A vast number of systems across the world use algorithmic decision making (ADM) to (partially) automate decisions that have previously been made by humans. When designed well, these systems promise more objective decisions while saving large amounts of resources and freeing up human time. However, when ADM systems are not designed well, they can lead to unfair decisions which discriminate against societal groups. The downstream effects of ADMs critically depend on the decisions made during the systems' design and implementation, as biases in data can be mitigated or reinforced along the modeling pipeline. Many of these design decisions are made implicitly, without knowing exactly how they will influence the final system. It is therefore important to make explicit the decisions made during the design of ADM systems and understand how these decisions affect the fairness of the resulting system. To study this issue, we draw on insights from the field of psychology and introduce the method of multiverse analysis for algorithmic fairness. In our proposed method, we turn implicit design decisions into explicit ones and demonstrate their fairness implications. By combining decisions, we create a grid of all possible "universes" of decision combinations. For each of these universes, we compute metrics of fairness and performance. Using the resulting dataset, one can see how and which decisions impact fairness. We demonstrate how multiverse analyses can be used to better understand variability and robustness of algorithmic fairness using an exemplary case study of predicting public health coverage of vulnerable populations for potential interventions. Our results illustrate how decisions during the design of a machine learning system can have surprising effects on its fairness and how to detect these effects using multiverse analysis.

The UK should introduce new legislation to control artificial intelligence or risk falling behind the EU and the US in setting the pace for regulating the technology, MPs have said. Rishi Sunak's government was urged to act as it prepares to host a global AI safety summit at Bletchley Park, home of the Enigma codebreakers, in November. The science, innovation and technology committee said on Thursday the regulatory approach outlined in a recent government white paper risked falling behind others. "The AI white paper should be welcomed as an initial effort to engage with this complex task, but its proposed approach is already risking falling behind the pace of development of AI," the committee said in an interim report on AI governance. "This threat is made more acute by the efforts of other jurisdictions, principally the European Union and the United States, to set international standards." The EU, a trendsetter in tech regulation, is pushing ahead with the AI Act, while in the US the White House has published a blueprint for an AI bill of rights and the US senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has published a framework for developing AI regulations.

When Ernie Bot was released on March 16, the response was a mix of excitement and disappointment. Many people deemed its performance mediocre relative to the previously released ChatGPT. But most people simply weren't able to see it for themselves. The launch event didn't feature a live demonstration, and later, to actually try out the bot, Chinese users need to have a Baidu account and apply for a use license that could take as long as three months to come through. Because of this, some people who got access early were selling secondhand Baidu accounts on e-commerce sites, charging anywhere from a few bucks to over $100.

Around the time of the 2016 election, YouTube became known as a home to the rising alt-right and to massively popular conspiracy theorists. The Google-owned site had more than 1 billion users and was playing host to charismatic personalities who had developed intimate relationships with their audiences, potentially making it a powerful vector for political influence. At the time, Alex Jones's channel, Infowars, had more than 2 million subscribers. And YouTube's recommendation algorithm, which accounted for the majority of what people watched on the platform, looked to be pulling people deeper and deeper into dangerous delusions. The process of "falling down the rabbit hole" was memorably illustrated by personal accounts of people who had ended up on strange paths into the dark heart of the platform, where they were intrigued and then convinced by extremist rhetoric--an interest in critiques of feminism could lead to men's rights and then white supremacy and then calls for violence. Most troubling is that a person who was not necessarily looking for extreme content could end up watching it because the algorithm noticed a whisper of something in their previous choices.

Debris rained from the Kyiv night sky as Russia launched air attacks on early Wednesday, killing at least two people in the Ukrainian capital, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Ukraine and Russia made their boldest drone and missile strikes in months on each other, with a strike in Kyiv killing two people while a strike on ships in the Black Sea and an airport near the border lasted for hours, according to local reports. "While the Russians have been retaliating brutally against Ukraine, Kyiv's incremental escalation has prevented a massive conventional (or nuclear attack) that would have obliterated Ukraine," Rebekah Koffler, president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting and a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, told Fox News Digital. "It's quite witty," she said. "Will this win the war for Ukraine? But it might gradually wear down the Russian people's morale."

The "Qakbot" botnet, a network of infected computers used by hackers to attack governments and businesses around the world, has been dismantled and destroyed. So claims United States Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray, who delivered the news via a short video announcement attached to a press release. According to the FBI, a new technique redirected the botnet's traffic to Bureau-controlled systems, which were then able to remotely uninstall it from hundreds of thousands of infected computers. Bleeping Computer goes into more detail on the actual mechanism used. This particular botnet has been used in 40 or more ransomware attacks, notably targeting government infrastructure and healthcare providers, shaking down victims by locking critical systems and stealing personal data then extorting payment via hard-to-trace cryptocurrency.

Ukraine's forces advanced on the southern and eastern fronts during the 79th week of the country's war with Russia, reaching what experts believe to be the rear of Russia's first line of defence. But they also faced a Russian advance in the northeast that created a dilemma about where to field available troops. Ukrainian forces driving towards occupied Melitopol confirmed their recapture of Robotyne, an important Russian stronghold in western Zaporizhia, which they entered on August 20. Southern forces spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun said on August 28 that forces were busy demining the area, securing their positions and winning more territory southeast of the settlement. Geolocated footage placed them 5km (3.1 miles) southeast of Robotyne.

Having trounced humans at everything from chess and Go, to StarCraft and Gran Turismo, artificial intelligence (AI) has raised its game and laid waste world champions at a physical sport. The latest mortals to feel the sting of AI-induced defeat are three expert drone racers who were beaten by an algorithm that learned to fly a drone around a 3D race course at breakneck speeds without crashing. Developed by researchers at the University of Zurich, the Swift AI won 15 out of 25 races against world champions and clocked the fastest lap on a course where drones reach speeds of 50mph (80km/h) and endure accelerations up to 5g, enough to make many people black out. "Our result marks the first time that a robot powered by AI has beaten a human champion in a real physical sport designed for and by humans," said Elia Kaufmann, a researcher who helped to develop Swift. First-person view drone racing involves flying a drone around a course dotted with gates that must be passed through cleanly to avoid a crash.

A faux-rap song that features the AI-generated voice of Donald Trump defending himself against the criminal indictment out of Georgia has jumped to the No. 2 spot on the iTunes rap chart. Hi-Rez the Rapper, who describes himself as a radical freedom extremist, released the song on August 25, one day after Trump posted his August 24th mugshot to X (formerly Twitter). The song has been viewed nearly 3million times on X, and has shot to the top of the Hip-Hop charts since its release. The digital imitation of the former president's voice is nearly identical to the real-life 2024 candidate's. In the song, Hi-Rez imagines how Trump responded to being booked and released on bond on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

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