Artificial intelligence is the future. One of the latest advancements is using it for automatically estimating age based on a person's face, a technology used for determining who can enter a bar or potentially view age-restricted content online. But are there biases in AI processing? Researchers from Western University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) tested a large sample of the prominent major AI technologies available today and found not only did they reproduce human biases in the recognition of facial age, but they exaggerated those biases. The findings were published in Scientific Reports.

This article is the second in a series on David Ben-Gurion's exchanges with Prof. Amos de-Shalit. A year and a half passed "quietly" since David Ben-Gurion and Prof. Amos de-Shalit last corresponded. During this time no letters or ideas were exchanged between the two. Nevertheless, the subject seems to have continued to preoccupy Ben-Gurion's thoughts, to the point where he began to read scientific articles by renowned physicists on related subjects. On June 10, 1959, Ben-Gurion decided to break his silence and sent de-Shalit a short and to-the-point letter.

"In the world of imagination, it is possible to envisage a cognitively and emotionally intelligent chief executive, who happens also to be an inspiring public communicator... and the possessor of exceptional political skill and vision. In the real world, human imperfection is inevitable, but some imperfections are more disabling than others .... Beware the presidential contender who lacks emotional intelligence. Fred Greenstein, an emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, wrote this in his book "The Presidential Difference" (third edition, 2009), which surveys the characters of American presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama and seeks to glean the characteristics needed to be a good leader. In his book, Greenstein goes deeper into the popular American habit of ranking presidents. The genesis of this method is usually ascribed to the American historian Arthur Schlesinger. In the 1940s, Schlesinger discovered a relatively empty niche in his field, American history, ...

"Can you hold on a minute? I need to charge my robot." Uri Kartoun is developing robots, nicknamed EDNex and Clango, for handling suspicious packages. Down the hall, classmate Juan Wachs is working on a computer interface that responds to hand gestures. Both are enrolled in a joint master's/Ph.D. program in intelligent systems at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, located in Beersheba, Israel [see photo, " School Daze"]. But their reasons for choosing Ben-Gurion were very different and illustrate the range of issues prospective students should consider when choosing an engineering graduate program.