Patrick Radden Keefe's account of the London Met's police unit of "super-recognizers" is fascinating, but the use of their identifications in investigations or in prosecutions risks misidentification and wrongful conviction ("Total Recall," August 22nd). Since 1989, eyewitness misidentification has contributed to a seventy-one per cent rate of wrongful convictions, proved by DNA testing. Despite the unit's system of checks and balances, identifications by Met super-recognizers lack the basic elements of scientific inquiry: validation, peer review, and error rates. Even if super-recognizers are better at face recognition than most people, the hypothesis that they excel at matching a previously seen face to a target has not been tested in a clinical environment. Nor have there been any valid studies that independently establish error rates.

Most people have heard of the headline-making achievements in artificial intelligence (AI); systems winning quiz shows and beating world champions in chess. These are the poster children of the discipline but there is a quieter revolution taking in shape in other areas, including regulatory compliance in financial services. Writing for Banking Technology, Mike MacDonagh, London-based director of enterprise risk management at Wolters Kluwer, examines how AI technologies are promising to transform the way that firms ensure they can comply with a global explosion of new regulation. The problem with regulation Looked at in isolation, a piece of regulation is a relatively simple affair – a legal document containing text that describes what needs to be done, by whom, when, and (sometimes) how. With some understanding of the underlying topic, a compliance officer can read the document; understand what is mandated and where it will affect his or her part of the organisation.

Dr. Latanya Sweeney explains how Racism gets Automatically Baked into the Algorithms that Quietly Shape Our World. Computers like children, are not born or in the case of the computer, created, racist, prejudice, sexist, hateful, etc. The person(s) who develop the Artificial Intelligence – A.I., i.e., Machine Learning – ML, Cognitive Computing, Natural Language Processing – NLP, etc., algorithms can either code the computer to be Racist, Prejudice, Sexist, Hateful, etc., or not. This algorithm forms the very foundation upon how that A.I. operates from that time forward, just as parents, teachers, communities, and friends can form the foundation early on, for how you operate, interact, behave, etc.

This paper considers a restriction to nonnegative matrix factorization in which at least one matrix factor is stochastic. That is, the elements of the matrix factors are nonnegative and the columns of one matrix factor sum to 1. This restriction includes topic models, a popular method for analyzing unstructured data. It also includes a method for storing and finding pictures. The paper presents necessary and sufficient conditions on the observed data such that the factorization is unique. In addition, the paper characterizes natural bounds on the parameters for any observed data and presents a consistent least squares estimator. The results are illustrated using a topic model analysis of PhD abstracts in economics and the problem of storing and retrieving a set of pictures of faces. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Trade Commission. I'm grateful for continued discussions about this problem with Devesh Raval and Nathan Wilson.

States across the Southeast are experiencing sharp jumps in gas prices after a major gasoline pipeline ruptured in central Alabama, spilling as many as 336,000 gallons of fuel upstream from a national wildlife refuge. But thanks to a few strokes of luck, the environmental damage is minimal. The pipeline breached near an old coal mine pit, and much of the fuel flowed into a water retention pond. With local streams dry -- much of central Alabama is suffering from moderate to severe drought -- the gasoline did not find its way down into the Cahaba River, home to 64 rare and endangered plant and animal species, including the Cahaba lily. "We really did bypass the bullet," said Myra Crawford, executive director at Cahaba Riverkeeper, which has been monitoring the area by canoe and foot."It

The most frequent criticism was summed up by a woman who wrote: "You do not understand the'staying power' that the two major parties have in elections. They are not going to let an outsider into their club. A man put it this way: "They can wait out the Tea Parties and the crazies. Mavericks can't get a major party nomination." No matter who wins in November, I contend that the moderates in both parties will rise again, if only because the extremists and the folks on the fringes are not very good at governing.) As I wrote in 2011, "this is one of those times when fewer and fewer Americans believe that good politicians exist.

To the editor: We should not confuse high income/style of living with high reported "taxable" income. People who have very high/comfortable living styles often report meager levels of "taxable income." To me, it's little wonder Trump seems so reluctant to release those returns of his. Current audit, or minimized reported taxable income that would shock even his most ardent followers? To the editor: About the only growth I could see in his plan was that of the federal deficit, which, in turn, will further balloon the national debt. It is a plan riddled with assumptions.

Question: After moving into my condo 15 years ago I attended a board meeting with several fed-up owners complaining of many unresolved problems. I thought things would change; I was wrong, nothing changed. I began a letter-writing campaign to all 75 homeowners to get the board to see the folly of its ways but that didn't work. I wrote my legislators and no one was interested in helping in any meaningful way. A couple months ago, I wrote to the state attorney general complaining of poor management and misappropriation of association funds.

This Wednesday, the tech billionaire investor announced an investment in Luminance, a newly launched startup that uses artificial technology to read contracts in order help law firms with the arduous process of due diligence for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). It's not a "sexy" piece of technology, Lynch argues -- but one that has huge implications for the way we live our lives, and is indicative of a quiet revolution in artificial intelligence. What this is is probably an example of what's going to be changing a lot of things. If you can get machine technology to be reading contracts, it's going to be changing a lot of the world around us ... you're seeing the beginning of a new age." He has since founded venture capital firm Invoke Capital -- the vehicle through which the investment in Luminance was made. This week, Business Insider sat down with the investor to discuss Luminance, Brexit, his augmented reality plans, and why he likes having an "unfair advantage." Mike Lynch is an investor in Luminance -- but was also instrumental in helping create it. "The bit that makes it possible is the machine learning, and that was being done by some research people at Cambridge, and I actually have a connection because my PhD a long, long time ago was in machine learning," Lynch said. "I was introduced to them, and what they were doing looked great, but I said to them'look, you gotta go and meet some real world people.' "So they started getting real data and they met up with [law firm] Slaughter and May, and basically the machine learnt from Slaughter and May how to do these thing and at that point they made a little company. They got a CEO who is a lady who'd actually been involved in a lot of M&A deals over their career and we funded it, and it's been developing the product, and today it comes out into the bright lights of day."

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer; you should seek real legal council. This is not legal advice. One of the problems you might run into is that, at least in the US, it's illegal to break DRM systems even for fair-use activities (with certain exceptions). The law in question is called the DMCA. You need to make sure you're not violating that by, e.g.