Police body cameras are widely seen as a way to improve law enforcement's transparency with the public. But when mixed with police use of facial-recognition tools, the prospect of continual surveillance comes with big risks to privacy. Facial-recognition technology combined with policy body cameras could "redefine the nature of public spaces," Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology, told the US House Oversight Committee at a hearing on March 22. It's not a distant reality and it threatens civil liberties, he warned. Technologists already have tools, and are developing more, that allow police to recognize people in real time. Of 38 manufacturers who make 66 different products, at least nine already have facial recognition technology capabilities or have made accommodations to build it in, according to a 2016 Johns Hopkins University report, created for the US Department of Justice, on the body-worn camera market.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used as an unbiased judge, for matters ranging from insurance to economic efficiency. But can it ever truly be unbiased? When Remy Descartes first wrote the phrase cogito ergo sum –'I think therefore I am'– in the 1600s, he could not have been aware of the philosophical questioning that would erupt with the onset of artificial intelligence (AI) in the 20th and 21st century. Every Google search, every video suggested on YouTube and every Siri recommendation is built on machine learning algorithms designed to learn everything about your online habits, in a bid to offer targeted content that you might like. Even outside of consumer-level decisions, AI and algorithms are increasingly being used to root out hidden meanings in billions of lines of genetic code, in the hope of finding a cure to a disease or building machines that can talk for themselves.

I was meeting with the Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce's Communications Committee; there was some brainstorming about session ideas for the upcoming Chamber Conference. There were some thoughts thrown out, and quite a few comments were made. Then someone said, "how about automation and artificial intelligence." Suddenly, a surge of ideas and thoughts hit the room like a vicious uppercut from Mike Tyson circa 1999. All industries went into the mix: retail, auto, construction, medical and legal.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell repeatedly mentions what has become known as the "10,000-hour rule", which states that to become world-class in any field you must devote 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice". Whether or not you believe the 10,000-hour figure, many would acknowledge that to become an accomplished legal professional requires considerable legal, communicative and, particularly in in-house environments, interpersonal skills that are often acquired after a tremendous amount of effort exerted over many years. There has been much hoopla about AI-based legal systems that, some might have you believe, may soon replace lawyers (no doubt causing a degree of anxiety among some legal professionals). There is some misunderstanding among many lawyers, and much of the public, about what AI systems are presently capable of. Can a legal AI, based on current technology, actually "think" like a lawyer?

Newswire) Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the next big growth areas for the mobile industry according to a white paper released by IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, ahead of Mobile World Congress. "Smartphones will both be the interface for consumer AI and deliver the vast amount of data technology companies need to train AI systems" "We see AI making smart devices even smarter with improved user experiences," said Ian Fogg, director of mobile and telecom analysis at IHS Markit. "Existing AI agents like Apple's Siri and Google Assistant will expand across the industry, complemented by embedded AI in all parts of mobile devices from cameras, to audio, to machine." "Smartphones will both be the interface for consumer AI and deliver the vast amount of data technology companies need to train AI systems," Fogg said. Software investments and partnerships are critical for hardware companies to create smarter AI-enabled experiences, said the IHS Markit white paper.

Businesses that put in the effort to create an artificially intelligent business may see amazing returns at first -- but there are good reasons to expect those to diminish. It would be very, very helpful to know what the future holds for artificial intelligence in business. Unfortunately, it is also very, very hard to predict. With this topic, our extrapolation heuristics may not work well. We tend to extrapolate linearly, expecting the pace of past progress to continue unchanged.

Interview Sure, algorithms are insanely useful, but we need to watch we don't become complacent and unable to question them, University College London's Dr Hannah Fry warned in an interview with The Register. Dr Fry is a lecturer in the mathematics of cities at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, where her research "revolves around the study of complex social and economic systems at various scales, from the individual to the urban, regional and the global, and particularly those with a spatial element." While not engaged in research, however, Dr Fry is quickly becoming one of the UK's favourite mathematicians, known for her work on BBC 4's The Joy of Data, as well as her popular TED talk, 'The Mathematics of Love', which applied statistical and data-scientific models to dating, sex and marriage. Chatting to The Register ahead of DataFest2017, the inaugural week-long data science festival in Edinburgh, Dr Fry said she thought the event was going to be "a lot of fun". It's something people really need to address, and having so many excellent people together in a room at once; it's going to be a great few days." "Data science as a field has exploded over the past five years," because there's "much more access to data now" said Dr Fry, noting that with "sensors, IoT, with us living more of our lives online" there's now "very little that is untouched by data". We "realised a few years ago how much data there was," Dr Fry said. "I think the whole thing is very exciting.

There are three categories of intelligence in the legal vertical–intellectual, emotional, and artificial. Many lawyers have elevated IQ's, though relatively few seem to possess high EQ's– commonly called'people skills'. Only the best lawyers--trusted advisers– have both. Artificial intelligence (AI), a recent entrant in the legal vertical, scores high on IQ, but the jury is still out on whether machines can develop comparable EQ. What kind of intelligence is required for legal delivery?

Impressive advances in artificial intelligence technology tailored for legal work have led some lawyers to worry that their profession may be Silicon Valley's next victim. But recent research and even the people working on the software meant to automate legal work say the adoption of A.I. in law firms will be a slow, task-by-task process. In other words, like it or not, a robot is not about to replace your lawyer. "There is this popular view that if you can automate one piece of the work, the rest of the job is toast," said Frank Levy, a labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An artificial intelligence technique called natural language processing has proved useful in scanning and predicting what documents will be relevant to a case, for example.

After decades of unfulfilled promises artificial intelligence (AI) has started to deliver. Not hindered by rules and regulations intelligent machines are now exceeding humans in areas such as image recognition. With some of us this raises worries about killer robots. Consciously or subconsciously the tech industry is feeding these apocalyptic visions in order to divert attention from real issues surrounding AI. Prominent science and technology luminaries such as Bill Gates and Elon Musk have warned several times that self-aware, super intelligent artificial systems will advance to a point at which they could become a threat to human existence.