Ireland doesn't have a specific legal regime applicable to AI, yet it is widely deployed across a myriad of industries. We currently look to existing laws and try and fit AI into them. So when we want to incorporate AI applications into our businesses,we look for guidance in the strangest of places - the Employment Equality Acts 1988-2015 for HR deployments; the case of Donoghue -v- and Stephenson from 1932, when looking at general liability; and even the Control of Dogs Act 1986, when trying to find some analogies as to how robots or mobile AI might be treated! On 21 April the EU published its long awaited proposal for an AI Regulation. It now must go through the European Parliament and Council for consideration.

Combining humans with machines to create superhuman intelligence may soon no longer be the plot of science-fiction films, as the US Space Force's chief scientist say it will happen in'the coming decade.' Dr. Joel Mozer, speaking at an event at the Airforce Research Laboratory Wednesday, announced we are entering the age of'human augmentation,' which is crucial to the US's national defense in order to not'fall behind our strategic competitors.' However, his proposal does not turn humans into cyborgs, but employs'AI agents' to assist with strategic military planning. Mozer highlights the abilities seen in developed by a Google subsidiary, AlphaGo Zero, which was able to train itself to play the game of Go at a master level in just a few weeks. Mozer suggests the extortionary capabilities can lead to superhuman capabilities, by means of combining human ingenuity with the power, speed and efficiency of machines.

Artificial intelligence and the potential dangers of allowing this technology to grow too big too quickly have been long debated. For decades popular sci-fi media brought to the light the potential risks of AI, but only in the past several years has the technology evolved in a way that the discussion has migrated to the real world. As a response to this rapid evolution of AI, the European Union has published a new framework to regulate the use of AI across the 27 member states. The regulations cover a wide range of applications, from software in self-driving cars to algorithms used to vet job candidates, and arrive at a time when countries around the world are struggling with the ethical ramifications of artificial intelligence. Similar to the EU's data privacy law, GDPR, the regulation gives the bloc the ability to fine companies that infringe its rules up to 6 percent of their global revenues, though such punishments are extremely rare.

Jose Hernandez joins'Fox News Live' to discuss NASA's historic feat and Blue Origin's latest successful launch, return. NASA's helicopter on Mars, the four-pound "Ingenuity," failed to get off the ground for its fourth flight Thursday, but NASA said it is safe and will try again Friday. Previous test flights for the helicopter went well, with Ingenuity rising up 16 feet in the air during the third flight last Sunday then flashing downrange about 50 yards at a speed of 6.6 feet per second. The second test flight on April 22 and the first flight on April 19 also went as planned. The cause of Thursday's hiccup was a "watchdog" timer issue that prevented Ingenuity from transitioning to "flight mode."

An AI-driven space debris-dodging system could soon replace expert teams dealing with growing numbers of orbital collision threats in the increasingly cluttered near-Earth environment. Every two weeks, spacecraft controllers at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, have to conduct avoidance manoeuvres with one of their 20 low Earth orbit satellites, Holger Krag, the Head of Space Safety at the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a news conference organized by ESA during the 8th European Space Debris Conference held virtually from Darmstadt Germany, April 20 to 23. There are at least five times as many close encounters that the agency's teams monitor and carefully evaluate, each requesting a multi-disciplinary team to be on call 24/7 for several days. "Every collision avoidance manoeuvre is a nuisance," Krag said. "Not only because of fuel consumption but also because of the preparation that goes into it. We have to book ground-station passes, which costs money, sometimes we even have to switch off the acquisition of scientific data. We have to have an expert team available round the clock."

Do COVID-19 vaccines really have trackers in them? A Republican lawmaker in California raised the doubt at a recent meeting and a doctor set the record straight. At a meeting of the Orange County Board of Supervisors to discuss "vaccine passports" earlier this week, Supervisor Don Wagner asked whether there is "any intention of tracking people." The county health care agency director, Clayton Chau, replied to him with a simple "no." "We heard about an injection of a tracking device. Is that being done anywhere in Orange County?"

