A Shanghai court has become China's first court to officially adopt an artificial intelligence-supported software to facilitate judicial hearings, with judges and prosecutors using the new technology to improve efficiency and accuracy in delivering justice. This also means using less paper and manpower. The software was first put to test in January during a case involving robbery and murder. No paperwork was filed during the trial and nearly all evidence were presented in the court through electronic display. Huang Boqing, a deputy chief judge of the Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People's Court, told CGTN that during previous trials, identifying and verifying evidence took a lot of time and attention.

WHEN the first printed books with illustrations started to appear in the 1470s in the German city of Augsburg, wood engravers rose up in protest. Worried about their jobs, they literally stopped the presses. In fact, their skills turned out to be in higher demand than before: somebody had to illustrate the growing number of books. Fears about the impact of technology on jobs have resurfaced periodically ever since. The latest bout of anxiety concerns the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI).

The use of artificial intelligence in medicine poses a number of ethical questions. To discuss these issues, FRANCE 24 spoke to David Gruson, the founder of Ethik-AI. The initiative aims to develop a regulatory framework for artificial intelligence. Technology is already assisting surgeons in the operating theatre. Artificial intelligence could soon enhance their life-saving work even further.

"This is a very exciting day as we kick-off testing of autonomous vehicles, putting Rhode Island on the map as a leader in this new high-tech field in transportation. And we'll do it in a careful and safe manner partnering with institutions of higher education to carefully study and evaluate the service and its integration on Rhode Island roads," said Governor Gina Raimondo. The vehicles are being tested this week on low-volume roads in the park as the beginning phase of a pilot project scheduled to launch in Providence in the spring of 2019. The testing period in Quonset will be followed by similar testing in Providence, prior to the start of service. Between the two locations, the vehicles will undergo 500 miles of testing.

One of the challenges of using artificial intelligence solutions in the enterprise is that the technology operates in what is commonly referred to as a black box. Often, artificial intelligence (AI) applications employ neural networks that produce results using algorithms with a complexity level that only computers can make sense of. In other instances, AI vendors will not reveal how their AI works. In either case, when conventional AI produces a decision, human end users don't know how it arrived at its conclusions. This black box can pose a significant obstacle.

Reported by the New York Times, new tests of facial recognition technology suggest that Amazon's system has more difficulty identifying the gender of female and darker-skinned faces compared with similar facial recognition technology services provided by IBM and Microsoft. Amazon's Rekognition is a software application that sets out to identify specific facial features by comparing similarities in a large volume of photographs. The study is of importance, given that Amazon has been marketing its facial recognition technology to police departments and federal agencies, presenting the technology as an additional tool to aid those tasked with law enforcement to identify suspects more rapidly. This tendency has been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (See: "Orlando begins testing Amazon's facial recognition in public"). The new study comes from Inioluwa Deborah Raji (University of Toronto) and Joy Buolamwini (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and it is titled "Actionable Auditing: Investigating the Impact of Publicly Naming Biased Performance Results of Commercial AI Products."

In this Feb. 1, 2019 photo, surveillance cameras are seen near the spot where "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett allegedly staged the attack in Chicago. Chicago police tapped into a vast network of surveillance cameras _ and some homeowners' doorbell cameras _ to help determine the identities of two brothers who later claimed they were paid by "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett to stage a racist and homophobic attack. CHICAGO (AP) -- Police tapped into Chicago's vast network of surveillance cameras -- and even some homeowners' doorbell cameras -- to track down two brothers who later claimed they were paid by "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett to stage an attack on him, the latest example of the city's high-tech approach to public safety. Officers said they reviewed video from more than four dozen cameras to trace the brothers' movements before and after the reported attack, determining where they lived and who they were before arresting them a little more than two weeks later. Smollett reported being beaten up by two men who shouted racist and anti-gay slurs and threw bleach on him.

Smart assistants could come with a'moral AI' to decide whether to report their owners for breaking the law. That's the suggestion by academics at the University of Bergen, Norway, who touted the idea at the ACM conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Society in Hawaii. They suggest that domestic bots such as Amazon Echo and Google Home should be enhanced with moral AI. This would enable them to weigh-up whether to report illegal activity to the police, effectively putting millions of people under constant surveillance. Marija Slavkovik, Associate Professor the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, led the research behind the idea.

AI is more pervasive in our daily lives than one may think. Spotify and Netflix use AI to recommend songs, films or television shows which it considers relevant to our interests based on our past activity or choices. Amazon uses it to recommend products based on past purchases or web browsing activity. Our increased reliance on online services and smart phones means that humans are interacting with AI at an ever-increasing rate. The technology has the potential to greatly increase efficiency, to save lives and to increase the general standard of living.

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar – A French national has appeared in court in Myanmar after being arrested two weeks ago for allegedly flying a drone close to the country's vast parliament complex. Arthur Desclaux faces a charge under the Illegal Export-Import Act and could be jailed for up to three years if convicted. He was driven into the court compound in the back of a police vehicle, past waiting media. A French consular official told reporters outside the court Friday that Desclaux said he had been well-treated, but expressed disappointment that the 27-year-old was still kept in custody. Frederic Inza says: "We regret he is still in prison.