Artificial intelligence (AI) has a huge impact on our personal lives and also on our democratic society as a whole. While AI offers vast opportunities for the benefit of people, its potential to embed and perpetuate bias and discrimination remains one of the most pressing challenges deriving from its increasing use. This new study, entitled "Discrimination, Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Decision-Making", which was prepared by Prof. Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius for the Anti-discrimination Department of the Council of Europe, elaborates on the risks of discrimination caused by algorithmic decision-making and other types of artificial intelligence (AI).

The United States is engaged in an increasingly bitter trade war with China. And while American companies like Google and Amazon are now leaders in the field, A.I. experts are concerned that China could surpass the United States in the development of technologies that will power surveillance systems and autonomous weapons as well as driverless cars and a wide range of internet services. In July 2017, Chinese unveiled a plan to become the world leader in A.I., aiming to create an industry worth $150 billion to its economy by 2030, and two Chinese cities promised to invest $7 billion in the effort. Other governments, too, began making large investments, including South Korea, Britain, France and Canada. In the United States, the Defense Department has accelerated efforts to embrace A.I., shifting $75 million of its annual budget to a new office that will develop these technologies. Other government agencies also have major projects in the works.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai brought good tidings to investors on parent company Alphabet's earnings call last week. Alphabet reported $39.3 billion in revenue last quarter, up 22 percent from a year earlier. Pichai gave some of the credit to Google's machine learning technology, saying it had figured out how to match ads more closely to what consumers wanted. One thing Pichai didn't mention: Alphabet is now cautioning investors that the same AI technology could create ethical and legal troubles for the company's business. The warning appeared for the first time in the "Risk Factors" segment of Alphabet's latest annual report, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission the following day: "[N]ew products and services, including those that incorporate or utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning, can raise new or exacerbate existing ethical, technological, legal, and other challenges, which may negatively affect our brands and demand for our products and services and adversely affect our revenues and operating results."

President Donald Trump will push AI with an executive order Monday, several outlets reported. President Donald Trump is directing federal agencies to focus on artificial intelligence (AI), multiple outlets have reported. The Trump administration is going to create the American AI Initiative with an executive order on Monday, according to the New York Times and Reuters. The order won't include specific funding for the initiative, an administration official told outlets on a conference call, but will reportedly focus on five areas: The news comes less than a week after Trump's second State of the Union, which was light on technology aside from a passing reference to the administration's infrastructure plan. Last October, Google withdrew from competition for a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract, saying it might conflict with its principles for ethical use of AI.

Artificial intelligence may have been invented in the United States, but other nations, including China, Canada, and France, have made bigger moves to back and benefit from the technology in recent years. President Donald Trump will seek to change that today by signing executive order that launches the US government's own AI play. The key focuses of the "American AI Initiative" have been released ahead of time by the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The initiative is designed to boost America's AI industry by reallocating funding, creating new resources, and devising ways for the country to shape the technology even as it becomes increasingly global. However, while the goals are lofty, the details are vague.

President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump to sign executive order promoting artificial intelligence Trump's new Syria timetable raises concern among key anti-ISIS allies Trump officials considering Mar-a-Lago for next meeting with China's Xi: report MORE on Monday will sign an executive order dedicating resources to boost U.S. artificial intelligence (AI), a move that comes as the Trump administration seeks a leg up in its technological race with China. The executive order, titled Accelerating America's Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, will direct federal agencies to dedicate money and manpower towards researching and developing artificial intelligence (AI) while making government data available to the technology's developers. Artificial intelligence is defined as software that allows computers to emulate human intelligence. "This initiative will devote the full resources of the federal government to develop AI," a senior administration official told reporters on Sunday evening. The order directs federal agencies to prioritize funding AI initiatives and open up their troves of data to AI experts, a move that privacy advocates are certain to push back against.

The White House is moving forward with the American AI Initiative, a set of policies aimed at focusing the full resources of the federal government on the frontiers of artificial intelligence. President Donald Trump is due to sign an executive order launching the initiative on Monday. Among its provisions is a call for federal agencies to prioritize AI in their research and development missions, and to prioritize fellowship and training programs to help American workers gain AI-relevant skills. The initiative also directs agencies to make federal data, models and computing resources more available to academic and industry researchers, "while maintaining the security and confidentiality protections we all expect." "This action will drive our top-notch AI research toward new technological breakthroughs and promote scientific discovery, economic competitiveness and national security," the White House said in a statement.

In a test based on playing an online game, study participants disagreed with 66% of the advice offered by an artificial intelligence. U.S. Army researchers and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara have found a persistent gap in basic knowledge about the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and it is unknown which AI aspects will or will not help military decision-making. The researchers developed an online game in which players obtained points by making good decisions in each round; an AI was used to generate advice in each round, which was shown alongside the game interface. The AI also made suggestions about which decisions players should make, which they were free to accept or ignore. About 66% of human decisions disagreed with the AI, regardless of the number of errors in the suggestions.

GCSEs should be scrapped and A-levels should be replaced by a mix of academic and vocational subjects, says Robert Halfon, chairman of the Education Select Committee. His radical rewriting of England's exam system is designed to give young people a much broader range of skills for their working lives. The former Tory minister says GCSEs for 16-year-olds have become "pointless". The Department for Education defended GCSEs as "gold standard" exams. But head teachers' leader Geoff Barton said the ideas had a "lot of merit".

President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order directing federal agencies to prioritize research and development in the field of artificial intelligence.