In this image taken from video, a sheep indicates recognition of former US president Barack Obama, right, displayed on a computer screen during research carried out by scientists at Cambridge University with their results published Wednesday Nov. 8, 2017, in Royal Society: Open Science. The new study shows that sheep have advanced face-recognition abilities comparable to those of humans and monkeys, according to Professor Jenny Morton, and the university hope their research assists research into Huntington's disease and other human brain disorders that affect mental processing.(Cambridge

If you are a data scientist, a software developer, or in the social and human sciences with interest in digital humanities, then you're no stranger to the ongoing discussions on how algorithms embed biases, and discrimination and the call for critical and ethical engagement. I have keenly been following such discussion for a while and this post is an attempt to put together the articles, books, book reviews, videos, interviews, twitter threads and so on., that I've come across in one place so it can be used as a resource. This list is by no means exhaustive and as more and more awareness is being raised, there are more pieces/articles/journal papers being written on a daily basis. I plan to update these lists regularly. Also, if you think there are relevant material that I have not included, please leave them as a comment and I will add them.

Seamgen LLC, a software development and design agency, has launched its Artificial Intelligence service, their newest way to help organizations, from enterprises to well-funded startups, maximize the value they bring to their customers. With a collection of the world's leading AI scientists, Seamgen is now able to help their clients effectively utilize their business data to more efficiently serve their customers. This comes at a time when Artificial Intelligence services are in high demand with businesses trying to find new ways to enhance their digital strategies. "Artificial Intelligence is one of the fastest growing sectors of the technology industry right now as companies large and small try to find new ways to inject AI into their digital strategy. Finding AI experts is not an easy task, but that's where we step in. Our AI as a Service can discover unique ways to transform data into viable business solutions," stated Marc Alringer, Seamgen's CEO and founder.

NEXT week, a meeting at UN headquarters in Geneva will discuss autonomous armed robots. Unlike existing military drones, which are controlled remotely, these new machines would identify and attack targets without human intervention. Groups including the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots hope the meeting will lead to an international ban. But while fiction is littered with cautionary tales of what happens when you put guns in the cold, metallic hands of a machine, the situation may not be as simple as "human good, robots bad". To understand why, we should look at what people are saying about the ethics of driverless cars, which advocates see as a way of reducing accidents.

Professor Stephen Hawking isn't afraid to state his opinion bluntly and honestly. He has publicly expressed his fears about the future of artificial intelligence (AI), the need for a new Space Age, the serious realities of global warming, how we might reach another Solar System, and that, as a species, humans must leave Earth in order to survive. Hawking has previously stated that our time on Earth is limited to 100 years, after originally estimating 1,000 years. But, in a new announcement in a video presentation this past Sunday, November 5th at the Tencent Web Summit in Beijing, he gave the human species less than 600 years before we will need to leave Earth, according to the British newspaper The Sun. Earlier in the year, Hawking said that: "We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth."

According to Medcrave, in a smart city, an AI Platform tracks citizen's habits, activities, and behavioral characteristics. Data and products can be personalised to meet and anticipate each user's unique and changing needs. Each citizen will have one's own digital personal assistant. Artificial intelligence can help governments handle their regulations monitoring by creating a natural language processing system to read through the legalities of regulations and reassemble the words into a set of computer-understandable rules. As per Digit, in the recent times, IBM Watson has been partnering with Indian Government to bring Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the daily lives of its people.

Uber is setting its sights on the skies with UberAir. Uber announced it will bring flying cars to Dallas and now Los Angeles by 2020. SAN FRANCISCO -- Uber has a host of issues to contend with, from remaking its corporate culture to battling unfriendly cities. But the ride-hailing company is nonetheless forging ahead with plans to make a Blade Runner vision of transportation -- self-flying cars-- a reality by 2020. Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden planned to announce at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon Wednesday that Los Angeles will join Dallas as the first two cities to host the company's proposed network of flying vehicles.

Post offices are often at the forefront of new technology, as developing efficient systems for delivering mail is essential for keeping costs down for users. Computer systems, in particular, hold tremendous potential for scanning and routing mail, allowing post offices to lower costs. Accenture has released a report, entitled "The New Delivery Paradigm," that examines 25 post offices through Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. For an average post and parcel industry, the analysis reveals that $500 million per year in value is possible through investment in advanced digital technologies. Increased competition and lower demand for mail is placing pressure on many post offices, but new investment could help cut costs, particularly when it comes to handling the so-called "last mile" of delivery.

When you think of artificial intelligence, the field of botany probably isn't uppermost in your mind. When you picture settings for cutting-edge computational research, century-old museums may not top the list. And yet, a just-published article in the Biodiversity Data Journal shows that some of the most exciting and portentous innovation in machine learning is taking place at none other than the National Herbarium of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The paper, which demonstrates that digital neural networks are capable of distinguishing between two similar families of plants with rates of accuracy well over 90 percent, implies all sorts of mouth-watering possibilities for scientists and academics going forward. The study relies on software grounded in "deep learning" algorithms, which allow computer programs to accrue experience in much the same way human experts do, upping their game each time they run.

Dr. Sumeet Dua is currently an upchurch endowed associate professor and the coordinator of IT research at Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, USA. He received his PhD in computer science from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His areas of expertise include data mining, image processing and computational decision support, pattern recognition, data warehousing, biomedical informatics, and heterogeneous distributed data integration. The National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research (AFOSR), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Louisiana Board of Regents (LA-BoR) have funded his research with over $2.8 million. He frequently serves as a study section member (expert panelist) for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and panelist for the National Science Foundation (NSF)/CISE Directorate.