PHILADELPHIA, March 22, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just over one in five employees believe their employer is preparing them for a more data-oriented and automated workplace (21%), according to new research from Qlik, a leader in data analytics. This is despite most business leaders predicting an upheaval in working practices due to the rapid onset of artificial intelligence (AI). With 35% of employees surveyed reporting they had changed jobs in the last 12 months because their employer wasn't offering enough upskilling and training opportunities, there is a stark need to better upskill workforces to support the workplace transition that is already underway. The report, Data Literacy: The Upskilling Evolution, was developed by Qlik in partnership with The Future Labs and combines insights from expert interviews with surveys from over 1,200 global C-level executives and 6,000 employees*. The findings, which were largely consistent across all geographies surveyed, reveal how the rapid growth in data usage is extending enterprise aspirations for its potential and, in turn, transforming working practices.

In the third week of Russia's war in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky appeared in a video, dressed in a dark green shirt, speaking slowly and deliberately while standing behind a white presidential podium featuring his country's coat of arms. Except for his head, the Ukrainian president's body barely moved as he spoke. His voice sounded distorted and almost gravelly as he appeared to tell Ukrainians to surrender to Russia. "I ask you to lay down your weapons and go back to your families," he appeared to say in Ukrainian in the clip, which was quickly identified as a deepfake. "This war is not worth dying for. I suggest you to keep on living, and I am going to do the same."

AI technology has brought many benefits to the world, but could weaponizing AI be a mistake? Many advancements in AI technology have been made in recent years, especially in the military. While most of these advancements have come in the form of reconnaissance and defense, AI is also being used on the attacking end. This raises significant ethical concerns due to the limitations of AI technology, specifically in understanding context and the difference between correlation and causation. Additionally, the efficacy of AI is questioned due to these limitations. These dilemmas in integrating AI into the military have led to much skepticism and hesitancy.

A deepfake of President Zelenskyy calling on citizens to "lay down arms" was posted to a hacked Ukrainian news website and shared across social networks. The deepfake purports to show Zelenskyy declaring that Ukraine has "decided to return Donbas" to Russia and that his nation's efforts had failed. Following an alleged hack, the deepfake was first posted to a Ukrainian news site for TV24. The deepfake was then shared across social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. "Earlier today, our teams identified and removed a deepfake video claiming to show President Zelensky issuing a statement he never did. It appeared on a reportedly compromised website and then started showing across the internet."

An artificial intelligence model was able to create 40,000 chemical weapons compounds in just six hours, after being given the task by researchers. A team of scientists were using AI to look for compounds that could be used to cure disease, and part of this involves filtering out any that could kill a human. As part of a conference on potentially negative implications of new technology, biotech startup Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, from Raleigh, North Carolina, 'flipped a switch' in its AI algorithm, and had it find the most lethal compounds.

AI's sophisticated ability to analyze numbers means that AI systems can detect diseases early, perform chemical reactions and unlock some of the mysteries of the universe. But there are downsides to this staggering and almost limitless artificial brain power. New research underscores how easy it is to train artificial intelligence models for malicious and good purposes, especially in the context of visualizing the design of speculative biological weapons agents. A pilot experiment using existing artificial intelligence identified 40,000 of these bioweapon chemicals in just 6 hours. In other words, while AI can be very powerful--and much faster than humans--it is likely to use the same powers when it comes to finding chemical and pharmaceutical compounds to improve our health.

The domain of Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethics is not new, with discussions going back at least 40 years. Teaching the principles and requirements of ethical AI to students is considered an essential part of this domain, with an increasing number of technical AI courses taught at several higher-education institutions around the globe including content related to ethics. By using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a generative probabilistic topic model, this study uncovers topics in teaching ethics in AI courses and their trends related to where the courses are taught, by whom, and at what level of cognitive complexity and specificity according to Bloom’s taxonomy. In this exploratory study based on unsupervised machine learning, we analyzed a total of 166 courses: 116 from North American universities, 11 from Asia, 36 from Europe, and 10 from other regions. Based on this analysis, we were able to synthesize a model of teaching approaches, which we call BAG (Build, Assess, and Govern), that combines specific cognitive levels, course content topics, and disciplines affiliated with the department(s) in charge of the course. We critically assess the implications of this teaching paradigm and provide suggestions about how to move away from these practices. We challenge teaching practitioners and program coordinators to reflect on their usual procedures so that they may expand their methodology beyond the confines of stereotypical thought and traditional biases regarding what disciplines should teach and how. This article appears in the AI & Society track.

Thaler first brought the image created by his "Creativity Machine" algorithm to the USCO in November 2018, Eileen Kinsella reported for Artnet News. A Recent Entrance to Paradise is part of a series Thaler describes as a "simulated near-death experience," where an algorithm repurposes pictures to create images seen by a synthetic dying brain. Thaler noted to the USCO he was "seeking to register this computer-generated work as a work-for-hire to the owner of the Creativity Machine." Providing this protection is required under current legal frameworks." Thaler has previously tested the limits of patent laws in numerous countries.

A big push is underway to democratize AI, though we need to figure out what this actually means and ... [ ] what it foretells. That phrasing is a well-intended respectful appropriation from Abraham Lincoln's famous 1863 Gettysburg Address in which he memorably stated that our democracy proffers a new birth of freedom entwining an erstwhile government of the people, by the people, and for the people. This same notion of the power of people was also captured in some years earlier speech by Senator Daniel Webster in 1830 in which he exhorted that our government was made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. You could readily assert that those keystone elements are a bedrock of democracy and democratization. The reason that I've leveraged such a famed saying is it seemingly can be purposely applied to Artificial Intelligence. You see, there is a great deal of vocal discussion these days about the democratization of AI. In brief, there is a heartfelt belief that we need to make sure that pretty much anybody at all can craft and deploy AI systems. The ardent view is that we are presently mired in having only techie-focused specialists that can put AI into use. A relatively narrow and devoted clique of AI experts and high-tech entities are dominating which AI systems we are getting and how those AI systems are being devised, the argument goes. We, the people, cannot allow ourselves to become controlled and overseen by a seeming handful of AI gurus. I think you can probably see how there is a claimed analogous pattern between the notion of how people are governed overall and how AI is being fostered upon the world.

Salt water within the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa could be transporting oxygen into an ice-covered ocean of liquid water, a new study suggests. Researchers think it could potentially help sustain alien life under the moon's'chaos terrains' -- landscapes made up of cracks, ridges and ice blocks that cover a quarter of the icy world. They believe the amount of oxygen brought into Europa's ocean could be on a par with the quantity in Earth's oceans today. The theory has been proposed before, but University of Texas at Austin-led experts put it to the test by building the world's first physics-based computer simulation of the process. Salt water within the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa could be transporting oxygen into an ice-covered ocean of liquid water (pictured in an artist's impression), a new study suggests The theory has been proposed before, but University of Texas at Austin-led experts put it to the test by building the world's first physics-based computer simulation of the process (pictured) Europa is 90 per cent the size of Earth's moon.