The evaluation of white matter lesion progression is an important biomarker in the follow-up of MS patients and plays a crucial role when deciding the course of treatment. Current automated lesion segmentation algorithms are susceptible to variability in image characteristics related to MRI scanner or protocol differences. We propose a model that improves the consistency of MS lesion segmentations in inter-scanner studies. First, we train a CNN base model to approximate the performance of icobrain, an FDA-approved clinically available lesion segmentation software. A discriminator model is then trained to predict if two lesion segmentations are based on scans acquired using the same scanner type or not, achieving a 78% accuracy in this task. Finally, the base model and the discriminator are trained adversarially on multi-scanner longitudinal data to improve the inter-scanner consistency of the base model. The performance of the models is evaluated on an unseen dataset containing manual delineations. The inter-scanner variability is evaluated on test-retest data, where the adversarial network produces improved results over the base model and the FDA-approved solution.

How should government and society come together to address the challenge of regulating artificial intelligence? What approaches and tools will promote innovation, protect society from harm and build public trust in AI? Artificial intelligence (AI) is a key driver of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Algorithms are already being applied to improve predictions, optimize systems and drive productivity in many other sectors. However, early experience shows that AI can create serious challenges. Without proper oversight, AI may replicate or even exacerbate human bias and discrimination, cause potential job displacement, and lead to other unintended and harmful consequences.

While AI and machine learning are enabling definite advances in the digital world, these technologies are also raising privacy and ethical concerns. What does AI mean for personal privacy, and is it being exploited unethically? Are these concerns being addressed, or will AI spell disaster for society? Bernd Stahl is coordinator of the EU's SHERPA project, a consortium that investigates the impact of AI on ethics and human rights. Bernd stopped by for episode 34 of Cyber Security Sauna to discuss the delicate balance of AI – its advantages and disadvantages, potential misuses and how AI may improve life and create opportunity for some, while others may be hurt by algorithmic biases and unemployment. Listen, or read on for the transcript. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review! Janne: So Bernd, how would you frame the work that the SHERPA project is doing? Bernd: SHERPA is trying to explore which ethical issues arise due to the use of AI. We're looking at human rights components in a variety of ways, and we are, as part of the overall work of the project, trying to explore which options of addressing possible ethical and human rights issues exist, which ones of those are important, and which ones of those need to be emphasized. Overall we hope to come up with a set of recommendations and proposals for the European Commission, but also for other stakeholders, that will help them deal with any issues that they may encounter.

Though I don't have a word cloud of you budget speech, I was happy to hear the two words, "Artificial Intelligence", appearing in it time and again, but not too happy to see that they did not hold the centre stage as they must. Artificial Intelligence (AI for kids who don't use Air India too often to get confused) is not a buzz word or a technology. It is The Future, promising or scary depending on what we do today, but most certainly the only and unavoidable one. Human 2.0 is on the horizon, and he is actually a great matter of concern for all of us in India, as there is no certainty that we are included therein. If we rise above the national boundaries and look what humanity is doing, of all the activities that we are doing and will be doing for possibly next fifty years that really matters is teaching "reality" to machines.

KRAKOW, POLAND - 2019/01/23: In this photo illustration, the Google Hangouts logo is seen displayed ... [ ] on an Android mobile phone. Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. According to a report released this week, Google is in the process of creating its newest messaging app and the company's development team is looking to combine the capabilities of multiple apps that the tech giant already provides into one. The report detailed that the new messaging app would combine the features from Hangouts Meet, Hangouts Chat, and Drive, but also include Gmail features. This would be Google's tenth app.

The danger of having artificially intelligent machines do our bidding is that we might not be careful enough about what we wish for. The lines of code that animate these machines will inevitably lack nuance, forget to spell out caveats, and end up giving AI systems goals and incentives that don't align with our true preferences. A now-classic thought experiment illustrating this problem was posed by the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. Bostrom imagined a superintelligent robot, programmed with the seemingly innocuous goal of manufacturing paper clips. The robot eventually turns the whole world into a giant paper-clip factory.

Consumers must be safeguarded from artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) which is "advancing at a remarkable pace", says a European parliamentary committee. A draft resolution, approved by the European Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) on 23 January, proposes that humans should always be ultimately responsible for, and able to overrule, decisions, especially in medical, legal and accounting contexts. It also sets out how to make use of the technology more transparent and accountable. IMCO chair Petra De Sutter said the committee welcomed the potential of rapid advances in AI technology, but at the same time wanted to highlight important issues that needed to be addressed. The resolution makes clear that while free-flowing data will be essential for the creation of innovative services, the importance of protecting personal data under GDPR, and of using only high-quality and unbiased data sets is equally important.

Calling data as the new oil, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her Budget speech announced the launch of a new policy to set up data centre parks for enabling digitisation of all public institutions in the country. While announcing the allocation of Rs 6,000 crore to the BharatNet programme, Sitharaman also said that advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, cloud computing, drones are disrupting the existent business models and rewriting the world economic order. "Data now is clearly the new oil. I propose a policy to set up data centre farms throughout the country. The idea is to skilfully incorporate data in every step of the value chain," she said.

America's intelligence collectors are already using AI in ways big and small, to scan the news for dangerous developments, send alerts to ships about rapidly changing conditions, and speed up the NSA's regulatory compliance efforts. But before the IC can use AI to its full potential, it must be hardened against attack. The humans who use it -- analysts, policy-makers and leaders -- must better understand how advanced AI systems reach their conclusions. Dean Souleles is working to put AI into practice at different points across the U.S. intelligence community, in line with the ODNI's year-old strategy. The chief technology advisor to the principal deputy to the Director of National Intelligence wasn't allowed to discuss everything that he's doing, but he could talk about a few examples.

"Research in Translation" is a series that showcases the most cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence, or AI, technology. Does the relationship between power and AI mean that all people will be monitored all the time? We have become obsessed with automated facial-recognition technology. There is something about the capacity to remotely identify and track a person through space that piques terror within us. But with the continuing development of computer vision and video analytics, facial recognition may ultimately turn out to be one of the more benign applications of camera surveillance.