Eric Horvitz is a technical fellow and director at Microsoft Research Labs. A recipient of the Feigenbaum and the Allen Newell Prizes for contributions to artificial intelligence (AI), he is also on the US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He is also part of the standing committee of Stanford University's One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence. Horvitz, who comes at least once a year to the country to interact with the India labs team, spoke about his work at Microsoft Research. He also shared his thoughts on the benefits and fear of AI, and attempts to address the bias in algorithms.

"Intelligence is central to everything humans do, and artificial intelligence should be no exception." With these words, Joanna Bryson urges for stronger professional standards for software engineers and experts designing intelligent-like systems. Joanna is a tenured associate professor at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, where she founded the Bath Intelligence Systems group. She is one of the world's leading AI researchers, uniting the perspectives of computer science, psychology, and biology in her work. HBR Presents is a network of podcasts curated by HBR editors, bringing you the best business ideas from the leading minds in management.

The Chinese government is using facial-recognition software to "track and control" a predominantly Muslim minority group, according to a disturbing new report from The New York Times. The Chinese government has reportedly integrated artificial intelligence into its security cameras to identify the Uighurs and appears to be using the information to monitor the persecuted group. The report, based on the accounts of whistleblowers familiar with the systems and a review of databases used by the government and law enforcement, suggests the authoritarian country has opened up a new frontier in the use of A.I. for racist social control--and raises the discomfiting possibility that other governments could adopt similar practices. Two people familiar with the matter told the Times that police in the Chinese city of Sanmenxia screened whether residents were Uighurs 500,000 times in a single month. Documents provided to the paper reportedly show demand for the technology is ballooning: more than 20 departments in 16 provinces sought access to the camera system, in one case writing that it "should support facial recognition to identify Uighur/non-Uighur attributes." This, experts say, is more than enough to raise red flags.

The operator of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant began removing fuel Monday from a cooling pool at one of three reactors that melted down in the 2011 disaster, a milestone in what will be a decades-long process to decommission the facility. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said workers started removing the first of 566 used and unused fuel units stored in the pool at Unit 3. The fuel units in the pool located high up in reactor buildings are intact despite the disaster, but the pools are not enclosed, so removing the units to safer ground is crucial to avoid disaster in case of another major earthquake similar to the one that caused the 2011 tsunami. TEPCO says the removal at Unit 3 will take two years, followed by the two other reactors, where about 1,000 fuel units remain in the storage pools. Removing fuel units from the cooling pools comes ahead of the real challenge of removing melted fuel from inside the reactors, but details of how that might be done are still largely unknown. Removing the fuel in the cooling pools was delayed more than four years by mishaps, high radiation and radioactive debris from an explosion that occurred at the time of the reactor meltdowns, underscoring the difficulties that remain.

The drone attack that brought Gatwick airport to a standstill last December could have been an "inside job", according to police, who said the perpetrator may have been operating the drone from within the airport. Sussex police told BBC Panorama that the fact an insider may have been behind the attack was "treated as a credible line of enquiry from the earliest stages of the police response". Gatwick's chief operating officer, Chris Woodroofe, believes the perpetrator was familiar with the airport's operational procedures and had a clear view of the runway or possibly infiltrated its communication network. "It was clear that the drone operators had a link into what was going on at the airport," he told Panorama, in his first interview since the incident. He said the culprit had carefully picked a drone that would remain undetected by the airport's DJI Aeroscope detection system being tested at the time.

The operator of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant has begun removing fuel from a cooling pool at one of three reactors that melted down in the 2011 disaster, a milestone in the decades-long process to decommission the plant. Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said on Monday that workers started removing the first of 566 used and unused fuel units stored in the pool at Unit 3. The fuel units in the pool located high up in reactor buildings are intact despite the disaster, but the pools are not enclosed so removing the units to safer ground is crucial to avoid disaster in case of another major quake. Tepco said the removal at Unit 3 would take two years, followed by the two other reactors. The step comes ahead of the real challenge of removing melted fuel from inside the reactors, but details of how that might be done are still largely unknown. Removing the fuel in the cooling pools was delayed five years by mishaps, high radiation and radioactive debris from an explosion that occurred at the time of the reactor meltdown, underscoring the difficulties that remain.

Uber, once the enfant terrible of the tech industry, put on its big kid pants and publicly filed for IPO this week, attempting to prove, once and for all, that it's got its crap together. Its filing reveals a sprawling company that's made strides since ex-CEO Travis Kalanick was dropping Boober jokes back in 2014--but one that also has a few big, hulking problems on the horizon, like fighting drivers on employee classification issues and, you know, achieving profitability. Also in transpo people and companies trying to prove themselves: Tesla goes off-menu for the $35,000 Model 3, ostensibly to shore up cash and streamline production; another industry insider says, yes, self-driving car hype got ahead of reality; and Audi argues its slightly dispiriting E-tron range numbers matter little compared to its luxury features. Let's get you caught up. Why do new premium electric vehicles keep coming up short on range?

When Merdis Wells visited the diabetes clinic at the University Medical Center in New Orleans about a year ago, a nurse practitioner checked her eyes to look for signs of diabetic retinopathy, the most common cause of blindness. At her next visit, in February of this year, artificial intelligence software made the call. The clinic had just installed a system that's designed to identify patients who need follow-up attention. The Food and Drug Administration cleared the system -- called IDx-DR -- for use in 2018. The agency said it was the first time it had authorized the marketing of a device that makes a screening decision without a clinician having to get involved in the interpretation.

Vikram Mahidhar reminds us all that AI is only as good as the humans supervising it and programming it. The biases and artefacts that come out of the processing are reflective of the biases programmed in at the beginning. A program trained to recognise totalled car bodies for insurance purposes, for example, will need close supervision of its decision-making outputs, for regulatory and consumer confidence and acceptance of the decision. There is a call and a growth in a new class of AI--one that is explainable, and that builds trust by providing evidence. Vikram also reminds us that a governance strategy is key to engendering trust in our organisation, processes and people.

The use of artificial intelligence in community oncology practices has the potential to grow rapidly and provide more assistance to oncologists and hematologists in the coming years, according to presenters at Community Oncology Alliance Annual Conference. But artificial intelligence (AI) will not take the place of oncologists, and presenters warned of relying too heavily on AI when caring for patients in the community practice setting. "We have to find a way to be very agile and adaptable," Aaron Lyss, MBA, director of strategy and business development at Tennessee Oncology, said during a presentation. "One of the things you will see in the community practice setting that's different than the academic setting, to use a baseball metaphor, is that we will not be swinging for the fences and missing. We are going to be [more careful] and hit doubles and singles."