He's 11-years-old and, until he can receive his shots, Gronvall's been using at-home COVID-19 test kits in order to determine if his sniffles are more than allergies or a slight cold. The test swabs are longer than a Q-tip, but easier on the nasal cavity than a flu diagnostic or the original "brain swab" used to test for COVID since early in the pandemic. "There's often a lot of stuff coming out of their nose," Gronvall said of her kids, with a slight chuckle, when we talked recently. As an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Gronvall knows the importance of testing. "We can't all rely on everybody being extra scrupulous and paying attention to all of the COVID restrictions," she said.

US government regulators are opening an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot system after cars using the feature crashed into stopped emergency vehicles. 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 National Highway Transportation Safety Administration announced the investigation on Monday, and it encompasses 765,000 Teslas sold in the US, a significant fraction of all of the company's sales in the country. The agency says the probe will cover 11 crashes since 2018; the crashes caused 17 injuries and one death.

Nuro's delivery autonomous vehicles (AVs) don't have a human driver on board. The company's founders Dave Ferguson (president) and Jiajun Zhu's (CEO) vision of a driverless delivery vehicle sought to do away with a lot of the stuff that is essential for a normal car to have, like doors and airbags and even a steering wheel. They built an AV that spared no room in the narrow chassis for a driver's seat, and had no need for an accelerator, windshield or brake pedals. So when the company petitioned the U.S. government in 2018 for a minor exemption from rules requiring a rearview mirror, backup camera and a windshield, Nuro might have assumed the process wouldn't be very arduous. In a 2019 letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation, The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) "[wondered] about the description of pedestrian'crumple zones,' and whether this may impact the vehicle's crash-worthiness in the event of a vehicle-to-vehicle crash. Even in the absence of passengers, AAMVA has concerns about cargo ejection from the vehicle and how Nuro envisions protections from loose loads affecting the driving public."

Technology has made it easier than ever to generate content with the aim of obfuscating. 'Fake' has always had inherently negative connotations, yet there is a rising genre of fake content that is altogether more positive. It's still algorithmically generated, it's still created with the purpose of disguising the truth, but it has potential to make the world fairer, more open, and safer. At least, that's what advocates of synthetic data are on a mission to prove as the technology gets set to enter the mainstream. Technically, the concept of synthetic data has been around for decades.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot system. Since 2018, Tesla cars driven by Autopilot have crashed into first-responder vehicles on 11 separate occasions, causing 17 injuries and one fatality. Given that first responders vehicles have flashing lights, arrow boards and road cones, officials are concerned the system lulls drivers into a false sense of security. The NHTSA will now investigate how Tesla's Autopilot system studies the road and, more importantly, ensures drivers engage with what's going on. This could be the first brick in the road toward tougher supervision of all autonomous and semi-autonomous driver assistance systems. After all, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has already criticized Tesla for beta-testing its product on public roads with very little oversight.

Any digital health conference features its share of machine learning evangelism. Technology executives give fervent testimonials about its power to save lives and money, to predict episodes of severe illness, to help hospitals root out inefficiency. This year's gathering of the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) in Las Vegas was no different. But in between the glowing anecdotes, an aggressive counter narrative emerged: Machine learning needs a watchdog. Throughout the four-day conference, the largest annual event in health care technology, industry leaders called for better ways to evaluate the usefulness of machine learning algorithms, audit them for bias, and put in place regulations designed to ensure reliability, fairness, and transparency.

To implement General Secretary XI Jinping's important remarks and crucial instructions concerning artificial intelligence, and to implement the work requirements of Ministry of Science and Technology and the construction of Shanghai National New-Generation Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Development Pilot Zone, under the guidance of Department of Strategic Planning & Department of High New Technology of Ministry of Science and Technology and Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality, "Artificial Intelligence Governance Forum" will be themed under "People-oriented, Application-concerned" and explore methods analyzing the impact of social application of artificial intelligence technology, promote "artificial intelligence governance enabling'People-oriented' concept", take stock of "Shanghai Experiences" and "Shanghai's Image", in which artificial intelligence technology application is contributing to responsible development and exhibiting demonstrative effects, so as to serve the modernization of artificial intelligence governance system and governance capacity building.

The European Union is now considering what could become the world's first comprehensive legislation on artificial intelligence (AI). The aim is to promote European leadership in emerging technology. The proposed regulation seeks to limit government involvement in surveillance, but it actually threatens innovation in several ways. American policymakers should pay attention to avoid making a similar mistake. The EU's proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) would classify AI activities into different categories according to their perceived level of risk.

New York – U.S. safety officials opened a preliminary investigation into Tesla's Autopilot after identifying 11 crashes involving the driver assistance system, officials said Monday. The incidents dating back to 2018 included one fatal crash and seven that resulted in injuries to 17 people, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency "is committed to ensuring the highest standards of safety on the nation's roadways," a spokesperson said, and in order to "better understand the causes of certain Tesla crashes, NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into Tesla Autopilot systems." Tesla founder Elon Musk has defended the Autopilot system and the electric automaker warns that it requires "active driver supervision" behind the wheel. But critics, including in Congress, say the system can be easily fooled and that its name gives drivers a false sense of confidence.

Some protesters in Minnesota set a fire last year. But then the surveillance footage from that day "set off a nearly yearlong, international manhunt...involving multiple federal agencies and Mexican police. The pursuit also involved a facial recognition system made by a Chinese company that has been blacklisted by the U.S. government." The New York Times tells the story of the couple who was eventually arrested: Ms. Yousif gave birth while on the run, and was separated from her baby for four months by the authorities. To prosecutors, the pursuit of Mr. Felan, who was charged with arson, and Ms. Yousif, who was charged with helping him flee, was a routine response to a case of property destruction...