SCI COMMUN### Climate change The United States submitted its new goals to the Paris climate agreement last week, pledging to cut its planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030. The nonbinding pledge, made on Earth Day at an online climate summit convened by President Joe Biden, is one of the most aggressive targets of any wealthy country. The cuts are also higher than the 26% to 28% reduction by 2025 pledged by former President Barack Obama when the United States first joined the agreement in 2015. In the past month, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom have also committed to cuts steeper than their earlier pledges; other large polluters, such as China, India, and Russia, have yet to increase their goals ahead of a critical U.N. climate meeting this winter in Glasgow, U.K. The U.S. pledge has a long road to reality. It will require immediate increases in renewable energy, widespread adoption of electric vehicles, and other steps, many of which will require laws that could be difficult to pass, such as Biden's climate-focused infrastructure bill. > “It is our policy … not to employ anyone who has taken the experimental COVID-19 injection.” > > Miami-based private school Centner Academy in a letter to parents this week, citing discredited claims that vaccinated people can transmit harmful substances to others. ### Biomedicine ![Figure][1] CREDITS: (GRAPHIC) J. BRAINARD/ SCIENCE ; (DATA) ASGCT/INFORMA The number of new clinical trials for gene, cell, and RNA therapies has almost tripled in the past 4 years, the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy said this month in its first ever quarterly trends report. As of 31 March, nearly 3500 of these experimental treatments were in development, most of which (53%) consist of altered genes or genetically modified (GM) cells, such as cancer-fighting T cells with modified receptors. Cancer is the target for the largest number (1200) of therapies under development. Among RNA therapies, many were vaccines (35) or COVID-19 treatments (30). The United States has more clinical trials underway in each of the three types of therapies than any other country: 1400 overall. Globally, 16 gene therapies (including GM cells), 53 non-GM cell therapies, and 15 RNA therapies have been approved for use so far. ### Vaccination The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last week killed a rule that would have made it much more difficult for people who sustain shoulder injuries during vaccination to win compensation from a $4.1 billion government fund. The rule had been finalized on 19 January, the last day of former President Donald Trump's administration. But President Joe Biden's administration froze its implementation on 20 January. The new administration said the previous one had been “irregular in its haste” when it moved to remove shoulder injuries from a list of injuries in which the petitioner does not have to prove a vaccine caused the injury, making it easier to win a government payout ( Science , 10 April 2020, p. [121][2]). Shoulder injuries accounted for nearly 55% of more than 2400 claims filed with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in the past 2 years, most of them after flu shots. COVID-19 vaccines fall under a different HHS program, but if they win formal approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, they could in principle be added to the national compensation program. ### Publishing Sixteen journals, including BMJ Open Science and Royal Society Open Science , say they will accept articles reviewed by the nonprofit Peer Community In Registered Reports (PCI RR). The organization, launched last week, will review one type of article: “registered reports,” describing studies for which detailed experimental plans are peer reviewed before research begins. Once the research is complete, PCI RR will do a second round of peer review including results and analysis. Papers it recommends can then be published in any of the 16 journals without further review as long as they meet a journal's normal criteria. The organization, funded by donations, will provide peer review free to authors and journals in any discipline. ### COVID-19 The National Institutes of Health (NIH) last week announced it would launch a large study repurposing existing drugs for patients with mild COVID-19 symptoms who don't need hospitalization. The $155 million trial, which aims to recruit 13,500 participants, will open in a few weeks at several research centers. It will test up to seven medications already approved for other conditions, but NIH hasn't yet named them. A recent, similar trial at the University of Oxford that has so far enrolled about 4800 patients has found that the asthma drug budesonide lessens symptoms and speeds recovery in certain COVID-19 patients. ### Medicine A large study has firmed up earlier evidence that SARS-CoV-2 increases the rate of complications for pregnant women and their babies. The study followed 706 pregnant women with COVID-19 and 1424 uninfected pregnant women at hospitals in 18 countries. Infected women had a 76% higher risk of developing problems caused by pregnancy-associated high blood pressure and a 59% higher risk of preterm birth. They were also five times more likely to be admitted to intensive care than uninfected women. Eleven women with COVID-19 died, compared with one uninfected woman, researchers report in JAMA Pediatrics . Infected women with fever and shortness of breath had babies with a fivefold increased risk of complications such as immature lungs, eye disorders, and brain damage. The coronavirus may affect pregnancy via changes in a woman's heart, lungs, and immune system. The results show pregnant women should be among priority groups for COVID-19 vaccines, the authors say. A separate study last week found no obvious safety problems in more than 800 U.S. women who gave birth after receiving messenger RNA vaccines. ### Community The American Humanist Association has decided to withdraw Richard Dawkins's 1996 Humanist of the Year award as a result of his “history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups.” The decision came soon after the evolutionary biologist and former University of Oxford professor wrote a tweet comparing transgender people to Rachel Dolezal, a civil rights activist who for years posed as Black. The association said the tweet “implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient.” In 2015, Dawkins argued that trans women are not women based on their chromosomes, but said he would use the pronoun “she” out of courtesy. ### Seismology The first large-scale, phone-based earthquake early warning system will be deployed in Greece and New Zealand, Google announced this week. Since last year, the company has been testing the use of data compiled from its more than 2 billion active Android phones to pinpoint the location and strength of earthquakes. The measurement comes from the built-in Android phones' accelerometers, which sense movement just like seismometers. When the phones detect earthquakelike signals, they alert a server that combines information from many phones. If enough phones corroborate the result, an alert goes out. The cellphone results compared well to those from seismometer-based warning systems in Japan and the United States. Google chose New Zealand and Greece, both countries with high earthquake hazards and many Android phones, to premier the system because they lack operational warning systems of their own. Eventually, phone-based alerts could be available worldwide. ### Biotechnology Genetically modified mosquitoes designed to prevent the spread of viruses such as Zika and dengue are set to be released in the United States for the first time. Starting this week, the company Oxitec will free fewer than 12,000 transgenic Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, all of them nonbiting males, in the Florida Keys as part of a pilot study, the company announced on 23 April. They are engineered to carry a gene that kills their female offspring, reducing the population of mosquitoes capable of transmitting diseases. Field tests outside the United States have shown dramatic population drops, though the company has not published definitive evidence that the strategy reduces disease in humans. The project, which has long faced public opposition in Florida, won approval in May 2020 from the Environmental Protection Agency, which predicted no adverse effects on people or local wildlife. ### Science policy President Joe Biden last week picked two veterans of government service and a newcomer to fill top science positions. He named soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe of the University of California, Merced, to lead the Department of Energy's Office of Science. Berhe, born in Eritrea, has little government experience but has won accolades for her research and efforts to promote diversity in science. She would become the first Black woman to lead the science office if confirmed by the Senate. Oceanographer Rick Spinrad of Oregon State University, Corvallis, who has held numerous posts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is Biden's choice to lead that agency. To run the State Department's science bureau, he chose Monica Medina, an ocean policy expert and attorney at Georgetown University. Confirmation hearings for the three nominees could come as early as next month. ### Regulation In one of the broadest attempts to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) to date, the European Commission on 21 April proposed new rules for algorithms that power everything from medical device and credit scoring software to chatbots and facial recognition systems. The rules divide AI technologies into risk categories, and put outright bans on some, such as systems that would score individuals' “social credit.” Other “high-risk” systems, including those that collect biometric data, would require a strict vetting process. However, there are exceptions for national security, and it could take years before the rules become law: They must first pass the European Council and the European Parliament and be adopted by member countries. ### Community An effort to increase gender, racial, and geographic diversity in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has begun to bear fruit. Nearly half of the 120-member 2021 class announced last week are women, compared with one-quarter in 2011. The new cohort includes nine Black scientists; NAS officials say previous classes never had more than three and often had none. “We need to do better, but I'm amazed at how far we've come,” says plant geneticist Susan Wessler, NAS home secretary. The academy's governing council has begun to give more slots to disciplinary units that present candidate slates less skewed toward older white men. To reduce its geographic imbalance, NAS is also prohibiting members from nominating someone from their own institution. Today, 18 U.S. states have two or fewer members, whereas a handful of elite academic institutions each have more than 100. [1]: pending:yes [2]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/368/6487/121

