Uber's chief of human resources, Liane Hornsey, tells USA TODAY a 200-session listening tour of the company after allegations of pervasive sexism found employees concerned about pay and performance reviews, but not sexual harassment. In this Dec. 13, 2016, file photo, Anthony Levandowski, head of Uber's self-driving program, speaks about their driverless car in San Francisco. SAN FRANCISCO -- Anthony Levandowski, the star engineer who once led Uber's ambitious self-driving project and a central figure in its contentious legal battle with Google's Waymo unit over trade secrets, has been fired. Uber spokesperson Chelsea Kohler confirmed to USA TODAY Tuesday that the ride-hailing company had severed its ties with Levandowski effectively immediately. The New York Times first reported on the firing.

Uber has followed through on threats to fire a star autonomous-car researcher whose hiring touched off a bitter legal fight with Waymo, the former self-driving car arm of Google. Waymo has alleged that Anthony Levandowski downloaded 14,000 documents containing trade secrets before he founded a startup that was purchased by Uber. A federal judge has ordered Uber to return the documents and referred the case to the U.S. Attorney's Office for possible criminal investigation. Uber said in a statement Tuesday that Levandowski missed a company deadline to help with an internal investigation in the case. A telephone message was left Tuesday afternoon for Levandowski.

Anthony Levandowski dismissed because he allegedly hasn't complied with court orders

Artificial intelligence is a technology that is already impacting how users interact with, and are affected by the Internet. In the near future, its impact is likely to only continue to grow. AI has the potential to vastly change the way that humans interact, not only with the digital world, but also with each other, through their work and through other socioeconomic institutions – for better or for worse. If we are to ensure that the impact of artificial intelligence will be positive, it will be essential that all stakeholders participate in the debates surrounding AI. In this paper, we seek to provide an introduction to AI to policymakers and other stakeholders in the wider Internet ecosystem. The paper explains the basics of the technology behind AI, identifies the key considerations and challenges surrounding the technology, and provides several high-level principles and recommendations to follow when dealing with the technology.

What if Fox News decided to address its gender and racial discrimination issues by entrusting personnel decisions to an algorithm? It's a fascinating thought experiment -- and one that helps illustrate the dangers of putting too much trust in big data. The channel's problems won't end with the passing of founder Roger Ailes, who resigned last year amid abundant allegations of sexual harassment. Just last week, a racial harassment complaint claimed yet another Fox host, and three more women filed suit saying that sexist and racial discrimination derailed their careers. There's a widespread belief that algorithms can help address such human foibles.

"So there's no sales tax revenue because there's no sales," says Joseph Henchman, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation. Cities and states get about 30 percent of their revenue from property taxes, 20 percent from sales tax, and another 20 from individual income taxes. "If revenues drop by a third"--the projected impact of automation--Henchman says, "that means services need to be cut back by a third, either through trying to be more focused or efficient with the services we do provide, or by actually having to pare back what government does." A robot tax isn't going to save jobs, but the idea is that it could help cushion the impact of mass automation by funding a universal basic income.

Facebook has claimed that a new German law that threatens to impose heavy fines on social media companies if they fail to delete hate speech and fake news, could lead to tech firms deleting legal content to avoid paying the punishing sanctions. The legislation, known as the Network Enforcement Act, was proposed by the German government in March and approved by the cabinet a month later, although it is yet to come into effect. Facebook reportedly issued a statement over the weekend explaining why the law "is not suitable to combat hate speech and false news". According to Business Insider, the company said in the statement that "the draft law provides an incentive to delete content that is not clearly illegal when social networks face such a disproportionate threat of fines." Facebook added: "It would have the effect of transferring responsibility for complex legal decisions from public authorities to private companies. And several legal experts have assessed the draft law as being against the German constitution and non-compliant with EU law. Facebook is committed to working in partnership with governments and civil society on solutions that will make this draft law unnecessary."

The ebb and flow of legal rules when it comes to flying a drone, whether it's a cheap mainstream model or something a little more intense, is confusing. It also differs depending on country, and even state. When it comes to Texas, both the House and the Senate are pushing a bill that could attach jail sentences to any pilot found guilty of flying something over oil and gas drilling facilities, as well as telecomms infrastructure and concentrated animal feeding operations -- factory farms. Politicians want these structures added to a "critical infrastructure" list, where flying a drone lower than 400 feet aboveit would be a Class B misdemeanor and could even mean up to 180 days in jail. The facilities would join a list that includes power plants, dams and other refineries, but critics say the additions would affect the public's First Amendment rights.

When people think of the ethical issues surrounding algorithms and AI, too many of us think of killer robots or movies like "The Matrix." But plenty of reasonable people are now rightly concerned that algorithms, far from being unbiased, can be used to perpetuate unjust or racist results. Last May, ProPublica published an article declaring that, "There's software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it's biased against blacks." ProPublica went on to detail how an algorithm used by parole boards to predict whether a criminal would re-offend was more likely to give bad scores to blacks than whites. There are plenty of other examples of algorithms which crank out ethically problematic results.

This question originally appeared on Quora. Capitalism works reasonably well as an economic system - provided that human beings are required to do effectively all of the labor. It worked far better than previous systems (slavery most notably). But capitalism has a long list of grievances, not the least of which is that human labor has slowly become devalued over time. The reason for that was simple: the assembly line, and the company that made its profits off of it, needed those workers.