The USA has been named as the country best prepared to realise the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in public service delivery, topping the 2020 Government AI Readiness Index. Meanwhile Singapore, which led the 2019 list, has fallen to sixth place. The index – compiled by UK-based consultants Oxford Insights and Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) – examines how well-placed nations are to take advantage of the benefits of AI in their internal operations and the delivery of public services. This year, 172 countries were reviewed. The ranking measures AI readiness across three criteria: government willingness to adopt AI, and the ability to adapt and innovate to do so; availability of AI expertise and tools from the technology sector; and capabilities in building AI tools, providing them with high-quality data, and building them into public services.

Less than 20% of Europeans believe that current laws "efficiently regulate" artificial intelligence, and 56% have low trust in authorities to exert effective control over the technology, according to a new survey from the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC). The findings have important implications for the governance and design of AI-powered public services, emphasising the need to address citizens' fears over transparency, accountability, equity in decision-making, and the management of personal data. The BEUC surveyed 11,500 consumers in nine European countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. It found that while a large majority of respondents feel that artificial intelligence (AI) can be useful, most don't trust the technology and feel that current regulations do not protect them from the harms it can cause. It also found that 66% of respondents from Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain agree that AI can be hazardous and should be banned by authorities.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said the US government must pour more funding into artificial intelligence (AI) research if it is to avert Chinese dominance in the field. Speaking during an online event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) think tank last Tuesday, Schmidt warned that the US is losing the AI race. "China is on its way to surpass [the US] in many, many ways," he said. "We need to take them seriously… they're going to end up with a bigger economy, more R&D investments, better quality research, wider applications of technology, and a stronger computing infrastructure." Schmidt, who is chair of the US defence department's Defense Innovation Advisory Board, described China's potential dominance in AI as a security threat that could lead to "high-tech authoritarianism" worldwide.

The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) was set up by a Royal Decree in August 2019. The organisation oversees the National Data Management Office, the National Information Center and the National Center for Artificial Intelligence. "Data is the single most important driver of our growth and reform and we have a clear roadmap for transforming Saudi Arabia into a leading AI and data-driven economy," said Dr Abdullah bin Sharaf Al Ghamdi, president of SDAIA, according to regional news website gulfnews.com. The country is establishing a national data bank to consolidate more than 80 government datasets, the equivalent to 30 per cent of the government's digital assets. It is also planning to build one of the largest clouds in the region by merging 83 data centres owned by more than 40 government bodies.

The Council of Europe is working on a future legal framework to regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) across all 47 member states. The Council's Ad hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI) held a three-day meeting on 6-8 July attended by around 150 international experts. The purpose of the meeting was to draw up "concrete proposals on the feasibility study of a future legal framework on artificial intelligence based on human rights, democracy and the rule of law," according to the Council. Representatives from all 47 member states, including Russia, attended the online meeting alongside delegates from'observer states' (USA, Canada, Japan, Mexico, the Vatican and Israel) and AI experts drawn from civil society, academia, and business. Other international organisations such as the EU, OECD and the UN will also contribute to CAHAI's work on potential AI regulation.

Experts from the private sector and leading research labs in the US and Europe have joined forces to create a toolkit for turning AI ethics principles into practice. The preprint paper, published last week, advocates paying people for finding risks of bias in artificial intelligence (AI) systems – adapting a model used to check the security of new computer systems, in which hackers are paid'bounties' for identifying weaknesses. The paper also proposes better linking independent third-party auditing operations and government policies to foster a market in regulatory systems, and suggests that governments increase funding for researchers in academia to verify performance claims made by industry. The 80-page paper, Toward Trustworthy AI Development: Mechanisms for Supporting Verifiable Claims, has been put together by AI specialists from 30 organisations including Google Brain, Intel, OpenAI, Stanford University and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. "In order for AI developers to earn trust from system users, customers, civil society, governments, and other stakeholders that they are building AI responsibly, there is a need to move beyond [ethics] principles to a focus on mechanisms for demonstrating responsible behaviour," the executive summary reads.

Countries around the world – including the US, South Korea and Taiwan – are using artificial intelligence (AI) to help slow the spread of COVID-19. The technology is being used to speed up the development of testing kits and treatments, to track the spread of the virus, and to provide citizens with real-time information. In South Korea, the government mobilised the private sector to begin developing coronavirus testing kits soon after reports of a new virus began to emerge from China. As part of this drive, Seoul-based molecular biotech company Seegene used AI to speed up the development of testing kits, enabling it to submit its solution to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) three weeks after scientists began working on it. The company's founder and chief executive, Chun Jong-yoon, told CNN that had AI not been used, the process would have taken two to three months.

Consumers must be safeguarded from artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) which is "advancing at a remarkable pace", says a European parliamentary committee. A draft resolution, approved by the European Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) on 23 January, proposes that humans should always be ultimately responsible for, and able to overrule, decisions, especially in medical, legal and accounting contexts. It also sets out how to make use of the technology more transparent and accountable. IMCO chair Petra De Sutter said the committee welcomed the potential of rapid advances in AI technology, but at the same time wanted to highlight important issues that needed to be addressed. The resolution makes clear that while free-flowing data will be essential for the creation of innovative services, the importance of protecting personal data under GDPR, and of using only high-quality and unbiased data sets is equally important.

In a surprise announcement, Indonesia's president Joko Widodo has ordered government agencies to replace top civil servants with artificial intelligence (AI) during 2020. The president announced the decision to a room of business leaders as he set out plans for his second five-year term after winning an election in April, Reuters reported. Widodo said that the top four tiers of civil servants would be condensed into two. "I have ordered my minister [of administrative and bureaucratic reform] to replace them with AI. Our bureaucracy will be faster with AI," he said.

The UK's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is accelerating its use of automated systems to handle claims for benefits, in a move some fear will disadvantage welfare recipients. The DWP has hired nearly 1,000 new IT staff in the last 18 months, and increased spending to about £8m (US$10.3m) This new'virtual workforce' is to take over some of the jobs of humans. According to an investigation by The Guardian, which has unearthed further detail on the DWP's plans, one recent tender document requested help to build "systems that… can automatically carry out tasks without human intervention". As well as contracts with a number of multinationals, the department is working with UiPath, a New York-based firm co-founded by Daniel Dines, the world's first "bot billionaire", whose machine learning software is being deployed by the DWP to check benefit claims and detect fraud.