Air pollution in cities can be an acute problem leading to damaging effects on people, animals, plants and property. It is an important topic which is getting increased attention as the human population of cities continues to increase. This year it was the subject the 2018 KDD Cup, the annual data mining and knowledge discovery competition organized by ACM SIGKDD. The burning of fossil fuels for transport and home heating is a major contributor to air pollution in urban environments, creating the pollutant nitrogen dioxide (NO2). This is a secondary pollutant produced by the oxidation of NO. It is a major contributor to respiratory problems. In the European Union, the Cleaner Air For Europe (CAFÉ) Directive 2008/50/EC established an hourly limit of 200 μg/m3 and an annual mean limit of 40 μg/m3 in respect of NO2.

Google employees, upset over reports of a secretive search engine project for China, have signed a petition asking for more transparency from company leaders. SAN FRANCISCO -- Hundreds of Google employees have signed a petition protesting a secret project to develop a search engine for China, the latest example of tech workers rebelling against corporate policies that push moral boundaries. The letter, which was posted by Buzzfeed and first reported by The New York Times, says Google's decision to work with China raises "urgent moral and ethical issues," and that employees "do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions" about their work, projects and employment. The employees, who represent a fraction of parent company Alphabet's workforce of 89,000, also were upset by the secrecy of the project and in the petition demanded more transparency about the company's myriad ventures, which range from self-driving cars to advanced artificial intelligence. Google was scheduled to have a regular company-wide meeting between senior leadership and global employees late Thursday, during which in-person and remote staffers can ask any question they want.

SAN FRANCISCO – Google's plan to launch a censored search engine in China requires more "transparency, oversight and accountability," hundreds of employees at the Alphabet Inc. unit said in an internal petition seen by Reuters on Thursday. Hoping to gain approval from the Chinese government to provide a mobile search service, the company plans to block some websites and search terms, Reuters reported this month, citing two people familiar with the matter. Disclosure of the secretive effort has disturbed some Google employees and human rights advocacy organizations. They are concerned that by agreeing to censorship demands, Google would validate China's prohibitions on free expression and violate the "don't be evil" clause in the company's code of conduct. After employees petitioned this year, Google announced it would not renew a project to help the U.S. military develop artificial intelligence technology for drones.

Employees at Google are protesting the company's work on a censored search engine for China, the New York Times reports, signing a letter that calls for more transparency and questions the move's ethics. Reports of the search engine surfaced earlier this month, leaving many to wonder how the company could justify it after publicly pulling its Chinese search engine in 2010 due to the country's censorship practices. The letter, which is circulating on Google's internal communications system, has been signed by approximately 1,000 employees, according to the New York Times' sources. "We urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table and a commitment to clear and open processes: Google employees need to know what we're building," the letter said. It also asked the company to let employees be a part of ethics reviews and publish ethical assessments of projects that are seen as controversial.

Three of Tinder's founders and a handful of current executives say the popular dating app's parent companies cheated them out of as much as $2 billion by manipulating financial information to undermine its valuation, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday. The co-founders and executives claim that Match Group Inc. MTCH -0.21% and IAC/InterActiveCorp . IAC 0.18% hid projections of Tinder's rapid growth in order to reduce payments to the holders of stock options, which were based on the company's valuation. The suit, filed by 10 plaintiffs in New York Supreme Court, also says that Greg Blatt, a longtime executive of IAC who served as interim chief executive of Tinder, groped and sexually harassed Tinder's vice president of marketing and communications, Rosette Pambakian, during the Los Angeles-based company's 2016 holiday party. Mr. Blatt didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

There's been a lot of media attention in recent years about how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are going to change the world--how they're going to create new and interesting applications in fields as diverse as education, law, health care and transportation. But if I had to bet on a use case where AI and ML will create a tangible, lasting impact, I'm putting my chips on DevOps. DevOps is all about automation of tasks. Its focus is on automating and monitoring every step of the software delivery process, ensuring that work gets done quickly and frequently. While it doesn't eliminate human tasks--far from it--it does encourage enterprises to set up repeatable processes that promote efficiency and reduce variability.

Currently, algorithms are used to make life-altering financial and legal decisions like who gets a job, what medical treatment people receive, and who gets granted parole. In theory, this should lead to fairer decision making. In reality, AI tech can be just as biased as the humans who create it. We are living in the age of the algorithm. More and more we are handing decision making over to mathematical models.

It supports the end-to-end data mining and machine learning process with a comprehensive, visual interface that handles all tasks in the analytical life cycle. Plus, since it runs on SAS Viya, the latest addition to the SAS Platform, you get predictive modeling and machine learning capabilities at breakthrough speeds. We hope you enjoy the test-drive! SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

Climate change has been bleaching coral reefs, decimating the local marine species that call them home, since at least the first major observations were recorded in the Caribbean in 1980. Thankfully, new A.I. cataloguing designed to identify the geographic regions where coral is still thriving hopes to reverse the trend, saving some of the world's most dense and varied aquatic ecosystems from all-but-certain extinction. There are numerous reasons why we need to care about saving coral reefs, from the ethical to the economic. In addition to housing about a quarter of marine species, these reefs provide $375 billion USD in revenue to the world economy, according to the Guardian, and food security to half a billion people. Without them, researchers say countless species and the entire ocean fishing industry that depends on them would simply evaporate.

The short answer is of course "because we can." Humans have always been inventive. Anything that can we invented will be invented, by someone somewhere. The long answer is somewhat complicated and philosophical. The truth is, our human brains are not very good at reasoning.