Air pollution kills--scientists have known this for many years. But how do they know? The global scientific community has developed and agreed upon a framework that draws on multiple lines of evidence across different scientific disciplines to assess the existence and strength of links between air pollution and health. In the United States, federal policies require use of this science-based framework to ensure that air pollution standards protect the public's health. But now this science-based policy process--and public health--are at risk.

These posts represent my personal views on enterprise governance, regulatory compliance, and legal or ethical issues that arise in digital transformation projects powered by the cloud and artificial intelligence. Unless otherwise indicated, they do not represent the official views of Microsoft. This week I'd like to take a break from regular blogging to introduce you to a new series of online publications called AI Insights that my team at Microsoft is producing. Each title is presented as a media rich digital publication with photos, charts, and embedded videos. The adaptive design meets customers where they are--displaying equally well on desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones.

The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) is organizing the Human Rights and Artificial Intelligence Forum on April 5. The event will take place at Concordia's 4TH SPACE, an innovative and immersive venue for state-of-the-art installations, which will permit leading experts from around the world to gather to discuss this emerging technology's implication for human rights. MIGS has convened thought leaders and practitioners with the goal of understanding how new technologies are disrupting global affairs. MIGS has worked with Global Affairs Canada and Tech Against Terrorism to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can counter online extremism and how non-state actors might use AI for nefarious purposes. MIGS has also presented work on AI at the Hague Digital Diplomacy Camp organized by the Dutch Foreign Ministry.

The emergence of machine learning in the last decade has given rise to an important debate regarding the ethical and societal responsibility of its offspring. Machine learning has provided a universal toolbox enhancing the decision making in many disciplines from advertising and recommender systems to education and criminal justice. Unfortunately, both the data and their processing can be biased against specific population groups (even inadvertently) in every single step of the process [BS16]. This has generated societal and policy interest in understanding the sources of this discrimination and interdisciplinary research has attempted to mitigate its shortcomings. Discrimination is commonly an issue in applications where decisions need to be made sequentially. The most prominent such application is online advertising where platforms need to sequentially select which ad to display in response to particular query searches. This process can introduce discrimination against protected groups in many ways such as filtering particular alternatives [DTD15, APJ16] and reinforcing existing stereotypes through search results [Swe13, KMM15]. Another canonical example of sequential decision making is medical trials where underexploration on female groups often leads to significantly worse treatments for them [LDM16]. Similar issues occur in image classification as stressed by "gender shades" [BG18].

Elizabeth Keatinge tells us about Elon Musk's DNA Friend makes fun of the at-home DNA testing craze. The government's contempt of court case against Tesla CEO Elon Musk is moving forward. Federal Judge Alison Nathan has set a court date of April 4 to hold oral arguments. The Securities and Exchange Commission is asking Nathan to find Musk in contempt for allegedly violating terms of an October court-approved securities fraud settlement with a Feb. 19 tweet. In the tweet, Musk wrote: "Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019."

Estonia is building an artificial intelligence powered robo-judge that will rule over a backlog of small court cases. It will be fed legal documents and analyse them before coming to a decision based on its pre-programmed algorithms and training. The'robot judge' would preside over disputes of less than €7,000 (£6,000/$8,000) and free up more time for humans to work on bigger cases. Any ruling would be legally binding but could be appealed to a human judge. The project and technology is still in its infancy and no set date has been announced for its roll-out, but the larger AI project it is part of will announce its results in May.

The laws will apply only in the EU for now, but it's possible these global companies will apply these laws elsewhere (Microsoft has already applied some EU regulations in other places.) Venezuela used to have an anti-government newspaper, but that was until the government made it impossible for them to get enough paper to print. So Venezuelans have turned to the voice-chat app Zello to spread news, get basic needs, and coordinate aid amid the country's political and economic crisis. Vice President Mike Pence said the US will be sending astronauts to the moon's south pole. Because there's tons of ice Pence says can be turned into life support and even rocket fuel.

Developing and commercializing artificial intelligence has proved an ethical mine field for companies like Google. The company has seen its algorithms accused of perpetuating race and gender bias and fueling efforts to build autonomous weapons. The search giant now hopes that a team of philosophers, engineers, and policy experts will help it navigate the moral hazards presented by artificial intelligence without press scandals, employee protests, or legal trouble. Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president for global affairs and chief legal officer, announced the creation of a new independent body to review the company's AI practices at EmTech Digital, an AI conference in San Francisco organized by MIT Technology Review. Walker said that the group, known as the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC), would review the company's projects and plans and produce reports to help determine if any of them contravene the company's own AI principles.

As we finalize this article November 11, 2018, and consider current and future directions for computing in Europe and across the globe, we remember the end of World War I exactly 100 years ago: the end to a war of atrocities at a scale previously unseen and the culmination of a series of events that European nations had allowed themselves to'sleepwalk' into, with little thought for the consequences.10 When this article appears in spring 2019, we will remember the first proposal for a new global information sharing system written by Tim Berners-Lee 30 years ago at CERN,4 the European organization for nuclear research. This proposal marked the beginning of the World Wide Web, which now pervades every facet of modern life for over four billion users. However, the Web 30 years on, is not the land of free information and discussion, or an egalitarian space that supports the interests of all, as originally imagined.4 Rather, egotisms, nationalisms, and fundamentalisms freewheel on a landscape that is increasingly dominated by powerful corporate actors, often silencing other voices, including democratically elected representatives. For seven decades Europe has been a political and social project, seeking to integrate what has been divisive historically and to make citizens more equal. While the proponents of the Web were driven by similar values, there is now increasing concern in Europe--and beyond--that the Web has become a vehicle of disintegration, polarization, and exploitation.

We live in the digital world, where every day we interact with digital systems either through a mobile device or from inside a car. These systems are increasingly autonomous in making decisions over and above their users or on behalf of them. As a consequence, ethical issues--privacy ones included (for example, unauthorized disclosure and mining of personal data, access to restricted resources)--are emerging as matters of utmost concern since they affect the moral rights of each human being and have an impact on the social, economic, and political spheres. Europe is at the forefront of the regulation and reflections on these issues through its institutional bodies. Privacy with respect to the processing of personal data is recognized as part of the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals.