With more than 6,000 applicants from over 100 countries competing, the first international beauty contest judged entirely by artificial intelligence just came to an end. The results are a bit disheartening. The team of judges, a five robot panel, attempted to pick winners from the submitted photos in hopes that it could determine which faces most closely resembled the idea of "human beauty." Each of the five robot judges used artificial intelligence to analyze specific traits that contribute to perceived outer beauty. Momentum by TNW is our New York technology event for anyone interested in helping their company grow. Using complex algorithms, the judges picked 44 winners.

I've been writing about the work of Cathy "Mathbabe" O'Neil for years: she's a radical data-scientist with a Harvard PhD in mathematics, who coined the term "Weapons of Math Destruction" to describe the ways that sloppy statistical modeling is punishing millions of people every day, and in more and more cases, destroying lives. Today, O'Neil brings her argument to print, with a fantastic, plainspoken, call to arms called (what else?) Weapons of Math Destruction. Discussions about big data's role in our society tends to focus on algorithms, but the algorithms for handling giant data sets are all well understood and work well. Models are what you get when you feed data to an algorithm and ask it to make predictions. As O'Neil puts it, "Models are opinions embedded in mathematics." Other critical data scientists, like Patrick Ball from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group have located their critique in the same place.

International firm Reed Smith expects to make greater use of artificial intelligence technology for transactional work following a successful pilot in its London office. After using AI technology for a real estate matter, chief knowledge officer Lucy Dillon (pictured) said the firm will definitely be using it again. 'I think we will be using [the technology] more widely as it lends itself to any transaction where you are reviewing large reams of documents,' she added. The firm tested a'cognitive computing platform' developed by software provider RAVN Systems. The software was used to read, interpret and extract key provisions from a client's leases. It then produced a review identifying higher-risk leases that required further inspection.

The first international beauty contest judged by "machines" was supposed to use objective factors such as facial symmetry and wrinkles to identify the most attractive contestants. After Beauty.AI launched this year, roughly 6,000 people from more than 100 countries submitted photos in the hopes that artificial intelligence, supported by complex algorithms, would determine that their faces most closely resembled "human beauty". But when the results came in, the creators were dismayed to see that there was a glaring factor linking the winners: the robots did not like people with dark skin. Out of 44 winners, nearly all were white, a handful were Asian, and only one had dark skin. That's despite the fact that, although the majority of contestants were white, many people of color submitted photos, including large groups from India and Africa.

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An agreement to send Canadian authorities passenger name record (PNR) data for flights from the European Union cannot be entered into in its current form, a top European Union judge has said. That's because parts of the draft agreement are incompatible with EU citizens' fundamental privacy rights, according to Paolo Mengozzi, Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU, in a legal opinion issued Thursday. His opinion, on a case brought by the European Parliament, is only advisory, and it still remains for the CJEU to make a final ruling on the matter. But if the court follows his advice, it could disrupt the European Commission's plans for a new directive on the sharing of PNR data among EU member states and with other countries. The agreement, which the EU and Canada began negotiating in 2010, concerns the transfer of PNR data to Canadian authorities for the purpose of combatting terrorism and other serious transnational crime. The passenger name records concerned contain 19 categories of information, covering the passenger's identity, nationality, address, contact details of the person making the reservation, payment information such as the number of the credit card used to reserve the flight, luggage details, and additional services requested concerning health problems, mobility, or dietary requirements.

Three military veterans once involved in the U.S. drone program have thrown their support behind a Yemeni man's legal fight to obtain details about why his family members were killed in a 2012 strike. The former soldiers' unusual decision to publicly endorse the lawsuit against President Obama and other U.S. officials adds another twist to Faisal bin Ali Jaber's four-year quest for accountability in the deaths of his brother-in-law and nephew, who he believes needlessly fell victim to one of the most lethal covert programs in U.S. history. The former enlisted service members told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a recent filing that they believe the 2012 drone strike serves as a case study of how mistakes frequently occur in the nation's targeted-killing program, where life-or-death decisions are based upon top-secret evidence. The veterans say they "witnessed a secret, global system without regard for borders, conducting widespread surveillance with the ability to conduct deadly targeted killing operations." Though the veterans did not disclose any personal knowledge of the strike that is alleged to have killed Jaber's relatives, they claim the military frequently labels the deaths of unknown victims as "enemy kills."

Their policy push happened just as the larger public's perceptions about nanotechnology--was it Drexlerian nanobots or a more incremental blend of physics and chemistry?--were Smalley and some policymakers had fears that negative perceptions might impede their plans for a national research initiative. This concern was heightened when, in April 2000, Wired magazine published Bill Joy's article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us." Joy, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, warned about future technological dystopias. He singled out nanotechnology--especially the Drexlerian visions of autonomous and self-replicating nano-assemblers--as a potential threat to humanity. Two years later, novelist Michael Crichton published his best-selling techno-thriller Prey.

BRUSSELS--For Apple Inc. AAPL -2.05 % and Ireland, the European Commission's decision ordering Dublin to collect billions of euros from Apple in unpaid taxes isn't the end of the story. They have a chance to turn the tables on the commission at the bloc's highest courts, where they are preparing to appeal. The European Commission, the bloc's antitrust regulator, has ordered Ireland to recoup about 13 billion, or roughly 14.6 billion, in taxes that the commission has estimated Apple avoided paying in Europe for more than a decade. There is a strong record of the European Union's top court ruling in favor of the European Commission's decisions. But lawyers say there is one area where that trend isn't as clear-cut: state-aid cases dealing with tax matters.

The U.S. has been using drones more and more frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks. They have been highly effective on the battlefield, but have raised legal and ethical issues. The U.S. has been using drones more and more frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks. They have been highly effective on the battlefield, but have raised legal and ethical issues. Today in the skies over New Mexico, Air Force students are practicing for the kill.