Once upon a time, a job at Google was the dream of every starry-eyed techie looking to make big bucks and not be evil in the process. Some 17 years after minting its now-infamous'Don't be evil' motto, some engineers are shunning the tech giant for its Maven project, a collaboration with the Department of Defense (DOD) to provide artificial intelligence for analyzing drone footage. Now, Google is backing away from military deals and alienating sought-after talent. After details of the Maven project, more than 4,000 Googlers signed a letter demanding that CEO Sundar Pichai ditch warfare-related technology. "Amid growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to keep the public's trust," the letter read.

If communication is measurable in terms of number of words, we are the greatest communicators in the history of our species. There's the rub, says President magazine. Listening is the hard part. It's harder than talking -- in part, writes Toshiyuki Goda of the NHK Broadcast Research Center in his contribution to President's feature on "listening ability," because, as speakers, we can keep the dialogue within our comfort zone, while listening may take us outside it -- into the realm of our own ignorance, which is uncomfortable enough; or, worse, into that of the awkward silence. The on-air broadcaster is particularly sensitive to the latter, but it bedevils all social intercourse.

Google today released guidelines for the creation of artificial intelligence, which includes a ban on making autonomous weaponry and most applications of AI with the potential to harm people. The guidelines emerge just days after Google announced it would not renew its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to analyze drone footage. As a self-described AI-first company, proprietor of popular open source frameworks like Kaggle and TensorFlow, and employer of prominent researchers, Google is one of the most influential companies in AI. "We want to be clear that while we are not developing AI for use in weapons, we will continue our work with governments and the military in many other areas. These include cybersecurity, training, military recruitment, veterans' healthcare, and search and rescue," CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post. In the post, Pichai spells out the principles that should be considered when creating AI, as well as applications of AI that Google will not pursue.

A recent survey found that 31% of new hires quit within their first six months on the job. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, during the last half of the year from April 2017 to April 2018 over two million people left their jobs each month -- for the first six months, it was over 3 million. All of this churning points to a major headache for businesses seeking to identify and hire the right people. The traditional paradigm of HR personnel digging through stacks of paper resumes clearly isn't working that well -- and there's nothing to suggest that digital resumes are any better. And this is more than a mere annoyance for companies: Filling open positions costs money and time that's lost when the wrong person is hired.

FILE- In this May 8, 2018, file photo, Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at the Google I/O conference in Mountain View, Calif. Google pledges that it will not use artificial intelligence in applications related to weapons or surveillance, part of a new set of principles designed to govern how it uses AI. Those principles, released by Pichai, commit Google to building AI applications that are "socially beneficial," that avoid creating or reinforcing bias and that are accountable to people. Google's declaration of principles for AI is a short but carefully worded text covering the main issues related to the uses of its technology. I would recommend reading the document, given that it raises many about the future and the rules we will need to guide us as it evolves.

Google is banning the development of artificial-intelligence (AI) software that can be used in weapons, chief executive Sundar Mr Pichai said, setting strict new ethical guidelines for how the tech giant should conduct business in an age of increasingly powerful AI. The new rules could set the tone for the deployment of AI far beyond Google, as rivals in Silicon Valley and around the world compete for supremacy in self-driving cars, automated assistants, robotics, military AI and other industries. "We recognise that such powerful technology raises equally powerful questions about its use," Mr Mr Pichai wrote in a blog post. "As a leader in AI, we feel a special responsibility to get this right." Google reveals'terrifying' bot to call people and pretend to be human The ethical principles are a response to a firestorm of employee resignations and public criticism over a Google contract with the US Defence Department for software that could help analyse drone video, which critics argued had nudged the company one step closer to the "business of war." Google executives said last week that they would not renew the deal for the military's AI endeavour, known as Project Maven, when it expires next year.

A study appearing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has brought answers. In work that combines forensic science with psychology and computer vision research, a team of scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and three universities has tested the accuracy of professional face identifiers, providing at least one revelation that surprised even the researchers: Trained human beings perform best with a computer as a partner, not another person. "This is the first study to measure face identification accuracy for professional forensic facial examiners, working under circumstances that apply in real-world casework," said NIST electronic engineer P. Jonathon Phillips. "Our deeper goal was to find better ways to increase the accuracy of forensic facial comparisons." The team's effort began in response to a 2009 report by the National Research Council, "Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward," which underscored the need to measure the accuracy of forensic examiner decisions.

Google, while promising to "bring the benefits of AI to everyone," signed a deal with the Pentagon to use their AI technology to kill people. The outrage this caused among its employees, made Google cancel the contract. Though, at first glance, it seems like a victory for the non-violent use of AI, isn't it also quite naive? Technology firms working with the military-industrial complex is neither new or shocking. Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are very involved without anybody paying much attention.

Since 2014, a series of pictures have emerged of converted Chinese armored vehicles, which had been modified into autonomous robots with cameras and LIDAR for navigation. China is also offering smaller machine gun equipped robots for export, and has expended significant resources in building legged robots. While the ZTZ-59 robotic tank is strictly noncombatant for now, it will only be a matter of time until the PLA, like every other major military, deploys greater numbers of robotic vehicles. Are Weaponized'Crab Walker' Robots The Future Of Chinese Land Wars?

TEISS guest blogger and cybersecurity consultant, Harold Kilpatrick, talks us through the impact of AI and Maching Learning on cyber security. The rapid development of artificial intelligence may significantly improve efficiency in businesses, but the technology could also pose serious threats to online security, a report by a group of UK and US experts warn. As AI is becoming more powerful and faster in performing automated tasks, it is increasingly adopted in a wide variety of industries, from manufacturing to software development. In fact, analysts expect that by 2020 artificial intelligence solutions will be applied in almost all new software products and services, which will irreversibly change the way we interact with technologies and make use of their benefits. But in the quest for innovation and better operations, many miss the obvious risks AI and machine learning could bring.