Amid rising geopolitical tensions and intensifying polarisation, building a global consensus around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to be tough. Yet experts at a recent Science Business Data Rules workshop were cautiously optimistic that the necessary political will exists. If they fail to achieve some form of coordination, all of the world's major powers will suffer, according to MEP Brando Benifei, one of the European Parliament's rapporteurs for the EU's AI Act, which could arrive on the statute books next year. "I think it would be a problem, not just for Europe, but for all the players involved because artificial intelligence will be a very pervasive technology," he said. "Having two different contexts of application, standards and regulation will make it complicated to deal with all the activities that now interconnect the world. So I think we need really to put an effort into avoiding this situation."

Technology that measures emotions based on biometric indicators such as facial movements, tone of voice or body movements is increasingly being marketed in China, researchers say, despite concerns about its accuracy and wider human rights implications. Drawing upon artificial intelligence, the tools range from cameras to help police monitor a suspect's face during an interrogation to eye-tracking devices in schools that identify students who are not paying attention. A report released this week from U.K.-based human rights group Article 19 identified dozens of companies offering such tools in the education, public security and transportation sectors in China. "We believe that their design, development, deployment, sale and transfers should be banned due to the racist foundations and fundamental incompatibility with human rights," said Vidushi Marda, a senior program officer at Article 19. Human emotions cannot be reliably measured and quantified by technology tools, said Shazeda Ahmed, a doctoral candidate studying cybersecurity at the University of California, Berkeley and the report's co-author. Such systems can perpetuate bias, especially those sold to police that purport to identify criminality based on biometric indicators, she added.

Say the word Apple today and we think of Steve Jobs' multi-billion-dollar technology company that spawned the iPhone and the Mac computer. But a decade before the California-based firm was even founded, Apple Electronics, a subsidiary of the Beatles' record label Apple, was working on several pioneering inventions – some of which were precursors of commonly available products today. Apple Electronics was led by Alexis Mardas, a young electronics engineer and inventor originally from Athens in Greece, known to the Beatles as Magic Alex. He died on this day in 2017, aged 74, and was one of the most colourful and mysterious characters in the Beatles' story. Dressed in a white lab coat in his London workshop, Mardas created prototypes of inventions that were set to be marketed and sold. These included the'composing typewriter' – powered by an early example of sound recognition – and a phone with advanced memory capacity.

BANGKOK - The launch of facial recognition technology at two Indian airports and plans to place it in police stations have stoked fears over privacy and increased surveillance among human rights groups in the country. The "paperless biometric technology" launched in Bengaluru airport this week identifies passengers by their face, doing away with the need to present boarding passes, passports and other identity documents, according to a statement from the airport in India's tech capital. Another airport in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad is also testing facial recognition technology this month. While airlines, airports and the companies developing the software promise greater security and increased efficiency, some technology analysts and privacy experts say the benefits are not clear, and come at the cost of privacy and greater surveillance. This is particularly true of India, which does not have a data protection law or an electronic surveillance framework, said Vidushi Marda, a lawyer and advisor at human rights group Article 19.