Have you ever attempted to roll out a new service based on an emerging or new technology, expand into a new market or completely transform the way you do business? Have you ever looked back on these initiatives and wondered why they weren’t as successful as you had hoped in the timeframe you had planned for? The reason may be that your organization is not positioned correctly to innovate. The Emerging Technology Innovation Assessment, created by CompTIA’s Emerging Technology Community, will help you examine the areas of business that are necessary to drive innovation and determine what steps are needed to ensure you’re ready to expand your business.  
Continue reading: https://surveys.comptia.org/s3/Emerging-Tech-Assessment-Grid

We’ve all seen drone fail videos pop up on social media from time to time. Sometimes, we get a good laugh out of the misfortune, or sheer foolishness, of hapless pilots. Other times, we wonder out loud, “What the hell were you thinking?!” Guess which category this gem fits in.
The video “Parent of the year award goes to the dad flying his kid on a giant drone” has been getting some buzz on Reddit. The 50-second footage begin with a toothy kid explaining to us that he’s wearing a helmet because things are about to get “scary.”
You’d think he means “crazy,” but by the time the video ends, you realize scary indeed was the apt word choice.
So, here’s this daredevil kid who is standing underneath a giant industrial drone, probably oblivious to what propellers spinning at speed can do to do human flesh. He grabs the landing gear and the drone lifts him off the ground, its motors groaning tremendously under pressure. Thankfully, the drone doesn’t go too high because that helmet would have done precious little to save the guy’s legs if he fell.
You can see how things could have gotten so much worse for this boy, the way that drone crashed… So, why do it? Why put your kid at risk and total an expensive piece of gadget for a few seconds of thrill?
And lately, when it comes to drone users, we’ve been wondering that a lot: Why do people do the things they do… because if you really think about it, there are many rules mandated by the regulatory bodies that would seem like common sense to most, and yet people break them:

• Don’t fly near an airport because you may actually hit an airplane like the York Regional Police in Canada did.
• Don’t interfere with an emergency response because that action could result in a 2-acre-wide fire spreading to 500 acres overnight, fueling the second-largest recorded wildfire in California’s history.
• Don’t fly over people or invade someone’s privacy because it may prompt your city council to restrict drone operators with even more regulations and everyone’s going to hate you for that.
• Don’t fly under the influence of alcohol or drugs because you may end up crashing into your neighbor’s window and they will call the police on you.
• Don’t harass wildlife with your drone because you don’t really want the blood of 1,500 unborn elegant terns on your hands, now do you?

Continue reading: https://dronedj.com/2021/09/22/things-you-shouldnt-do-with-a-drone-use-it-to-lift-your-kid/

One of the US Navy’s first female fighter pilots, the engineering and robotics professor talks about the promise and peril of automation in airplanes and cars, predicting a “very distinct shift away from replacing human reasoning to augmenting human reasoning.”


 

In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Michael Chui speaks with Mary “Missy” Cummings, one of the first female fighter pilots in the US Navy and now a professor in the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, as well as the director of Duke’s Humans and Autonomy Laboratory.
Cummings talks about her life as a fighter pilot and her journey into automation and robotics. She also answers questions like:

• What are your reflections on diversity across different fields?
• What are some interesting developments you’re seeing in the automation of vehicles?
• Are there things that car designers should be learning from the aerospace industry, or vice versa, as they’re starting to implement more levels of automated technology and driver assistance?
• What is the perfect use case for automation?
• What excites you most about advances in technology?

Continue reading: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/from-fighter-pilot-to-robotics-pioneer-an-interview-with-missy-cummings

SAN RAMON, CA — Megan Jacob, a Dougherty Valley High School student, said she's long had a love for technology and engineering. But time and time again, at hackathons, engineering fix-it clinics or robotics meets, she noticed few women and girls were among the crowd.
Thus Jacob's nonprofit, Tech Girls United, was born last summer. Jacob said in an email that she hopes to educate and empower women in tech. So far, she's reached more than 2,200 girls and women in 30 states and 45 countries.
Tech Girls United kicked off with a data science boot camp that drew 100 girls across the world to learn the basics and put those lessons into use with a final project.
Continue reading: https://patch.com/california/sanramon/san-ramon-teen-starts-nonprofit-empower-techs-girls-women

