AI ethics in June 2018

Employing the universe of juvenile court decisions in a US state between 1996 and 2012, we analyze the effects of emotional shocks associated with unexpected outcomes of football games played by a prominent college team in the state. We find that unexpected losses increase sentence lengths assigned by judges during the week following the game. Unexpected wins, or losses that were expected to be close contests ex ante have no impact. The effects of these emotional shocks are asymmetrically borne

Robots and chatbots are sophisticated. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly popular in the financial industry due to its ability to provide customers with cheap, efficient and personalised services. This article uses doctrinal sources and a case study to show that many banks and FinTech start-ups are investing in AI. Yet, there are a number of challenges arising from the use of AI which could undermine trust and confidence amongst consumers. This article features the issue of bias and di

Elderly care at home is a matter of great concern if the elderly live alone, since unforeseen circumstances might occur that affect their well-being. Technologies that assist the elderly in independent living are essential for enhancing care in a cost-effective and reliable manner. Elderly care applications often demand real-time observation of the environment and the resident’s activities using an event-driven system. As an emerging area of research and development, it is necessary to exp

Analysis of social media using digital methods is a flourishing approach. However, the relatively easy availability of data collected via platform application programming interfaces has arguably led to the predominance of single-platform research of social media. Such research has also privileged the role of text in social media analysis, as a form of data that is more readily gathered and searchable than images. In this paper, we challenge both of these prevailing forms of social media research

BACKGROUND: Heart failure is one of the leading causes of hospitalization in the United States. Advances in big data solutions allow for storage, management, and mining of large volumes of structured and semi-structured data, such as complex healthcare data. Applying these advances to complex healthcare data has led to the development of risk prediction models to help identify patients who would benefit most from disease management programs in an effort to reduce readmissions and healthcare cost

With the antibiotic development pipeline running dry, many fear that we might soon run out of treatment options. High-density infections are particularly difficult to treat due to their adaptive multidrug-resistance and currently there are no therapies that adequately address this important issue. Here, a large-scale in vivo study was performed to enhance the activity of antibiotics to treat high-density infections caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. It was sh

Big data and data science transform organizational decision-making. We increasingly defer decisions to algorithms because machines have earned a reputation of outperforming us. As algorithms become embedded within organizations, they become more influential and increasingly opaque. Those who create algorithms may make arbitrary decisions in all stages of the ‘data value chain’, yet these subjectivities are obscured from view. Algorithms come to reflect the biases of their creators, can reinforce

While substantial effort has been invested in making robots more reliable, experience demonstrates that robots operating in unstructured environments are often challenged by frequent failures. Despite this, robots have not yet reached a level of design that allows effective management of faulty or unexpected behavior by untrained users. To understand why this may be the case, an in-depth literature review was done to explore when people perceive and resolve robot failures, how robots communicate

Jose Ordovas and colleagues consider that nutrition interventions tailored to individual characteristics and behaviours have promise but more work is needed before they can deliver Dietary factors are well recognised contributors to common diseases, including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer.123 Despite the known link between dietary patterns and disease, interventions to alter dietary habits and to improve public health and wellbeing have had limited impact. Personalisation of

Algorithms silently structure our lives. Algorithms can determine whether someone is hired, promoted, offered a loan, or provided housing as well as determine which political ads and news articles consumers see. Yet, the responsibility for algorithms in these important decisions is not clear. This article identifies whether developers have a responsibility for their algorithms later in use, what those firms are responsible for, and the normative grounding for that responsibility. I conceptualize

This OECD Learning Framework 2030 offers a vision and some underpinning principles for the future of education systems. It is about orientation, not prescription. The learning framework has been co-created for the OECD Education 2030 project by government representatives and a growing community of partners, including thought leaders, experts, school networks, school leaders, teachers, students and youth groups, parents, universities, local organisations and social partners. This is work in progr

In machine learning, the concept of interpretability is both important and slippery.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly transform the role of the doctor and revolutionise the practice of medicine. This qualitative review paper summarises the past 12 months of health research in AI, across different medical specialties, and discusses the current strengths as well as challenges, relating to this emerging technology. Doctors, especially those in leadership roles, need to be aware of how quickly AI is advancing in health, so that they are ready to lead t