For all the modern conveniences technology brings to the home – Wi-Fi-enabled washing machines, powerful gaming systems and enormous smart televisions – one of the downsides is paying to power it all. In fact, home utility costs are continuing to spike for many parts of the country, with 2021 electricity prices rising at the fastest rate since 2008, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) – already hitting Americans facing skyrocketing inflation, resulting in higher costs for many goods and services. Not only does the average household have dozens of consumer electronics products plugged into power outlets at any given time, most consume electricity when not in use. "Vampire power" – also referred to as "phantom power" or "standby power" – can account for as much as 10% of a household's electricity bill, says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This can really add up.

Argentine national security agencies have acquired irregular access to the biometric records of seven million people, including the president, and footage from Buenos Aires for identifying demonstrators via facial recognition cameras when authorized to access a list of fewer than 50,000 persons of interest, reports Página 12 via Público. The Buenos Aires judge who discovered the scandal has now demanded explanations from the city's Minister of Security and Justice as to how biometric data of a set of 62 cases relating to the capital, including those of the Argentine president and vice president, were transferred from the national ID database – the Registro Nacional de las Personas (ReNaPer) – to the city's authorities, namely the police, reports Página 12/Público. A massive breach of ReNaPer's digital ID database was reported last year. Judge Roberto Andrés Gallardo has suspended the use of the facial recognition system in question and has given Marcel D'Alessandro, Minister of Security and Justice for the City of Buenos Aires Government, two days to explain how the biometrics of persons such as former president and current vice president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and fellow former president Alberto Fernández were used. D'Alessandro had previously said that the system had been deactivated during the pandemic.

Have you ever watched any of the "Terminator" movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger? If you have, you will be familiar with the evil villain "Skynet," which is a fictional artificial, neural network-based, conscious group-mind and artificial general superintelligence system that decided to terminate all human life in the late 2020s. It has become palpably obvious that the company that most closely resembles Skynet today is Google. You may recall that Google purchased the leading artificial intelligence company Deep Mind a little over eight years ago for the paltry sum of $500 million. This was likely the most important purchase Google made to jumpstart them to Skynet status, with their already massive surveillance capacity corralling data collected from its search engine, which controls 93% of the searches in the world.

Click here to join the seminar. Research on machine learning (ML) algorithms, as well as on their ethical impacts, has focused largely on mathematical or computational questions. However, for algorithmic systems to be useful, reliable, and safe for human users, ML research must also wrangle with how users' psychology and social context affect how they interact with algorithms. This talk will address how novel research on how people interact with ML systems can benefit from decades-old ideas in social science. The first part of the talk will address how well-worn ideas from psychology and behavioral research methods can inform how ML researchers develop and evaluate algorithmic systems.

Artificial intelligence could help catch wildfires sooner. It's far from a wildfire, but the small flame of a candle could help catch something much bigger. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona students rigged a special setup to train the artificial intelligence they developed called Bronco Ember. The AI uses an infrared camera to decide if something is burning from afar. "Our generation really does want to tackle the big problems in the world,' said Michael Pham, a student researcher.

Ever since artificial intelligence (AI) made the transition from theory to reality, research and development centers across the world have been rushing to come up with the next big AI breakthrough. This competition is sometimes called the "AI race". In practice, though, there are hundreds of "AI races" heading towards different objectives. Some research centers are racing to produce digital marketing AI, for example, while others are racing to pair AI with military hardware. Some races are between private companies and others are between countries.

The NHS is now employing a cutting-edge AI program that can diagnose heart illness in just 20 SECONDS. While the patient is in the scanner, the computer tool, which resembles human ability but with more precision and speed, can analyze cardiac MRI data in 20 seconds. According to the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which has supported research into the technology, this is significantly faster than a doctor physically examining the pictures following an MRI scan, which may take up to 13 minutes. The technology identifies heart structure and function changes with 40% greater accuracy and retrieves 40% more information than a human can. According to the new research, the approach was more accurate at analyzing MRIs than the work of three specialists.

Scale AI, Canada's artificial intelligence (AI) cluster, has announced it is investing $24 million to support five AI projects in supply chain operations. The federally and Québec government-supported AI cluster is also partnering with MaRS to support the commercialization of 12 Canadian supply chain solutions AI startups. A number of startups and partners are sharing in the $24 million investment. AlayaCare, CIUSSS du Nord-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, Bien Chez Soi, Polytechnique Montréal, for example, are receiving $800,000 to use AI to optimize care worker resources, using data to streamline the organization of shifts by geographic area, schedules and skills. The largest investment of $3 million went to London Drugs Limited, Deloitte, TAP, Sanctuary AI, and Atlantia to develop an AI-powered supply chain model focused on forecasting supplier demand.

The capabilities of automation tools have not gone unnoticed in the cybersecurity market. Here, Tim Wallen, LogPoint Regional Director, UK&I, discusses what is needed for AI, Machine Learning and RPA to transform cybersecurity. Unfortunately, this trend was not bucked in 2021. Indeed, the threat landscape continued to intensify, driven by a growth in attacks and the increasing sophistication of techniques used by perpetrators, adding additional pressures into a profession that – in the eyes of many – is nearing breaking point. Reports that a record US$40 million ransomware payment was paid by a US insurance company after its network was brought down and data stolen, merely scratches the surface of the cybercriminal events of last year.

The last year was a busy one for Russia's military and civilian artificial intelligence efforts. Moscow poured money into research and development, and Russia's civil society debated the country's place in the larger AI ecosystem. But Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February and the resulting sanctions have brought several of those efforts to a halt--and thrown into question just how many of its AI advancements Russia will be able to salvage and continue. Ever since Putin extolled the development of robotic combat systems in the new State Armaments Program in 2020, the Russian Ministry of Defense has been hyper-focused on AI. We have learned more about the Russian military's focus on AI in the past year thanks to several public revelations.