Workers at Amazon have demanded that their employer stop the sale of facial recognition software and other services to the US government. In a letter addressed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and posted on the company's internal wiki, employees said that they "refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights," citing the mistreatment of refugees and immigrants by ICE and the targeting of black activists by law enforcement. The letter follows similar protests at Google and Microsoft. "As ethically concerned Amazonians, we demand a choice in what we build, and a say in how it is used," says the letter, first reported by The Hill. The employees (it's not clear how many signed the letter) refer to the sale of computer services by IBM to the Nazis as a worrying parallel.

A quiet wager has taken hold among researchers who study artificial intelligence techniques and the societal impacts of such technologies. They're betting whether or not someone will create a so-called Deepfake video about a political candidate that receives more than 2 million views before getting debunked by the end of 2018. The actual stakes in the bet are fairly small: Manhattan cocktails as a reward for the "yes" camp and tropical tiki drinks for the "no" camp. But the implications of the technology behind the bet's premise could potentially reshape governments and undermine societal trust in the idea of having shared facts. It all comes down to when the technology may mature enough to digitally create fake but believable videos of politicians and celebrities saying or doing things that never actually happened in real life.

Nearly a decade ago, I had the good fortune of being one of the last people to interview the founder of Commodore International, Jack Tramiel (famous for Commodore computers and the popular C64), before he passed away. At 83 he died from heart failure after pioneering the consumer market for personal computers and home gaming, and working toward changing people's lives for the better through technology. What few people knew, and what I discovered in our interview, was that the foundational concept driving the Commodore 64 was Tramiel's vision for a future in which the Holocaust and its concentration camps (from which Jack survived but his father did not) would never be able to happen again. In our interview Mr. Tramiel told me: I made the market for the computer youth-driven. I went around the world meeting young people in computer clubs and showing them what the computer can do.

These and many other fascinating insights were shared during Eightfold.ai's Panel participants included Monika Fahlbusch, Chief Employee Experience Officer at BMC Software and former Senior Vice President, Global Employee Success at Salesforce, Ciara Ennis, Senior Marketing Manager EMEA for Twilio, Russell Williams, former Vice President of Human Resources at PARC, A Xerox Company and Ashutosh Garg, Eightfold,ai founder. The Honorable Ananth Kumar Hegde, Union Minister of State, India, also addressed in detail his plans for re-skilling India and empowering youth in his nation. The panel provided insights into how CHROs are meeting the many challenges of talent management today and provides valuable lessons learned. How Machine Learning Is Solving One Of HR's Greatest Paradoxes Winning the war for talent must be multidimensional with a strong focus on making every HR process more employee-centric.

Right now, if you're in the United States and you want to fly a drone, you have to keep the zippy little vehicle in sight. That, and you can't go any faster than 100 mph. No soaring over people, either, and keep its altitude under 400 feet. Those are the FAA regulations. But these rules present an obstacle for any company or organization that wants to use drones for practical tasks, like delivering packages or monitoring highway traffic.

Amazon workers have written to CEO Jeff Bezos in protest of the company selling facial recognition tools and other technology to police departments and government agencies. The workers cite the use of Amazon technology by the US Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, which have been criticised for enforcing President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy that has seen parents separated from their children at the US border. "As ethically concerned Amazonians, we demand a choice in what we build, and a say in how it is used. We learn from history, and we understand how IBM's systems were employed in the 1940s to help Hitler," the letter states. "IBM did not take responsibility then, and by the time their role was understood, it was too late. We will not let that happen again. The time to act is now."

Amazon's operation has grown well beyond merely delivering items to people's homes. Jeff Bezos's massive corporation is now involved in everything from grocery shopping to fashion, but the recent revelation that Amazon technology assists law enforcement is a bridge too far for some employees. A group of Amazon employees (referred to as Amazonians) penned a letter to Bezos on Thursday asking the billionaire CEO to halt the sale of facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies, The Hill reported. The software, called Amazon Web Services Rekognition, has been linked to government agencies like the controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The letter cited the United States government's history of injustice towards minorities in calling for Amazon to stop assisting ICE.

In the future, artificial intelligence may be the facilitator of decision-making, financial instruments and even conclusion of contracts. However, its actual power to impact these and other activities is difficult to predict. That's why various leading experts and organizations are pushing for the regulation of AI at many levels, all the way from consumer-grade to international markets. But it remains to be seen how AI use within companies can be regulated, what form this regulation will take and whether it can be truly effective. By contrast, Musk appears to fear that autonomous machines will take control of the world, having seemingly failed to grasp the definition of AI for the purposes of the debate over regulation. AI consists of the software-level processes capable of performing functions such as sifting through large quantities of data and reaching conclusions in line with their programmed parameters; the main application of AI lies in saving similarly capable humans from conducting lengthy and tedious tasks.

Sixty-two years ago this summer, Dartmouth professor John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence. Joi Ito, director of MIT's Media Lab, has come to think it's unhelpful. Talk of AI has become hard to avoid due to surging investment from companies hoping to profit from advances in machine learning. Ito believes the term has also become tainted by the assumption that humans and machines must be in opposition--think debates about jobs stolen by robots, or superintelligence threatening humanity. "Instead of thinking about AI as separate or adversarial to humans, it's more helpful and accurate to think about machines augmenting our collective intelligence and society," Ito says.