The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) are pleased to announce that Marietje Schaake has been named to international policy roles in each of their organizations. At FSI, Schaake will serve as the first international policy director of the Cyber Policy Center. With a focus on cybersecurity, disinformation, digital democracy and election security, the Cyber Policy Center's research, teaching and policy engagement aims to bring new insights and solutions to national governments, international institutions and industry. Schaake will also be an international policy fellow at Stanford HAI, which seeks to advance artificial intelligence (AI) research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition. The university-wide institute is committed to working with industry, governments and civil society organizations that share the goal of a better future for humanity through AI.

An internal project to rewrite how Apple's Siri voice assistant handles "sensitive topics" such as feminism and the #MeToo movement advised developers to respond in one of three ways: "don't engage", "deflect" and finally "inform". The project saw Siri's responses explicitly rewritten to ensure that the service would say it was in favour of "equality", but never say the word feminism – even when asked direct questions about the topic. Last updated in June 2018, the guidelines are part of a large tranche of internal documents leaked to the Guardian by a former Siri "grader", one of thousands of contracted workers who were employed to check the voice assistant's responses for accuracy until Apple ended the programme last month in response to privacy concerns raised by the Guardian. In explaining why the service should deflect questions about feminism, Apple's guidelines explain that "Siri should be guarded when dealing with potentially controversial content". When questions are directed at Siri, "they can be deflected … however, care must be taken here to be neutral".

AI is being built into more systems and software as organizations attempt to compete in the algorithmic age. With the level of machine intelligence reaching new heights, the number of experts is not growing proportionally. To compensate, AI libraries, APIs, systems and software are becoming easier to use so more people can take advantage of them. However, ease of use does not necessarily diminish risks. At present, there's no minimum competence level one must have to operate an AI system, except perhaps data scientists with graduate degrees in math, statistics or computer science who use the most sophisticated tools.

I have been thinking of interactive ways of getting my postgraduate thesis on Racial Bias, Gender Bias, AI new ways to approach Human Computer Interaction out to everyone. Life has been super busy so I have decided to add snippets of the thesis for now. For this research paper, the researcher has identified a number of areas of concern in regards to systems powered by AI being deployed in situations that affect the lives of humans. These examples will be used to further highlight this area of concern. Suggestions have made that decision-support systems powered by AI can be used to augment human judgement and reduce both conscious and unconscious biases (Anderson & Anderson, 2007).

The Malta Information Technology Law Association (MITLA) has appealed to the government not to cede control of information to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and to ensure that information remains driven by humans. In a reaction document to Government's call for public consultation on an ethical framework for AI, MITLA recommended that the human-centric element be kept strongly in focus. To this end, MITLA proposed that human-operated'kill-switches' are introduced to over-ride AI "…malfunctioning or worse, of AI systems". MITLA made a strong recommendation to Government not to grant distinct legal personality to AI systems, so as not to undermine the fundamental principle of human-centric AI, which should respect fundamental human rights. MITLA also said that to ensure that the process of creating an ethical AI framework is coherent, digital rights should first be introduced into the Maltese Constitution.

According to statistics, over 1.9 billion users log into YouTube every single month watching more than a billion hours of video daily, which is half the internet. Organizations are integrating video creation and video sharing with their marketing strategies. As on date, YouTube supports 80 different languages, which also adds to its popularity. Cisco predicts that by 2022, video will consume 82 percent of all internet traffic. Considering the massive number of users, high volume of activities and richness of content, it makes sense for YouTube to take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to add efficiency to its operations.

With companies continuing to shrink or outsource their human resources departments, it is tempting to augment that traditional business function with artificial intelligence. Data science holds so much promise for other fields that it makes sense for algorithms to replace imperfect human decision-making for hiring, firing, scheduling and promoting. But new research from Wharton professors Peter Cappelli and Prasanna "Sonny" Tambe flashes a cautionary yellow light on using AI in human resources. In their paper, "Artificial Intelligence in Human Resources Management: Challenges and a Path Forward," the professors show how limited data, the complexity of HR tasks, fairness and accountability pose problems for digital HR. The study, which was co-authored by Valery Yakubovich, professor at ESSEC Business School and senior fellow at the Wharton Center for Human Resources, also looks at how to remedy those problems. Cappelli and Tambe spoke about their research with Knowledge@Wharton. An edited transcript of the conversation follows. Knowledge@Wharton: You make the point that while AI is invading many different industries and sectors, there are some special concerns when it comes to using AI in human resources. Can you talk about what some of those challenges are?

The paradigm of pretrained deep learning models has recently emerged in artificial intelligence practice, allowing deployment in numerous societal settings with limited computational resources, but also embedding biases and enabling unintended negative uses. In this paper, we treat pretrained models as objects of study and discuss the ethical impacts of their sociological position. We discuss how pretrained models are developed and compared under the common task framework, but that this may make self-regulation inadequate. Further how pretrained models may have a performative effect on society that exacerbates biases. We then discuss how pretrained models move through actor networks as a kind of computationally immutable mobile, but that users also act as agents of technological change by reinterpreting them via fine-tuning and transfer. We further discuss how users may use pretrained models in malicious ways, drawing a novel connection between the responsible innovation and user-centered innovation literatures. We close by discussing how this sociological understanding of pretrained models can inform AI governance frameworks for fairness, accountability, and transparency.

Artificial intelligence (AI) issues in intellectual property are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. For example, the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has issued "thousands of patents on AI technologies."1 The Persado Message Machine, which creates written content by way of data science and AI and is used by "[o]ver 250 of the world's most valuable brands," can generate marketing messages in 25 languages.2 And the University of Surrey in the UK just filed two patent applications--one that claims a "beverage container based on fractal geometry" and one that claims a device "that may help with search and rescue operations"--alleged to be the first inventions "created autonomously by artificial intelligence (AI) without a human inventor."3 Perhaps given these developments, the PTO has decided that the time is now to begin asking questions that broadly address how AI shifts our basic understanding of patent law concepts like inventorship, eligibility, enablement, and the level of ordinary skill in the art.

Fox News Flash top headlines for Sept. 6 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com An Apple project to rewrite how the Siri voice assistant handles sensitive topics like feminism and the #MeToo movement told developers to either not engage, deflect or inform. According to leaked documents obtained by The Guardian, the project saw Siri's responses rewritten to never explicitly say the word "feminism" -- although it was OK for the AI-powered assistant to say it was in favor of equality. Apple's guidelines explain that "Siri should be guarded when dealing with potentially controversial content," and that when questions are directed at the voice assistant, they can be "deflected. However, care must be taken here to be neutral."