Lifeboat Foundation

Recommending content, powering chatbots, trading stocks, detecting medical conditions, and driving cars. These are only a small handful of the most well-known uses of artificial intelligence, yet there is one that, despite being on the margins for much of AI’s recent history, is now threatening to grow significantly in prominence. This is AI’s ability to classify and rank people, to separate them according to whether they’re “good” or “bad” in relation to certain purposes.

At the moment, Western civilization hasn’t reached the point where AI-based systems are used en masse to categorize us according to whether we’re likely to be “good” employees, “good” customers, “good” dates and “good” citizens. Nonetheless, all available indicators suggest that we’re moving in this direction, and that this is regardless of whether Western nations consciously decide to construct the kinds of social credit system currently being developed by China.

This risk was highlighted at the end of September, when it emerged that an AI-powered system was being used to screen job candidates in the U.K. for the first time. Developed by the U.S.-based HireVue, it harnesses machine learning to evaluate the facial expressions, language and tone of voice of job applicants, who are filmed via smartphone or laptop and quizzed with an identical set of interview questions. HireVue’s platform then filters out the “best” applicants by comparing the 25,000 pieces of data taken from each applicant’s video against those collected from the interviews of existing “model” employees.

It’s a working car that can seat two people who just want to pretend like they’re driving around Gotham.

Hu is part of a rising class of creators in China who are racing to get in on live-stream shopping, an emerging form of retail that has grown into an industry worth an estimated $66 billion. Although the trend has been part of Chinese internet culture for years, analysts say the coronavirus pandemic has made it mainstream.

A rising class of creators in China are racing to get in on live-stream shopping, an emerging form of retail that has become an estimated $66 billion industry.

Experts are concerned that the company has not been more forthcoming about two participants who became seriously ill after getting its experimental vaccine.

Moscow is in various stages of talks and has received requests to supply as many as 1.2 billion doses of its vaccine, which is still in the trial phase.

Early results from the first COVID-19 vaccine candidate tested in people showed that it triggered an immune response against the virus with no serious side effects.

Tick-tock, the Sun’s like a clock — but much more complex to predict. Scientists use a combination of observations, models, and mathematical techniques (including a “solar clock” analysis) to understand how the Sun will behave in the upcoming solar cycle. https://go.nasa.gov/3kzpLoF

This week on September 16, the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM) Board of Directors held a meeting to discuss their support for bringing SpaceX’s Starlink broadband internet service to Canada. “The Board adopted a resolution during a recent meeting in Hearst, held both electronically and in-person, supporting Starlink, a satellite internet service that’s being developed by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation’s (SpaceX),” FONOM representatives wrote in a press release. “The Resolution also calls on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to permit and expand the company a Basic International Telecommunications Services (BITS) license.”

“We know today our citizens require greater connectivity than 50/10 megabits per second,” the President of FONOM Danny Whalen said in a statement. “FONOM believes that the Starlink program is our best option.”

SpaceX says its service is capable of providing low-latency broadband internet below 30 milliseconds, and download speeds greater than 100 megabits per second.

Momentum is building to finally tackle a neglected health problem that strikes poor, rural communities.