Error-prone facial recognition leads to another wrongful arrest

The Detroit Police Department (DPD) is once again under scrutiny as a new lawsuit emerges, revealing that another innocent person has been wrongly arrested due to a flawed facial recognition match.

Porcha Woodruff, an African American woman who was eight months pregnant at the time, is the sixth individual to come forward and report being falsely accused of a crime because of the controversial technology utilised by law enforcement.

Woodruff was accused of robbery and...

7 August 2023 | Applications

European Parliament adopts AI Act position

The European Parliament has taken a significant step towards the regulation of artificial intelligence by voting to adopt its position for the upcoming AI Act with an overwhelming majority. 

The act aims to regulate AI based on its potential to cause harm and follows a risk-based approach, prohibiting applications that pose an unacceptable risk while imposing strict regulations for high-risk use cases.

The timing of AI regulation has been a subject of debate, but...

14 June 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

AI leaders warn about ‘risk of extinction’ in open letter

The Center for AI Safety (CAIS) recently issued a statement signed by prominent figures in AI warning about the potential risks posed by the technology to humanity.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” reads the statement.

Signatories of the statement include renowned researchers and Turing Award winners like Geoffery Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, as well as...

31 May 2023 | Applications

EU committees green-light the AI Act

The Internal Market Committee and the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament have endorsed new transparency and risk-management rules for artificial intelligence systems known as the AI Act.

This marks a major step in the development of AI regulation in Europe, as these are the first-ever rules for AI. The rules aim to ensure that AI systems are safe, transparent, traceable, and non-discriminatory.

After the vote, co-rapporteur Brando Benifei (S&D,...

11 May 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

Clearview AI used by US police for almost 1M searches

Facial recognition firm Clearview AI has revealed that it has run almost a million searches for US police.

Facial recognition technology is a controversial topic, and for good reason. Clearview AI's technology allows law enforcement to upload a photo of a suspect's face and find matches in a database of billions of images it has collected.

Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That disclosed in an interview with the BBC that the firm has scraped 30 billion images from platforms such...

28 March 2023 | Applications

GitHub CEO: The EU ‘will define how the world regulates AI’

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke addressed the EU Open Source Policy Summit in Brussels and gave his views on the bloc’s upcoming AI Act. 

“The AI Act will define how the world regulates AI and we need to get it right, for developers and the open-source community,” said Dohmke.

Dohmke was born and grew up in Germany but now lives in the US. As such, he is all too aware of the widespread belief that the EU cannot lead when it comes to tech innovation.

“As a...

6 February 2023 | Applications

FBI director warns about Beijing’s AI program

FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned about the national security threat posed by Beijing’s AI program.

During a panel at the World Economic Forum, Wray explained that Beijing’s AI program “is not constrained by the rule of law”.

Wray says Beijing has “a bigger hacking program than any other nation” and will use machine learning to further boost the capabilities of its state-sponsored hackers.

Much like nuclear expertise, AI can be used to...

23 January 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

Cal Al-Dhubaib, Pandata: On developing ethical AI solutions

Businesses that fail to deploy AI ethically will face severe penalties as regulations catch up with the pace of innovations.

In the EU, the proposed AI Act features similar enforcement to GDPR but with even heftier fines of €30 million or six percent of annual turnover. Other countries are implementing variations, including China and a growing number of US states.

Pandata are experts in human-centred, explainable, and trustworthy AI. The Cleveland-based outfit...

24 November 2022 | Applications

Italy’s facial recognition ban exempts law enforcement

Italy has banned the use of facial recognition, except for law enforcement purposes.

On Monday, the country’s Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali) issued official stays to two municipalities – the southern Italian city of Lecce and the Tuscan city of Arezzo – over their experiments with biometrics technologies.

The agency banned facial recognition systems using biometric data until a specific law governing its use is...

15 November 2022 | Applications

Axon’s AI ethics board resign after TASER drone announcement

The majority of Axon’s AI ethics board have resigned after the company announced that it’s developing taser-equipped drones.

In response to yet another shooting in a US school, Axon founder and CEO Rick Smith began thinking about how the company could help put a stop to the all too regular occurrence.

The shooting kicked off the usual debate over whether stricter gun laws are needed. Unfortunately, we all know nothing is likely to really change and we’ll be back to...

7 June 2022 | Companies