Business units have started identifying processes they want to automate within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, now that its CIO is managing the infrastructure and licensing. The Robotic Process Automation Governance Team within the Office of the CIO handles configuration management and cybersecurity vetting to standardize the credentialing of bots, while business analysts pick the automations. Analysts need only fill out an RPA intake form, the first step of the governance process, which asks nine questions before calculating the necessary bot's complexity and expected time savings. "We've reached a point with our maturity where we're really encouraging different business units to come to the table with their own ideas for automation," said Jacob Feldman, program analyst at USPTO, during an ACT-IAC event Wednesday. "This is implementing a federated model of development."

In contemporary litigation, "machine learning" and "predictive analytics" are phrases that are typically used in the context of e-discovery. However, as these technologies grow and evolve, so too will their application and utility in employment decisions and legal proceedings. Predictive analytics, machine learning, and AI raise a number of privacy and ethics concerns in society, but when utilized properly, can prove to be an invaluable asset to clients both inside, and outside, the context of litigation. Indeed, employers are rapidly deploying these technologies across the employment spectrum, from identifying potential job candidates, conducting initial applicant screenings, tracking working time and attendance, identifying potential promotion candidates, as well as in workforce restructuring. Employers definitely should embrace, and not fear, implementing these technologies, especially given their trajectory towards becoming essential to business in the modern era.

It's "time to wake up and do a better job," says publisher Tim O'Reilly--from getting serious about climate change to building a better data economy. And the way a better data economy is built is through data commons--or data as a common resource--not as the giant tech companies are acting now, which is not just keeping data to themselves but profiting from our data and causing us harm in the process. "When companies are using the data they collect for our benefit, it's a great deal," says O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media. "When companies are using it to manipulate us, or to direct us in a way that hurts us, or that enhances their market power at the expense of competitors who might provide us better value, then they're harming us with our data." And that's the next big thing he's researching: a specific type of harm that happens when tech companies use data against us to shape what we see, hear, and believe. It's what O'Reilly calls "algorithmic rents," which uses data, algorithms, and user interface design as a way of controlling who gets what information and why. Unfortunately, one only has to look at the news to see the rapid spread of misinformation on the internet tied to unrest in countries across the world. We can ask who profits, but perhaps the better question is "who suffers?" According to O'Reilly, "If you build an economy where you're taking more out of the system than you're putting back or that you're creating, then guess what, you're not long for this world." That really matters because users of this technology need to stop thinking about the worth of individual data and what it means when very few companies control that data, even when it's more valuable in the open. After all, there are "consequences of not creating enough value for others." We're now approaching a different idea: what if it's actually time to start rethinking capitalism as a whole? "It's a really great time for us to be talking about how do we want to change capitalism, because we change it every 30, 40 years," O'Reilly says. He clarifies that this is not about abolishing capitalism, but what we have isn't good enough anymore. "We actually have to do better, and we can do better. And to me better is defined by increasing prosperity for everyone."

In September, Timnit Gebru, then co-leader of the ethical AI team at Google, sent a private message on Twitter to Emily Bender, a computational linguistics professor at the University of Washington. "Hi Emily, I'm wondering if you've written something regarding ethical considerations of large language models or something you could recommend from others?" she asked, referring to a buzzy kind of artificial intelligence software trained on text from an enormous number of webpages. The question may sound unassuming but it touched on something central to the future of Google's foundational product: search. This kind of AI has become increasingly capable and popular in the last couple years, driven largely by language models from Google and research lab OpenAI. Such AI can generate text, mimicking everything from news articles and recipes to poetry, and it has quickly become key to Google Search, which the company said responds to trillions of queries each year. In late 2019, the company started relying on such AI to help answer one in 10 English-language queries from US users; nearly a year later, the company said it was handling nearly all English queries and is also being used to answer queries in dozens of other languages.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard was suspended from the team facilities and activities for a week and fined $50,000 after using an anti-Semitic slur during a video game livestream earlier this week. The NBA announced the punishment against Leonard on Thursday. The Heat had said Tuesday he would be "away" from the team indefinitely.

Under the Portuguese chairmanship of the Council of the European Union (EU), Portugal will focus on adopting the first EU law on artificial intelligence, based on transparency and respect for users' rights, and also expects cooperation with the US administration. "We attach great importance to the legal framework for artificial intelligence. It is now clear that artificial intelligence is the basis for enhanced productivity and has great potential for growth," said Pedro Siza Vieira, the economy minister. Speaking via videoconference in the European Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee on the priorities of the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the EU, he stressed that "the standards of society and individuals should be respected in the area of artificial intelligence and the algorithms involved. For this reason, Portugal will focus on adopting this first legal framework at EU level for artificial intelligence, which should be based on a "transparent framework, taking into account the risks involved and protecting the EU's values, on issues such as human rights and privacy, among others", he said.

The European Commission has published a report by an independent group of experts on Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs). This report advises on specific ethical issues raised by driverless mobility for road transport. The report aims to promote a safe and responsible transition to connected and automated vehicles by supporting stakeholders in the systematic inclusion of ethical considerations in the development and regulation of CAVs. The report presents 20 ethical recommendations concerning the future development and use of CAVs based on ethical and legal principles. Improvements in safety achieved by CAVs should be publicly demonstrable and monitored through solid and shared scientific methods and data; these improvements should be achieved in compliance with basic ethical and legal principles, such as a fair distribution of risk and the protection of basic rights, including those of vulnerable users; these same considerations should apply to dilemma scenarios.

Artificial intelligence continues to be a focus and concern for businesses, regulators, and lawmakers alike. As we recently wrote, there was much activity and focus on artificial intelligence and the impact on privacy laws. In addition to legal developments, there have been advancements in AI business technologies by major multinational technology firms, something focused on this post in our sister Intellectual Property Law Blog. There has been an arms race underway by the world's leading economies to win the estimated $13 Trillion of GDP this field stands to award the winner. In a recent podcast episode, partners Siraj Husain and Michael P.A. Cohen discuss these developments, risks, and solutions that businesses are experiencing. Putting it Into Practice: Companies will continue to implement artificial intelligence into their operations.

This is a series of 4 articles I am sharing here, for people who are concerned and eager to understand more about job displacement impact potentially caused by artificial intelligence technology. You would read about "safe" versus "endangered" jobs in this series. The jobs listed in each article are demonstrative from my research research and technological knowledge, which may or may not fit into your personal scenario. I highly encourage readers to take those as references and inspirations, and to start re-imagine and re-strategize your career today with our shared future -- powered by AI. Psychiatrists, social workers, marriage counselors are all professions that require strong communication skills, empathy, and the ability to win trust from clients.

Who should be on the ethics board of a tech company that's in the business of artificial intelligence (A.I.)? Given the attention to the devastating failure of Google's proposed Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC) earlier this year, which was announced and then canceled within a week, it's crucial to get to the bottom of this question. Google, for one, admitted it's "going back to the drawing board." Tech companies are realizing that artificial intelligence changes power dynamics and as providers of A.I. and machine learning systems, they should proactively consider the ethical impacts of their inventions. That's why they're publishing vision documents like "Principles for A.I." when they haven't done anything comparable for previous technologies.