Tech & Society
Will AI that discriminates based on race, gender, or economic status undermine the public’s confidence in the technology? Seduced by the promise of cost savings and data-driven decision making, organizations will deploy biased systems that end up doing real-world damage.
Tech & Society
Will we ever understand what goes on inside the mind of a neural network?The fear: When AI systems go wrong, no one will be able to explain the reasoning behind their decisions.
Tech & Society
Facing a tsunami of user-generated disinformation, YouTube is scrambling to stop its recommendation algorithm from promoting videos that spread potentially dangerous falsehoods.
Business
Three of the biggest AI vendors pledged to stop providing face recognition services to police — but other companies continue to serve the law-enforcement market.
Tech & Society
Facebook uses automated systems to block hate speech, but hateful posts can slip through when seemingly benign words and pictures combine to create a nasty message. The social network is tackling this problem by enhancing AI’s ability to recognize context.
Tech & Society
Facebook’s leadership has thwarted changes in its algorithms aimed at making the site less polarizing, according to the Wall Street Journal. The social network’s own researchers determined that its AI software promotes divisive content.
Tech & Society
A consortium of top AI experts proposed concrete steps to help machine learning engineers secure the public’s trust. Dozens of researchers and technologists recommended actions to counter public skepticism toward artificial intelligence, fueled by issues like data privacy.
Tech & Society
Unexploded munitions from past wars continue to kill and maim thousands of people every year. Computer vision is helping researchers figure out where these dormant weapons are likely to be.
Tech & Society
A prominent AI researcher has turned his back on computer vision over ethical issues. The co-creator of the popular object-recognition network You Only Look Once (YOLO) said he no longer works on computer vision because the technology has “almost no upside and enormous downside risk.”
Tech & Society
YouTube is a great place to learn about new ideas — including some that have been thoroughly discredited. YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is helping spread misinformation about climate change, according to research by Avaaz, a self-funded activist group.
Interviews & Essays
I have three hopes for 2020: Hope that advanced machine learning techniques beyond deep neural networks can emerge. Neural networks have been studied and applied by many researchers, engineers, and practitioners for a long time.
Interviews & Essays
Datasets are critical to AI and machine learning, and they are becoming a key driver of the economy. Collection of sensitive data is increasing rapidly, covering almost every aspect of people’s lives.