In The News

Entrepreneur: How to Embrace AI for Enacting Humanitarian Change

Gideon Kimbrell April 7, 2017
Artificial intelligence may be replacing humans for many workplace tasks, but could also be employed to make compassionate choices, suggests Gideon Kimbrell for Entrepreneur. The Center on Artificial Intelligence in Society, at the University of Southern California, is developing algorithms to assist with initiatives – including use of social media and other online data to encourage HIV testing...

Scout: The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine

Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath April 5, 2017
Stories are always at risk for manipulation, but technology can now analyze and recruit individuals to unwittingly promote specific, even false, ideas. Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath, writing for Scout, argue the challenge is larger than fake news. Big data analysis, surveillance, AI, programmed bots, Facebook posts, sophisticated behavior assessments, computational psychology and fake news...

BBC: WikiLeaks Claims CIA Has Tools to Snoop Via TVs, Phones

Leo Kelion March 8, 2017
WikiLeaks reports that the US Central Intelligence Agency has amassed a wide range of hacking tools for televisions, phones and consumer products that rely on the internet. “The alleged cyber-weapons are said to include malware that targets Windows, Android, iOS, OSX and Linux computers as well as internet routers,” reports Leo Kelion for BBC News. “Some of the software is reported to have been...

SmartCompany: Human Error Causes Amazon Web Services Outage, How to Protect Cloud Systems

Dominic Powell March 5, 2017
Businesses and others rely on cloud computing and experts to save money and time, but also they relinquish control over how their data is handled. And data and software stored with off-site servers are crucial infrastructure for many. “An outage of Amazon Web Services… that led to disruptions for huge numbers of cloud-based businesses and websites was caused a technician inputting an incorrect...

Caixin: Chinese Drone Maker to Supply Dubai with Self-Flying Taxis

Coco Feng February 17, 2017
Dubai, with a population of 2.7 million, is the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, and traffic congestion is a major complaint. The Dubai Roads and Transportation Authority is planning to allow remote-controlled drones work as taxis, and Chinese drone maker EHang Inc. announced “it will supply passenger-carrying drones to Dubai, which is aiming to become in July the world’s first city to...

Wired: The AI Threat – End of the Middle Class

Cade Metz February 12, 2017
Researchers of artificial intelligence recognize their work is capable of disrupting the global economy. Automation and computers have already supplanted many jobs that will never return. “In the US, the number of manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979 and has steadily decreased ever since,” explains Cade Metz for Wired. “At the same time, manufacturing has steadily increased, with the US now...

GPS World: Agriculture Robots Market Projected to Reach US$5.7 Billion by 2024

February 2, 2017
Need to feed a growing global population, along with urban migration and less land dedicated to agriculture, is pushing development of robots for the agriculture industry. Companies in Asia, North America and Europe are developing the robots for precision farming, and these “include UAVs, driverless tractors, automated harvesting machines and more,” reports GPS World, based on a Transparency...