“This ability to account for mistakes could be crucial for building machines that robustly infer and act in our interests,” says Tan Zhi-Xuan, PhD student in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the lead author on a new paper about the research. “Otherwise, AI systems might wrongly infer that, since we failed to achieve our higher-order goals, those goals weren’t desired after all. We’ve seen what happens when algorithms feed on our reflexive and unplanned usage of social media, leading us down paths of dependency and polarization. Ideally, the algorithms of the future will recognize our mistakes, bad habits, and irrationalities and help us avoid, rather than reinforce, them.”
To create their model the team used Gen, a new AI programming platform recently developed at MIT, to combine symbolic AI planning with Bayesian inference. Bayesian inference provides an optimal way to combine uncertain beliefs with new data, and is widely used for financial risk evaluation, diagnostic testing, and election forecasting.
Irish regulators fined Twitter about $547,000 over its handling of a privacy breach on Tuesday, the first penalty issued against an American tech giant under the European Union’s new data-protection law.
The 450,000-euro fine marked a milestone in the enforcement of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, a 2018 law meant to give Europeans more control over their online data.
Business Insider, Advertising Newsletter, Lucia Moses
from
It’s been four years since Dentsu acquired data analytics and performance marketing agency Merkle — a move that was followed in quick succession by other ad holding companies buying or building their own data arms. … These developments show how the value of big-budget TV ads has dwindled as advertising has become more performance-dominated — and the tech giants have started calling the ad budget shots.
Large fines and break-ups are threatened for non-compliance.
It is proposed that if companies refuse to obey, they could be forced to hand over up to 10% of their European turnover.
And “recurrent infringers” are warned that they could be made to divest “certain businesses, where no other equally effective alternative measure is available to ensure compliance”.
The two new laws involved – the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act – have yet to be passed, so would only come into force after the Brexit transition period has ended.
The Washington Post today announces the Lede Lab, a team dedicated to exploring the use of emerging technologies, such as 5G and spatial computing, in the development of innovative storytelling techniques, strategic products and creative partnerships that help The Post serve its growing global audience.
The six-person team, led by Director of Strategic Initiatives Elite Truong, will spearhead partnerships with tech, academic and artistic collaborators to define how journalists can reach and engage new audiences with inventive storytelling. The team will also leverage cutting-edge capabilities to enhance the way Post journalism is reported, published and distributed. In just the last few months, the team published an immersive timeline using 149 videos reconstructing the first seven days of protests in Minneapolis following George Floyd’s death, debuted AI-powered audio updates for 2020 election results on Post podcasts, and experimented with a drawing robot to illustrate live the electoral map as results came in on and after election day.
It’s hard to say the word “innovation” and not think of California. Technology has paced the state’s growth in everything from agriculture and oil to housing, entertainment, and aerospace. California has always been the harbinger of the American future, the promise of ever-greater economic and social progress.
Yet increasingly, many of today’s innovators are fleeing the state. This past week, one half of the company arguably most symbolic of tech development in the state—Hewlett Packard Enterprises—one part of the now broken-up old Hewlett Packard and focused on lucrative areas like cloud computing and IT infrastructure—decided to leave for Houston. Within a week Elon Musk, the latest in the line of truly transformative California tech entrepreneurs, also announced that he would move to Texas, along with Oracle, a Fortune 100 company and global leader in database management. Other recent departures also include more traditional firms as Charles Schwab, McKesson, Bechtel, Parsons Engineering, and CB Richard Ellis.
The corporate exodus accompanies a human one. The state’s population, notes demographer Wendell Cox, is now virtually stagnant, with more people leaving and fewer people coming.
Structural racism can lead to discrimination in many aspects of life including criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power, and education. A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine examines the impact of structural racism on health and confirms that chronic exposure to stressors leads to a marked erosion of health that is particularly severe among foreign-born Blacks and Latinx. Investigators say largescale structural policies that address structural racism are needed.
Structural racism is defined as laws, rules, or official policies in a society that result in a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race. “There is evidence that structural racism has a material impact on the health of racial/ethnic minorities and immigrants,” explained lead investigator Brent A. Langellier, PhD, Department of Health Management and Policy, Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA. “Comparing allostatic load–a multidimensional measure of the body’s response to stressors experienced throughout the life course–between immigrants and non-immigrants of different racial/ethnic backgrounds can help shed light on the magnitude of health differences between groups.”
A year ago, zero scientists were studying COVID‑19. Since then, the COVID-19 papers submitted to 1 journal (NEJM) outnumber all Ebola papers ever published. Researchers worked wonders at a time when research was harder than ever to do. 2/
We have effective vaccines against a virus that, a year ago, was still unknown. That is an *astonishing* feat, not least because it validates technologies that will make it easier to build vaccines against future pandemics, too. 3/
Google and Facebook, the No. 1 and No. 2 players in online advertising, made a secret illegal pact in 2018 to divide up the market for ads on websites and apps, according to an antitrust suit filed Wednesday against the search giant.
The suit — filed by Texas and eight other states — alleges that the companies colluded to fix prices and divvy up the market for mobile advertising between them.
