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"At the heart of the problem that troubles Ming is the training that computer engineers receive and their uncritical faith in AI. Too often, she says, their approach to a problem is to train a neural network on a mass of data and expect the result to work fine. She berates companies for failing to engage with the problem first - applying what is already known about good employees and successful students, for example - before applying the AI."

"The development of autonomous military systems - dubbed "killer robots" by campaigners opposed to them - is deeply contentious. Earlier this year, Google withdrew from the Pentagon's Project Maven, which uses machine learning to analyse video feeds from drones, after ethical objections from the tech giant's staff. The government insists it "does not possess fully autonomous weapons and has no intention of developing them". But, since 2015, the UK has declined to support proposals put forward at the UN to ban them. Now, using government data, Freedom of Information requests and open-source information, a year-long investigation reveals that the MoD and defence contractors are funding dozens of artificial intelligence programmes for use in conflict."

"On the contrary, building large centralized databases and predictive algorithms that make decisions on behalf of humans, and which completely ignore privacy concerns, now seem to be the most efficient way of governing. Algorithms now handle college admissions processes, applicants' selection processes for jobs, where to go to college, what to study in that college, which city is best for you to start your career and raise a family, what part of that city you should live in, and even who you should marry."

"Nemitz identifies four bases of digital power which create and then reinforce its unhealthy concentration in too few hands: lots of money, which means influence; control of "infrastructures of public discourse"; collection of personal data and profiling of people; and domination of investment in AI, most of it a "black box" not open to public scrutiny. The key question is which of the challenges of AI "can be safely and with good conscience left to ethics" and which need law. Nemitz sees much that needs law."

""Privacy Not Included" is Mozilla's Christmas shopping (anti)-guide to toys and gadgets that spy on you and/or make stupid security blunders, rated by relative "creepiness," from the Nintendo Switch (a little creepy) to the Fredi Baby monitor (very creepy!). Mozilla's reviews include a detailed rationale for each ranking, including whether the product includes encryption, whether it forces a default password change, how easy to understand the documentation is, whether it shares your data for "unexpected reasons," whether it has known security vulnerabilities, whether it has parental controls and more."

"The Facebook data, which captured the engagement metrics on thousands of posts by the six major party leaders in the two months leading up to the election, was collected by academics at the University of Pisa's MediaLab. It reveals all of the 25 most shared Facebook posts in the two months leading up to the election were videos, live broadcasts or photos from either Salvini, who runs the far-right League, or Di Maio, the leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S)."

" Critics have pointed out that the old computing adage "garbage in, garbage out" also applies to ML. If the data from which a machine "learns" is biased, then the outputs will reflect those biases. And this could become generalised: we may have created a technology that - however good it is at recommending films you might like - may actually morph into a powerful amplifier of social, economic and cultural inequalities."

"About 70% of the world's online traffic is reckoned to pass through Loudoun County. But there is a big problem, centred on a power company called Dominion, which supplies the vast majority of Loudoun County's electricity. According to a 2017 Greenpeace report, only 1% of Dominion's total electricity comes from credibly renewable sources:"

"Three software flaws in Facebook's systems allowed hackers to break into user accounts, including those of the top executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, according to two people familiar with the investigation but not allowed to discuss it publicly. Once in, the attackers could have gained access to apps like Spotify, Instagram and hundreds of others that give users a way to log into their systems through Facebook."

"The app, using Solid's decentralized technology, allows Berners-Lee to access all of his data seamlessly-his calendar, his music library, videos, chat, research. It's like a mashup of Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify, and WhatsApp."

"Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you've been. Google's support page on the subject states: "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored." That isn't true. Even with "location history" paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking."

"Affectiva is running a program that pays drivers to help train its emotion-recognition system. The company sends drivers a kit including cameras and other sensors to place within their vehicles. These record a person's facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice on the road. That data is then labeled by trained specialists for a range of emotions, and fed into deep neural networks."

"Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg called for new global regulations governing the internet, recommending overarching rules on hateful and violent content, election integrity, privacy and data portability."

"Based on data from over 17,000 teenagers, the study "casts doubt on the widely accepted notion that spending time online, gaming or watching TV, especially before bedtime, can damage young people's mental health.""

"Robots, artificial intelligence and smart speakers will ease the burden on doctors and give them more time with patients, according to an NHS report on the pending technological "revolution" in healthcare. Developments in the ability to sequence individuals' genomes - the entirety of their genetic data - will also spur on advances, according to the review published on Monday."

"Vietnam has introduced a new cybersecurity law, which criminalises criticising the government online and forces internet providers to give authorities' user data when requested, sparking claims of a "totalitarian" crackdown on dissent. The law, which mirrors China's draconian internet rules, came into effect on 1 January and forces internet providers to censor content deemed "toxic" by the ruling communist government. Vietnam's ministry of public security said it will tackle "hostile and reactionary forces", but human rights groups said it was authorities' latest method of silencing free speech."

"The Wheelie 7 kit equips a wheelchair with artificial intelligence to detect the user's expressions and process the data in real-time to direct the movement of the chair. Smiling, raising the eyebrows, wrinkling the nose or puckering the lips as if for a kiss are among the repertoire of 10 gestures recognised by the prototype Wheelie 7."