In a data-driven world, the implications of AI are far-reaching. In this article, Ashley Kramer, Chief Product & Marketing Officer for Sisense shares her views on AI, its challenges and opportunities and what women can do to lead the way.
Why did you decide to pursue a career in AI and data analytics?
I was a computer science major who doubled as an athlete, playing soccer in college. Earlier in my career I was a software engineer at NASA and Oracle. I quickly realized that I am better suited talking to people rather than computers, so I pivoted into a product-focused role with Amazon. What was really impactful during my time at Amazon was the focus on the customer and using data to drive the business. That really built a solid foundation of using analytics to drive better outcomes as an emerging product leader – a foundation that I’ve used throughout my career.
From there, I moved to Tableau because I had experienced for myself how analytics can be utilized to save time and money for companies. I was fortunate to be a part of the early cloud movement and led the move of Tableau to the cloud (Tableau Online) which was a pivotal part of my career journey.
Continue reading: https://womenlovetech.com/sisenses-ashley-kramer-on-ai-data-ethics-and-future-of-women-in-technology/

Data permeate all aspects of modern economies and societies. As a result of decades of digitalization, data in digital form are constantly created, gathered and shared across the globe to support core societal functions. Digitalization brings together two interrelated processes: digitization, the transformation of analogue information into digital form, and datafication, the application of quantitative and other analytics to data.
The digitization of everything and the unprecedented expansion of datafication have led jurisdictions to produce and utilize ever expanding amounts of data, setting the stage for a new economy – a fourth industrial revolution. Through this revolution, data have transformed into a strategic asset interlocking individuals, private actors and public entities in global networks, supporting traditional economic activities and giving rise to a new economic ecosystem – the data economy – where digital information is sourced, analyzed, aggregated and exchanged.
Over the past three decades, transnational data governance has been dominated by a techno-libertarian ethos reflected in free movement of data across decentralized infrastructure – the internet. Without an international legal framework governing data, domestic policy-makers are developing different systems of rules and processes to extend their jurisdictional control over the digital world, domestically and transnationally. Legal and regulatory frameworks are being developed to define rights and obligations for data holders and consumers; competition policies have been triggered to curb data abuse by dominant incumbent firms; new rules to assert control over internal and external data flows and related infrastructure are being enacted.
Continue reading: https://www.omfif.org/2021/09/solving-the-transnational-data-governance-problem/

Since graduating in Geomatics Engineering from Germany’s University of Essen in the 1980s, Ulrich Hermanski – chief marketing officer and executive vice president of geopositioning at Topcon – has seen the surveying profession change dramatically. In this interview with GIM International, he sums up the current status of the surveying profession. He reflects on the key advances in the ever-evolving geospatial business, emphasizes the vital role of geodata and discusses the role of surveyors – and of Topcon – in the future.
There have been a lot of changes since then, but the biggest in terms of geomatics is of course the impact of digital technology. This change hasn’t just impacted the way professionals take measurements and analyze findings; it has actually completely transformed the role of a geomatics engineer. Today, geomatics professionals are far more focused on data handling than in the past – or at least they should be. With masses of data now available on every job site, it’s vital that surveyors are able to translate this data into meaningful information for project teams. Back when I was studying, it was more important to focus on taking accurate measurements and avoiding human errors on site, rather than considering how the information would be digested by other stakeholders on the project. And in 1985, there was far less data available – not to mention there being no laptops, smartphones or tablets. Any computerized calculation was performed by a machine that took up half a room! So when you look at what technology is at a geomatics engineer’s fingertips now versus back then, you can’t even compare the two situations.
Continue reading: https://www.gim-international.com/content/article/the-surveyor-s-need-to-embrace-data-management

The complex issue of data management is becoming an increasingly important focus for businesses in the UK, particularly with cybertheft continuing to pose a significant threat to entrepreneurs.
For example, an estimated 88% of UK firms have suffered data breaches during the last 12 months, while it’s thought that one small business is hacked on these shores every 19 seconds.
But what steps can firms take to manage their data more effectively? Here are some tips to keep in mind!
#1. Complete Regular Backups to Safely Store Your Data
Let’s start with the basics; backing up your data and creating a clear path to recovery are crucial if you’re to manage your customer’s information safely and securely.
Continue reading: https://www.techiexpert.com/essential-data-management-tips/

