This report from the Montreal AI Ethics Institute (MAIEI) covers the most salient progress in research and reporting over the second half of 2021 in the field of AI ethics. Particular emphasis is placed on an "Analysis of the AI Ecosystem", "Privacy", "Bias", "Social Media and Problematic Information", "AI Design and Governance", "Laws and Regulations", "Trends", and other areas covered in the "Outside the Boxes" section. The two AI spotlights feature application pieces on "Constructing and Deconstructing Gender with AI-Generated Art" as well as "Will an Artificial Intellichef be Cooking Your Next Meal at a Michelin Star Restaurant?". Given MAIEI's mission to democratize AI, submissions from external collaborators have featured, such as pieces on the "Challenges of AI Development in Vietnam: Funding, Talent and Ethics" and using "Representation and Imagination for Preventing AI Harms". The report is a comprehensive overview of what the key issues in the field of AI ethics were in 2021, what trends are emergent, what gaps exist, and a peek into what to expect from the field of AI ethics in 2022. It is a resource for researchers and practitioners alike in the field to set their research and development agendas to make contributions to the field of AI ethics.

This special issue interrogates the meaning and impacts of "tech ethics": the embedding of ethics into digital technology research, development, use, and governance. In response to concerns about the social harms associated with digital technologies, many individuals and institutions have articulated the need for a greater emphasis on ethics in digital technology. Yet as more groups embrace the concept of ethics, critical discourses have emerged questioning whose ethics are being centered, whether "ethics" is the appropriate frame for improving technology, and what it means to develop "ethical" technology in practice. This interdisciplinary issue takes up these questions, interrogating the relationships among ethics, technology, and society in action. This special issue engages with the normative and contested notions of ethics itself, how ethics has been integrated with technology across domains, and potential paths forward to support more just and egalitarian technology. Rather than starting from philosophical theories, the authors in this issue orient their articles around the real-world discourses and impacts of tech ethics--i.e., tech ethics in action.

Revenue-cycle management company R1 RCM on Monday said it plans to acquire Cloudmed in an all-stock transaction that values Cloudmed at roughly $4.1 billion. Cloudmed uses artificial intelligence and automation to analyze medical records, payment data and medical insurance models for revenue-cycle management. The company has more than 3,100 healthcare provider customers. The acquisition fits into R1's vision of creating an end-to-end platform for managing revenue cycle for providers and engaging patients around payment. "We have been very deliberate and very consistent in terms of our excitement around the long-term automation potential that exists in this industry," said Joe Flanagan, R1's president and chief executive officer, Monday at a conference. "This transaction significantly increases our data footprint and we are positioned very well for meaningful innovation in and around data." Cloudmed's data will accelerate R1's work in machine learning, which requires data to create accurate models, Flanagan said at J.P. Morgan's annual healthcare conference--which is virtual for the second year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this article, we discuss the 10 best AI stocks for 2022. If you want to skip our detailed analysis of these stocks, go directly to the 5 Best AI Stocks for 2022. Artificial intelligence is the backbone of a myriad of innovations in today's world such as self-driving cars, high-tech computing, enterprise solutions, and robotics to name a few. AI is also set to play a key role in blockchain technology which forms the basis of the cryptocurrency industry. In addition, AI also played a key role in fighting the spread of COVID-19 from contact tracing to robots and drone deployment to responding to urgent needs in hospitals as well as performing deliveries of food, medications, and equipment.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a part of everyday conversation and our lives. It is considered as the new electricity that is revolutionizing the world. AI is heavily invested in both industry and academy. However, there is also a lot of hype in the current AI debate. AI based on so-called deep learning has achieved impressive results in many problems, but its limits are already visible. AI has been under research since the 1940s, and the industry has seen many ups and downs due to over-expectations and related disappointments that have followed. The purpose of this book is to give a realistic picture of AI, its history, its potential and limitations. We believe that AI is a helper, not a ruler of humans. We begin by describing what AI is and how it has evolved over the decades. After fundamentals, we explain the importance of massive data for the current mainstream of artificial intelligence. The most common representations for AI, methods, and machine learning are covered. In addition, the main application areas are introduced. Computer vision has been central to the development of AI. The book provides a general introduction to computer vision, and includes an exposure to the results and applications of our own research. Emotions are central to human intelligence, but little use has been made in AI. We present the basics of emotional intelligence and our own research on the topic. We discuss super-intelligence that transcends human understanding, explaining why such achievement seems impossible on the basis of present knowledge,and how AI could be improved. Finally, a summary is made of the current state of AI and what to do in the future. In the appendix, we look at the development of AI education, especially from the perspective of contents at our own university.

