Silicon Valley is in the middle of an awakening, the dawning but selective realization that their products can be used to achieve terrible ends. In the past few months, this growing unease has bubbled up into outright rebellion from within the rank and file of some of the largest companies in the Valley, beginning in April when Google employees balked at the company's involvement with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program called Project Maven. On Monday, Amazon shareholders sent an open letter asking CEO Jeff Bezos to halt a program developing facial recognition software for governments pending a review by the board of directors. Also this week, as general horror built up over the Trump administration's new "zero tolerance" immigration policy, which has led to the separation of more than 2,000 children from their parents, Microsoft employees objected to their company's contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use Microsoft's Azure cloud services. "We are part of a growing movement, comprised of many across the industry who recognize the grave responsibility that those creating powerful technology have to ensure what they build is used for good, and not for harm," reads an open letter posted to the company's internal message board Tuesday.

The Trump administration's privacy, competition and consumer protection cops plan to embark on a cross-country listening tour to gauge how academics and average Web users believe the U.S. government should address digital-age challenges, from the rise of artificial intelligence to the data-collection mishaps that have plagued companies like Facebook. The effort announced Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission and its new chairman, Joe Simons, includes 15 or more public sessions in a series of cities that have yet to be announced. The hearings are expected to touch on a wide array of topics like the agency's "remedial authority" to address privacy and security abuses, the potential risks posed by big data, and the commission's tools to enforce antitrust laws as media, tech and telecom companies gobble each other up or seek to enter new lines of business. The public outreach will begin in September and continue into January 2019, the agency said. It could presage tougher scrutiny of Silicon Valley in response to complaints that the FTC has been too soft on tech giants and the ways they collect, swap and manipulate personal information about billions of Americans.

Dana Bowman, 56, expresses gratitude for fresh produce at least 10 times in the hour and a half we're having coffee on a frigid spring day in Lindsay, Ontario. Over the many years she scraped by on government disability payments, she tended to stick to frozen vegetables. She'd also save by visiting a food bank or buying marked-down items near or past their sell-by date. But since December, Bowman has felt secure enough to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. She's freer, she says, to "do what nanas do" for her grandchildren, like having all four of them over for turkey on Easter.

The first Stakeholder Summit on Artificial Intelligence, organised by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the European Commission, stressed that the EU must ensure that artificial intelligence is safe, unbiased and in line with European values. The event, which aimed to discuss the next steps to advance the EU strategy on artificial intelligence, took place on 18 June in Brussels. The key EU policy-makers on artificial intelligence and European stakeholders who gathered for the first stakeholder summit agreed that artificial intelligence held great promise in terms of addressing societal issues, but also raised a number of challenges with regard to privacy, security, labour, education and ethics. "Artificial intelligence is a technology which does not have to overcome and overwhelm us," said Catelijne Muller, President of the EESC Thematic Study Group on Artificial Intelligence, adding that humans should stay in command of artificial intelligence and be able to determine "if, when and how we want to use these technologies in our daily lives." Artificial intelligence is one of the main political priorities of the EESC's current presidency.

The mystery of a strange Martian rock formation that has baffled scientists for decades has now been solved. Since its discovery in the 1960s, researchres have been trying to work out exactly what causes the undulating hills and sharp ridges of the Medusae Fossae formation. The formation covers an area of about 2 million sq km (770,000 sq miles) around the Martian equator and is described by Nasa as an'enigmatic pile of eroding sediments'. In the absence of any scientific explanation, conspiracy theorists have said that at least some of the exotic shapes found in the area belong to a'crashed UFO'. But a new study claims the rocks in this area of Mars are in fact the remains of volcanic eruptions that would have changed the climate of the red planet 3 billion years ago.

The power of artificial intelligence is such that very few jobs will be safe. The truth is that automation is currently being driven less by a desire to make people's lives easier or better than by a desire to cut labor costs. This is a problem as long as people still need money to live and still need to work to get money.

A robot servant that can be controlled using the power of thought has been developed by MIT engineers. The machine, named Baxter, reads human brainwaves in real-time so that it knows when a human is unhappy with its actions. If a human think a mistake has been made, Baxter takes notice - and corrects himself. Baxter's owner can then make subtle hand gestures to direct the machine into performing a different task. Scientists say the technology is designed to make robots acts like an extension of a person's will, without any training.

The report says that London has an opportunity to build on the current levels of female founders and provide a start-up environment that encourages higher levels of female participation in AI and across the technology sector. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: "There are few areas of innovation that have the power to define our future economy and society more than artificial intelligence. "The research describes a city with a rich technology ecosystem, a strong pipeline of AI innovation and an academic and investment base set up for the long term. "London's unique global status as a capital of finance, business, government, and technology is our standout asset. Everything entrepreneurs need is here in one place - not least access to clients."

On the sidelines of Money20/20, held in Amsterdam this week, bobsguide caught up with Nick Cook, head of regtech and advanced analytics at the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). All of the external facing regtech sits under my department. Internally, I'm leading our more advanced analytics, both the technology side - cloud analytics - as well as building out our human side - our data science capability. Over time, through training and development we can start to build it out and expand in an osmotic fashion across the wider organisation - effectively enabling us to leverage machine learning. We're also running sandboxes and hackathons to develop and encourage the regtech contingent of the UK startup market.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.), chairman of the Senate's consumer protection subcommittee, said he was considering joining in an effort by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) to pass a privacy bill of rights in Congress. His comments showed that the risks for big internet companies haven't dissipated since Facebook's scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a political data consultancy that worked with President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and obtained data of millions of Facebook users from an app developer, Aleksandr Kogan. Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.), the chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee, added that Facebook "remains under the microscope" and said lawmakers continue to examine potential measures to protect user privacy. But key lawmakers appeared to be far from a consensus on how to proceed. At Tuesday's hearing, Mr. Kogan, a social psychologist and University of Cambridge lecturer, in prepared testimony, called for strengthening the system of obtaining users' consent for subsequent use of their information.