At the Common Good in the Digital Age tech conference recently held in Vatican City, Pope Francis urged Facebook executives, venture capitalists, and government regulators to be wary of the impact of AI and other technologies. "If mankind's so-called technological progress were to become an enemy of the common good, this would lead to an unfortunate regression to a form of barbarism dictated by the law of the strongest," he said. In a related but contextually different conversation, this summer Joy Buolamwini testified before Congress with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that multiple audits found facial recognition technology generally works best on white men and worst on women of color. What these two events have in common is their relationship to power dynamics in the AI ethics debate. Arguments about AI ethics can wage without mention of the word "power," but it's often there just under the surface. In fact, it's rarely the direct focus, but it needs to be. Power in AI is like gravity, an invisible force that influences every consideration of ethics in artificial intelligence. Power provides the means to influence which use cases are relevant; which problems are priorities; and who the tools, products, and services are made to serve. It underlies debates about how corporations and countries create policy governing use of the technology.

Researchers, start-ups and multinationals have been named among the winners of this year's AI Awards. Now in its second year, the AI Awards are run by AI Ireland, a non-profit business with backing from Microsoft Ireland and Alldus International. The organisation runs a number of community websites and monthly meetups supporting the area of data science, machine learning and AI in Ireland. Seven awards were handed out as part of the event today (20 November), with those shortlisted coming from academia, start-ups, SMEs and multinationals. The first of these awards was for the use of AI in a sector, with the winner named as speech recognition start-up SoapBox Labs.

From pharma to hospitals and beyond, the potential applications in healthcare are promising. Late last year, we spoke for The World Bank about our proprietary AI in healthcare research, and speaking with governments, it's clear that there are hurdles that healthcare companies have to overcome to access data for training AI systems. Broadly, most of the folks that we speak with who are innovating in AI and healthcare are frustrated with how hard it is to streamline the data to make use of it for applications such as diagnosing illnesses.

Good code has both substance and style. It provides all necessary information, without extraneous details. It is accurate, succinct and eloquent enough to be read and understood by humans. But by the late 1960s, advances in computing power had outpaced the abilities of programmers. Many computer scientists created programs without thought for design.

Upon meeting for the first time at a dinner at Stanford earlier this year, Fei-Fei Li and Jennifer Doudna couldn't help but note the remarkable parallels in their experiences as scientists. Stanford's Fei-Fei Li and Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley will discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence and CRISPR technology. Both women helped kickstart twin revolutions that are profoundly reshaping society in the 21st century – Li in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and Doudna in the life sciences. Both revolutions can be traced back to 2012, the year that computer scientists collectively recognized the power of Li's approach to training computer vision algorithms and that Doudna drew attention to a new gene-editing tool known as CRISPR-Cas9 ("CRISPR" for short). Both pioneering scientists are also driven by a growing urgency to raise awareness about the ethical dangers of the technologies they helped create.

The 3rd Annual Internet of Manufacturing South is a very important conference for the construction and support of the industrial ecosystem. It's a great pleasure to come and compare new ideas. In the build up to Internet of Manufacturing South 2019 we caught up with Arnie Kravitz the CTO of Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) to discuss Digital Twin Technologies, AI, & Automation and its benefit for manufacturers. What are your views on Digital Twin technologies? How do you think they will affect manufacturers' operations in the future?

Jerry has extensive experience in machine learning, storage systems, online service, distributed systems, virtualization, and OS kernel. He has worked on high performance and large-scale systems at companies such as: Lyft, Box, Twitter, Zynga, and Microsoft. He has also authored the open-source project Lib Crunch and is a three-time Microsoft Gold Star Award winner. Jerry completed his master's degree in computer science at Shanghai University. His most recent startup is Datatron.

Everything you need to know about Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle and her new life as part of the British royal family. There's something about that "Markle sparkle" that has the world transfixed, seeing as Meghan Markle has now been named the world's "most powerful dresser" in a 2019 report from Lyst, a fashion search engine. It was a big year for the Duchess of Sussex, who stylishly seized the spotlight at dozens of public appearances and royal tours, and even when introducing the world to baby Archie -- and according to Lyst, shoppers took notice. There's something about that "Markle sparkle" that has the world transfixed, as Meghan Markle has been named the world's most powerful dresser of 2019. According to Lyst's annual Year in Fashion roundup, each of the Duchess' numerous fashion statements sparked a 216-percent average increase in search for similar items.

It can be a bit difficult to wrap your brain around what exactly neural interface startup Ctrl-labs is doing with technology. That's ironic, given that Ctrl-labs wants to let your brain directly use technology by translating mental intent into action. We caught up with Ctrl-labs CEO Thomas Reardon at Web Summit 2019 earlier this month to understand exactly how the brain-machine interface works. Founded in 2015, Ctrl-labs is a New York-based startup developing a wristband that translates musculoneural signals into machine-interpretable commands. But not for long -- Facebook acquired Ctrl-labs in September 2019. The acquisition hasn't closed yet, so Reardon has not spoken to anyone at the social media giant since signing the agreement. He was, however, eager to tell us more about the neural interface technology so we could glean why Facebook (and the tech industry at large) is interested. In short, Ctrl-labs wants us to interact with technology not via a mouse, a keyboard, a touchscreen, our voice, or any other input we've adopted. Reardon and his team expect that in a few years we will be able to use individual neurons -- not thoughts -- to directly control technology. Reardon has said many times that his company is tackling the "mother of all machine learning problems."

Beyond cortical and limbic systems, the company Neuralink could add a third layer of digital superintelligence to humans and avoid artificial intelligence enslavement, its founder Elon Musk claimed Tuesday. The brain-computer linkup firm is working to treat medical conditions using its implanted chip as early as next year, but during a podcast appearance, Musk reiterated his belief that the technology could avoid some of the worst consequences of advanced machines. "It's important that Neuralink solves this problem sooner rather than later, because the point at which we have digital superintelligence, that's when we pass the singularity and things become just very uncertain," Musk said during an interview with MIT professor Lex Fridman. Musk was keen to note that the singularity, a hypothesized point where machines grow so advanced that humanity slips into an irreversible change, may not necessarily be good or bad. He did state, however, that "things become extremely unstable" after that point, which means Neuralink would need to achieve its human-brain linkup either before or not long after "to minimize the existential risk for humanity and consciousness as we know it."