At the same time, there was indeed more action. In one major victory, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM banned or suspended their sale of face recognition to law enforcement, after the killing of George Floyd spurred global protests against police brutality. It was the culmination of two years of fighting by researchers and civil rights activists to demonstrate the ineffective and discriminatory effects of the companies' technologies. Another change was small yet notable: for the first time ever, NeurIPS, one of the most prominent AI research conferences, required researchers to submit an ethics statement with their papers. So here we are at the start of 2021, with more public and regulatory attention on AI's influence than ever before.

The way children play iPad games could reveal if they have autism, researchers have found. They found those with the condition used greater force and moved their finger in different ways. It is hoped the app could lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment. The children were asked to play games on smart tablet computers with touch-sensitive screens and embedded movement sensors. Researchers at the University of Strathclyde and colleagues at the start-up Harimata added code to two commercially available games for children in order for them to capture sensor and touch-screen data as they children played.