Like superheroes capable of seeing through obstacles, environmental regulators may soon wield the power of all-seeing eyes that can identify violators anywhere at any time, according to a new Stanford University-led study. The paper, published the week of April 19 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), demonstrates how artificial intelligence combined with satellite imagery can provide a low-cost, scalable method for locating and monitoring otherwise hard-to-regulate industries. Go to the web site to view the video. Brick production, a major industry in South Asia, is a source of pollution that threatens health. Regulating brick kilns is difficult because there is no database of kiln locations.

Faculty, a VC-backed artificial intelligence startup, has won a tender to work with the NHS to make better predictions about its future requirements for patients, based on data drawn from how it handled the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2019, Faculty raised a $10.5 million Series A funding round from U.K.-based VCs Local Globe, GMG Ventures, and Jaan Tallinn, one of Skype's founding engineers, giving it a valuation of around $100 million. Faculty will work with NHS England and NHS Improvement to build upon the Early Warning System (EWS) it developed for the service during the pandemic. Based on Bayesian hierarchical modeling, Faculty says the EWS uses aggregate data (for example, COVID-19 positive case numbers, 111 calls and mobility data) to warn hospitals about potential spikes in cases so they can divert staff, beds and equipment needed. This learning will now be applied across the whole of the service, for issues other than the pure pandemic response, such as improving service delivery and patient care and predicting A&E demand and winter pressures.

Michael Collins flew in both the Gemini 10 and the Apollo 11 space missions in the 1960s. After retiring from NASA in 1970, he became director of the National Air and Space Museum until 1978, when he became undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution. From 1982 to 2006, he served on the National Geographic Society's board of trustees. Collins died from cancer at age 90 on April 28, 2021. He contributed this essay to our "Dear Spacecraft" series in 2019.