It’s predicted that there will be more than 41 billion IoT devices in use by 2027. This is up from an already staggering 8 billion just two years ago. Why the unbelievable exponential growth? In large part because these devices are turning out to be incredibly useful for businesses, automating and streamlining processes in every industry. However, all of that automation comes with an enormous volume of data, and trying to collect and analyze that data, then transforming it into actionable information, isn’t always easy.
Enter edge-computing (EC) platforms.
These platforms aim to remedy the pain points felt by businesses who are sending all of their IoT data to the cloud. The cloud process can be slow, inefficient, and costly, none of which helps businesses optimize and get ahead.
Edge-computing platforms, or edge analytics, on the other hand, are situated near IoT devices, making it possible for them to collect and analyze data where it originates. This ensures that businesses can use the analytics in near real-time, which is the timeframe you want to be working with when it comes to improving operational efficiency and planning predictive-maintenance upgrades.
Continue reading: 
https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/iot/article/21176184/wyebot-optimizing-networks-to-resolve-iot-and-edge-challenges

IoT devices, particularly in the home, are growing at an incredible rate. Some estimates have the number of household devices at around 30 billion by 2025. To put that in perspective, that's double the number of devices deployed in 2020.
Users in both industrial and connected home settings need these products and applications to just work for them to be viable and profitable. But this explosion of technology has put an unprecedented amount of pressure on networks and the networking technologies that the internet relies on even today.
IP technologies, and IPv6 in particular, can assist with this rapid growth. Developers, manufacturers and IT specialists must use standardized technologies to ensure the interoperability and long-term viability of IoT.
Continue reading: https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/post/Why-move-to-an-all-IP-IoT

IoT devices are fast becoming an everyday part of our lives. Whether it be in the role they play in manufacturing and industry or powering the appliances in our own homes, it’s clear that IoT devices provide new and efficient ways of working and living. From wearables to smart cities, there’s no shortage of the capabilities that IoT devices have when collecting data from their environment and the internet, but with this advance in technology comes new risks to data, networks, and IT infrastructures.
Despite their prevalence in our lives, the security risks that are inherent to these data sharing devices are failing to be tackled head on. All this can disrupt everything from our power and security within our homes as well as impacting the critical infrastructure sector.
With the growing risk of cyberattacks which look to exploit the security vulnerabilities of IoT devices, it’s now more important than ever to have a strong understanding and security strategy in place to avoid and mitigate these risks.
Continue reading: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/09/23/protecting-iot-dns/

London, UK:  Altitude Angel, the world’s most trusted UTM (Unified Traffic Management) technology provider, and Oxfordshire County Council have today announced they are to collaborate on a unique project which will provide local authorities with a blue-print for each to realize and enable its local drone economy.
With the backing of The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and under the moniker AirTek, the partnership will establish a framework to understand the requirements councils need to have in place to progress UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) services and trials.  In doing so, it will reduce discretion and monitoring costs, which are often barriers to opening new services and operations. Oxfordshire County Council iHub team will make use of their extensive knowledge on developing the requirements for CAV trials and services for local authorities to the UAV environment.
There are established business cases for using UAVs as freight carriers, including medical samples, alleviating pressure on ground transportation and AirTek will enable and accelerate this technology’s economic and environmental benefits.
Continue reading: https://www.suasnews.com/2021/09/uk-business-minister-backs-altitude-angel-to-keep-the-uk-at-the-cutting-edge-of-innovation/

The alarming increase in the occurrence of wildfires isn't going away. In fact, fire frequencies are projected to increase by approximately 27% globally by 2050. Areas such as North America, Northern Eurasia, and Australia are deemed to be most susceptible to wildfires, making finding effective methods to respond to them increasingly more important.
Increasingly, fire departments across the globe have started to deploy first responder drones to ensure firefighter safety as well as enhance operational effectiveness when tackling a wide range of emergency sites including oil wells, high rises, and wildfires.
In response to a recent forest fire that broke out in Athens, Defense Minister Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos said that the armed forces would strengthen their capabilities in fire prevention, deploying drones over other vulnerable sites across the country to obtain accurate data. Drone deployment in a fire emergency ensures the protection of personnel, gathers situational awareness speedily and accurately, and provides a cost-effective helicopter replacement and enables fast mapping for incident response and recovery.
Continue reading: https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-a-drone-in-a-box-can-stop-wildfires/

