Cruz Missile for Microsoft (The Week in AI)

Reporting by Madhumita Murgia and Yuan Yang at the FT revealed that Microsoft researchers had collaborated with the Chinese Military University on work that could be used in surveillance and censorship. One of the papers described a new AI method to recreate detailed environmental maps by analysing human faces, stoking fears that this approach could be used in advanced surveillance.

Politicians in Washington reacted testily, with former Presidential-hopeful Ted Cruz chastising Microsoft. “American companies are increasingly at risk of boosting the Chinese Communist party’s human rights atrocities,” said Cruz.

This story comes in the same week that Google announced a new external advisory council to guide it’s use of AI in thorny areas and the EC issued its AI ethics guidelines (see below).

 
News in Brief:

• Google gathers an external panel to consider AI challenges (VentureBeat) https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/26/google-gathers-an-external-panel-to-consider-ai-challenges/
• Facebook to use AI to stop telling users to say hi to dead friends (Guardian) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/09/facebook-to-use-artificial-intelligence-to-stop-telling-users-to-say-hi-to-dead-friends
• The rise of the killer robots – and the two women fighting back (Guardian) – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/08/the-rise-of-the-killer-robots-jody-williams-mary-warehan-artificial-intelligence-autonomous-weapons?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
• European Commission publishes AI ethics guidelines and associated pilot (Forbes) https://www.forbes.com/sites/washingtonbytes/2019/04/11/europes-quest-for-ethics-in-artificial-intelligence/#1d3d88187bf9
• Philippe Starck, Kartell and Autodesk unveil “world’s first production chair designed with artificial intelligence” (Dezeen) https://www.dezeen.com/2019/04/11/ai-chair-philippe-starck-kartell-autodesk-artificial-intelligence-video/