Forecasting has always been at the forefront of decision making and planning. The uncertainty that surrounds the future is both exciting and challenging, with individuals and organisations seeking to minimise risks and maximise utilities. The large number of forecasting applications calls for a diverse set of forecasting methods to tackle real-life challenges. This article provides a non-systematic review of the theory and the practice of forecasting. We provide an overview of a wide range of theoretical, state-of-the-art models, methods, principles, and approaches to prepare, produce, organise, and evaluate forecasts. We then demonstrate how such theoretical concepts are applied in a variety of real-life contexts. We do not claim that this review is an exhaustive list of methods and applications. However, we wish that our encyclopedic presentation will offer a point of reference for the rich work that has been undertaken over the last decades, with some key insights for the future of forecasting theory and practice. Given its encyclopedic nature, the intended mode of reading is non-linear. We offer cross-references to allow the readers to navigate through the various topics. We complement the theoretical concepts and applications covered by large lists of free or open-source software implementations and publicly-available databases.

'Business is an art and business leaders are artists', a well said a statement that is proving to be true every time a top leader takes amazing decisions for his organization. Although businesses rise and fall as times change, leaders never fail to be at the forefront to give their best. However, the key to long-term sustained success is great leadership and the ability of an executive to embrace the evolving trends. While talking about trends, the first thing that comes to our mind is artificial intelligence and disruptive technologies that are driving the next generation towards major digitization. The idea of technology came to practical usage when men thought that they needed machines to replace human activities. The core of such machines is to mimic or outperform human cognition. Although the concept of artificial intelligence came into existence in the 1950s, it didn't get fruition till the 1990s when technology hit the mainstream applications. Since then, the rise of technology has been enabled by exponentially faster and more powerful computers and large, complex datasets. Today, we have many futuristic technologies like machine learning, autonomous systems, data analytics, data science, and AR/VR in play. On the other hand, the enormous inflow of data has also contributed to this growth. In the digital world, development is highly reliant on technological advancement. Organizations across diverse industries are processing data to find insights and data-driven answers. Apart from laymen and consumers, it is the business leaders and corporate executives who have joined the bandwagon of the population to use artificial intelligence to the fullest. These trailblazing leaders are now increasingly using technology to optimize performance and experiment with new explorations. Their success story is what the world needs to hear. Analytics Insight has listed the top 100 such interviews that describe the journey of tech leaders and companies. Engineering and mining companies have faced a growing range of pressures in recent years, including price volatility, the need to drill down deeper to find new resources, and an industry-wide skills shortage. To address these challenges, many mining companies have embraced digital technology to enhance engineering design and develop smart mines'. Ausenco is a tech-savvy engineering company that delivers innovative, value-add consulting services, project delivery, asset operations, and maintenance solutions to the mining and metals, oil and gas, and industrial sectors….

In the age of big data, data processing and analytics are fundamental, ubiquitous, and crucial to many organizations which undertake a digitalization journey to improve and transform their businesses and operations. Data analytics typically entails other key operations such as data acquisition, data cleansing, data integration, modeling, etc., before insights could be extracted. Big data can unleash significant value creation across many sectors such as health care and retail[56]. However, the complexity of data (e.g., high volume, high velocity, and high variety) presents many challenges in data analytics and hence renders the difficulty in drawing meaningful insights. To tackle the challenge and facilitate the data processing and analytics efficiently and effectively, a lot of algorithms and techniques have been designed and numerous learning systems have also been developed by researchers and practitioners such as Spark MLlib[63], and Rafiki[104]. To support fast data processing and accurate data analytics, a huge number of algorithms rely on rules that are developed based on human knowledge and experience. For example, Shortest-job-first is a scheduling algorithm that chooses the job with the smallest execution time for the next execution. However, without fully exploiting characteristics of the workload, it can achieve inferior performance compared to DRL-based scheduling algorithm [58].

This report from the Montreal AI Ethics Institute covers the most salient progress in research and reporting over the second quarter of 2021 in the field of AI ethics with a special emphasis on "Environment and AI", "Creativity and AI", and "Geopolitics and AI." The report also features an exclusive piece titled "Critical Race Quantum Computer" that applies ideas from quantum physics to explain the complexities of human characteristics and how they can and should shape our interactions with each other. The report also features special contributions on the subject of pedagogy in AI ethics, sociology and AI ethics, and organizational challenges to implementing AI ethics in practice. Given MAIEI's mission to highlight scholars from around the world working on AI ethics issues, the report also features two spotlights sharing the work of scholars operating in Singapore and Mexico helping to shape policy measures as they relate to the responsible use of technology. The report also has an extensive section covering the gamut of issues when it comes to the societal impacts of AI covering areas of bias, privacy, transparency, accountability, fairness, interpretability, disinformation, policymaking, law, regulations, and moral philosophy.

There is mounting public concern over the influence that AI based systems has in our society. Coalitions in all sectors are acting worldwide to resist hamful applications of AI. From indigenous people addressing the lack of reliable data, to smart city stakeholders, to students protesting the academic relationships with sex trafficker and MIT donor Jeffery Epstein, the questionable ethics and values of those heavily investing in and profiting from AI are under global scrutiny. There are biased, wrongful, and disturbing assumptions embedded in AI algorithms that could get locked in without intervention. Our best human judgment is needed to contain AI's harmful impact. Perhaps one of the greatest contributions of AI will be to make us ultimately understand how important human wisdom truly is in life on earth.