Last year, Commercial UAV News spoke with Mainblades about looking into making a presentable use case for outdoor applications. A lot has happened since then, and the company has now performed the first European fully automated outdoor airport drone inspection of a commercial aircraft at an active airfield in Woensdrecht, Netherlands.
To validate the increasing interest for outdoor airport drone inspections, Mainblades, in cooperation with Fokker Techniek, Truenoord, and the Dutch Drone Centre / Aviolanda, used its M300 drone solution to inspect an Airbus A330. Typically, aircraft inspections require inspectors on-site to check that all the damages and repairs of the aircraft are correctly recorded in the damaged and repair mapping report. This becomes problematic with bigger aircraft as it can be hard to take a good look on top of it, including the wings or the tail. With a drone, this process becomes much easier since a drone can fly around the aircraft to find damages and take pictures that show more than can be seen with the naked eye. 
Currently, Mainblades is still primarily performing indoor drone inspections, but this is the first step toward developing and modernizing aircraft maintenance services. Outdoor inspections allow the reservation of hangar space for heavy-duty maintenance and scheduled inspections, while light inspections can be done in front of the hangar, on parking spots, or at the gate in the future, massively reducing the time spent for unscheduled maintenance. This holds great potential for shorter turnaround times and fewer overall aircraft movements (towings) at the airport.
Continue reading: https://www.commercialuavnews.com/infrastructure/mainblades-conducts-first-european-outdoor-airplane-drone-inspection

Although the drone economy is new, it’s growing and promises to revolutionize package delivery, aerial imaging and a host of other applications in everyday life and business. “Across a broad array of sectors, many organizations are seeing the value drones can add, be that inspecting infrastructure, surveying agricultural land or aiding first responders,” says Jim Barksdale, president of Barksdale Investment & Research in Atlanta. As the industry progresses, and especially regulations begin to allow drones to fly out of sight of their operators, drones will have a much bigger impact on the economy, says Miriam McNabb, editor-in-chief of Dronelife and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional drone services marketplace. She points to “major retailers like Walmart and logistics players like UPS (increasing) their investments in the drone industry.” Here are seven drone stocks to watch today with an eye for growth.
When AgEagle was founded in 2010, its focus was on fixed-wing drones, data and analytics for the agriculture industry. Since then, it has been a story in diversification. “They’ve really moved out of a single-industry focus,” McNabb says. While the company offers two proprietary fixed-wing drones, it has expanded into contract manufacturing that also includes multirotor and hybrid fuselages for energy, construction and government, in addition to agriculture. It’s also involved in the manufacturing and assembly of drones for delivery operations. “Increasing demand for faster delivery in the transport and logistics industry is fueling capital investments in drone delivery initiatives across several sectors, including delivery of consumer packages, food, healthcare supplies and heavy cargo,” the company says.
Continue reading: https://www.bollyinside.com/news/as-technology-increases-here-are-7-drone-actions-to-watch

Expect to see drones buzzing above you within the next few years in Corpus Christi.
The City Council on Tuesday approved a $4 million, five-year business incentive agreement between the Corpus Christi B Corporation and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. It intends to expand and support the modernization and infrastructural needs to the campus' Lone Star Unmanned Aircraft System Center.
LSUASC is one of seven Federal Aviation Administration drone test sites in the United States, and the only one in Texas. The test site was established in 2013 as a research center at TAMUCC with support from the Corpus Christi Business and Job Development Corporation.
The center is a global partner for research, development, testing and evaluation of drone technologies across educational, public and commercial agency interests. It supports the aeronautical research needs of research institutions, private-sector service providers, nonprofit corporations and local, state and federal agencies.
Continue reading: https://www.caller.com/story/news/education/2021/09/22/tamucc-expand-business-corpus-christi-drone-technology/5803023001/

