The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set newsroom policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com. Keith E. Sonderling is a commissioner on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.The views here are the author's own and should not be attributed to the EEOC or any other member of the commission. With 86 percent of major U.S. corporations predicting that artificial intelligence will become a "mainstream technology" at their company this year, management-by-algorithm is no longer the stuff of science fiction. AI has already transformed the way workers are recruited, hired, trained, evaluated and even fired. One recent study found that 83 percent of human resources leaders rely in some form on technology in employment decision-making.

Like a band with too few hit singles, the European Union is resorting to playing the classics over and over again. The bloc has, like clockwork, tabled a proposal for legislators to think about maybe possibly having a debate about if it's worth creating a common charging standard. This has happened more than a few times before, as it pushed micro-USB as a voluntary standard in 2009 and tried to pass it into law in 2014. And it started this process again in January 2020, although some world-shattering event got in the way of that process. The new proposal would require that "all smartphones, tablets, cameras, headphones, portable speakers and handheld video game consoles" would use USB-C for charging.

AI software identifies which areas of your face you should subtly change with make-up to fool face recognition technology – and it works 98.8 per cent of the time

The United Kingdom has ruled out that AIs or artificial intelligence cannot set forth its patents or have an invention or innovation named after them after an appeal by one Dr. Stephen Thaler. The researcher has set forth several innovations to be named after the AI he used, something which is somehow unnatural for the courts. The case of Thaler vs. Comptroller General of Patents Trade Marks and Designs has focused on the United Kingdom's view on AI and its right to push forward an invention for society. It has examined the possibility of having an AI take credit for its work, something which was not yet that of an open possibility in the country. That being said, the "AI DABUS" or technology by Thaler, which he put down as the "inventor" of the technology that they are trying to patent, was dismissed and denied.

Steve Durbin is Chief Executive of Information Security Forum. He is a frequent speaker on the Board's role in cybersecurity and technology. A technology-led revolution, dubbed Industry 4.0, is gathering pace in the industrial world where traditional processes and legacy technologies are being replaced by smart devices, automated machines and advanced forms of computing. The rise of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), owing to exponential growth in technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, robots, drones, sensors, etc., is helping manufacturers improve efficiencies, productivity and the autonomous operation of production lines. Businesses are pouring billions of dollars in AI and automation, and the Industrial IoT (IIoT) alone is set to become a $500 billion market by 2025.

The Moon’s polar regions are home to craters and other depressions that never receive sunlight. Today, a group of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany presents the highest-resolution images to date covering 17 such craters in the journal Nature Communications. Craters of this type could contain frozen water, making them attractive targets for future lunar missions, and the researchers focused further on relatively small and accessible craters surrounded by gentle slopes. In fact, three of the craters have turned out to lie within the just-announced mission area of NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), which is scheduled to touch down on the Moon in 2023. Imaging the interior of permanently shadowed craters is difficult, and efforts so far have relied on long exposure times resulting in smearing and lower resolution. By taking advantage of reflected sunlight from nearby hills and a novel image processing method, the researchers have now produced images at 1-2 meters per pixel, which is at or very close to the best capability of the cameras.

Esri India, the country's Geographic Information System (GIS) software and solutions provider, has introduced Site Scan for ArcGIS, a complete cloud-based drone mapping solution. The solution encompasses flight planning, data capture, data processing, analysis, data sharing and drone fleet management. It is offered as'Software as a Service' (SaaS) with unlimited storage and computing. Site Scan for ArcGIS is hosted in India, on a cloud approved by the Government of India and ensures that the drone data is stored and processed within India in compliance with the government regulations. Site Scan for ArcGIS exhibits the capability to process data captured by most of the drones manufactured in India or abroad.

Despite one of Team Explorer's ground robots returning to the garage with bent parts and covered in mud, the team was proud of how it performed during the final run of DARPA's SubT Challenge. "This one drove off a cliff," said Matt Travers, one of the team's co-leads, pointing to the smallest ground robot. "But I think it did so in a very valiant way. The team sent in eight robots during the one-hour run. Three drones launched from the start gate and one from the back of a ground robot.

Ronen Lavi and Shay Perera have spent years working to develop and deploy AI in one of the most demanding environments in the world--the elite intelligence units of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Lavi established and led the AI Lab of Israel's Military Intelligence and Perera served there as manager of machine learning and computer vision research and development. After being awarded a National Security Award in 2018, they left the IDF to launch a startup, as many Israelis with similar experience and skills have done before them. The rapid digital transformation of the healthcare industry worldwide, the proliferation of healthcare data, the increasing complexity of healthcare (including its administration), the dearth of qualified personnel--and the Covid pandemic--have all contributed to a rising demand for AI solutions, intended to assist with detection, diagnosis, treatment, preventive care and wellness. The wealth of data that is produced by digitized medical records is what modern AI approaches (deep learning) require so they can "learn" from examples, automate certain decisions, and provide a helping hand to physicians and healthcare staff.

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technology for many companies. Governments are developing strategies to encourage further adoption. However, many businesses are still wary of AI and require additional reassurance to go ahead, particularly in industries where implementation is slow. AI insurance is the solution to speed up adoption, says Saar Yoskovitz, co-founder & CEO of Augury. As the capabilities of AI solutions improve and development and implementation become easier, businesses are shifting their views and increasing the use of the technology.