Clearview AI is about to get formal acknowledgment for its controversial facial recognition technology. Politico reports Clearview has received a US Patent and Trademark Office "notice of allowance" indicating officials will approve a filing for its system, which scans faces across public internet data to find people from government lists and security camera footage. The company just has to pay administrative fees to secure the patent. In a Politico interview, Clearview founder Hoan Ton-That claimed this was the first facial recognition patent involving "large-scale internet data." The firm sells its tool to government clients (including law enforcement) hoping to accelerate searches.

The European Commission has presented on Wednesday (21 April) a long-waiting'AI package'. The proposal is the first-ever attempt to regulate AI and has been developed as part of a broader ambition to make Europe a global leader in the field by being the first to set clear guidelines.

The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block Nvidia's acquisition of Arm, the semiconductor design firm, saying that the blockbuster deal would unfairly stifle competition. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. "The FTC is suing to block the largest semiconductor chip merger in history to prevent a chip conglomerate from stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies," Holly Vedova, director of the FTC's competition bureau, said in a statement. "Tomorrow's technologies depend on preserving today's competitive, cutting-edge chip markets. This proposed deal would distort Arm's incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia's rivals."

AI is certainly the core technology leading the smart digital transformation of our 4Th Industrial Era. Computers with AI are designed for automation activities that include, speech recognition, learning, planning, and problem solving. These technologies can provide for more efficient decision making by prioritizing and acting on data, especially across larger networks with many users and variables. AI is a catalyst for driving fundamental changes in many industries such as customer service, marketing, online banking, healthcare, business accounting, public safety, retail, education, and public transport.

This week, the Partnership on AI (PAI), a nonprofit committed to responsible AI use, released a paper addressing how technology -- particularly AI -- can accentuate various forms of biases. While most proposals to mitigate algorithmic discrimination require the collection of data on so-called sensitive attributes -- which usually include things like race, gender, sexuality, and nationality -- the coauthors of the PAI report argue that these efforts can actually cause harm to marginalized people and groups. Rather than trying to overcome historical patterns of discrimination and social inequity with more data and "clever algorithms," they say, the value assumptions and trade-offs associated with the use of demographic data must be acknowledged. "Harmful biases have been found in algorithmic decision-making systems in contexts such as health care, hiring, criminal justice, and education, prompting increasing social concern regarding the impact these systems are having on the wellbeing ...

The House minority leader blasted Democratic leadership, saying the current policy is'creating another Syria' in the Middle East. The United States military conducted a drone strike in Syria targeting a senior al-Qaeda leader and planner, a CENTCOM spokesperson says. "U.S. forces conducted a kinetic strike near Idlib, Syria, December 3, targeting a senior al-Qaeda leader and planner," CENTCOM spokesperson Captain Bill Urban told Fox News Digital in a statement. "The strike was conducted using a precision strike method from MQ-9 aircraft." Urban added that an "initial review of this strike indicates the potential for possible civilian casualties."

The history of deep fake technology is surprisingly long. Researchers at academic institutions have been developing deep fake tech since the early 1990s. The idea is even older, as popular science fiction--like the 1987 film The Running Man--can attest. But deep fakes are no longer relegated to the realm of sci-fi; they are, in fact, more present in our daily lives than you might realize. It's easy to think of deep fakes as some sort of advanced CGI used to create highly realistic animated films or to replace established actors in a film or television series, especially in cases where actors pass away unexpectedly before filming is complete.

NASA's Curiosity rover has snapped a spectacular 360-degree selfie of the Red Planet. The veteran explorer, which was launched to Mars 10 years ago, captured the image using a camera at the end of its robotic arm. It snapped 81 individual pictures to make up the panoramic view of its desolate surroundings. The Curiosity rover's Twitter account shared the images, writing: 'Stop! I took this 360-degree selfie using the Mars Hand Lens Imager at the end of my arm.' Landmarks featured in the selfie include a rock structure behind the rover known as'Greenheugh Pediment', while a hill to the right is'Rafael Navarro Mountain', named after a Curiosity team scientist who died earlier this year.

Dezfouli points out that whether these technologies are used for good or ill depends on how responsibly we design and deploy them. In an attempt to ensure good outcomes, CSIRO and the Australian government developed an ethics framework for AI in government and industry. These (voluntary) principles include much of what you might expect, like "AI systems should respect and uphold privacy rights and data protection." Another tenant says that transparency and responsible disclosure are crucial, so that people can understand when their choices are being guided and find out when an AI system is engaging with them.

Alternative data vendor QuantCube has created a slew of environmental intelligence products using satellite data sourced from the European Space Agency combined with other alternative data sources. As well as creating four environmental and social economic indicator services, the Paris-based company has also incorporated the new information into its benchmarking and analytical overlays. The offerings are the fruit of a two-year collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French Space Agency (CNES), which gave the company access to its Earth observation data through its business application programme. Using data beamed from the Copernicus programme's Sentinel satellites, QuantCube is providing its clients with four environmental indicators at macro-level: The data is processed by artificial intelligence software after being harvested from orbiting technology that can take detailed images down to 30 square centimetres on the Earth's surface. Satellite technology can also identify concentrations of greenhouse gases and pollutants, including carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2).