Facial recognition technology is spreading fast. Already widespread in China, software that identifies people by comparing images of their faces against a database of records is now being adopted across much of the rest of the world. It's common among police forces but has also been used at airports, railway stations and shopping centres. The rapid growth of this technology has triggered a much-needed debate. Activists, politicians, academics and even police forces are expressing serious concerns over the impact facial recognition could have on a political culture based on rights and democracy. As someone who researches the future of human rights, I share these concerns.

In this post, I cover some of my favorite methods for detecting outliers in time series data. There are many different approaches for detecting anomalous data points; for the sake of brevity, I only focus on unsupervised machine learning methods in this post. I deal with time series data a lot, and it's not uncommon for data sets to experience unexpected drops or spikes, flat lines, or phase shifts. Each of these situations qualifies as an'anomaly' -- something out of the ordinary when compared to the behavior of the sequence as a whole. Detecting anomalies in a time series is important for a variety of reasons.

C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), a national premier R&D organization under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, and Atos1, a global leader in digital transformation, today announce that they have signed a Cooperation Agreement for technology advancement in the areas of Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Exascale Computing. Dr Hemant Darbari, Founder Member and Director General, C-DAC, India is spearheading the C-DAC Mission Mode Programs on Exascale Computing, Microprocessor and Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Computing of national importance. In addition to delivering an Atos' Quantum Learning Machine, the world's highest-performing commercially available quantum simulator, this partnership encompasses the creation of a'Quantum Computing Experience Center' at C-DAC's headquarters in Pune. It aims to bring together users from academic, scientific, research and industry to rapidly acquire skills and develop further expertise in the field of quantum computing with the support from the Government of India. This center will enable advance study of applications of quantum theory, thereby creating new technologies and platforms for information security, connectivity and computing.

C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), a national premier R&D organization under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, and Atos1, a global leader in digital transformation, today announce that they have signed a Cooperation Agreement for technology advancement in the areas of Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Exascale Computing. Dr Hemant Darbari, Founder Member and Director General, C-DAC, India is spearheading the C-DAC Mission Mode Programs on Exascale Computing, Microprocessor and Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Computing of national importance. In addition to delivering an Atos' Quantum Learning Machine, the world's highest-performing commercially available quantum simulator, this partnership encompasses the creation of a'Quantum Computing Experience Center' at C-DAC's headquarters in Pune. It aims to bring together users from academic, scientific, research and industry to rapidly acquire skills and develop further expertise in the field of quantum computing with the support from the Government of India. This center will enable advance study of applications of quantum theory, thereby creating new technologies and platforms for information security, connectivity and computing.

Pilots can serve as a critical resource for agency insiders as they begin to deploy artificial intelligence, and considerations around built-in bias should be addressed from the earliest of efforts, federal officials with firsthand experience leveraging the technology said in Washington Tuesday. "One beauty of the cloud is you can do a pilot, and if it fails just turn it off--it's not like buying millions in servers and then find that you are going to go in a different direction," Small Business Administration Deputy Chief Information Officer Guy Cavallo said at Nextgov's Tech Talks. "We have actually done three 90-day sprint pilots that have revolutionized the way we work." Cavallo explained how SBA effectively implemented artificial intelligence and the cloud to enhance their cybersecurity capabilities and supplement what human employees are able to do. Elaborating on the success he's seen through various piloting projects related to that work, Cavallo said the agency participated in one with General Services Administration and Homeland Security Department for the Trusted Internet Connections initiative.

File photo - An airplane flies over a drone during the Polar Bear Plunge on Coney Island in the Brooklyn borough of New York Jan. 1, 2015. If you're thinking about adding a flamethrower or gun to your drone for an epic end-of-summer blowout party, think again. The Federal Aviation Administration wants you to know that it's illegal to weaponize a drone. "Perhaps you've seen online photos and videos of drones with attached guns, bombs, fireworks, flamethrowers, and other dangerous items. Do not consider attaching any items such as these to a drone because operating a drone with such an item may result in significant harm to a person and to your bank account," the FAA said in a warning last week.

Water scarcity – an increasingly important topic of conversation as countries across the Middle and East and Africa grapple with rising concerns around future water shortages, which not surprisingly often results in civil unrest. Currently the Middle East and North Africa is the most water-scarce region in the world, according to the United Nations. With at least 17 countries well below the water line, water is being consumed faster than it can be replenished. Only a year ago, the City of Cape Town was in the headlines with a forecasted Day Zero where the city's taps would be turned off in order to preserve the remaining water supply (13.5% of normal) for critical services. Fortunately, the city avoided Day Zero through a combination of water saving measures and well-timed rain.

In the 2016 movie Hidden Figures, the very human, relatable protagonists worried that the installation of an IBM mainframe at NASA in 1961 would make their jobs redundant. "This IBM's going to put us all out of work." "There's only one thing to do: Learn all we can. "Somewhere down the line, a human being's going to have to push the buttons." Many employees today are equally nervous about alarmist headlines related to the creeping influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. Yet most managers and HR leaders aren't fully prepared to deal with these concerns. You need to make your people comfortable with the future by explaining what AI will mean to them in real terms, what it's going to look like in your industry, how it's going to benefit them and even how it may impact them if we all don't proactively get in front of it. The first step to leading your employees through this cycle of change is to educate yourself. Before you talk with your employees about AI, you have ...

Long the prediction of futurists and philosophers, the lived reality of technology replacing human work has been a constant feature since the cotton gin, the assembly line and, more recently, the computer. What is very much up for debate in the imaginations of economists and Hollywood producers is whether the future will look like "The Terminator," with self-aware Schwarzenegger bots on the hunt, or "The Jetsons," with obedient robo-maids leaving us humans very little work and plenty of time for leisure and family. The most chilling future in film may be that in Disney's "Wall-E," where people are all too fat to stand, too busy staring at screens to talk to each other and too distracted to realize that the machines have taken over. We're deep into what-ifs with those representations, but the conversation about robots and work is increasingly paired with the debate over how to address growing income inequality -- a key issue in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. How should Americans deal with it?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation in late July to create a temporary state commission that will examine how artificial intelligence impacts his state. In doing so, New York joined Vermont, Alabama, and Washington in establishing an A.I. task force that will examine the cutting-edge technology and then make recommendations about how it should be regulated. The groups vary in their mission, but the general message is the same: companies pushing A.I., the brains behind innovation like robotics and facial recognition software, can't necessarily be trusted to do what's in the best interest of state residents. Brandie Nonnecke, founding director of University of California's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society Policy Lab, says that task forces could help keep state lawmakers up to date about the technology. The end result, she says, will be better-written bills that don't get stuck in legislative purgatory.