Police responsible for safety at a Guns N’ Roses concert that drew 14,000 fans used Elistair Orion 2 tethered drones for security – here’s why customers including the French defense agency and CNN Air are using tethered drones to secure large events.
On the evening of August 13, 2021, an Elistair Orion 2 unmanned aerial vehicle was utilized to monitor a Guns N’ Roses concert held at the University of Montana. The drone flew over the venue continuously for six hours in order to guarantee the safety of the 14,000 attendees.
Police at the University of Montana’s Washington Grizzly Stadium were given access to a consistent aerial view of the stadium and surrounding area, streamed directly from the Orion’s electro optic and infrared sensors. The Orion’s dual sensor payload in conjunction with its 24 hour flight endurance enabled the system to carry out an uninterrupted, day into night mission, eliminating the need to land.
Continue reading: https://dronelife.com/2021/09/22/tethered-drones-for-security-elistair-orion-2-flies-over-guns-n-roses-concert/

The Korean delegation at the recent Commercial UAV Expo show in Las Vegas was among the largest international groups on the floor, featuring not only a large and varied range of Korean drones, but representation from the Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation – a body actively supporting the growing drone industry in Korea.   Korea’s decision to support innovation and the drone ecosystem at a top-down, national level is helping small- and medium-sized drone businesses make their mark on the global drone market.
Korean technology is known around the world, with large companies like Hyundai, Samsung, LG, and Kia among the top automotive and tech providers around the globe.  Korean drones are entering the global market quickly, supported by generous grants to support innovation, regulatory flexibility, and government-funded testing facilities.  As the U.S. government turns away from China-made tech, the Korean industry is ready to take advantage of the opportunity that a growing market provides.
Continue reading: https://dronelife.com/2021/09/22/korean-drones-at-commuav-expo-why-koreas-drone-industry-is-racing-ahead/

Do you have some anxiety about Artificial Intelligence (AI) bias or related issues? You’re not alone. Nearly all business leaders surveyed for Deloitte’s third State of AI in the Enterprise report expressed concerns around the ethical risks of their AI initiatives.
There is certainly some cause for uneasiness. Nine out of ten respondents to a late 2020 Capgemini Research Institute survey were aware of at least one instance where an AI system had resulted in ethical issues for their businesses. Nearly two-thirds have experienced the issue of discriminatory bias with AI systems, six out of ten indicated their organizations had attracted legal scrutiny as a result of AI applications, and 22 percent have said they suffered customer backlash because of these decisions reached by AI systems.
As Capgemini leaders pointed out in their recent blog post: “Enterprises exploring the potential of AI need to ensure they apply AI the right way and for the right purposes. They need to master Ethical AI.”
Continue reading: https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2021/9/what-is-ethical-artificial-intelligence-ai-7-questions-answered

The U.K. government has announced a national AI strategy — its first dedicated package aimed at boosting the country’s capabilities in and around machine learning technologies over the longer term.
It says it hopes the strategy will lead to an increase in the number and types of AIs being developed and commercialized in the U.K. over the next 10 years.
The plan to prioritize and “level up” development and applications of artificial intelligence follows earlier industrial and digital strategies — which talked up the promise of AI. But Boris Johnson’s government is now inching onward, announcing a 10-year plan to invest in making Britain “a global AI superpower”, as the government’s PR puts it — by targeting support at areas like upskilling and reskilling in the hopes of reaping AI-driven economic rewards down the line.
Whether there’s much of policy substance here, as yet, looks debatable.
Continue reading: https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/uk-announces-a-national-strategy-to-level-up-ai/

