Years ago, the thought of using software to fight a deadly pathogen might have seemed far-fetched. The Coronavirus pandemic has caused monumental shifts in the use and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) around the world. Of those now using AI to fight Coronavirus, none are more prominent than China. From software that diagnoses the symptoms of Coronavirus to algorithms that identify and compile data on individuals with high temperatures vis-à-vis infrared cameras, China is showcasing the potential applications of AI. But Beijing is also demonstrating its willingness to leverage the technology to solve many of its problems.

Amid a global pandemic, economic recession and simmering racial tensions around the world, Israel's threat to formally annex parts of occupied Palestinian territory presents yet another international crisis in the making. This is because, with this outrageous move, the Israeli government threatens to unravel the rules-based system of international relations. Today's international law regime was established in the first half of the 20th century not only to regulate relations between states but also to assist the movements for self-determination across the world and oversee the end of colonialism. The looming Israeli annexation of Palestinian land and the global inaction on it evidence the failure of this regime to help end colonialism and put its very raison d'etre in question. Much of the narrative in international diplomatic circles around the issue of annexation has revolved around deterrence, with the rationale being the threat of tangible consequences to annexation will lead to a reconsideration of the move. Yet this narrative fails to acknowledge that we have reached a point, where Israel will annex yet another chunk of Palestinian territory precisely because deterrence has not worked.

A machine-learned AI system used to assess recidivism risks in Broward County, Fla., often gave higher risk scores to African Americans than to whites, even when the latter had criminal records. The popular sentence-completion facility in Google Mail was caught assuming that an "investor" must be a male. A celebrated natural language generator called GPT, with an uncanny ability to write polished-looking essays for any prompt, produced seemingly racist and sexist completions when given prompts about minorities. Amazon found, to its consternation, that an automated AI-based hiring system it built didn't seem to like female candidates. Commercial gender-recognition systems put out by industrial heavy-weights, including Amazon, IBM and Microsoft, have been shown to suffer from high misrecognition rates for people of color.

The United Nations's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary killings presented a new report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Agnes Callamard's investigation focused on the legality of armed drones including one that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad's airport on January 3. It concluded the United States acted unlawfully in carrying out the attack. The US, meanwhile, denounced her findings. Callamard spoke to Al Jazeera about her probe and the future of drone warfare.

The phrase "Quantum computing" sounds like something from a science fiction show, but it's very real. Some federal agencies are already investing in it and more are sure to follow. Agency leaders need to understand what it is, how it differs from the traditional computer technology everyone uses, and what to do in order to implement it. Put as simply as possible, Quantum computing uses quantum mechanics to perform computation. These phenomena enable certain kinds of calculations at a speed and scale that conventional computers cannot come close to matching. However, much of its potential remains theoretical as scientists continue to refine the technology.

MIM Software Inc., a leading global provider of medical imaging software, announced it has received 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its deep learning auto-contouring software, Contour ProtégéAI . Contour ProtégéAI is an auto-contouring solution that seamlessly integrates into any department's workflow and can be rapidly implemented into virtually any environment. User feedback and a determination to continuously improve auto-segmentation were key drivers in developing the product. "Our customers are under continual pressure to improve their practices while facing escalating time constraints," said Andrew Nelson, Chief Executive Officer of MIM Software Inc. "Our deep learning auto-segmentation product, Contour ProtégéAI, will play a critical role in reducing the burden of contouring." Auto-contouring is an ideal use case for deep learning algorithms because it is one of the most time-consuming clinical tasks.

We propose a new simulation-based estimation method, adversarial estimation, for structural models. The estimator is formulated as the solution to a minimax problem between a generator (which generates synthetic observations using the structural model) and a discriminator (which classifies if an observation is synthetic). The discriminator maximizes the accuracy of its classification while the generator minimizes it. We show that, with a sufficiently rich discriminator, the adversarial estimator attains parametric efficiency under correct specification and the parametric rate under misspecification. We advocate the use of a neural network as a discriminator that can exploit adaptivity properties and attain fast rates of convergence. We apply our method to the elderly's saving decision model and show that including gender and health profiles in the discriminator uncovers the bequest motive as an important source of saving across the wealth distribution, not only for the rich.

The U.S. Air Force plans to have an operational combat drone by 2023. The service plans to build out a family of unmanned aircraft, known as Skyborg, capable of carrying weapons and actively participating in combat. The Air Force's goal is to build up a large fleet of armed, sort-of disposable jets that don't need conventional runways to take off and land. The Air Force, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology, expects to have the first operational Skyborg aircraft ready by 2023. Skyborg will be available with both subsonic and supersonic engines, indicating both attack and fighter jet versions.

In a move that caused a ripple effect across the Middle East, Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad's international airport on January 3. On that day, the Pentagon announced the attack was carried out "at the direction of the president". In a new report examining the legality of armed drones and the Soleimani killing in particular, Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial and arbitrary killings, said the US raid that killed Soleimani was "unlawful". Callamard presented her report at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday. The United States, which is not a member after quitting the council in 2018, rejected the report saying it gave "a pass to terrorists". In Callamard's view, the consequences of targeted killings by armed drones have been neglected by states.

The Estonian Ministry of Justice has officially asked Ott Velsberg, the country's chief data officer, to design a "robot judge" to take care of a backlog of small claims court disputes, Wired reports. The artificial intelligence-powered "judge" is supposed to analyze legal documents and other relevant information and come to a decision. Though a human judge will have an opportunity to revise those decisions, the project is a striking example of justice by artificial intelligence. Estonia, a tiny Northern European nation of fewer than 1.4 million inhabitants, has made impressive strides in digitizing, streamlining, and modernizing its government functions. Estonia famously launched its "e-residency" program that allows practically anybody -- including foreigners -- to access Estonian government services.