Huawei has helped Chinese authorities create surveillance technology that targets the country's Uyghur minority population, an investigation has alleged. A series of marketing presentation slides reviewed by the Washington Post found Huawei had a role in developing surveillance projects created in a partnership with other Chinese companies. They included analysis of voice recordings, monitoring detention centres, tracking locations of political individuals of interest, police surveillance in the western Xinjiang region, and corporate tracking of employees and customers. While the slides did not specify who the presentations were for, the report said some of them showcased surveillance functions specific to police or government agencies, which suggests Chinese government authorities may have been the intended audience. Huawei said it had no knowledge of the projects mentioned in the Washington Post report.

Safer and more efficient services will be delivered for NSW residents using Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a new world-leading AI Assurance Framework to come into effect in March 2022. All agencies across the NSW Government can apply the Assurance Framework to ensure increasingly sophisticated AI systems are safe, effective and delivering on state outcomes, improving the lives of people in NSW and the resilience of communities and driving the economy. NSW Government's Chief Data Scientist Dr Ian Oppermann said the Framework would ensure Government services using AI were aligned to state outcomes, easy to access and use by customers as well as being personalised and secure. "AI creates a huge opportunity to improve Government services. We are already piloting the technology with eHealth NSW to help doctors to earlier identify sepsis in patients attending emergency departments," Dr Oppermann said.

A Chinese company is selling its surveillance technology to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, police, and military, according to a new report by IPVM, a surveillance research group. The firm, called Tiandy, is one of the world's largest video surveillance companies, reporting almost $700 million in sales in 2020. The company sells cameras and accompanying AI-enabled software, including facial recognition technology, software that it claims can detect someone's race, and "smart" interrogation tables for use alongside "tiger chairs," which have been widely documented as a tool for torture. The report is a rare look into some specifics of China's strategic relationship with Iran and the ways in which the country disperses surveillance technology to other autocracies abroad. Tiandy's "ethnicity tracking" tool, which has been widely challenged by experts as both inaccurate and unethical, is believed to be one of several AI-based systems the Chinese government uses to repress the Uyghur minority group in the country's Xinjiang province, along with Huawei's face recognition software, emotion-detection AI technologies, and a host of others.

One Tuesday morning this fall, I strapped on a Mylar vest and slid into the passenger seat of a gray Ford Interceptor sedan, the souped-up Taurus that replaced the Crown Vic as America's default police car a decade ago. This model has several features that are not available for civilian use, including a siren on the roof and a V6 Mustang engine under the hood. That came in handy when Kevin Roberts, a talkative, thoughtful third-year cop, steered us onto Connecticut's Interstate 84 for the day shift. We were heading toward Waterbury, whose interlocking expressways are his to patrol. Roberts was in the left lane going 80, and I had the uncanny experience of surveying the highway from his point of view. How many times have I been on the other side--overtaking some slowpoke, 12 over the limit, only to see a rack of siren lights in the rearview mirror and ask myself: How slowly can I complete this pass? Roberts and I were waiting for that moment of panicked recognition. He knows people resent that the police are always speeding, but he says it's the only way to do the job. You can't drive the speed limit or below, because no one wants to pass a cop. The highway's self-organizing system would disintegrate and traffic would slow to molasses. "Everyone's at 10 and 2," he said as we made our way past another stone-faced commuter.

The US government will place eight Chinese companies including drone manufacturer DJI on an investment blocklist for alleged involvement in surveillance of Uyghur Muslims, the Financial Times has reported. The firms will reportedly be put on the Treasure department's "Chinese military-industrial complex companies" list on Tuesday, meaning US citizens will be barred from making any investments. DJI is already on the Department of Commerce's Entity list, meaning American companies can't sell it components unless they have a license. At the time, the government said it was among companies that "enabled wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance." However, unlike products from Huawei and others, DJI drones are have not been banned for sale in the US. The latest moves are part of an effort by US President Joe Biden to sanction China for repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.

Algorithms play a growing role in our lives, even as their flaws are becoming more apparent: a Michigan man wrongly accused of fraud had to file for bankruptcy; automated screening tools disproportionately harm people of color who want to buy a home or rent an apartment; Black Facebook users were subjected to more abuse than white users. Other automated systems have improperly rated teachers, graded students, and flagged people with dark skin more often for cheating on tests. Now, efforts are underway to better understand how AI works and hold users accountable. New York's City Council last month adopted a law requiring audits of algorithms used by employers in hiring or promotion. The law, the first of its kind in the nation, requires employers to bring in outsiders to assess whether an algorithm exhibits bias based on sex, race, or ethnicity.

Prediction #6: The U.S. federal government will adopt a more proactive policy approach to AI in 2021 ... [ ] under President Biden. Below are 10 bold predictions about what will unfold in the world of artificial intelligence in 2021, from academic research to startups to capital markets to regulation. To keep ourselves honest, we will revisit these predictions in December 2021 to grade how we did. Autonomous vehicle developers like Waymo and Cruise have massive ongoing cash needs. Public market investors are thirsty for IPOs.

Australia's National Artificial Intelligence Centre has been launched to help unlock the potential of AI for business by coordinating the country's AI expertise and capabilities. The Centre is part of the federal government's $124.1 million investment under its AI Action Plan, which sets out a vision for Australia to become a global leader in developing and adopting trusted, secure and responsible artificial intelligence. Minister for Science and Technology Melissa Price said the Government was delivering on the AI Action Plan, ensuring Australia was charging ahead in developing and adopting artificial intelligence products and services. "The launch of the National Artificial Intelligence Centre positions Australia as a global leader in AI technology, harnessing our collective capabilities, talent and resources to be developers and drive early adoption of AI by our businesses," Minister Price said. "The National Artificial Intelligence Centre will play a pivotal role in ensuring we can take advantage of AI technologies, which has been forecast to contribute more than $20 trillion to the global economy by 2030. It will unlock the potential of AI and create new opportunities for business to access critical AI expertise and capabilities. The National Artificial Intelligence Centre will also help address barriers that small and medium enterprises face in developing AI and other emerging technologies by connecting business with the talent, knowledge and tools to succeed."

The strategic combination of a Defensive Artificial Intelligence implementation collaborated with Robotic Process Automation strategies to bring an adaptive, effective, and buzz-worthy edge to the industry.

In October, the Forum for Cooperation on Artificial Intelligence (FCAI), a multistakeholder dialogue among high-level government officials and experts from industry, civil society, and academia, released an interim report taking stock of the current landscape for international cooperation on AI and offering recommendations to make further progress. FCAI publicly launched the report as part of Brookings' Global Forum on Democracy and Technology event, Aligning technology governance with democratic values. UK Secretary of State Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Nadine Dorries, praised the "excellent" report as a "helpful step in [the] process" of building international AI collaboration while discussing her government's role in its presidency of the G7 group and its upcoming Future Tech Forum. To discuss the report, Brookings co-authors Cam Kerry and Josh Meltzer, and Andrea Renda of the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) welcomed a panel featuring representatives from the governments of Australia, Canada, and the United States, as well as industry representatives from IBM and Twitter. While the entire event and panel discussion around the report can be found here, for some unfamiliar with the FCAI, this blog will serve as an introduction to the Forum and the new report.