Welcome to our May 2023 monthly digest, where you can catch up with any AIhub stories you may have missed, peruse the latest news, find out about recent events, and more. This month, we learn how to mitigate biases in machine learning, explore tradeoffs in school redistricting, and find out how machine learning algorithms fared in predicting the winner of this year's Eurovision Song Contest. In this blogpost, Max Springer examines the notion of fairness in hierarchical clustering. Max and colleagues demonstrate that it's possible to incorporate fairness constraints or demographic information into the optimization process to reduce biases in ML models without significantly sacrificing performance. Joar Skalse and Alessandro Abate won the AAAI 2023 outstanding paper award for their work, Misspecification in Inverse Reinforcement Learning, in which they study the question of how robust the inverse reinforcement learning problem is to misspecification of the underlying behavioural model.

Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel joins'Fox & Friends' to discuss the benefits of artificial intelligence in the medical industry if used with caution. Artificial intelligence is taking on an ever-widening role in the health and wellness space, assisting with everything from cancer detection to medical documentation. Soon, AI could make it easier for dentists to give patients a more natural, functional smile. Researchers from the University of Hong Kong recently developed an AI algorithm that uses 3D machine learning to design personalized dental crowns with a higher degree of accuracy than traditional methods, according to a press release from the university. The AI analyzes data from the teeth adjacent to the crown to ensure a more natural, precise fit than the crowns created using today's methods, the researchers said.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang showed off the first iteration of Spectrum-X, the Spectrum-4 chip, with one hundred billion transistors in a 90-millimeter by 90-millimeter die. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, offering the opening keynote of the Computex computer technology conference, on Monday in Taipei, Taiwan, unveiled a host of new products, including a new kind of ethernet switch dedicated to moving high-volumes of data for artificial intelligence tasks. "How do we introduce a new ethernet, that is backward compatible with everything, to turn every data center into a generative AI data center?" "For the very first time we are bringing the capabilities of high performance computing into the ethernet market," said Huang. The Spectrum-X, as the family of ethernet is known, is "the world's first high-performance ethernet for AI," according to Nvidia.

New Yorkers reveal what they would put in their doomsday bags. "Transformers" and "Las Vegas" star Josh Duhamel has spoken out about becoming a doomsday prepper, stating that he's planning on protecting his family if the "s*** hits the fan" in Los Angeles. The actor, who has starred in the TV show "Las Vegas," gave an interview in which he explained, "I've become a bit of a doomsday prepper, I guess." Duhamel told the website Inverse, "I'm learning how to hunt. He added, "Suddenly I had 54 acres out there.

Ever year, more than a million people in North America suffer some form of spinal cord injury (SCI), with an annual cost of more than $7 billion to treat and rehabilitate those patients. The medical community has made incredible gains toward mitigating, if not reversing, the effects of paralysis in the last quarter-century including advances in pharmacology, stem cell technologies, neuromodulation, and external prosthetics. Electrical stimulation of the spinal cord has already shown especially promising results in helping spinal injury patients rehabilitate, improving not just extremity function but spasticity, bladder and blood pressure control as well. Now, in a study published in Nature Tuesday, SCI therapy startup Onward Medical, announced that it has helped improve a formerly-paraplegic man's walking gait through the use of an implanted brain computer interface (BCI) and novel "digital bridge" that spans the gap where the spine was severed. We've been zapping paraplegic patients' spines with low-voltage jolts as part of their physical rehabilitation for years in a process known as Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES).

Rishi Sunak is scrambling to update the government's approach to regulating artificial intelligence, amid warnings that the industry poses an existential risk to humanity unless countries radically change how they allow the technology to be developed. The prime minister and his officials are looking at ways to tighten the UK's regulation of cutting-edge technology, as industry figures warn the government's AI white paper, published just two months ago, is already out of date. Government sources have told the Guardian the prime minister is increasingly concerned about the risks posed by AI, only weeks after his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said he wanted the UK to "win the race" to develop the technology. Sunak is pushing allies to formulate an international agreement on how to develop AI capabilities, which could even lead to the creation of a new global regulator. Meanwhile Conservative and Labour MPs are calling on the prime minister to pass a separate bill that could create the UK's first AI-focused watchdog.

Google has finally removed a controversial mobile game that allowed players to buy, sell and even inflict torture on black characters. Called'Simulador de Escravidão' (or'Slavery Simulator'), the Android game for'all ages' was created by Malaysian games developer Magnus Games. It was released to Google's Play Store on April 20 and downloaded more than 1,000 times before it was removed on Wednesday following uproar on social media. But it still remains available to people who have already downloaded it, according to Brazilian daily newspaper Folha de S Paulo. It follows claims that the hugely popular FIFA football video game perpetuates racist myths and stereotypes about black people.

'Outnumbered' hosts weigh in on the health of top Democrat leaders and discuss proposals for how to handle lawmakers who become unwell during service. The subjects of mental and physical competency in elected office has become a fierce debate in recent months. Back in February, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called for a mandatory cognitive test for politicians 75 and older, a not-so-subtle dig at 80-year-old President Biden and her 76-year-old GOP rival former President Trump. Poll after poll have shown voters, even among Democrats, increasingly concerned about Biden's age as he seeks reelection in 2024. And his presidency has not been short of gaffes, verbal stumbles and various memory lapses.

Neuralink has announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the launch of its first clinical study in humans. "We are excited to share that we have received the FDA's approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!" Neuralink's official Twitter account wrote on Thursday.(opens in a new tab) "This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people." The neurotechnology company isn't recruiting test subjects just yet, and hasn't released any information on exactly what the clinical trial will involve. Even so, fans of Neuralink founder Elon Musk are already chomping(opens in a new tab) at(opens in a new tab) the(opens in a new tab) bit(opens in a new tab) to implant questionable experimental technology in their grey matter. Neuralink aims to develop implantable devices that will let people control computers with their brain, as well as restore vision or mobility to people with disabilities.

Neuralink Corp., Elon Musk's brain-implant company, said it received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to conduct human clinical trials. "This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people," the company said Thursday in a tweet. The FDA and Neuralink did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Musk's startup is developing a small device that will link the brain to a computer, consisting of electrode-laced wires. Placing the device requires drilling into the skull. The approval "is really a big deal," said Cristin Welle, a former FDA official and an associate professor of neurosurgery and physiology at the University of Colorado.