News of the week selected by Impactscool – June 18th, 2018
18 June 2018 | Written by La redazione
The most important news on technology and the future, selected from all over the web for Impactscool’s readers
Google’s artificial intelligence will not be used for weapons. The company’s ethical stance comes a week from the decision not to renew the relationship with the Pentagon, which involved the development and use of an AI to identify the subjects present in the videos shot by drones. Google, in communicating the decision, has also listed some ethical principles that will guide the company’s work in the research and development processes of this technology. Google’s artificial intelligence applications will have to meet high standards of scientific excellence, be socially useful, accountable to people and be in line with privacy principles, they will need to avoid bias and be built and tested for security. Finally, Google will strive to monitor the use that will be made of AI systems because, as used to say, the technologies can not be “bad”, but who uses them yes.
Axon, an American company specializing in the production of teaser guns, has announced that it is working on the construction of surveillance drones, with the aim of selling them to the US police departments. Thanks to the collaboration with the Chinese company of drone production DJI, through a program called “Axon Air”, Axon intends to connect the new devices to Evidence.com, cloud of data management owned by the same company. The idea is to propose to the American police “a single package“, which offers at the same time technological tools, data management and support. But will the police adopt this new system? The question seems controversial: if, on the one hand, drones are cheap, automated and massively expand the police surveillance capabilities, on the other they could violate many aspects related to the privacy of citizens.
Tesla and the dream almost become reality, of autonomous driving car
The autonomous driving features on the Tesla cars will be complete already with the August update. This is what the company’s CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet written in response to a user who “complained” about the non-stellar performance of the current autopilot system. According to what Musk published, in fact, with version 9 of the software, which will be released in August, the current problems will be resolved, but there will be made available also some new advanced features, able to make the guide “truly autonomous”. Does this mean that as early as August we will go on holiday while sitting comfortably on our cars, without worrying about the road? Absolutely not. The one announced by Tesla’s CEO is just one more step towards completely autonomous vehicles, which exceeds the level of “assisted driving” that has been widespread up to now. In fact, before the epochal revolution of the machines that are guided by themselves, it will not be enough to complete the technological development, but it will be necessary to discuss and regulate many other aspects, starting from the ethical and juridical ones.
