I built this'AI aunt' for women after family tragedy in South Africa A gruesome killing in her own family inspired South African Leonora Tima to create a digital platform where people, mostly women, can talk about and track abuse. Leonora's relative was just 19 years old, and nine months pregnant, when she was killed, her body dumped on the side of a highway near Cape Town in 2020. I work in the development sector, so I've seen violence, Leonora says. But what stood out for me was that my family member's violent death was seen as so normal in South African society. Her death wasn't published by any news outlet because the sheer volume of these cases in our country is such that it doesn't qualify as news.

The California Superior Court in Sacramento has ruled in favor of Waymo, allowing the company to keep specific details about its autonomous vehicle technology a secret. Waymo won the case against the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which it sued back in January to prevent the agency from disclosing what it considers trade secrets that could give its competitors an edge. While the Alphabet company filed a lawsuit against the DMV, it was an unidentified party that made a public records request for its driverless technology that started it all. The DMV gave Waymo the chance to redact information it deems to be trade secrets from its driverless deployment application before handing the copy over to the requester. However, the third party challenged the blacked out sections, and the DMV had advised Waymo to seek an injunction if it wants to prohibit the disclosure of the redacted materials. The information Waymo wants to keep secret includes how it plans to handle emergencies, such as how it analyzes collisions involving its vehicles, and how its technology decides when to hand over control to a human driver.

Striking a blow to patent applicants seeking to assert inventorship by artificial intelligence ("AI") systems, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled on September 3, 2021 that an AI machine cannot qualify as an "inventor" under the Patent Act. The fight is now expected to move to the Federal Circuit on appeal. Proskauer has been closely monitoring the quickly-developing legal treatment of AI systems, especially in view of their implications for life sciences patents. AI's presence in life sciences innovation is well established, for example, to predict biological targets of prospective drug molecules and to identify drug design candidates (among many other applications). As we reported in August, two countries--Australia and South Africa--have already permitted AI systems to qualify as "inventors" in patent applications. However, hope for a worldwide trend have been dashed, at least for now.

A district court ruled that the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence must be more transparent in its work researching AI. The congressionally mandated commission is comprised of current and former government and industry executives who receive government briefings and hold regular meetings. But according to the court, the commission has not complied with the Federal Advisory Committee Act in disclosing its work to the public. The commission, co-chaired by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is tasked by the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act with researching how AI will shape and impact the future of U.S. national security. It will ultimately deliver a final report to Congress in March 2021 before dissolving later that October.

Fox News Flash top headlines for August 29 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com A Pennsylvania court ruled Tuesday that making a "gunlike hand gesture" is a crime after a man made the hand motion during an argument with his neighbor -- an act which reportedly made several nearby residents nervous and prompted a call to police. Stephen Kirchner, 64, made the gesture toward his neighbor in Manor Township in June 2018, according to surveillance video. Kirchner, walking alongside a female neighbor, "stopped, made eye contact with [the male neighbor] and then made a hand gesture at him imitating the firing and recoiling of a gun," according to court documents.

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said Thursday that Facebook users in Illinois can sue the company over its use of facial recognition technology. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said Thursday that Facebook users in Illinois can sue the company over its use of facial recognition technology. A U.S. court has ruled that Facebook users in Illinois can sue the company over face recognition technology, meaning a class action can move forward. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued its ruling on Thursday. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, it's the first decision by a U.S. appellate court to directly address privacy concerns posed by facial recognition technology.

Uber should treat its drivers in the U.K. as employees, paying them at least minimum wage from the moment they are available to work until they log off and providing them with paid time off, a London employment tribunal has ruled. The drivers and Uber must now make proposals to the judge how they will comply with the ruling, made following a preliminary hearing. What they agree will have consequences for Uber and businesses like it across the U.K. It could push costs up, increasing Uber's incentive to develop its own self-driving car. Drivers and other on-demand workers around the world are finding that the flexibility to choose their working hours touted by Uber and companies like it comes with a high cost: The absence of other benefits often taken for granted in other jobs. For the two test claimants in the London case, former Uber drivers Yaseen Aslam and James Farrar, those missing benefits included paid time off for vacations or illness, and a guaranteed minimum hourly income during periods when they made themselves available to Uber yet were not offered paid work.

Norway has violated the human rights of mass killer Anders Breivik by keeping him in solidarity confinement in a three-cell complex where he can play video games, watch TV and exercise, a court has ruled. The ruling found in Oslo on Wednesday that Breivik - who killed 77 people in twin attacks in 2011 - had been subjected to strip searches, had been woken up hourly by guards for long periods and that the authorities had done little to alleviate the effect of his isolation. "The prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment represents a fundamental value in a democratic society. This applies no matter what - also in the treatment of terrorists and killers," judge Helen Andenaes Sekulic said in her ruling. The state must pay Breivik's legal fees of more than 40,000, the judge ruled.