Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, a new threat has emerged to equal employment opportunity as employers base hiring decisions on artificial intelligence powered video and game-based "pre-employment" assessments of job candidates. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit research center based in Washington, D.C., recently asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate HireVue, a recruiting company based in Utah that purports to evaluate a job applicant's job qualifications through online "video interview" and/or "game-based challenge." According to its web site, HireVue has more than 700 customers worldwide including over one-third of the Fortune 100 and such leading brands such as Unilever, Hilton, JP Morgan Chase, Delta Air Lines, Vodafone, Carnival Cruise Line, and Goldman Sachs. The company states it has hosted more than ten million on-demand interviews and one million assessments. The EFF complaint follows a wave of lawsuits in recent years charging that employers are using software algorithms to discriminate against older workers by targeting internet job advertisements exclusively to younger workers.

When Megan Gray, CEO of Moment AI, first tested one of her company's services -- a tool using AI to determine facial signs indicating a driver may have fallen asleep or suffered a medical issue -- it didn't work. "The technology worked on our CTO, who is a white male. But then I tried it, and it couldn't detect that my eyes were closed," Gray said. This is just one example of how a lack of diversity in the field of AI affects the technologies that are created. At GTC DC, this week's Washington edition of the GPU Technology Conference, a range of events focused on sharing ideas on how workplaces can become more inclusive, and how researchers can improve their AI technology to avoid bias.

Disruption of the job market and the economy from automation and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the primary ideas animating Andrew YangAndrew YangThe Hill's Campaign Report: Bloomberg looks to upend Democratic race Yang on potential Bloomberg 2020 entrance: 'It's probably going to change the price of advertising' Poll: Biden support hits record low of 26 percent MORE's surprising campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Alone among the candidates, Yang is directly engaging with one of the central forces that will shape our futures. Over the past ten years, I have written two books on the subject of artificial intelligence and its impact on the job market and the economy. I've spoken at dozens of events in more than 30 countries. The majority of my presentations were given to what you might call elite audiences -- executives, technologists, Wall Street financiers, economists, government technocrats and so forth.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has acknowledged the potential impact that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can have on healthcare. The FDA has been hard at work on the cutting edge of how to regulate transformative AI to ensure patients have access to safe technology that saves lives. Vast amounts of health data are collected every day during routine medical procedures. The development of any form of machine learning relies upon high-quality pools of data to build the necessary algorithms. With so much data available to build algorithms from, the healthcare industry is an accessible field for AI to make a positive impact.

We learned this week that the Department of Defense is using facial recognition at scale, and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said he believes China is selling lethal autonomous drones. Amid all that, you may have missed Joint AI Center (JAIC) director Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan -- who is charged by the Pentagon with modernizing and guiding artificial intelligence directives -- talking about a future of algorithmic warfare. Algorithmic warfare, which could dramatically change warfare as we know it, is built on the assumption that combat actions will happen faster than humans' ability to make decisions. Shanahan says algorithmic warfare would thus require some reliance on AI systems, though he stresses a need to implement rigorous testing and evaluation before using AI in the field to ensure it doesn't "take on a life of its own, so to speak." "We are going to be shocked by the speed, the chaos, the bloodiness, and the friction of a future fight in which this will be playing out, maybe in microseconds at times. How do we envision that fight happening? It has to be algorithm against algorithm," Shanahan said during a conversation with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google VP of global affairs Kent Walker.

A research collaboration between LBNL, PNNL, Brown University, and NVIDIA has achieved exaflop (half-precision) performance on the Summit supercomputer with a deep learning application used to model subsurface flow in the study of nuclear waste remediation. Their achievement, which will be presented during the "Deep Learning on Supercomputers" workshop at SC19, demonstrates the promise of physics-informed generative adversarial networks (GANs) for analyzing complex, large-scale science problems. In science we know the laws of physics and observation principles – mass, momentum, energy, etc.," said George Karniadakis, professor of applied mathematics at Brown and co-author on the SC19 workshop paper. "The concept of physics-informed GANs is to encode prior information from the physics into the neural network. This allows you to go well beyond the training domain, which is very important in applications where the conditions can change." GANs have been applied to model human face ...

Streamlining multiple targeting sensors to destroy long-range targets, arming forward- positioned robots to penetrate enemy defenses and receiving organized weather-specific terrain mapping from nearby drones - are all emerging combat dynamics increasingly made possible by AI-enabled weapons and technologies. New applications of AI are consolidating data from otherwise disparate sensor systems, analyzing seemingly limitless amounts of targeting data in seconds and instantly sifting through hours of drone video to massively improve attack options and shorten "sensor-to-shooter" time. "We are developing an AI stack regarding how we pull together the sensors, computing layer and analytics to manage the data," Col. Doug Matty, Army AI Task Force Deputy Director, told Warrior in an interview. New algorithms, AI-enabled computer processing and high-speed networking are all specific elements of work now underway with the Army's AI Task Force, an emerging Army effort to collaborate with industry and academia, find technology breakthroughs and develop new applications for AI, Matty explained. The Task Force is now working on prototyping systems for integration onto UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, Long-Range Precision Fires systems and the Army's emerging fleet of Next-Gen Combat Vehicles, he said.

The recent Capgemini Research Institute report, Reinventing cybersecurity with artificial intelligence, found companies are facing ever-increasing threats and attacks. Forty-two percent of executives surveyed reported an increase in incidents through time-sensitive applications and 43% noted an increase in machine-speed attacks. Nearly one in four executives surveyed believe they will not be able to successfully investigate all identified incidents, which is concerning because cyber-analysts need to be able to track anomalies, incidents, and breaches that occur impacting an organization's brand as well as its business operations. The promises of AI and machine learning make it easy to think that they are a quick fix to this escalating threat landscape. Typically, though, companies trying to solve cybersecurity issues themselves tend to be flooded with information and alert overloads.

James Dean, who has been dead for 64 years, is set to star in an upcoming movie about the Vietnam War. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie, an adaptation of Gareth Crocker's novel, Finding Jack, will feature a computer-generated image (CGI) version of Dean. "We searched high and low for the perfect character to portray the role of Rogan, which has some extreme complex character arcs, and after months of research, we decided on James Dean," says Anton Ernst, one of the film's co-directors. Dean will be constructed through "full-body" CGI using archival footage from his films – he will be physically captured through the movements of an actor and voiced by another actor. The fact that the directors couldn't find an actor of this capability in an age where much so much untapped talent is available is questionable.

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence released an interim report on November 4, 2019. The report offers a blend of deservedly bold recommendations coupled with actions that lie within the power of the Executive without all of them involving major funding. The recommendations involve investments in AI R&D; applying AI to national security missions; training and recruiting AI talent; protecting and building upon US technology advantages; and, marshaling global AI cooperation. The Commission may be somewhat less optimistic than warranted with respect to the prospects for the West to share data as US and allies' approaches to preserving privacy are converging. However, the Commission is spot on with respect to the need for high powered diplomacy.