CEOs of the world's leading companies have a global influence that stretches beyond their own business and commercial interests. The general public is increasingly looking to the people steering some of the largest companies in the world for their views on political and social issues. In a Financial Times article published last August, Rana Foroohar describes today's chief executives as "transnational leaders" who face a growing expectation, from both investors and the public, to speak out on issues. Given this growing public expectation, our team at BrandsEye decided to apply our combination of machine learning algorithms and human intelligence to assess public sentiment towards executives on Twitter. Rather than using the typical financial indicators that so often inform these indices, our analysis was based on the unsolicited views of Twitter users.

An algorithm that uses artificial intelligence can automatically and more accurately diagnose a potentially devastating cause of childhood blindness than most expert physicians, a paper published in JAMA Ophthalmology suggests. The finding could help prevent blindness in more babies with the disease, called retinopathy of prematurity, or ROP. Musician Stevie Wonder went blind due to this condition. The algorithm accurately diagnosed the condition in images of infant eyes 91 percent of the time. On the other hand, a team of eight physicians with ROP expertise who examined the same images had an average accuracy rate of 82 percent.

Europe is trying to catch up to the United States and China in an artificial intelligence (AI) arms race. The European Commission announced last week that it would devote €1.5 billion to AI research funding through 2020. It also said it would present ethical guidelines for AI development by the end of the year, suggesting that Europe could become a precautionary counterweight to its global rivals as fears are raised about a lack of fairness and transparency in the quickly advancing field. The commission says it will fund basic research as well as research that could be spun off into the market, and it intends to help member states set up joint research centers across Europe. It also plans to update rules to ease the reuse of public sector information--including available research data.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. What do Suda the elephant and e-David the robot have in common? Both are capable of creating beautiful paintings, free(ish) of human intervention--one uses its trunk to clutch the brush, the other a mechanical arm (though whether Suda is truly "free" when she paints is a matter of serious contention). Each can even sign their work. The quality of their paintings does vary slightly, though of course, beauty is in the visual sensor of the beholder.

Think you have a clever way to unlock big public data for analysis without compromising citizens' privacy? Then the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would like to hear from you for its "Unlinkable Data Challenge," which carries a grand prize of $50,000. Governments collect a lot of data, just as their corporate counterparts do. There are driver's license records, tax returns, arrest records, welfare claims, health data, airline records, and much more. But instead of cutting costs and boosting profits, which are typical goals in the corporate sector, governments ostensibly aim to improve the quality of life for its citizens through things like improving contagious disease tracking, identifying patterns of violence in communities, and planning for disasters. Despite the good intentions, all this public data carries significant risks to the privacy and security of the citizens that the data describes.

The strategy will require Facebook to make progress on some of the biggest challenges in computing. During two congressional sessions last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg referenced AI more than 30 times in explaining how the company would better police activity on its platform. The man tasked with delivering on those promises, CTO Mike Schroepfer, picked up that theme in a keynote and interview at Facebook's annual developer conference Wednesday. Schroepfer told thousands of developers and journalists that "AI is the best tool we have to keep our community safe at scale." After the congressional hearings, critics accused Zuckerberg of invoking AI to mislead people into thinking the company's challenges are simply technological.

This week's IRL heads to the theater, where the latest Marvel flick is setting box-office records. Find out how several of our editors felt about it (spoiler-free, although we can't guarantee anything about the comments section below), as well as our thoughts on a few new series from Netflix, Hulu and HBO. It's been quite a while since I watched the original Lost in Space, but something tells me its weird mashup of sixties-style drama and campy sci-fi doesn't hold up too well. When I was a kid devouring as many reruns of the show as possible, I identified with Robbie the Robot, because, well, we had the same name. In the current reboot of the show, currently streaming on Netflix, I connect more with the parents.

Big data is at the heart of the 4th industrial revolution -- and a new Open Access, rigorously peer-reviewed journal is helping to fuel this. Frontiers in Big Data provides a centralized pool of cutting-edge knowledge in machine learning, cybersecurity, data mining and other data-related disciplines. By making the latest research immediately and freely available through an online platform, the journal empowers researchers, citizens and companies to rapidly and efficiently share and combine knowledge -- and so drive the big data revolution. Two of these sections, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and Medicine and Public Health, will link to the soon-to-be launched Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence journal, which will focus on core AI fields and their various applications. Leveraging the collective intelligence of diverse research communities is critical for fast scientific progress and technological innovation.

JERUSALEM – "Has" or "had"? Earlier this week the White House quietly walked back a charge that Iran maintains an active nuclear weapons program, saying it really meant that Iran had one before the 2015 nuclear agreement. A statement sent to reporters Monday by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that a cache of Iranian documents released by Israel is "consistent with what the United States has long known: Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program." But intelligence agencies in the U.S. and overseas have stated that the 2015 nuclear deal has frozen Iran's nuclear program. The version of Sanders' statement posted to the White House website was later modified to make clear that Iran "had" such a program.

Technology's tentacles have encroached every aspect of our lives. Sitting in the comfort of your home you can tune in to live discussions and gain new understanding about technologies that are reshaping our world view. NDTV Tech Conclave 2018 saw a congregation of leading minds in the technology, mobile, and digital industries. The conclave aimed to showcase and create opportunities by bringing together many of the top entrepreneurs, investors, enterprise leaders, academics, and policymakers from around the world. The moderator of this session outlined two diametrically opposite views of AI and threw it open to the panelists.