Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to improve people's lives worldwide and accelerate progress on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, AI can also bring with it a host of unintended consequences. One of the most pernicious areas could be AI's ability to spread misinformation at a pace and scale not seen before. At the recent AI for Good Global Summit, participants from academia, the United Nations, major media outlets and the private sector gathered to discuss the unintended consequences of AI and AI-powered misinformation. To be sure, AI has provided a wealth of task-facilitating tools for media and the field of journalism, where its impact can be seen in everything from the emergence of voice-recognition transcription tools to automatically generated content.

Apple has once again taken a shot at Google with a giant billboard next to its rival's smart neighbourhood reading'we're in the business of staying out of yours'. The firm placed the advert, which also says'Privacy. It is not the first time the firm has made thinly-veiled dig at its rivals, with a similar billboard appearing at CES in Las Vegas earlier this year. This one read'What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone'. Sidewalk Labs hope to revitalise a run-down stretch of Toronto's waterfront, with self-driving taxis, pavements that automatically melt away snow and traffic lights that track pedestrian movements.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in every function of businesses in the sector, says David Sexton, VP & head of insurance practice, UK and Ireland, at tech group Cognizant.

Scientists have created pieces of'smart' glass that they say can recognise images without requiring any sensors, circuits or power sources. Tiny strategically placed bubbles and impurities embedded within the glass bend light in specific ways to differentiate among different images, experts say. To test out the idea, researchers created glass squares that can differentiate between lit up numeric figures from 1 to 9. The breakthrough could lead to a number of new frontiers in the field of low-power electronics, they claim. That includes facial and other image recognition technologies being built into the materials used to make smartphones and other gadgets. Scientists have created pieces of'smart' glass they say can recognise images without requiring any sensors, circuits or power sources.

Newswire) VSBLTY Groupe Technologies Corp. (CSE: VSBY) (5VS.F) (VSBGF), a leading software technology company, was selected by Microsoft (MSFT) to join its elite group of global independent software vendors for intensive joint sales, support and go-to-market initiatives, according to an announcement made today by Jay Hutton, VSBLTY co-founder and CEO. Launched in 2016, Microsoft created its co-sell ready initiative under its Microsoft One program to provide comprehensive sales and marketing support for select partners. To be eligible for the go-to-market program, independent software vendors must submit customer references that demonstrate successful projects and meet a performance commitment in addition to passing sales and technology assessments. VSBLTY technology provides customer audience measurement using the power of machine learning through computer vision. Its industry leading VisionCaptor and DataCaptor combine motion graphics and interactive brand messaging with first of its kind Facialanalytics .

The Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence started with a conversation between two neighbors, in their driveways: John Etchemendy, PhD '82, a philosopher, and Fei-Fei Li, a computer scientist. Li expressed her growing discomfort that the people creating AI--primarily white men--were not representative of the millions affected by it. "Throughout human history," Li says, "every time something is invented or produced, if we're not careful, it favors a particular group. My favorite example is scissors. Humans have been using scissors for thousands of years, but they were designed for right-handed people."

There's a global shortage of artificial intelligence (AI) talent; labour markets all over the world can't keep up with the demand for developers, mathematicians and scientists who can create new and innovative AI technology. There are an estimated 1,600 AI startups just in Europe, not factoring in the AI initiatives in large tech companies, so the wait for new AI graduates remains long. Microsoft has recently announced the goal of training 15,000 new AI professionals by 2022, which is a good start but not enough to fill the estimated millions of roles that are currently vacant. In a recent study, Microsoft and IDC found that the shortage of workers with AI skills has stopped companies that want to adopt AI from being able to do so. Until more highly skilled AI developers enter the workforce, organisations must find creative ways to supplement the talent they need to initiate their AI projects across industries--whether those projects involve voice, image, or pattern recognition, enabling autonomous movement or simulating realistic conversations. These innovations can underpin a new generation of healthcare tools, smart home devices or digital personal assistants.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have mined state driver's license databases using facial recognition technology, analyzing millions of motorists' photos without their knowledge. In at least three states that offer driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants, ICE officials have requested to comb through state repositories of license photos, according to newly released documents. At least two of those states, Utah and Vermont, complied, searching their photos for matches, those records show. In the third state, Washington, agents authorized administrative subpoenas of the Department of Licensing to conduct a facial recognition scan of all photos of license applicants, though it was unclear whether the state carried out the searches. In Vermont, agents only had to file a paper request that was later approved by Department of Motor Vehicles employees.

Artificial intelligence might be coming for your next job, just not in the way you feared. The past few years have seen any number of articles that warn about a future where AI and automation drive humans into mass unemployment. To a considerable extent, those threats are overblown and distant. But a more imminent threat to jobs is that of algorithmic bias, the effect of machine learning models making decisions based on the wrong patterns in their training examples. A online game developed by computer science students at New York University aims to educate the public about the effects of AI bias in hiring.

Berkeley Lab researchers (from left) Vahe Tshitoyan, Anubhav Jain, Leigh Weston, and John Dagdelen used machine learning to analyze 3.3 million abstracts from materials science papers. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have shown that an algorithm with no training in materials science can scan the text of millions of papers and uncover new scientific knowledge. A team led by Anubhav Jain, a scientist in Berkeley Lab's Energy Storage & Distributed Resources Division, collected 3.3 million abstracts of published materials science papers and fed them into an algorithm called Word2vec. By analyzing relationships between words the algorithm was able to predict discoveries of new thermoelectric materials years in advance and suggest as-yet unknown materials as candidates for thermoelectric materials. "Without telling it anything about materials science, it learned concepts like the periodic table and the crystal structure of metals," says Jain. "That hinted at the potential of the technique. But probably the most interesting thing we figured out is, you can use this algorithm to address gaps in materials research, things that people should study but haven't studied so far."