Captivating images capture by custom-built drones have revealed the damage to the Greenland Ice Sheet that is being caused by rising global temperatures. The images, which have been taken as part of an EU-funded project to track changes in the world's second-largest ice sheet, are the first drone-based observations of how fractures form and expand under meltwater lakes. The expanding fractures cause catastrophic lake drainages, during which huge quantities of water are transferred to below the surface of the ice. Changes in ice flow occur on a much shorter timescales than were previously considered possible, said the research team, which was led by the University of Cambridge. 'It's possible we've under-estimated the effects of these glaciers on the overall instability of the Greenland Ice Sheet,' said drone pilot Tom Chudley, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute.

Chatbots are the latest emerging technologies used by organizations to improve customer service and reduce costs. Most companies today have deployed chatbots in various messaging apps, websites and portals to provide the first line of service and self-help to customers. With the advent of GDPR, companies are required to follow the strict guidelines prescribed by it while dealing with sensitive customer data and these rules apply for the company's chatbots as well. However, users still share their data with a bot via conversations. Bottomline – ensuring your chatbot is GDPR compliant is mandatory if your customers are citizens of the European Union.

Companies planning on using artificial intelligence (AI) in their work should ensure it is "transparent and accountable", the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said. The UK's data watchdog has published its first draft regulatory guidance into the use of AI in collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute. It warned that the public are still uneasy over the use of computer software to make decisions previously made by humans, so any systems must be transparent and provide clear explanations of decisions made. The guidance identified four key principles for AI: transparency, accountability, consideration of context and reflection on impacts. Co-authored with the @turinginst, 'Explaining decisions made with AI' is out for consultation until January 24 2020.

The six answers you want to have about Machine Learning, all in one place. The founder of Pinboard, Maciej Cegłowski, has just published his statement about "Privacy Rights and Data Collection in a Digital Economy". The addendum on Machine Learning of that document is a great, simple explanation of its intrinsical limits, and the risks coming from them. To make them even simpler to understand, I took the liberty of synthesizing it in an easier Q&A format. Questions and parts in italic are my own additions, and any error is mine only.

In a bid to tackle the spread of fake news and misleading videos created using artificial intelligence (AI) and bots, China has released new rules that ban online video and audio providers from using deep learning to produce fake news without a proper disclosure. Failing to provide a disclosure that the post in question was created with AI or VR technology is now a criminal offence, according to the Chinese government. The rules go into effect on January 1st, 2020, and will be enforced by the Cyberspace Administration of China, The Verge reported. The regulation comes about one-and-a-half months after California introduced legislation to make political deepfakes illegal, outlawing the creation or distribution of videos, images, or audio of politicians doctored to resemble real footage within 60 days of an election. The new regulation published said that both providers and users of online video news and audio services are not allowed to use new technologies such as deep learning and virtual reality to create, distribute and broadcast fake news, according to South China Morning Post.

A Slate staff writer who regularly reports on Christianity responds to Andrew D. Hudson's "A Priest, a Rabbi, and a Robot Walk Into a Bar." The Michigan-based company Covenant Eyes markets itself to Christians who want to stop viewing pornography. Its software takes screenshots of a user's screen activity, uses A.I. to scan it for pornographic imagery, and then sends regular reports to the user and a designated "ally" who has agreed to hold him accountable. The company's name comes from a Bible verse that reads, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman." Everyone wants technology to reflect their own worldview, and religious conservatives are no exception.

Earlier this year, San Francisco-based venture capital firm Riverwood Capital invested US$ 20 million in Omie, a Brazilian start-up that provides small and medium businesses (SMBs) with an AI-powered business management software. Omie's genius idea was to focus on small firms, not served by larger management software services. By automating business functions, the company essentially eliminates the massive amount of paper work required in Brazil, a country notorious for red tape. "Cloud management platforms are revolutionising small and medium businesses in Brazil," says Marcelo Lombardo, Omie's CEO and founder. He spoke with LSE Business Review managing editor Helena Vieira on 5 November during the Web Summit conference in Lisbon. Starting from the beginning, what does Omie do? Omie is a cloud management software for small and midsize businesses. We put together pretty much everything a small business owner needs for his daily life (financials, invoicing, inventory, manufacturing, etc).

New Delhi: Delhi government's VAT department will soon take the help of a machine learning tool to identify bogus firms and tax evasion to plug leaks, which is estimated to be around Rs 300 crore annually. AAP government has shared thousands of VAT returns registered in Delhi between 2012-17, which are being scrutinised by two research scholars -- Aprajit Mahajan and Shekhar Mittal -- who are associated with University of California, Berkeley. Government officials said the researchers are likely to submit their first set of findings by December on the basis of which the VAT department would plan its action against firms that might be involved in systematic evasion of taxes. "It is going to be a first-ever systematic study of tax evasion in an economy with weak compliance," Delhi Dialogue and Development Commission vice-chairman Jasmine Shah said, referring to the researchers' paper'Who is Bogus? According to officials, the VAT department currently carries out surprise inspections to nab defaulters or traders resorting to unfair means to avoid paying taxes by generating bills of fraudulent transactions with firms that exist only on paper.

As machine learning models are increasingly used for high-stakes decision making, scholars have sought to intervene to ensure that such models do not encode undesirable social and political values. However, little attention thus far has been given to how values influence the machine learning discipline as a whole. How do values influence what the discipline focuses on and the way it develops? If undesirable values are at play at the level of the discipline, then intervening on particular models will not suffice to address the problem. Instead, interventions at the disciplinary-level are required. This paper analyzes the discipline of machine learning through the lens of philosophy of science. We develop a conceptual framework to evaluate the process through which types of machine learning models (e.g. neural networks, support vector machines, graphical models) become predominant. The rise and fall of model-types is often framed as objective progress. However, such disciplinary shifts are more nuanced. First, we argue that the rise of a model-type is self-reinforcing--it influences the way model-types are evaluated. For example, the rise of deep learning was entangled with a greater focus on evaluations in compute-rich and data-rich environments. Second, the way model-types are evaluated encodes loaded social and political values. For example, a greater focus on evaluations in compute-rich and data-rich environments encodes values about centralization of power, privacy, and environmental concerns.

"To boldly go where no one has gone before." The series followed the voyages of the starship USS Enterprise as she explored "strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations." I think we are all on a similar voyage right now. And we don't have to engage a "warp drive" to experience new life and new civilizations. Life -- here on Earth -- is changing rapidly due to technological developments.