Japanese scientist Makoto Kuroda faces felony charges after allegedly poisoning a colleague's water bottle with toxic chemicals at UW-Madison's Influenza Research Institute.

But not everyone is happy. The firm has angered a number of manga fans who see the use of AI to translate a celebrated and traditional art form as one more front in the ongoing battle between tech companies and artists. "However well-intentioned this company might be, I find the idea of using AI to translate manga distasteful and insulting," says Casey Brienza, a sociologist and author of the book Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics. Manga is a form of Japanese comic that has been around for more than a century. Hit titles are often translated into other languages and find a large global readership, especially in the US. Some, like Battle Angel Alita or One Piece, are turned into anime (animated versions of the comics) or live-action shows and become blockbuster movies and top Netflix picks.

Litigating Artificial Intelligence: When Does AI Violate Our Legal Rights? Read full article May 27, 2021, 3:20 PM ·3 min read From the minds of Canada's leading law and technology experts comes a playbook for understanding the multi-faceted intersection of AI and the law TORONTO, May 27, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- We are living in an Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom. Self-driving cars, personal voice assistants, and facial recognition technology are just a few of the AI-enabled technologies permeating into everyday life. But what happens when AI causes harm or violates our rights? If your self-driving car gets into an accident while on autopilot, are you responsible? Emond Publishing, Canada's leading independent legal publisher, today announced the release of Litigating Artificial Intelligence, a book examining AI-informed legal determinations, AI-based lawsuits, and AI-enabled litigation tools. Anchored by the expertise of general editors Jill R. Presser, Jesse Beatson, and Gerald Chan, this title offers practical insights regarding AI's decision-making capabilities, position in evidence law and product-based lawsuits, role in automating legal work, and use by the courts, tribunals, and government agencies. For example, can government agencies use AI-powered facial recognition software to identify BLM protestors and Capitol rioters, or does this violate privacy rights? Who is liable, users, developers, or AI? What laws are in place to prevent AI-related crimes, and how do litigators prosecute the responsible parties?

If European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi appears slightly more downbeat at his regular news conference than before, it could foreshadow a possible move by the bank to trim its monetary policy stimulus. That's the conclusion of two Japanese researchers who have used artificial intelligence software to analyze split-second changes in Draghi's facial expressions at his news conferences following policy meetings. The findings follow a similar analysis by the same researchers of Draghi's Japanese counterpart, Haruhiko Kuroda, last year, which claimed to have identified a correlation between patterns in his facial expressions and subsequent policy changes. Yoshiyuki Suimon and Daichi Isami, the paper's authors, think that subtle changes in Draghi's facial expressions could reflect a sense of frustration Draghi might have been feeling before making policy adjustments. Their study covered Draghi's news conference from June 2016 to December 2017 and found signs of "sadness" preceding two recent major policy changes -- when the central bank announced a dovish tapering in December 2016 and another quantitative easing cutback in October last year.

For decades, economists have tried to guess central bank policy direction by studying subtle changes in official language -- now, researchers are finding new clues on policy, not in the words of central bankers but in their faces. In Japan, two artificial intelligence researchers, one from Nomura Securities and the other from Microsoft, are using software to analyze split-second changes in the facial expressions of Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda at his post-meeting news conferences. Their study found that Kuroda showed fleeting signs of "anger" and "disgust" at news conferences that preceded two recent major policy changes -- the January 2016 introduction of negative interest rates and the adoption of the so-called yield curve control policy in September last year. The implication is that Kuroda was beginning to sense the constraints of existing policies about six or seven weeks before the central bank's board actually decided to change them, the researchers concluded. The research was presented last weekend to a subcommittee meeting of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI).

TOKYO (Reuters) - For decades, economists have tried to guess central bank policy direction by studying subtle changes in official language -- now, researchers are finding new clues on policy, not in the words of central banker but in their faces. In Japan, two artificial intelligence researchers, one from Nomura Securities and the other from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), are using software to analyze split-second changes in the facial expressions of Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda at his post-meeting press conferences. Their study found that Kuroda showed fleeting signs of "anger" and "disgust" at news conferences that preceded two recent major policy changes -- the January 2016 introduction of negative interest rates and the adoption of the so-called "yield curve control" policy September last year. The implication is that Kuroda was beginning to sense the constraints of existing policies about six or seven weeks before the central bank's board actually decided to change them, the researchers concluded. The research was presented last weekend to a subcommittee meeting of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI).

If Japan, home to the world's largest public debt, wanted to save a bundle, it would close the Bank of Japan. Auctioning off its giant neo-baroque headquarter buildings around the nation and pink-slipping roughly 4,900 full-time employees would cheer Moody's and Standard & Poor's and plug holes in the national balance sheet. That's not going to happen, of course. But imagine if the BOJ had closed shop 17 years ago, right after it first cut interest rates to zero, and turned its function over to a computer program. Would the artificial-intelligence version of the BOJ be any closer to 2 percent inflation than the well-compensated humans occupying its buildings?