As part of its emerging role as a global regulatory watchdog, the European Commission published a proposal on 21 April for regulations to govern artificial intelligence use in the European Union.
The economic stakes are high: the Commission predicts European public and private investment in AI reaching €20 billion a year this decade, and that was before the additional earmark of up to €134 billion earmarked for digital transitions in Europe’s Covid-19 pandemic recovery fund, some of which the Commission presumes will fund AI, too. Add to that counting investments in AI outside the EU but which target EU residents, since these rules will apply to any use of AI in the EU, not just by EU-based companies or governments.
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Translated Story: No appointments for mental health patients during the COVID-19 pandemic
Andrés Colao speaks from his own experience as a patient who has seen the COVID-19 pandemic cripple an already weak healthcare system. He is the spokesperson for AFESA, a Spanish charity of people with mental illness and their relatives. For those who had a disorder diagnosed before the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis has left them in limbo.
Jorge Daniel Castilla, who was undergoing treatment for a mental health condition, says, “I have had a couple of calls since March, the last one was in June to ask how I was doing. My therapy has been left up in the air.”
The crisis has been especially difficult for people seeking psychiatric and psychological services. “There are patients who have suffered a lot,” Colao says.
COVID-19 has caused a tsunami in mental health. During the first wave, 93% of countries surveyed by the World Health Organization (WHO) suffered paralysis in one or more services for patients with mental, neurological and substance abuse problems. Almost 40% of participating European countries reported worse conditions: they had stopped three out of four health services. “The stricter the lockdown, the more severe the impact,” says Marcin Rodzinka, spokesperson for Mental Health Europe, a network of mental health service users and professionals. This happened in Spain, for example, which shut its mental health outpatient centres.
Continue reading Translated Story: No appointments for mental health patients during the COVID-19 pandemicCountries Debate Openness of Future National IDs
Kenya’s High Court ruled Thursday that a recent amendment requiring citizens to register for a national biometric digital identification system overreached on some counts, such as allowing for links to DNA or GPS records, and failed to guarantee sufficient inclusion of Kenyan residents.
The ID system, called the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), was a homegrown answer to India’s pioneering Aadhaar system, which two years ago faced its own Indian Supreme Court ruling that upheld some components while modifying others.
More than half of African countries are developing some form of biometric or digital national ID in response to major international calls to establish legal identification for the almost 1 billion people who now lack it. But this ID boom, also taking place outside Africa, often gets ahead of data protection laws, as occurred in Kenya.
Continue reading Countries Debate Openness of Future National IDs
Ancient crystal growths in caves reveal seas rose 16 meters in a warmer world
The future of sea level rise may be written into the walls of coastal Spanish caves.
Mineral “bathtub rings” deposited inside the limestone Artà Caves on the Balearic island of Mallorca show how high seas rose during the Pliocene Epoch — a time when Earth was about as warm as it’s expected to get by 2100. Those mineral deposits suggest the planet’s seas were around 16 meters higher on average than they are today, researchers report August 30 in Nature.
Continue reading Ancient crystal growths in caves reveal seas rose 16 meters in a warmer world