. However, on the other side of the fence, research commissioned by the Royal Society of Arts suggests candidates don't agree, with 60 per cent of the public stating they're opposed to the use of automated decision-making in recruitment.

Digital molecule designer Insilico Medicine has launched a preclinical research program focused on finding new treatments for brain cancer, and has brought on the former global program head of GlaxoSmithKline's computer-aided drug discovery unit to help run it. George Okafo will join Insilico as an entrepreneur-in-residence, as the company looks to wield its artificial intelligence networks and generative engines to uncover novel targets and molecules for glioblastoma multiforme, and potentially spin out the findings into a new business. "Brain cancers are the worst diseases anyone can ever get and the most rare cancers are often overlooked because the efforts are expensive, the market is small, and the probability of failure is high," Insilico co-founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov said in a statement. "We will try to change this with our AI-powered drug discovery pipeline." "We needed to have a seasoned big pharma veteran to drive this process to the point where it can be quickly developed and externalized," Zhavoronkov added, saying the company plans to use its AI to generate and evaluate several leads over the coming months, before hopefully setting the whole project off on its own by the end of August.

The increase in the number of cancer cases worldwide is a major cause for concern for the medical community. Doctor Alexandru Floares, a speaker at a 3-day workshop organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life on Ethics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), spoke to Vatican Radio on the potential for larger strides in the field of oncology and medical research through the efficiency that AI provides. Dr. Floares, a Neurologist, specialist in AI applications in Oncology, and President of Solutions of Artificial Intelligence Applications (SAIA), gave a presentation titled "AI in Oncology." In his interview with Vatican Radio, Dr. Floares spoke on issues bordering on access to data for medical research, solutions to the emerging issues surrounding the use of AI in healthcare, and the revolutionary role of AI in the field of medicine. "The problems related to applying AI to medicine and oncology can be solved relatively easily," he said.