You look like a criminal: Amazon.com’s facial recognition technology falsely flagged 28 U.S. lawmakers as criminals in a test run by the American Civil Liberties Union, The Guardian reports. Whoops! Five members of Congress have demanded an explanation from Amazon, CNET says.
Amazon instead of libraries? It was a bit of a weird week for Amazon. After a Forbes article – since pulled from the website – suggested the giant retailer should replace libraries, the Internet went nuts, not in a good way. The Daily Dot looks at the controversy.
AI as the terminator: Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban has joined the ranks of luminaries warning about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence. “If you don’t think by the time most of you are in your mid-40s that a Terminator will appear, you’re crazy,” he said at a gathering of conservative high school students. CNBC.com has the details of his speech.
AI as a money saver: Meanwhile, AI backers say the technology can bring huge benefits. London’s Metropolitan Police Service could save £30 million and put 545 officers on the streets by using AI to analyze large volumes of data and cross-reference information from databases and surveillance systems, according to a study covered by the Evening Standard.
Computers fight fake news: People are bad at spotting fake news, but maybe computers can do it better. Science News looks at several efforts to use technology to separate fake news from the real stuff.
Millions and millions served: Let’s Encrypt, the Internet Society-sponsored nonprofit certificate authority, has secured more than 100 million websites, the organization has announced. In the last month, more than 24 million websites moved to be secured through HTTPS, Neowin reports.
Blockchain vs. censorship: Chinese Internet users have used blockchain to share a censored news story about faulty vaccines given to babies, The Verge reports. To share the article, interested Chinese readers used the Ethereum blockchain network and pasted the text to a small financial transaction.
Want to learn more about AI? Read the Internet Society’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning policy paper and explore how it might impact the Internet’s future.