One person unsurprised by the unfolding data scandals surrounding Cambridge Analytica and Facebook is Cathy O'Neil. In 2016 Cathy published her book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. In the book O'Neil reveals how a silent bureaucracy governed by algorithms and big data is emerging across every corner of society. This new bureaucracy is increasingly deciding who gets a job, who gets credit (and at what rate), who goes to prison and what information people read. Some of these systems may be making accurate decisions. However, Cathy argues that accuracy and efficiency alone are not sufficient metrics for success. Fairness, equity and other social considerations need to be built into the algorithms.

Everybody is talking about it. Use your digital exhaust to feed machine learning programs to develop algorithms that will transform your productivity. All three offer cloud services to help you get started. Shouldn't you be doing it too? Does your company have, or will your customers grant you, proprietary access to log data containing signals that can be extracted and used to predict outcomes and prescribe actions that have material consequences? There's a lot to unpack here, so let me take things phrase by phrase.

AI has arrived, but are companies ready for it? According to an MIT scientist, executives are underestimating the speed, scope, and scale of the disruption it will bring. The promises and practical applications of artificial intelligence (AI) are here. In this interview with Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and cofounder of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, he explains how AI, and machine learning in particular, is quickly disrupting companies' economic models, strategy, culture, and even the very nature of how they are structured and run. But there are opportunities for companies that can answer the call--and meet the needs and wants of consumers. An edited transcript of McAfee's remarks follows.

The recent deaths of a woman struck by a car Uber was testing in driverless mode and of a man whose Tesla Model X crashed when his hands were off the steering wheel because he was letting the car do some of the driving may shift the debate over autonomous vehicles. Those tragic fatalities are raising overdue questions about whether people and places will be ready when this new technology moves from beta-testing to a full-throttled rollout. As an urban planner who has analyzed how technology affects cities, I believe that driverless vehicles will change everything that moves and the stationary landscape too. Until now, the public and governments at all levels have paid too little attention to how letting these machines drive themselves will transform urban, rural and suburban communities. The Tesla Model S electric car that crashed into a fire engine in Culver City, California, in January 2018.

Solar-powered self-driving cars, reusable space ships, Hyperloop transportation, a mission to colonize Mars: Elon Musk is hell-bent on turning these once-far-fetched fantasies into reality. But none of these technologies has made him as leery as artificial intelligence. At Code Conference 2016, Musk stated publicly that given the current rate of A.I. advancement, humans could ultimately expect to be left behind--cognitively, intellectually--"by a lot." His solution to this unappealing fate is a novel brain-computer interface similar to the implantable "neural lace" described by the Scottish novelist Iain M. Banks in Look to Windward, part of his "Culture series" books. Along with serving as a rite of passage, it upgrades the human brain to be more competitive against A.I.'s with human-level or higher intelligence.

See the novel work, which joins Nicolas Laugero-Lasserre's pieces by Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and other human artists. The Paris-based collector Nicolas Laugero-Lasserre is known for his extensive collection of urban art by the likes of Shepard Fairey, Ivader, Banksy, and Swoon. But recently, he made a novel acquisition by a very different kind of artist. His latest purchase, Le Comte de Belamy, was created by artificial intelligence. Laugero-Lasserre bought the work directly from Obvious, the collective that created the AI behind it, for around €10,000 ($12,000) in February.

France has announced a new national AI strategy, including government funding worth nearly €1.5 billion ($1.85 billion). But the country's president, Emmanuel Macron, is worried about the damage this technology could do if not properly guided. In an interview with Wired, he said there was even a risk AI could "jeopardize democracy." Macron is worried about unaccountable "black box" algorithms being introduced into society and making decisions formerly entrusted to humans. He gave the example of an algorithm used to sort students into universities and said that if its workings were not easy to understand, it could destroy trust and encourage people to "reject" innovation.

This article originally appeared in the Motley Fool. In 2014, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook penned a missive regarding Apple's approach to privacy. In the letter Cook famously noted, "A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you're not the customer, you're the product." Cook was mostly looking to contrast the business model of Apple, which involves mostly making money on device sales, versus that of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), which often sells devices at breakeven to make money from advertising and data collection. However, Cook drew the ire of Facebook's (NASDAQ:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who responded in an interview with Time magazine.

The first thing many of us think about when it comes to the future relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity is Skynet--the fictional neural net-based group mind from the "Terminator" movie franchise. But at least one security professional (with a somewhat rosier view) suggested that AI must be understood across a broader landscape, regarding how it will influence cybersecurity and how IT can use AI to plan for future security technology purchases. Earlier this year, Dudu Mimran, chief technology officer (CTO) at Telekom Innovation Laboratories in Israel, discussed the relationship between AI and cybersecurity in a speech and subsequent blog post for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Forum 2018. I caught up with Mimran at his office in Beersheba, Israel for an interview, which we continued later over email. "While the threat of cyberattacks powered by AI is increasingly likely, I am less concerned in the short- and midterm about machines making up their minds and being able to harm people," Mimran said.

Authorities in New Jersey arrested a man accused of kidnapping and murdering a 20-year-old trying to buy a PlayStation video game console advertised online, reports said Saturday. Rufus Thompson, 29, was arrested Saturday morning in Trenton and was charged with murder, felony murder, robbery, kidnapping and weapons offenses in the death of Danny Diaz-Delgado. The victim's body was discovered March 24 near the banks of Assunpink Creek in Hamilton Township, the Trentonian reported. Investigators said Diaz-Delgado had been shot at least seven times, with wounds in his head, torso and one leg. His hands were tied behind his back and tape was wrapped around his face.