The dominant public narrative about artificial intelligence is that we are building increasingly intelligent machines that will ultimately surpass human capabilities, steal our jobs, possibly even escape human control and kill us all. This misguided perception, not widely shared by AI researchers, runs a significant risk of delaying or derailing practical applications and influencing public policy in counterproductive ways. A more appropriate framingbetter supported by historical progress and current developmentsis that AI is simply a natural continuation of longstanding efforts to automate tasks, dating back at least to the start of the industrial revolution. Stripping the field of its gee-whiz apocalyptic gloss makes it easier to evaluate the likely benefits and pitfalls of this important technology, not to mention dampen the self-destructive cycles of hype and disappointment that have plagued the field since its inception. At the core of this problem is the tendency for respected public figures outside the field, and even a few within the field, to tolerate or sanction overblown press reports that herald each advance as startling and unexpected leaps toward general human-level intelligence (or beyond), fanning fears that "the robots" are coming to take over the world.

In 2018, when Google employees found out about their company's involvement in Project Maven, a controversial US military effort to develop AI to analyze surveillance video, they weren't happy. "We believe that Google should not be in the business of war," they wrote in a letter to the company's leadership. Around a dozen employees resigned. Google did not renew the contract in 2019. Project Maven still exists, and other tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, have since taken Google's place.

AI-enhanced cybersecurity is a must in 2021 and beyond. Clearly, the industry agrees -- you'll find an endless list of AI security platforms in the marketplace. What do vendors really mean when they use the term "artificial intelligence?" AI can be a fluid term, and sometimes mean different things to different people, and although marketing teams at cyber companies are using this ambiguity to their advantage, too often when it comes to the actual implementation and use of these platforms, the technology and promise falls short of AI in it's true scientific sense. Some artificial intelligence is and will be groundbreaking for the cybersecurity industry.

In a bid to promote transparency, the Defense Innovation Unit, which awards DoD contracts to companies, has released what it calls "responsible artificial intelligence" guidelines that it will require third-party developers to use when building AI for the military, whether that AI is for an HR system or target recognition. The guidelines provide a step-by-step process for companies to follow during planning, development, and deployment. They include procedures for identifying who might use the technology, who might be harmed by it, what those harms might be, and how they might be avoided--both before the system is built and once it is up and running. "There are no other guidelines that exist, either within the DoD or, frankly, the United States government, that go into this level of detail," says Bryce Goodman at the Defense Innovation Unit, who coauthored the guidelines. The work could change how AI is developed by the US government, if the DoD's guidelines are adopted or adapted by other departments.

When the sheriff in Suffolk County, New York, requested $700,000 from the U.S. government for an artificial intelligence system to eavesdrop on prison phone conversations, his office called it a key tool in fighting gang-related and violent crime. But the county jail ended up listening to calls involving a much wider range of subjects -- scanning as many as 600,000 minutes per month, according to public records from the county obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Beginning in 2019, Suffolk County was an early pilot site for the Verus AI-scanning system sold by California-based LEO Technologies, which uses Amazon speech-to-text technology to transcribe phone calls flagged by keyword searches. The company and law enforcement officials say it is a crucial tool to keep prisons and jails safe, and to fight crime, but critics say such systems trample the privacy rights of prisoners and other people, like family members, on the outside. "T he ability to surveil and listen at scale in this rapid way -- it is incredibly scary and chilling," said Julie Mao, deputy director at Just Futures Law, an immigration legal group.

An internal report on Artificial Intelligence recently approved by a special committee of the European Parliament embodies a push from EU lawmakers and member states to make regulation on artificial intelligence less burdensome and more innovation-friendly. Christian Democrat MEP Axel Voss has been leading the charge against "overburdening" companies with excessive regulation, arguing that the EU regulatory environment should leave more room for innovation. That was the underlying motive of an own-initiative report on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age, recently approved in the AIDA committee, a parliamentary body set up in 2020, under Voss' leadership. "We need a better regulatory framework that learns also from the mistakes of the GDPR," Voss said while presenting the report. Instead of overburdening companies, the AI Act should give clear guidance and should leave space for innovation, he added.

On the second day of the COSM 2021 conference, speakers asked -- with appropriate skepticism -- whether we could ever produce true Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). But the final day of the conference hosted a conversation on the realistically achievable forms of AI and quantum computing that may pose existential threats to modern life. Robert J. Marks, Director of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence (which hosted COSM) -- also Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University -- spoke first. The title of his 2020 book, The Case for Killer Robots: Why America's Military Needs to Continue Development of Lethal AI, provides an unsubtle hint at his position. Marks thinks that AI will never be "will never be sentient. It will never understand what it is doing. And, currently, it has no common sense."

"As this technology continues to improve, it will have a significant impact on how clinical training is conducted in psychology and medicine," said psychologist and virtual reality technology expert Albert "Skip" Rizzo, PhD, who demonstrated recent advancements in virtual reality for use in psychology. Virtual humans can now be highly interactive, artificially intelligent and capable of carrying on a conversation with real humans, according to Rizzo, a research scientist at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. "This has set the stage for the'birth' of intelligent virtual humans to be used in clinical training settings," he said. Rizzo showed videos of clinical psychiatry trainees engaging with virtual patients called "Justin" and "Justina." Justin is a 16-year-old with a conduct disorder who is being forced by his family to participate in therapy.

"A job advertised online today attracts dozens to hundreds to thousands of applications, mainly due to the amplifying effect of the internet," said Laurie Cumbo, Democratic majority leader of the council and sponsor of the bill. In response, she said, employers have adopted software that sifts through applications rapidly and makes recommendations through an "opaque" process. "My bill will require audits that will clear the fog around these processes and help limit implicit bias and discrimination in the hiring process," Cumbo said. Harvard Business School surveyed 2,250 executives earlier this year and found that 90% of companies were using software to screen applicants, even as a majority of those firms admitted that the screening process eliminated qualified candidates. That happens for reasons beyond gender or racial discrimination, the report noted.

Mumbai: Cash is no more the king, but digital revolution needs to be supported by a regulatory infrastructure, says a study. India economy has undergone significant formalisation in last 5 years. Latest currency in circulation data reveals that it has remained constant over the previous year even as record purchases happened during Diwali at Rs1.25 lakh crores, says an internal research report by SBI economists. This happened for the first time since 2014. Indian consumers have now migrated big time to better technology platform like UPI that does not require the intervention of a POS machine and factor authentications: UPI transactions have jumped 70 times in last 4 years.