AI Weekly: AI prosecutors and pong-playing neurons closed out 2021

In the week that drew 2021 to a close, the tech news cycle died down, as it typically does. Even an industry as fast-paced as AI needs a reprieve, sometimes -- especially as a new COVID-19 variant upends plans and major conferences. But that isn't to say late December wasn't eventful. One of the most talked-about stories came from the South China Morning Post (SCMP), which described an "AI prosecutor" developed by Chinese researchers that can reportedly identify crimes and press charges "with 97% accuracy." The system -- which was trained on 1,000 "traits" sourced from 17,000 real-life cases of crimes from 2015 to 2020, like gambling, reckless driving, theft, and fraud -- recommends sentences given a brief text description.