Describe why we--the "social good sector"--should care about and help shape the role AI plays in our society

Alphabet's Jigsaw subsidiary has revealed a new tool that's intended to help journalists more easily spot deepfakes and manipulated images. The tool, called Assembler, uses "detectors" to analyze an image or deepfake; determine if it's authentic; and if it's not, inform the user where the image may have been manipulated. Assembler's detectors can see things like an image pasted over another or changes to image brightness, according to a blog post by Jigsaw CEO and founder Jared Cohen. Jigsaw also says Assembler has a detector specifically made to catch deepfakes and one that takes the combined signals from many detectors to analyze an image for multiple instances of manipulation at the same time. Right now, the tool is in testing with more than a dozen news and fact-checking organizations, including Animal Politico, Rappler, and Agence France-Presse, though Jigsaw doesn't plan to offer it to the public, according to The New York Times.

EVENT: The UCI Forum for the Academy and the Public will host a two-day conference on "The Future of the Future: The Ethics and Implications of AI." Keynote speaker Bruce Sterling, an award-winning science fiction author, and an interdisciplinary and international panel of writers, academics and communicators will tackle an advance in technology that touches our everyday lives: artificial intelligence. INFORMATION: All events are free and open to the public, but please RSVP here. Visitor parking is available in the Student Center Parking Structure (grid D5 on campus map) and in the Mesa Parking Structure (grid D3 on campus map) for $13 per day or $2 per hour. Media planning to attend should contact Pat Harriman at 949-824-9055 or pharrima@uci.edu. BACKGROUND: The UCI Forum for the Academy and the Public is a collaborative project of the literary journalism program, the School of Humanities and the School of Law that bridges the university and the public via conferences and pop-ups that take on the most pressing issues of our time.

The European Union won't issue a ban on facial recognition tech, as it once proposed, the Financial Times reports. In a previous draft of a paper on artificial intelligence, the European Commission suggested a five-year moratorium on facial recognition, so that the technology's impact could be studied, noting that it can be inaccurate, used to breach privacy laws and facilitate identity fraud. In a new draft, seen by the Financial Times, that moratorium has been removed. Instead, it seems the European Commission will encourage individual member states to set their own facial recognition rules. The latest draft suggests that independent groups assess each proposed public use of the technology.

CAIRO - 12 February 2020: "We are entering the cognitive age. Over the next 25 years, advanced AI [Artificial Intelligence] will be the central element of digital transformation that fundamentally changes how businesses operate," Executive Vice President of global consulting firm Protiviti, Cory Gunderson, once said. Protiviti argues in a report that artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are poised to help companies make dramatic shifts in performance, shareholder value and business development within the next two years. "AI opens the door to analyse massive amounts of data and deliver critical insights that organisations across a wide variety of industries can use to improve processes, drive profitability, and increase their competitive advantage," it stated. The research concluded that companies leading the charge with advanced AI are finding that it is a real game changer, while companies that are still lagging behind will soon experience a major disadvantages.

The "2020 Global Forecast for Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Chipsets (2021-2026 Outlook)-High Tech & Emerging Markets Report" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report contains timely and accurate market statistics and forecasts on the market for over 140 countries. Published annually, it provides a unique and accurate estimate on market sizing for this equipment/material using a proprietary economic model that integrates historical trends (horizontal analysis) and longitudinal analysis of incorporated industries (vertical analysis). Estimates on equipment or material sales (product shipments value) are published historically for 2013 to 2017, projections for 2016 to 2020 and forecasts for 2021 to 2026. Product shipments include the total value of all products produced and shipped by all producers.

Meet Spot, the first robot to get its own employee number at Norwegian oil producer Aker BP. Developed by Boston Dynamics, the robot is set to start patrolling Aker BP's oil and gas production vessel at the Skarv field in the Norwegian Sea this year, testing its ability to run inspections, detect hydrocarbon leaks, gather data and generate reports. The upshot for Aker BP, which is seeking to be a front-runner in the digitalization of the oil industry, is to make offshore operations safer and more efficient, the company said as it presented the robot at its capital markets day in Oslo on Tuesday. Aker BP will run the tests with Cognite, the software venture controlled by the oil company's main owner, Aker ASA. "These things never get tired, they have a larger ability to adapt and to gather data," Kjetel Digre, Aker BP's senior vice president for operations, said in an interview.

After the messy reporting of the Iowa caucus results, some who build tech for progressive causes say the approach to software development in this space needs rethinking. After the messy reporting of the Iowa caucus results, some who build tech for progressive causes say the approach to software development in this space needs rethinking. Democrats could avoid another tech meltdown like the one that afflicted the Iowa caucuses with a better strategy for building the tools they need, progressive technology specialists say. The origins of the Iowa debacle are in a boom-and-bust cycle that places technology in competition with other priorities as time-crunched campaigns grapple with how best to spend as they hurtle toward an election. "The easy way to spend money, that's reliable, is on advertising," says Evan Henshaw-Plath, a technologist who has built applications for progressive causes and was an early employee at Twitter.

A New York Times investigation has catapulted Clearview AI, a US-based facial recognition (FR) company, into the center of the privacy debate. Clearview AI identifies individuals from non-consensually collected images, which threatens to eradicate individual privacy in its entirety. The company has built a database of over one billion images taken from social media, without user consent, and contrary to the websites' terms of use. The tool can identify any individual on the street from just one image thus obliterating public privacy. The revelations should propel swift regulatory action.

Positive, reliable and human-centric artificial intelligence (AI) relies on the willingness of Europe as a whole to design a balanced and inclusive governance framework that would allow it to become a leader in the development of trustworthy AI technologies worldwide. That was the main conclusion reached in the frame of the high-level workshop organised by the Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) on 29 January 2020 at the European Parliament in Brussels. The first STOA event for this parliamentary term (2019-2024) drew a full house with Members of the European Parliament, European Commission leaders, academic experts and representatives of international organisations debating how to strike the right balance on AI. Harnessing the numerous benefits that the transformative power of AI can bring needs to also take account of the necessity to mitigate a number of potential risks – from hampering people's fundamental rights, such as privacy or non-discrimination – to undermining European values such as democracy, human dignity and the right to assemble. The event proved to be a timely occasion to discuss how Europe could maximise the benefits and address the challenges of AI in a human-centric way, coming only a few days before the publication of the European Commission's legislative plans on AI in the form of a White Paper on 19 February 2020.