The concept of data streaming is not new. But one of the most critical emerging uses for streaming data is in the public sector, where government agencies are eyeing its game-changing capability to advance everything from battlefield decision-making to constituent experience. IDC predicts that the collective sum of the world's data will grow 33%, to 175 zettabytes, by 2025. For context, at today's average internet connection speeds, 175 zettabytes would take 1.8 billion years for one person to download. Streaming has only further accelerated the velocity of data growth.

MILAN – Perhaps no single aspect of the digital revolution has received more attention than the effect of automaton on jobs, work, employment, and incomes. There is at least one very good reason for that – but it is probably not the one most people would cite. Former US President Donald Trump is not Hitler, and America is not the Weimar Republic. But, as four excellent recent books about the interwar years show, false narratives and craven political choices can have dreadful consequences that may not emerge immediately. Using machines to augment productivity is nothing new.

In recent years, AI has evolved from science fiction to part of our everyday lives. Emerging tech is on the cusp of revolutionizing global value chains. Shaping a "new corporate tomorrow" is already taking place, and the ethical issues related to AI have been laid out in numerous executive debates. To secure democratic values and a high standard of transparency, we must take AI Ethics to the next level: AI Policy. History shows that policy and lawmaking do the trick when it comes to protecting liberty, democratic values, and human rights.

Recently, Gartner released a series of Predicts 2021 research reports, including one that highlights the serious, wide-reaching ethical and social problems it predicts artificial intelligence (AI) to cause in the next several years. The race to digital transformation and abundance of data has coerced companies to invest in artificial intelligence technologies. And with that, the concept of leveraging responsible AI took central stage in discussions between government, enterprises and other tech purists and critics. A quick search trends shows that the words like "Ethical AI", and "Responsible AI" have gained popularity in the past five years. But what is the reason behind it? Currently, presence of bias in training data for artificial intelligence models and lack of transparency (black box) threaten the possibility of using AI for good.

The mass affordability of sequencing enables a paradigm shift from sequencing only those with risk factors (such as someone's family history or medical symptoms) to sequencing proactively to identify risk factors. It will allow every individual to build up genomic data capital, opening the door for new applications and business models across health insurance, care delivery, and everyday life. New approvals & patents - Ava, a Swiss digital healthcare company focused on women's reproductive health, announced that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its fertility tracking wearable. BrainQ, an Israeli start-up, announced that the FDA has designated its AI-powered electromagnetic field therapy that aims to enhance recovery and reduce disability after neurological damage caused by stroke as a Breakthrough Device, giving access to the new Medicare Coverage of Innovative Technology (MCIT) pathway. Voluntis (French DTx) announced the issuance of a new patent by the European Patent Office (EPO) for intelligent patient support in drug dosing applied in the field of diabetes for insulin titration support.

Africa has a unique opportunity to develop its competitiveness through artificial intelligence (AI). From agriculture and remote health to translating the 2,000-odd languages spoken across the continent, AI can help tackle the economic problems that Africa faces. Africa faces several known challenges in developing AI such as a dearth of investment, a paucity of specialised talent, and a lack of access to the latest global research. These hurdles are being whittled down, albeit slowly, thanks to African ingenuity and to investments by multinational companies such as IBM Research, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which have all opened AI labs in Africa. Innovative forms of trans-continental collaboration such as Deep Learning Indaba (a Zulu word for gathering), which is fostering a community of AI researchers in Africa, and Zindi, a platform that challenges African data scientists to solve the continent's toughest challenges, are gaining ground, buoyed by the recent "homecoming" of several globally-trained African experts in AI.

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) have revolutionized industries and our daily lives; they help video-streaming services predict which movies we'd like to watch, allow credit card companies to identify fraudulent transactions and enable navigation apps to find the fastest routes to our destinations. For geospatial applications, AI and ML can identify objects and patterns automatically and derive meaningful insights from satellite imagery in hours--a task that previously would have required teams of analysts and months of effort. With these tools, we can gain insights about any spot on the globe, identify where things are changing most quickly and find patterns that have never before been visible in data. In machine learning, a form of AI, computer programs improve through experience, accessing data and using it to learn for themselves. Algorithms with richer data will become more effective in nature.

For more than a decade, journalists and researchers have been writing about the dangers of relying on algorithms to make weighty decisions: who gets locked up, who gets a job, who gets a loan--even who has priority for COVID-19 vaccines. Rather than remove bias, one algorithm after another has codified and perpetuated it, as companies have simultaneously continued to more or less shield their algorithms from public scrutiny. The big question ever since: How do we solve this problem? Lawmakers and researchers have advocated for algorithmic audits, which would dissect and stress-test algorithms to see how they work and whether they're performing their stated goals or producing biased outcomes. And there is a growing field of private auditing firms that purport to do just that.

Timnit Gebru--a giant in the world of AI and then co-lead of Google's AI ethics team--was pushed out of her job in December. Gebru had been fighting with the company over a research paper that she'd coauthored, which explored the risks of the AI models that the search giant uses to power its core products--the models are involved in almost every English query on Google, for instance. The paper called out the potential biases (racial, gender, Western, and more) of these language models, as well as the outsize carbon emissions required to compute them. Google wanted the paper retracted, or any Google-affiliated authors' names taken off; Gebru said she would do so if Google would engage in a conversation about the decision. Instead, her team was told that she had resigned. After the company abruptly announced Gebru's departure, Google AI chief Jeff Dean insinuated that her work was not up to snuff--despite Gebru's credentials and history of groundbreaking research.

Some blasts from the past surfaced this week, including revelations that a Russia-linked hacking group has repeatedly targeted the US electrical grid, along with oil and gas utilities and other industrial firms. Notably, the group has ties to the notorious industrial-control GRU hacking group Sandworm. Meanwhile, researchers revealed evidence this week that an elite NSA hacking tool for Microsoft Windows, known as EpMe, fell into the hands of Chinese hackers in 2014, years before that same tool then leaked in the notorious Shadow Brokers dump of NSA tools. WIRED got an inside look at how the video game hacker Empress has become so powerful and skilled at cracking the digital rights management software that lets video game makers, ebook publishers, and others control the content you buy from them. And the increasingly popular, but still invite-only, audio-based social media platform Clubhouse continues to struggle with security and privacy missteps. If you want something relaxing to take your mind off all of this complicated and concerning news, though, check out the new generation of Opte, an art piece that depicts the evolution and growth of the internet from 1997 to today.