The exponential growth of data has fed artificial intelligence’s voracious appetite and led to its transformation from niche to omnipresent.  An equally important aspect of this AI growth equation is the ever-expanding demands it places on computer system requirements to deliver higher AI performance. This has not only led to AI acceleration being incorporated into common chip architectures such as CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs but also mushroomed a class of dedicated hardware AI accelerators specifically designed to accelerate artificial neural networks and machine learning applications. While these hardware accelerators can deliver impressive AI performance improvements, software AI accelerators are required to deliver even higher orders of magnitude AI performance gains across deep learning, classical machine learning, and graph analytics, for the same hardware set-up. What’s more is that this AI performance boost driven by software optimizations is free, requiring almost no code changes or developer time and no additional hardware costs.
Let us try to visualize the scope of the cost savings that can be realized through the 10-100X performance gains that can be realized through software AI acceleration. For example, many of the leading streaming media services have tens of thousands of hours of available content. They might want to use image classification and object detection algorithms for content moderation, text identification, and celebrity recognition. The classification criteria might also be different by country based on local customs and government regulations and the process might need to be repeated for ~10% of the content every month, based on new programs and rule changes. Using the list prices of running these AI algorithms on the leading cloud service providers, even a 10X gain in performance through software AI accelerators can lead to approximate cost savings of millions of dollars a month**.
Continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/2021/09/22/software-ai-accelerators-ai-performance-boost-for-free/

“Alexa, buy a stock that has the best chance of going up between 1% and 3% today.” Could the complexity of financial research ever become this simple? The answer is yes. New developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are disrupting the underwriting process, portfolio composition, robo-advising, research and virtually every corner of fintech.
Someday, you’ll have reliable AI that can analyze your specific investing style, alert you as to where opportunities lay hidden and offer you hard-hitting analyses to stay informed. This is vital because sound financial systems underpin economic growth and development, and they’re the engine behind the civilized world in advancing shared prosperity and reducing class inequality.
And making investing accessible is critical. Class division is more severely disproportionate in the ownership of financial assets than in the distribution of income. The top 1% of wealthy Americans control about 38% of the stock market, and the top 10% have 84% of all of Wall Street portfolios’ value, according to the results of the Federal Reserve’s 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/09/22/how-ai-will-democratize-access-to-investing/?sh=37f61b0f2a1b

Amid the most significant leadership changes in company history, Amazon Web Services has made a series of organizational changes to prioritize new areas of the business, according an internal memo viewed by Insider and sources with direct knowledge of the changes.
Amazon is creating a new organization called EC2 Edge, according to an internal memo Elastic Compute Cloud boss Dave Brown sent last week, combining hybrid cloud and edge computing products Outposts, AWS Local Zones, Wavelength, and Telco. To run the new org as a VP, Amazon hired Jan Hofmeyr from Comcast, where he was the chief network officer and one of the architects behind the company's X1 video and entertainment platform. 
In the cloud industry, "edge" refers to the concept of keeping more computing power close to the final user — considered the edge of the network. Some in the industry believe that edge computing could be the next great frontier for the cloud market, powering more intelligent devices like self-driving cars or industrial robotics, where decisions can be made faster and on-the-fly without the need to communicate with platforms like AWS itself. 
Indeed, one AWS insider said that dedicating a new VP to a business indicates that it's something Amazon sees as a potential billion-dollar business, or otherwise represents a significant strategic area for the company. Amazon declined to comment for this story.
The new organization will be "focused on providing EC2 Compute and Networking outside of our current regional footprint," Brown wrote in the email last week. "We're making strong progress in this area with the products that we have and I'm confident that the alignment here will allow us to move even faster. While it is still early days, I'm confident that EC2 Edge will be a very meaningful business for AWS in the coming years."
The unit also includes products like Outposts, which represent Amazon's first-ever product designed for the traditional data center, helping customers connect their legacy IT architecture up to the AWS cloud. Hybrid cloud is seen as tying in closely to the concept of edge computing, bringing more of the power of the cloud to the servers that customers already use.
Outposts General Manager Joshua Burgin, Local Zones boss Nathan Helmick, and Telco Director Kiran Edara, and EC2 senior principal software engineer Diwakar Gupta will now report to Hofmeyr. George Elissaios will also report to Hofmeyr and run a new consolidated product management organization for EC2 Edge products, including Outposts. 
Continue reading: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-web-services-internal-memo-edge-computing-2021-9

