To protect us from the risks of advanced artificial intelligence, we need to act now

By Paul Salmon, Professor of Human Factors, University of the Sunshine Coast , Peter Hancock Professor of Psychology, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, University of Central Florida, Tony Carden , Researcher, University of the Sunshine Coast - Tuesday, January 29th, 2019

Artificial intelligence can play chess, drive a car and diagnose medical issues. Examples include Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo, Tesla’s self-driving vehicles, and IBM’s Watson.

This type of artificial intelligence is referred to as Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) – non-human systems that can perform a specific task. We encounter this type on a daily basis, and its use is growing rapidly.

But while many impressive capabilities have been demonstrated, we’re also beginning to see problems. The worst case involved a self-driving test car that hit a pedestrian in March. The pedestrian died and the incident is still under investigation.

The most effective public policy and practice nudges of 2018

By Stephen Easton - Tuesday, January 29th, 2019

A teachable moment doesn’t have to arise naturally; even a simulated one helped make British police officers 21% less likely to be hooked by a phishing email, in one of a series of behavioural nudges tested in 2018.

Nudges often only influence a small fraction of the target group because they preserve choice by definition, as opposed to incentives or penalties, but are still good value as they can be scaled up at very low cost.

Several trialled over the past year have produced much larger effects, however, according to the latest yearly research report from the Behavioural Insights Team, a company jointly owned by its staff, the British government and the innovation quango Nesta.

DIY with IoT

By Ted Smillie - Tuesday, January 29th, 2019

“Democratizing data science is the notion that anyone, with little to no expertise, can do data science if provided ample data and user-friendly analytics tools. Supporting that idea, the new tool ingests datasets and generates sophisticated statistical models typically used by experts to analyze, interpret, and predict underlying patterns in data.” So says a 15 January […]

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s Administration of the Biometric Identification Services Project

By Australian National Audit Office - Monday, January 28th, 2019

On 1 July 2016, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) was created through the merger of the CrimTrac agency (CrimTrac), the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) and the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC).1 Prior to the merger, CrimTrac had commenced planning and initial administration of the Biometric Identification Services project (the BIS project or BIS).