This also feels like the end of an era for me personally: I was the first reporter to get the scoop on an early draft of the AI Act in 2021, and have followed the ensuing lobbying circus closely ever since. But the reality is that the hard work starts now. The law will enter into force in May, and people living in the EU will start seeing changes by the end of the year. Regulators will need to get set up in order to enforce the law properly, and companies will have between up to three years to comply with the law. The Act places restrictions on AI use cases that pose a high risk to people's fundamental rights, such as in healthcare, education, and policing.

A Beyoncé gig, the coronation of King Charles, and the British Formula One Grand Prix all have one thing in common: Thousands of people at the events, which all took place earlier this year, had their faces scanned by police-operated face recognition tech. Backed by the Conservative government, police forces across England and Wales are being told to rapidly expand their use of the highly controversial technology, which globally has led to false arrests, misidentifications, and lives derailed. Police have been told to double their use of face searches against databases by early next year--45 million passport photos could be opened up to searches--and police are increasingly working with stores to try to identify shoplifters. Simultaneously, more regional police forces are testing real-time systems in public places. The rapid expansion of face recognition comes at a time when trust in policing levels are at record lows, following a series of high-profile scandals.

The effects of AI on society are not just limited to the workplace. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about how AI will affect our social interactions and how we create and experience social spaces. AI-driven architecture for social spaces presents us with new opportunities as well as challenges. In his work, Babar Kasam Cazir explores the implications of how artificial intelligence could change socioeconomic dynamics - specifically in event spaces - through its ability to analyze patterns at scale. Cazir is a prominent Moorish American architect who has spent many years working in and around the entertainment and hospitality industry as the founder of AV hospitality, a casting associate at Sony Pictures, a brand ambassador at Armand de Brignac, and an event organizer.

The EU is facing a backlash over new AI rules that allow for limited use of facial recognition by authorities -- with opponents warning the carveouts could usher in a new age of biometric surveillance. A coalition of digital rights and consumer protection groups across the globe, including Latin America, Africa and Asia are calling for a global ban on biometric recognition technologies that enable mass and discriminatory surveillance by both governments and corporations. In an open letter, 170 signatories in 55 countries argue that the use of technologies like facial recognition in public places goes against human rights and civil liberties. "It shows that organizations, groups, people, activists, technologists around the world who are concerned with human rights, agree to this call," said Daniel Leufer of U.S. digital rights group Access Now, which co-authored the letter. The use of facial recognition technology is becoming widespread.

The European Union's lead data protection supervisor has called for remote biometric surveillance in public places to be banned outright under incoming AI legislation. The European Data Protection Supervisor's (EDPS) intervention follows a proposal, put out by EU lawmakers on Wednesday, for a risk-based approach to regulating applications of artificial intelligence. The Commission's legislative proposal includes a partial ban on law enforcement's use of remote biometric surveillance technologies (such as facial recognition) in public places. But the text includes wide-ranging exceptions, and digital and humans rights groups were quick to warn over loopholes they argue will lead to a drastic erosion of EU citizens' fundamental rights. And last week a cross-party group of MEPs urged the Commission to screw its courage to the sticking place and outlaw the rights-hostile tech.

As cases of violence against women and girls have surged in South Asia in recent years, authorities have introduced harsher penalties and expanded surveillance networks, including facial recognition systems, to prevent such crimes. Police in the north Indian city of Lucknow earlier this year said they would install cameras with emotion recognition technology to spot women being harassed, while in Pakistan, police have launched a mobile safety app after a gang rape. But use of these technologies with no evidence that they help reduce crime, and with no data protection laws, has raised alarm among privacy experts and women's rights activists who say the increased surveillance can hurt women even more. "The police does not even know if this technology works," said Roop Rekha Verma, a women's rights activist in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh state, which had the highest number of reported crimes against women in India in 2019. "Our experience with the police does not give us the confidence that they will use the technology in an effective and empathetic manner. If it is not deployed properly, it can lead to even more harassment, including from the police," she said.

The global AI-based fever detection camera market size is USD1.28 billion by 2020 and is projected to reach USD 2.19 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 8.0% during the forecast period. The worldwide surge in the growth of corona infected people has led to the emergence of advanced artificial intelligence-based fever detection cameras to monitor and detect human body temperature. Vaccine for coronavirus is still in its development stage and hence, the only way to reduce the spread of this pandemic is to isolate the infected person from the crowd. This type of camera is being considered as an efficient and effective device to identify a person with high temperature as fever is one of the symptoms of coronavirus. An individual with high temperature is further screened with virus-specific tests.

COVID-19, that has taken the world by a storm, has posed a great challenge to the country as well as business leaders. With the pandemic still looming large, businesses and establishments have undergone many changes, business meetings have gone virtual, education has now turned to online learning and work-from-home has become a new normal for the corporates. In more ways than one, the pandemic has affected businesses around the world drastically with massive changes in place. However, no matter how grave the situation is, we need to make ourselves agile and adaptable to the changes and bring the best out of what we have right now. Just as business operations and education have adapted to the new normal by resorting to video conferencing and online learning, many other establishments including, both government and private, are pondering over ways to boost the economy while tackling the social as well as health impact of COVID-19.

By Pradeep Kolankari, Senior Director, Medical Devices and Healthcare, Capgemini At a hospital in Wuhan in China, robots and IoT devices were used to check patients' temperatures, as well as monitor their heart rates and sugar levels through a smart bracelet worn by patients. They also cleaned and disinfected the area, apart from providing food and medicines to patients. Best of all, they even entertained patients with some dance moves. Welcome to the age of the Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare! Globally, the healthcare landscape is stretched.

The data and targets are then split into training, and testing data be keeping 10% of data as testing and 90% as training data. A checkpoint is created, which will save the model, which will have the minimum validation loss. Then the training data is then fitted in the model so that predictions can be made in the future.