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Today: A Mentally Ill Inmate's Final 46 Hours

Los Angeles Times

The death of a man strapped to a chair for 46 hours in a San Luis Obispo County jail puts a focus on the conditions for mentally ill inmates in California's county jails. Here are the stories you shouldn't miss today: Andrew Holland's legs and arms were shackled to a chair in a jail observation cell, where he sat in his own filth, eating and drinking almost nothing, for nearly two days in January. He was naked except for a helmet and mask covering his face and a blanket that slipped off his lap. San Luis Obispo County jail officials say Holland, who had schizophrenia, was restrained because he had been hitting himself in the head and was kept there because he refused to not harm himself further. Within 40 minutes of being unbound, he had stopped breathing. Holland's death has provoked outrage, a $5-million legal settlement and questions about the way California jails handle a growing number of mentally ill inmates.


Tax the Rich and the Robots? California's Thinking About It

WIRED

Depending on whom you ask, robots and artificial intelligence are either coming to take your job, or you're perfectly safe, at least for the near future. Truth is, automation always has and always will put people out of work. It's just that this time around, even highly skilled jobs may be imperiled. And that has some folks dreading a time in which robots and AI upend the human workforce. Included among those folks is San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim, who Wednesday launched a campaign called the Jobs of the Future Fund to study a statewide "payroll" tax on job-stealing machines.


The NHS is a much bigger challenge for DeepMind than Go

#artificialintelligence

People have a weird obsession with games likes Chess and Go. Achievement in them has long been seen as a marker of human intellect, and yet they're among the least human test you could devise; putting players in simplified situations where everything is known, every possible course of action is laid out for them, and the test is one of concentration and logic. We pass far greater tests daily, when we recognise a face in a crowd, when we dynamically balance in motion, when we predict the response our words and expressions will have on another sentient being, or when we do all of the above, effortlessly, at the same time. We don't think of these as challenging because they're so innately human, while playing Chess or Go seems far more impressive precisely because they're more rigid and computational in nature. There's an irony in making a board game one of the'grand challenges' of AI, and it surprises me that more people don't see it.


Voyager still going strong

FOX News

Forty years ago, NASA launched twin robotic explorers on a mission to travel farther out than any spacecraft had gone before, and today, they continue to be our most distant emissaries. The story of those probes, and of the people behind them, is the focus of the aptly-titled documentary, "The Farthest," airing Wednesday (Aug. The Voyager probes, referred to by numerical designators "1" and "2," revealed the outer planets of our solar system and then continued to sail beyond. Voyager 2, which was the first to launch on Aug. 20, 1977, visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 departed Earth on Sep. 5, 1977, overtook its counterpart, and was the first to arrive at Jupiter and Saturn.


Tanzania to Use Drones to Deliver Medicines

U.S. News

Drones soon will be used in Tanzania to deliver medicines to health facilities across the East African country, continuing a trend of African governments embracing drone networks to deliver critical services.


China's Cabinet Expects Information Technology Market to Reach 6 Trillion Yuan by 2020

U.S. News

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's State Council on Thursday issued a guideline for the development of the country's information technology (IT) industry. The State Council expects China's IT industry to reach 6 trillion yuan ($901 billion) in value by 2020, based on an average annual growth rate of 11 percent. The report includes references to nascent developments in e-commerce, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as technology for traditional industries including medicine and education. Not all U.S. presidents are missed once they leave the White House. The agency says people facing deportation have been released from detention because their home countries have blocked their return.


Learning from Experience: FDA's Treatment of Machine Learning

#artificialintelligence

There seems to be a modern day gold rush as companies explore how to use machine learning in clinical decision support software. Unfortunately for libertarians, FDA will regulate some of that software because of its risk profile. While the 21st Century Cures Act that passed last December exempted certain CDS from regulation and indeed FDA intends to exempt even more, FDA will continue to regulate high risk CDS. The question is: how will FDA regulate high risk CDS when the software involves machine learning? Some might assume that machine learning in healthcare is so new, we have no idea how FDA will react.


Machine learning and biometrics: financial services market in the middle of a revolution

#artificialintelligence

Despite the enormous changes in recent years, including the emergence of the plethora of significant new market players – including fintech start-ups, established payment, technology, and information firms, telecoms, and other providers, the financial services market is indeed in the middle of a revolution and this is down to both technology and regulations. This begs the question of how financial services incumbents will fare is far from settled and offers a scenario wherein these incumbents looking to grow shareholder value will need to build and sustain new competitive advantages. The European Commission's revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2) represents a broad sweep of financial services sector regulations that will come into force next year. In summary, PSD2 creates the opportunity for digital actors to link directly into payment systems via API's. The regulation will require that banks provide these API's so that third-party service providers will be able to directly access customers' accounts.


Why GPS Spoofing Is a Threat to Companies, Countries

Communications of the ACM

When the crew of an $80-million super-yacht in the Ionian Sea checked its computer, they realized they were drifting slightly off course, likely as a result of strong currents buffeting their ship. The crew made adjustments and went back to work--without realizing they were now taking directions from a hacker. In the bowels of the ship, Todd Humphreys, an associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, worked with his team to feed the super-yacht's crew false navigation data using a few thousand dollars worth of hardware and software. The crew was completely unaware they were now piloting in a direction of Humphreys' choosing. Thankfully, it was all an experiment that took place with the yacht owner's blessing.


Turing Laureates Celebrate Award's 50th Anniversary

Communications of the ACM

Among the 22 Turing Laureates in attendance at the conference were: Front row, from left: Whitfield Diffie (2015), Martin Hellman (2015), Robert Tarjan (1986), Barbara Liskov (2008). Second row, from left: Vinton Cerf (2004), Richard Karp (1985), Richard Stearns (1993), Dana Scott (1976).