Tech & Society
AI Regulations Proceed Locally: U.S. States Enact Laws Targeting AI
EPIC published a summary of AI-related laws that states and cities considered between January 2021 and August 2022.
Harm
Tech & Society
Self-Driving Safety Check: U.S. Government Data Details 2021 Autonomous Vehicle Crashes
The United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) detailed autonomous vehicle collisions over a 12-month period.
Business
Ethical AI 2.0: Microsoft Revises its Responsible AI Standards
Microsoft tightened the reins on both AI developers and customers.What’s new: The tech titan revised its Responsible AI Standard and restricted access to some AI capabilities accordingly.
Business
Meta Decentralizes AI Effort: Meta Restructures its AI Research Teams
The future of Big AI may lie with product-development teams. Meta reorganized its AI division. Henceforth, AI teams will report to departments that develop key products.
Tech & Society
Ethics Team Scuttles Taser Drone: Axon Cancels Plans to Sell a Taser Drone
A weaponized AI system intended to protect students has been grounded. Axon, which makes law-enforcement equipment such as tasers and body cameras, canceled a plan to sell remote-controlled drones capable of firing electroshock darts.
Tech & Society
Child-Welfare Agency Drops AI: Oregon and Pennsylvania Halt Use of AI Tool for At-Risk Kids
Officials in charge of protecting children stopped using a machine learning model designed to help them make decisions in difficult cases. The U.S. state of Oregon halted its use of an algorithm intended to identify children who may benefit from intervention.
Tech & Society
Actors Act Against AI: UK Actors Union Launches Campaign Against AI
Performing artists are taking action to protect their earning power against scene-stealing avatars. Equity, a union of UK performing artists, launched a campaign to pressure the government to prohibit unauthorized use of a performer’s AI-generated likeness.
Tech & Society
Logistic Regression: Follow the Curve — A Basic Introduction to Logistic Regression for Machine Learning
There was a moment when logistic regression was used to classify just one thing: If you drink a vial of poison, are you likely to be labeled “living” or “deceased”? Times have changed.
Tech & Society
Recognizing Workplace Hazards: AI Device Helps Warehouses Avoid Workplace Injuries
A wearable device may help warehouse workers avoid injuries. Modjoul, maker of a system that evaluates risks to people engaged in physical labor, received an undisclosed sum from Amazon as part of a $1 billion investment in technologies that might enhance the retailer giant’s operations.
Tech & Society
When Data = Danger: Consumer Behavior App Removes Planned Parenthood Data
Amid rising social tension in the United States over reproductive freedom, a company that analyzes location data on abortion clinics stopped distributing its findings after a critical press report.
Science
AI Designs Chemical Weapons: Researchers retrained a system originally designed to discover new medicines to show that it could, instead, generate molecular formulas for poisons.
It’s surprisingly easy to turn a well-intended machine learning model to the dark side. In an experiment, Fabio Urbina and colleagues at Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, who had built a drug-discovery model to design useful compounds and avoid toxic ones, retrained it to generate poisons.
Tech & Society
Scam Definitely: AI tools to block spam phone calls.
Robocalls slip through smartphone spam filters, but a new generation of deep learning tools promises to tighten the net. Research proposed fresh approaches to thwarting robocalls. Such innovations soon could be deployed in apps.