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"Apart from biases in the training databases, it's hard to know how well face-recognition systems actually perform in the real world, in spite of recent gains. Anil Jain, a professor of computer science at Michigan State University who has worked on face recognition for more than thirty years, told me, "Most of the testing on the private venders' products is done in a laboratory environment under controlled settings. In real practice, you're walking around in the streets of New York. It's a cold winter day, you have a scarf around your face, a cap, maybe your coat is pulled up so your chin is partially hidden, the illumination may not be the most favorable, and the camera isn't capturing a frontal view.""

"As more governments turn to contact tracing apps to aid in their efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak, cybersecurity experts are warning this may spark renewed interest in Bluetooth attacks. They urge developers to ensure such apps are regularly tested for vulnerabilities and release patches swiftly to plug potential holes, while governments should provide assurance that their databases are secure and the data collected will not be used for purposes other than as originally intended. "

"The company has revealed the latest evolution of the Captcha (short, sort of, for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), which aims to do away with any interruption at all: the new, "invisible reCaptcha" aims to tell whether a given visitor is a robot or not purely by analysing their browsing behaviour. Barring a short wait while the system does its job, a typical human visitor shouldn't have to do anything else to prove they're not a robot."

"In October, American teachers prevailed in a lawsuit with their school district over a computer program that assessed their performance. The system rated teachers in Houston by comparing their students' test scores against state averages. Those with high ratings won praise and even bonuses. Those who fared poorly faced the sack. The program did not please everyone. Some teachers felt that the system marked them down without good reason. But they had no way of checking if the program was fair or faulty: the company that built the software, the SAS Institute, regards its algorithm a trade secret and would not disclose its workings."

"Facebook has detailed the steps it's taking to get help for people who need it. Which involves using artificial intelligence to "detect posts or live videos where someone might be expressing thoughts of suicide," identifying appropriate first responders, and then employing more people to "review reports of suicide or self harm". The social network has been testing this system in the U.S. for the last month, and "worked with first responders on over 100 wellness checks based on reports we received via our proactive detection efforts." In some cases the local authorities were notified in order to help."

"Computers once performed facial recognition rather imprecisely, by identifying people's facial features and measuring the distances among them - a crude method that did not reliably result in matches. But recently, the technology has improved significantly, because of advances in artificial intelligence. A.I. software can analyze countless photos of people's faces and learn to make impressive predictions about which images are of the same person; the more faces it inspects, the better it gets. Clearview is deploying this approach using billions of photos from the public internet. By testing legal and ethical limits around the collection and use of those images, it has become the front-runner in the field. "

"But even cleverest AI can be fooled with the simplest of hacks. If you write out the word "iPod" on a sticky label and paste it over the apple, Clip does something odd: it decides, with near certainty, that it is looking at a mid-00s piece of consumer electronics. In another test, pasting dollar signs over a picture of a dog caused it to be recognised as a piggy bank."

"In 2015, a research group fed an AI system called Deep Patient health and medical data from some 700,000 people, and tested whether it could predict diseases. It could, but Deep Patient provides no explanation for the basis of a diagnosis, and the researchers have no idea how it comes to its conclusions. A doctor either can either trust or ignore the computer, but that trust will remain blind."

"Take Yoti, for instance: the company provides a range of age verification services, partnering with CitizenCard to offer a digital version of its ID, and working with self-service supermarkets to experiment with automatic age recognition of individuals. John Abbott, Yoti's chief business officer, says the system is already as good as a person at telling someone's age from a video of them, and has been tested against a wide range of demographics - including age, race and gender - to ensure that it's not wildly miscategorising any particular group. The company's most recent report claims that a "Challenge 21" policy (blocking under-18s by asking for strong proof of age from people who look under 21) would catch 98% of 17-year-olds, and 99.15% of 16 year olds, for instance."

" A new AI pair programmer that helps you write better code. It helps you quickly discover alternative ways to solve problems, write tests, and explore new APIs without having to tediously tailor a search for answers on the internet. As you type, it adapts to the way you write code - to help you complete your work faster. In other words, Copilot will sit on your computer and do a chunk of your coding work for you. There's a long-running joke in the coding community that a substantial portion of the actual work of programming is searching online for people who've solved the same problems as you, and copying their code into your program. Well, now there's an AI that will do that part for you."

"Under the oxymoronic rubric of "self-regulation", Facebook, Twitter and Google are already considering ways to appear responsible and protective of the integrity of those two elections. Twitter has pledged to stop running political ads, and both Google and Facebook are considering suspending precise targeting of political ads."

"In a recent test of Amazon's facial recognition software, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California revealed that it mistook 26 California lawmakers as people arrested for crimes. "

"For the first time, BBC News published a news story for every constituency that declared election results overnight - all written by a computer. It was the BBC's biggest test of machine-generated journalism so far. Each of nearly 700 articles - most in English but 40 of them in Welsh - was checked by a human editor before publication."

"In the early days of the pandemic, a panicked Israel began using a mass surveillance tool on its civilians, tracking people's cellphones in hopes of stopping the spread of the coronavirus."

"The showman CEO has argued that with full self-driving capabilities, Tesla cars can make money for their owners. Tesla would additionally make money from operating a robotaxi fleet. If the tests conducted by Consumer Report are anything to go by, this is unlikely to happen soon."

"no vehicle available for purchase today is capable of driving itself."

"Launched in 2006, 23andMe sells tests to determine consumers' genetic ancestry and risk of developing certain illnesses, using saliva samples sent in by mail. Privacy advocates and researchers have long raised concerns about a for-profit company owning the genetic data of millions of people, fears that have only intensified with news of the partnership."

"The software, 4 Little Trees, was created by Hong Kong-based startup Find Solution AI. While the use of emotion recognition AI in schools and other settings has caused concern, founder Viola Lam says it can make the virtual classroom as good as - or better than - the real thing. Students work on tests and homework on the platform as part of the school curriculum. While they study, the AI measures muscle points on their faces via the camera on their computer or tablet, and identifies emotions including happiness, sadness, anger, surprise and fear. "

"The app, called Care19, and produced by a company called ProudCrowd that also makes a location-based social networking app for North Dakota State sports fans, generates a random ID number for each person who uses it. Then, it can "anonymously cache the individual's locations throughout the day," storing information about where people spent at least 10 minutes at a time, according to the state website. If users test positive for the coronavirus, they can provide that information to the North Dakota Department of Health for contact-tracing purposes so that other people who spent time near virus patients can potentially be notified."

"Admission algorithms can make or break your academic plans. A Washington Post investigation found 44 schools use prediction software to give applicants a score out of 100 for its admissions process. The score considers different aspects of a student's application from test scores, home address, transcripts, and even what websites they've visited. That's all calculated to rate how strong of a match a student is for a school."