Facial recognition technology is being deployed in housing projects, homeless shelters, schools, even across entire cities--usually without much fanfare or discussion. To some, this represents a critical technology for helping vulnerable communities gain access to social services. In this episode, we speak to the advocates, technologists, and dissidents dealing with the messy consequences that come when a technology that can identify you almost anywhere (even if you're wearing a mask) is deployed without any clear playbook for regulating or managing it. This episode was reported and produced by Jennifer Strong, Tate Ryan-Mosley, Emma Cillekens, and Karen Hao. Strong: So, I'm in lower Manhattan next to some buildings known as Knickerbocker Village. You might hear the subway running up overhead there. So history buffs might know this spot as kind of a birthplace of housing rights. Some of New York City's first regulations on rental housing came to exist here because of the tenants association. These buildings were also among the very first federally funded affordable housing units.

The accurate detection of disease outcomes still remains a challenging obstacle for physicians. As a result, machine learning (ML) has emerged as a popular tool for researchers. It can aid in discovering and identifying patterns and relationships from complex datasets, while predicting future outcomes. Now, researchers at Aalto University, the University of Helsinki, and the University of Turku in Finland report they have developed a machine learning model that can predict how combinations of different cancer drugs kill various types of cancer cells. The new AI model was trained with a large set of data obtained from previous studies, which had investigated the association between drugs and cancer cells.

Spain is to invest 600 million euros (725 million dollars) in developing artificial intelligence over the next two years as part of plans to transform its national economy, the premier said Wednesday. The programme would run from 2021 to 2023, starting with an initial injection of 330 million euros, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said. Developing artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the main objectives of Spain's digital transformation programme which was announced in July and is part of a plan to transform the Spanish economy. Sanchez said the aim of the government's AI strategy was to "align Spain with the leading countries involved in the study and use of reliable artificial intelligence for economic and social development as a tool for economic modernisation". The idea was "to generate an environment of trust with respect to the development of an artificial intelligence that would be inclusive and sustainable and have the public at its heart", a government statement added.

In September 2019, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued its first-ever warning for an attack on a commercial artificial intelligence algorithm. Security researchers had devised a way to attack a Proofpoint product that uses machine learning to identify spam emails. The system produced email headers that included a "score" of how likely a message was to be spam. But analyzing these scores, along with the contents of messages, made it possible to build a clone of the machine-learning model and craft spam messages that evaded detection. The vulnerability notice may be the first of many.

Nov. 25 (UPI) -- South Korea pledged to invest about $1 billion for artificial intelligence in semiconductor manufacturing to build on the nation's success developing computer chips to power economic growth. President Moon Jae-in said Wednesday at a meeting of South Korea's top tech executives in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, that his administration is prepared to improve regulations on artificial intelligence and provide a road map for innovation, EDaily and News 1 reported. "Countries around the world are competing to dominate in artificial intelligence," Moon said. "South Korea's dream is to become a leader [in the sector] in the post-pandemic era." Moon also said Korea has applied AI for public use, and that Seoul will work to open an "AI era" that would allow South Koreans to enjoy the benefits of innovation in their daily lives.

Humiliated by the killing of a top nuclear scientist, Iranian officials sought this week to rewrite the attack as an episode of science fiction: Israel had executed him entirely by remote control, spraying bullets from an automated machine gun propped up in a parked Nissan without a single assassin on the scene. Even hard-liners mocked the new spin. "Why don't you just say Tesla built the Nissan? It drove by itself, parked by itself, fired the shots and blew up by itself?" one hard-line social media account said. "Are you, like us, doubting this narrative?" Since the killing of the scientist on Friday, contradictory reports in the official news media about the escape or even existence of a hit team -- along with assertions of prior warnings from the Interior Ministry about the attack -- revealed tensions between competing Iranian intelligence agencies as each sought to dodge blame for an egregious security lapse.

Standing just 5ft tall, Mitra navigates around the hospital wards, guided by facial recognition technology and with a chest-mounted tablet that allows patients and their loved ones to see each other. Developed in recent years by the Bengaluru startup Invento Robotics, Mitra costs around $13,600 (£10,000) and – due to the reduced risk of infection to doctors – has become hugely popular in Indian hospitals during the pandemic. Since making headlines at its debut in 2017 at an international summit, where it greeted Ivanka Trump and interacted with India's prime minister Narendra Modi, Mitra has increasingly been put to use in hospitals treating Covid-19 patients. "Mitra was originally meant for care homes, but was adapted during the pandemic to assist doctors and nurses by taking vital readings, and to help in consultations," says Balaji Viswanathan, chief executive of Invento Robotics, which now exports the robot to five countries including the US and Australia. India still only has about three robots for every 10,000 workers, but the domestic industry is growing rapidly, fuelled in no small part by the pandemic.

Massachusetts could make history as the first state to issue a ban on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement. The state's House and Senate lawmakers have approved a police reform bill that would prohibit police departments and other public agencies from using facial recognition systems. As Forbes notes, there will be exceptions, such as if cops can secure a warrant to use facial recognition against someone's driver's license. Officers can also write a request to be able to use the technology if they can show evidence that it's needed to prevent serious injury or death. In addition to the facial recognition ban, the police reform bill also prohibits cops from using chokeholds and rubber bullets.

Over three decades ago, the Morris Worm infected an estimated 10% of the 60,000 computers that were online in 1988. It was the personal malware project of a Harvard graduate named Robert Tappan Morris, that was widely deemed to be the world's first cyber-attack. Fast forward to today, and cyberattacks now stand among natural disasters and climate change in the World Economic Forum's annual list of global society's gravest threats. In fact, with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) coming into the picture, cybersecurity is becoming more effective and powerful but there is another side of the coin too. Breaking into computer systems has become a child's play using AI and ML.

Former Trump campaign manager reacts to 2020 election results in exclusive interview on'The Story' Former Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale has accused "D-level" "talking heads" in the president's orbit of starting a whisper campaign that forced him out earlier this year. Speaking with Fox News' Martha MacCallum in an exclusive interview on "The Story" Tuesday night, Parscale alleged that "when the polling numbers were going down, they were in his ear and I was out working." Discussing a reported incident in which Trump berated Parscale for passing along a bad polling report, the former campaign manager said: "I didn't like lying to him -- I like telling the truth. Sometimes that comes with a lot of painful days, knowing that I might let him down or make him upset, but a lot of the D-level people that hung around him told him what he wanted to hear: They were'yes' men. I wasn't going to be'yes' man, but a'get it done' man." Parscale did not name anyone as being specifically responsible for his ouster in mid-July, when he was replaced by Bill Stepien.