The allegation that Google teamed up with Facebook to suppress competition mirrors a major claim in a separate antitrust suit the Justice Department filed against the company in October: that Google teamed up with Apple to help ensure the continued dominance of its search engine.
Congressman Paul Tonko, one of a handful of engineers currently serving in Congress, announced his Artificial Intelligence Education Act has passed the House as part of this year’s final National Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 335-78.
His bipartisan legislation would establish grants and other support to be administered by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help K-12 students develop artificial intelligence (AI) skills, experience and a deeper understanding of the ethics and social implications of this emerging field.
The FY21 NDAA includes a modified version of the Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act (AI-IA) aimed at bolstering U.S. leadership in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and development. Senators Heinrich and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) introduced the original bill (S.1558) in 2019. The AI-IA included in the NDAA will stand up a National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office to coordinate ongoing AI R&D and demonstration activities among civilian agencies, DOD and the Intelligence community. The bill also establishes the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee to provide expert advice to policymakers and the Initiative Office. The legislation will also task the National Science Foundation with examining how the present and future U.S. workforce can better prepare for and integrate AI systems. Finally, the bill authorizes the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) to advance collaborative frameworks, standards, guidelines, and associated methods and techniques for AI and to support the development of technical standards and guidelines that promote trustworthy AI systems. Overall, the bill authorizes $1.5B over the next five years for these critical AI initiatives.
The bill would also help coordinate the government’s AI strategy,[Martijn] Rasser says, by establishing an office dedicated to AI within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Rasser says this could help guide investment and use of AI, to ensure it is deployed ethically, and to align it with priorities concerning the future of the American workforce.[
The defense bill would also create a task force to examine the resources needed for AI researchers. This should lay the foundation for a National Cloud Computing platform for AI research. “That will really help researchers in smaller companies and universities that don’t have the massive resources that the big tech companies have,” Rasser says.
The bill may also help the DOD harness AI more effectively, by giving new acquisition powers to the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, part of the Defense Department, and by having its head report directly to the secretary of defense.
Artificial intelligence helped co-pilot a U-2 “Dragon Lady” spy plane during a test flight Tuesday, the first time artificial intelligence has been used in such a way aboard a US military aircraft.
Mastering artificial intelligence or “AI” is increasingly seen as critical to the future of warfare and Air Force officials said Tuesday’s training flight represented a major milestone.
“The Air Force flew artificial intelligence as a working aircrew member onboard a military aircraft for the first time, December 15,” the Air Force said in a statement, saying the flight signaled “a major leap forward for national defense in the digital age.”
New America Foundation, Stanford Cyber Policy Center, DigiChina Project, Mingli Shi
from
The Chinese government in October released the long-awaited draft of its comprehensive privacy law, the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL). DigiChina’s full English translation is here. As a whole, the draft PIPL largely follows mainstream global approaches to personal data protection, adopting many elements common to other privacy laws, such as notice-and-consent, individual rights, and a comprehensive set of data governance duties for personal information handlers. Notably, it also briefly addresses some still emerging topics in privacy law, such as algorithmic transparency and facial recognition. And it restricts processing of personal information that has already been made public, limiting further use of such data to the scope of use for which the data was originally made public. The draft PIPL is a crucial piece for China’s data governance legal regime, and although it is still subject to revision, it provides insight into the evolving process and potential future directions of Chinese regulation.
“The goal of the CITP Emerging Scholars program is to train scholars who have completed their undergraduate studies but require more coursework or research preparation to improve their chances of admission to highly competitive Ph.D. programs or another competitive career path. The program provides intensive research and/or work experience, coursework, and mentoring. The ideal outcome for participants is to either enter a competitive graduate program or to find an impactful placement in government, nonprofits, or the private sector.” Deadline for applications is January 10, 2021.
“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in partnership with the NASA Tournament Lab today announced its crowdsourcing challenge, ‘MagNet: Model the Geomagnetic Field.’ The challenge, which is being implemented by DrivenData and HeroX, seeks to mitigate the impact of geomagnetic storms on navigation systems through improved forecasting by increasing the accuracy in real-time magnetic field modeling and reducing errors in the magnetic navigation systems.” Deadline for submissions is February 12, 2021.
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The eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good program is now accepting applications for student fellows and project leads for the 2021 summer session. Fellows will work with academic researchers, data scientists and public stakeholder groups on data-intensive research projects that will leverage data science approaches to address societal challenges in areas such as public policy, environmental impacts and more. Student applications due 2/15 – learn more and apply here. DSSG is also soliciting project proposals from academic researchers, public agencies, nonprofit entities and industry who are looking for an opportunity to work closely with data science professionals and students on focused, collaborative projects to make better use of their data. Proposal submissions are due 2/22.
For episode seven it was a pleasure to welcome two guests, Jen Christiansen, Senior Graphics Editor at Scientific American, and Moritz Stefaner, self-employed ‘Truth and Beauty Operator’. We had a detailed conversation about the data, editorial, and design story behind a combined print and interactive visualisation project exploring ‘175 years of word usage patterns in Scientific American’, published in the magazine’s September 2020 issue. [audio,video, 1:08:33]