Earlier this month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) held a webinar on artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace.  Commissioner Keith Sonderling explained that the EEOC is monitoring employers’ use of such technology in the workplace to ensure compliance with anti-discrimination laws. The agency recognizes the potential for AI to mitigate unlawful human bias, but is wary of rapid, undisciplined implementation that may perpetuate or accelerate such bias.  Sonderling remarked that the EEOC may use Commissioner charges—agency-initiated investigations unconnected to an employee’s charge of discrimination—to ensure employers’ are not using AI in an unlawful manner, particularly under the rubric of disparate impact claims.
The EEOC’s interest in this topic is not new.  The agency previously held a public meeting in October 2016 discussing the use of big data in the workplace and the implications for employment law practitioners.  But the most recent webinar likely reflects the EEOC’s response to a November 2020 letter, authored by ten U.S. Senators, asking the agency to focus on employers’ use of artificial intelligence, machine-learning, and other hiring technologies that may result in discrimination.  We previously blogged about this letter here.
Many attorneys and AI commentators agree that AI, such as automated candidate sourcing, resume screening, or video interview analysis, is not a panacea for employment discrimination.  The technology, if not carefully implemented and monitored, can introduce and even exacerbate unlawful bias.  This is because algorithms generally rely on a set of human inputs, such as resumes of high-performing existing employees, to guide their analysis of candidates.  If those inputs lack diversity, the algorithm may reinforce existing institutional bias at breakneck speed.  This can lead to claims of disparate impact discrimination.  The EEOC would most assuredly take a heightened interest in any such claims.
Although the EEOC has flagged these issues, it has not yet issued written guidance on the use of AI in employment decisions.  In his remarks, Sonderling confirmed that the most relevant guidance document is over 40 years old.  He was referring to the EEOC’s 1978 Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures.  That guidance, written in the wake of the 1960s civil rights movement, outlines different ways employers can show that employment tests and other selection criteria are job-related and consistent with business necessity.  Although dated, the same principles that justified the validity of selection procedures in the 1970s can guide employers using AI today.  One such method, called the 80% rule, explains that a selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than eighty percent (80%) of the selection rate for the group with the highest selection rate constitutes a “substantially different rate of selection,” indicating possible disparate impact.  According to the Uniform Guidelines, this rule of thumb may be used by employers to test AI tools prior to implementation and to regularly audit such tools after implementation.
Continue reading: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/employers-beware-eeoc-monitoring-use-artificial-intelligence

When logistics service providers were first charged with delivering the new Covid-19 vaccines in late 2020, they may have wished for a magic wand to solve the extraordinary challenges their mission would present. While some already had specialized pharmaceutical divisions and cold chain warehouses to serve the typical trade in medicines and biological products, those networks were designed for a lighter flow of goods to predetermined destinations like hospitals, not an all-out blitz to reach every corner of the globe as quickly as possible.
The vials of the precious vaccine had to be moved in huge quantities, kept at ultra-low temperatures, and shipped and delivered at top speed … all at a time when commercial aircraft—whose belly space has long been the main means of expedited international cargo transport—were largely grounded due to pandemic-related restrictions on passenger travel. At the same time, the logistics companies’ employees had to work in conditions where they faced exposure to the very virus they were fighting. To cap it off, they were under colossal pressure to distribute the vaccines before the deadly disease could spread among vulnerable populations.
Citing severe capacity constraints in the aircargo market, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) dubbed the effort “the mission of the century” for the sector.
Yet despite those and other challenges, logistics service companies—and parcel carriers, in particular—have been successful in their efforts to swiftly distribute Covid-19 vaccines. One of the key tools players have brought to bear is the internet of things (IoT), a vast network of connected sensors that allowed shippers and carriers to monitor and track this critical cargo as it passed through multiple hands, transportation modes, and countries.
MOVE IT QUICKLY, KEEP IT COLD
To help them track shipments and manage the complexities of time-sensitive vaccine distribution, the major parcel carriers—DHL, FedEx Corp., and UPS Inc.—all turned to variations of IoT technology. 
For DHL, IoT tools were critical for monitoring cargo that had to be maintained at subzero temperatures (-70 degrees Fahrenheit for the Pfizer vaccine and -20 degrees for the Moderna version) and for reassuring trading partners who were pushing for urgent delivery. Those partners stretched across the globe: Through May of 2021, the company had transported more than 200 million doses of the various Covid-19 vaccines on about 9,000 flights to more than 120 countries.
Continue reading: https://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/52284-eye-in-the-sky-iot-powers-vaccine-delivery-blitz