The total number of US Customs and Border Protection device searches jumped by 17 percent over the 2024 fiscal year, but more invasive forensic searches remain relatively rare. Over the Past year, United States Customs and Border Protection staff searched more phones and electronic devices at the border than ever before, according to new statistics published by the government agency. Phone searches jumped around 17 percent during the past 12 months--with a marked increase over the past six months. Newly published CBP figures show that for the full fiscal year of 2025--running from October 2024 to the end of September 2025--border agents conducted around 55,424 searches of electronic devices. This is up from around the 47,000 searches that were completed during the government's 2024 fiscal year.

Kai Zhang, PhD, Xiaoqian Jiang, PhD The University of Texas Health Science Center, McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics, Houston, TX, USA Abstract: In the era of big data, there is an increasing need for healthcare providers, communities, and researchers to share data and collaborate to improve health outcomes, generate valuable insights, and advance research. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law designed to protect sensitive health information by defining regulations for protected health information (PHI). However, it does not provide efficient tools for detecting or removing PHI before data sharing. One of the challenges in this area of research is the heterogeneous nature of PHI fields in data across different parties. This variability makes rule-based sensitive variable identification systems that work on one database fail on another. To address this issue, our paper explores the use of machine learning algorithms to identify sensitive variables in structured data, thus facilitating the de-identification process. We made a key observation that the distributions of metadata of PHI fields and non-PHI fields are very different. Based on this novel finding, we engineered over 30 features from the metadata of the original features and used machine learning to build classification models to automatically identify PHI fields in structured Electronic Health Record (EHR) data. We trained the model on a variety of large EHR databases from different data sources and found that our algorithm achieves 99% accuracy when detecting PHI-related fields for unseen datasets.

But since then, labor participation has declined sharply, with around 3.4 million fewer workers participating in the job market than immediately before the pandemic, according to the chamber. Companies of all shapes and sizes have struggled to cope with the mounting labor shortage, and have seemingly tried everything to remedy it, from reducing operating hours to offering employees previously unheard-of perks. Now new data suggests that American companies are leaning more on something else to combat the lack of human workers: robots. For the third consecutive quarter, U.S. robotics sales numbers have hit a record high, according to figures out this week by the Association for Advancing Automation, a trade group also known as A3. The U.S. robotics industry sold 12,305 units last quarter, a 25% bump from the same period in 2021 and 6% higher than in the first quarter of this year.

Orders in North America for robots are reaching record numbers as the U.S. economy continues to slog through a labor shortage fueled by the pandemic. According to data from the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) – a trade group representing organizations involved in robotics, AI and other tech – the total number or orders this year reached nearly 29,000, with a value of $1.48 billion. The orders are up 37% from a year ago, says the trade group. "With labor shortages throughout manufacturing, logistics and virtually every industry, companies of all sizes are increasingly turning to robotics and automation to stay productive and competitive," said Jeff Burnstein, president of A3, in a statement. Reinventing the (steering) wheel:Tesla's Elon Musk introduces new yoke-shaped wheel During the third quarter, North American companies order 9,928 robots valued at $513 million, the third highest quarter ever in orders and fifth highest ever for value, said A3.

Companies in North America added a record number of robots in the first nine months of this year as they rushed to speed up assembly lines and struggled to add human workers. Factories and other industrial users ordered 29,000 robots, 37% more than during the same period last year, valued at $1.48 billion, according to data compiled by the industry group the Association for Advancing Automation. That surpassed the previous peak set in the same time period in 2017, before the global pandemic upended economies. The rush to add robots is part of a larger upswing in investment as companies seek to keep up with strong demand, which in some cases has contributed to shortages of key goods. At the same time, many firms have struggled to lure back workers displaced by the pandemic and view robots as an alternative to adding human muscle on their assembly lines.

North American companies ordering for robotic "workers" in record numbers to alleviate the continuing labor shortage in hopes of keeping their operations competitive, according to a trade group involved in the robotic industry. "With labor shortages throughout manufacturing, logistics, and virtually every industry, companies of all sizes are increasingly turning to robotics and automation to stay productive and competitive," said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), a trade group that represents organizations working with robotics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies, USA Today reported. The total orders for robotic technology this year climbed to nearly 29,000, and is valued at about $1.48 billion, marking an increase of 37% over last year, A3 reported. In the third quarter alone, North American companies placed orders for 9,928 robots, valued at $513 million, marking the third-highest quarter for orders and the fifth-highest in cost, the trade group added. The orders come as a record number of Americans are quitting their jobs in what is being called the "Great Resignation."

Numerous studies, including the WEF's 2020 Future of Jobs Report, have documented the ways that the pandemic has exacerbated inequalities in the global workplace. Indeed, unemployment rates for African-Americans and Latinos have consistently outpaced those for Whites by several percentage points, and that trend persists even as Americans begin re-entering the workforce in record numbers. This is because of the way that AI works: algorithms correlate information from a finite data set in order to make predictions about job applicants. If an algorithm's training data consists of the employer's current workforce, it may simply replicate the status quo. This can be problematic if the current workforce is made up predominantly of employees of one race, gender, or age group, because a hiring algorithm may automatically screen out applicants who do not share those same characteristics.

When SAP veteran Bill McDermott took over the CEO spot at digital workflow company ServiceNow in October, his mandate focused on growth. "Should we choose to do'tuck-ins' to compliment what our customers need, to get us somewhere faster, we'll do that very carefully," he told CNBC. ServiceNow kicked off 2020 with one such "tuck-in": the acquisition of Israeli company Loom Systems, an AIOps company that uses artificial intelligence to give enterprise users insights into digital operations and fix IT issues. The acquisition symbolizes a bigger trend in enterprise technology: Acquiring AI startups enables technology vendors to capitalize, enhance or expand their capabilities while bringing scarce talent aboard. Last year, consolidation in the AI market hit record numbers.

China and the U.S. are the top two countries for robot demand. It's true that more robots than ever are participating in the human labor force. Last year, businesses worldwide spent $26 billion employing some 70 million robots on manufacturing and service jobs, according to the World Robotics Report published by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) on Wednesday. On the industrial side, 422,000 robots were shipped last year, a 6% increase from 2017. More than half of the robots were bought by automotive and electronics companies, which came as a surprise amid the tough market conditions facing these industries in 2018.

US companies deployed more robots last year than ever before - as advanced machines capable of specialized tasks have come down in price and availability, reports Reuters. Shipments of robots hit 35,880 in 2018 - up 7% over 2017, according to the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) - an industry group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. What's interesting is that while most robots have historically been bought by the automotive industry, 16,702 shipments went to non-automotive companies, an increase of 41%, while automotive industry orders dipped by 12%. Notable growth came in areas like food and consumer goods (48 percent), plastics and rubber (37 percent), life sciences (31 percent), and electronics (22 percent). Meanwhile, shipments to the automotive industry slowed, with only 19,178 units shipped to North American automotive OEM and tier supplier customers in 2018.