The regulation of facial recognition is emerging as a key disagreement among the world's biggest tech companies, with Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai suggesting a temporary ban, as recently suggested by the EU, might be welcome, while Microsoft's chief legal officer Brad Smith cautions against such intervention. "I think it is important that governments and regulations tackle it sooner rather than later and give a framework for it," Pichai said at a conference in Brussels on Monday, reports Reuters. "It can be immediate but maybe there's a waiting period before we really think about how it's being used ... It's up to governments to chart the course." But in an interview published last week, Smith, who also serves as Microsoft's chief legal officer, was dismissive of the idea of a moratorium. "Look, you can try to solve a problem with a meat cleaver or a scalpel," Smith told NPR when questioned about a potential ban.

Despite its commitment to'trustworthy' artificial intelligence, the EU is bankrolling AI projects that are questionable, write Fieke Jansen and Daniel Leufer. Fieke Jansen is a PhD candidate at the Data Justice Lab and Mozilla Foundation Fellow 2019-2020. Daniel Leufer, PhD, is a Mozilla Foundation Fellow 2019-2020 hosted by Access Now and member of the Working Group on Philosophy of Technology at KU Leuven, Belgium. Discussions on the negative impact of Artificial Intelligence in society include horror stories plucked from either China's high-tech surveillance state and its use of the controversial social credit system, or from the US and its use of recidivism algorithms and predictive policing. Typically, Europe is excluded from these stories, due to the perception that EU citizens are protected from such AI-fueled nightmares through the legal protection offered by the GDPR, or because there is simply no horror-inducing AI deployed across the continent. In contrast to this perception, journalists and NGOs have shown that imperfect and ethically questionable AI systems such as facial recognition, fraud detection and smart (a.k.a surveillance) cities, are also in use across Europe.

Last Friday, the World Economic Forum (WEF) sent out a press announcement about an artificial intelligence (AI) toolkit for corporate boards. The release pointed to a section of their web site titled Empowering AI Leadership. For some reason, at this writing, there is no obvious link to the toolkit, but the press team was quick to provide the link. It is well laid out in linked we pages, and some well-produced pdfs are available for download. For purposes of this article, I have only looked at the overview and the ethics section, so here are my initial impressions. As would be expected from an organization focused on a select few in the world, the AI toolkit is high level.

IBM called for rules aimed at eliminating bias in artificial intelligence to ease concerns that the technology relies on data that bakes in past discriminatory practices and could harm women, minorities, the disabled, older Americans and others. As it seeks to define a growing debate in the U.S. and Europe over how to regulate the burgeoning industry, IBM urged industry and governments to jointly develop standards to measure and combat potential discrimination. The Armonk, New York-based company issued policy proposals Tuesday ahead of a Wednesday panel on AI to be led by Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The initiative is designed to find a consensus on rules that may be stricter than what industry alone might produce, but that are less stringent than what governments might impose on their own. "It seems pretty clear to us that government regulation of artificial intelligence is the next frontier in tech policy regulation," said Chris Padilla, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at International Business Machines Corp. The 108-year-old company, once a world technology leader, has lagged behind the sector for years.

Anthony Levandowski makes an unlikely prophet. Dressed Silicon Valley-casual in jeans and flanked by a PR rep rather than cloaked acolytes, the engineer known for self-driving cars--and triggering a notorious lawsuit--could be unveiling his latest startup instead of laying the foundations for a new religion. But he is doing just that. Artificial intelligence has already inspired billion-dollar companies, far-reaching research programs, and scenarios of both transcendence and doom. Now Levandowski is creating its first church.

After a draft white paper about the EU's position on AI regulation was leaked earlier this month, Google chief Sundar Pichai, on Monday (20 January), warned the bloc about imposing its own regulations and called for an "international alignment" on the core values of the future laws of the sector. However, ahead of what is expected to be the fourth industrial revolution, the European Commission wants to ensure an "appropriate" ethical and legal framework for the development of AI, which promises to boost innovation while making EU citizens' rights a priority. In November, commission chief Ursula von der Leyen pledged to develop AI legislation similar to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU law on privacy. "It is not about damming up the flow of data, it is about making rules that define how to handle data responsibly," she told MEPs back then. "For us, the protection of a person's digital identity is the overriding priority," she added. According to Ursula Pachl, deputy director-general at the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), an NGO in Brussels, "it is important that the European Commission has announced a legislative framework and is vocal about the ambition to become a global standard-setter in this area, much like it has done with the GDPR on data protection".

Sign up here to receive the Davos Diary, a special daily newsletter that will run from Jan. 20-24. IBM called for rules aimed at eliminating bias in artificial intelligence to ease concerns that the technology relies on data that bakes in past discriminatory practices and could harm women, minorities, the disabled, older Americans and others. As it seeks to define a growing debate in the U.S. and Europe over how to regulate the burgeoning industry, IBM urged industry and governments to jointly develop standards to measure and combat potential discrimination. The Armonk, New York-based company issued policy proposals Tuesday ahead of a Wednesday panel on AI to be led by Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The initiative is designed to find a consensus on rules that may be stricter than what industry alone might produce, but that are less stringent than what governments might impose on their own. "It seems pretty clear to us that government regulation of artificial intelligence is the next frontier in tech policy regulation," said Chris Padilla, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at International Business Machines Corp.

The idea that computers or software programs can both learn and make decisions is particularly significant and something that we should be aware of, as their processes are growing exponentially over time. Because of these two skills, AI systems can now accomplish many of the tasks that were once reserved for humans. Over the last few years, the growth of AI technology has been staggering. AI-based systems are now being used to help humans benefit from significant improvements and increased efficiency in nearly every area of life. As the development of AI continues to grow, it will change the ways we live and work more and more.

The race towards the adoption of Artificial Intelligence is on. While AI applications are already being integrated across various industries, governments around the world are beginning to take it seriously too. Canada was the first country in the World to issue a national AI strategy in 2017. Ever since then, 30 more countries have followed suit. The two largest economies of the World are already spending billions on the R&D for defense and non-defense related AI applications.

Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai supports a temporary ban on facial recognition technology in the European Union. Activists and technologists have called the controversial technology racially biased, and voiced concerns about privacy, regarding its use by governments and law enforcement. "I think it is important that governments and regulations tackle it sooner rather than later and give a framework for it," Pichai told a conference in Brussels, according to Reuters. Alphabet is Google's parent company.