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Artificial Intelligence Briefing: CFPB Weighs in on Algorithmic Transparency

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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issues policy statement on credit decisions based on complex algorithms. On May 26, the CFPB issued Circular 2022-03, which addresses an important question about algorithmic decision-making: "When creditors make credit decisions based on complex algorithms that prevent creditors from accurately identifying the specific reasons for denying credit or taking other adverse actions, do these creditors need to comply with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act's requirement to provide a statement of specific reasons to applicants against whom adverse action is taken?" The Circular says yes, compliance with ECOA and Regulation B is required even if complex algorithms (including AI and machine learning) make it difficult to accurately identify the specific reasons for taking the adverse action. Further, the Circular makes clear that those laws "do not permit creditors to use complex algorithms when doing so means they cannot provide the specific and accurate reasons for adverse actions." White House executive order calls for study of predictive algorithms used by law enforcement agencies.


Rights of the robots: the new laws we need before AI takes over

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We now live in a world where the most powerful computing systems can argue about politics; where they can flirt, banter and manipulate; where they can advise on mental health, on relationships or on the law; and where they can do all these things as well as the most eloquent humans -- or better. For most of history we took for granted that -- gods and spirits aside -- humans were the only earthly generators of words, of ideas, of arguments, of art. Last week Blake Lemoine, an engineer at Google, was placed on leave after claiming that a computer system called LaMDA had achieved "sentience". Lemoine, 41, who is also a "mystic Christian priest", wrote that the


Artificial Intelligence at Intel - Three Current Applications

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Daniel Faggella is Head of Research at Emerj. Called upon by the United Nations, World Bank, INTERPOL, and leading enterprises, Daniel is a globally sought-after expert on the competitive strategy implications of AI for business and government leaders. Intel was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, who had previously been among the founders of Fairchild Semiconductors. Today, Intel employs over 121,000 people worldwide. In its 2021 annual report, the company reported revenues of $79 billion.


Aimed at connecting artworks and culture, Microsoft develops AI-powered platform

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INTERWOVEN represents these visually and intuitively, encouraging further exploration, discovery and cross-cultural exchange. The Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) and Microsoft announced the launch of a novel artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform for connecting artworks and cultures around the world. The platform called INTERWOVEN is rooted in MAP's vast collection of South Asian textiles and was developed as part of Microsoft's AI for Cultural Heritage initiative, which leverages technology to empower people and organisations dedicated to the preservation and enrichment of art and culture. INTERWOVEN brings together collections from key institutions and partners across the world alongside MAP's (including the V&A in London, MET in New York, Rietberg in Zurich and the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada) to reveal connections between artworks from different cultures, mediums and time periods. INTERWOVEN represents these visually and intuitively, encouraging further exploration, discovery and cross-cultural exchange.


PAC-Wrap: Semi-Supervised PAC Anomaly Detection

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Anomaly detection is essential for preventing hazardous outcomes for safety-critical applications like autonomous driving. Given their safety-criticality, these applications benefit from provable bounds on various errors in anomaly detection. To achieve this goal in the semi-supervised setting, we propose to provide Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) guarantees on the false negative and false positive detection rates for anomaly detection algorithms. Our method (PAC-Wrap) can wrap around virtually any existing semi-supervised and unsupervised anomaly detection method, endowing it with rigorous guarantees. Our experiments with various anomaly detectors and datasets indicate that PAC-Wrap is broadly effective.


Artificial Intelligence On The Hunt For Illegal Nuclear Material

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Millions of shipments of nuclear and other radiological materials are moved in the U.S. every year for good reasons, including health care, power generation, research and manufacturing. But there remains the threat that bad actors in possession of stolen or illegally produced nuclear materials or weapons will try to smuggle them across borders for nefarious purposes. Texas A&M University researchers are making it harder for them to succeed. If border agents intercept illicit nuclear materials, investigators need to know who produced them and where they came from. Fortunately, nuclear materials carry certain forensic markers that can reveal valuable information, much like fingerprints can identify criminals.


Kamikaze Drones in Russia's War Against Ukraine Point to Future "Killer Robots"

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Editorial note: due to the time-sensitive nature of this topic, we are releasing this to all readers immediately rather than only to our paying subscribers. This is a first in a series of articles covering the impact of AI in Russia's war against Ukraine; subscribe to read future ones. You can support Ukraine with these highly rated charities. "Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world."[1]


Is Web Scraping Stealing?

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We're sure you've heard the claim that "data is the new oil". Web scraping is the process of mining data from the World Wide Web for a specific purpose. In the most simple form, it is copying and pasting a specific set of information to a local database for archival use, scientific analysis, or some other use. Some of the most widely used examples include aggregator websites which provide price comparisons for online goods. There are also sites like archive.orgthat


'Space Bubbles' could combat climate change by creating a floating shield between Earth and the sun

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Climate change is causing more frequent and intense droughts, storm, heat waves, rising sea levels and melting glaciers and to stop this destruction, MIT researchers proposes'Space Bubbles' to shield Earth from the sun's rays to combat the devastation. This geoengineering idea would feature inflatable bubbles, organized in a circular shape the size of Brazil, which would sit between the Earth and the sun, blocking radiation from hitting our planet. 'We believe that inflating thin-film spheres directly in space from a homogeneous molten material–such as silicon can provide the variation in thickness that refracts a broader wave spectrum and allows us to avoid the necessity of launching large structural film elements,' the team share in a press release. Although Space Bubbles could reduce the amount of radiation hitting Earth, those involved with the work stress the innovation is designed to supplement and not replace current efforts to combat climate change. MIT researchers proposes'Space Bubbles' to shield Earth from the sun's rays to combat the devastation According to the team at MIT's Senseable City Lab, bubbles have been tested in outer space conditions that they believe could one day be used to deflect solar radiation.


A.I. Adoption Opens More Doors to Cybersecurity Jobs

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Artificial intelligence (A.I.) isn't quite ready to take over the world, but it's moving a step closer. A recent survey released by Morning Consult and IBM finds that the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the continuing need to automate manual tasks and cybersecurity, has pushed more organizations to adopt A.I. technologies. The Global AI Adoption Index 2022 report, which is based on questions sent to approximately 7,500 IT leaders across the globe, finds that 35 percent of organizations surveyed are deploying A.I. today; another 42 percent are "exploring" these technologies. The study added that A.I. adoption was up four percentage points compared to a previous report released in 2021. As with many other cutting-edge technologies, the survey found that COVID-19 played a significant role in increasing A.I. adoption, as companies looked to automate certain tasks as a way to overcome tech skill gaps (as well as some of the labor shortages associated with the pandemic).