California Map Reveals Counties With Fresh Mask Mandates
Face mask mandates have made a return in several California counties, which will remain in place until the spring. The mandates have been introduced to help slow the spread of seasonal illnesses such as COVID-19, flu and other viral infections, health officials say.
“Generally, masks can help act as a filter to reduce the number of germs you breathe in or out,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. “Their effectiveness can vary against different viruses, for example, based on the size of the virus. When worn by a person who has a virus, masks can reduce the chances they spread it to others.”
Since September, COVID-19 levels across the U.S. have been on the decline. However, wastewater detections of the virus have shown an uptick in recent weeks, especially in the Midwest, in line with the spread of a new variant. However, in California, “minimal” levels of the virus have been detected, as of October 31.
The Chatbot Optimisation Game: Can We Trust AI Web Searches?
Does aspartame cause cancer? The potentially carcinogenic properties of the popular artificial sweetener, added to everything from soft drinks to children’s medicine, have been debated for decades. Its approval in the U.S. stirred controversy in 1974, several U.K. supermarkets banned it from their products in the 00s, and peer-reviewed academic studies have long butted heads.
Last year, the World Health Organization concluded aspartame was “possibly carcinogenic” to humans, while public health regulators suggest that it’s safe to consume in the small portions in which it is commonly used.
While many of us may look to settle the question with a quick Google search, this is exactly the sort of contentious debate that could cause problems for the internet of the future. As generative AI chatbots have rapidly developed over the past couple of years, tech companies have been quick to hype them as a utopian replacement for various jobs and services — including internet search engines.
Instead of scrolling through a list of webpages to find the answer to a question, the thinking goes, an AI chatbot can scour the internet for you, combing it for relevant information to compile into a short answer to your query. Google and Microsoft are betting big on the idea and have already introduced AI-generated summaries into Google Search and Bing.
Facial Recognition That Tracks Suspicious Friendliness Is Coming to a Store Near You
A brand new way of being surveilled could be coming to a store near you — a facial recognition system designed to detect when retail workers have anomalous interactions with customers.
About a month ago, Israel-based Corsight AI began offering its global clients access to a new service aimed at rooting out what the retail industry calls “sweethearting,” — instances of store employees giving people they know discounts or free items.
Traditional facial recognition systems, which have proliferated in the retail industry thanks to companies like Corsight, flag people entering stores who are on designated blacklists of shoplifters. The new sweethearting detection system takes the monitoring a step further by tracking how each customer interacts with different employees over long periods of time.
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US Election Rolls Over Unresolved Biometrics Oversight Debates
The soon to be seated 119th Congress will face a number of issues regarding the regulation and oversight of biometrics that it eventually is going to have to address, according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service, Congress’ investigative arm.
Among the issues the new Congress will need to tackle is the use of facial recognition by law enforcement, the collection of biometrics by travelers into and out of the U.S., social media, and consumer data privacy, CRS said.
“There are currently no federal laws specifically governing law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology.” Consequently, law enforcement’s use of facial recognition continues to be a subject of ongoing congressional attention, The CRS issues brief says.
CRS also said there are “several broad concerns related to AI spanning multiple sectors” that “could be considered” by the upcoming new session of Congress. And, CRS noted, that “there is no specific legislative framework at the federal level that governs law enforcement use of social media,” a matter of growing concern and contention that most certainly will have to be addressed.
Tech5 Wins $54M Livescan Biometrics Contract With Virginia Police
Virginia State Police are upgrading their livescan fingerprint biometrics collection capabilities through a 15-year contract with Tech5. The contract, worth an estimation $54 million, represents a significant win in the law enforcement market segment, which Tech5 is targeting with the recent launch of its multi-biometric and tattoo identification platform.
Tech5 will provide what it calls a comprehensive suite of cloud software services and approximately 800 livescan systems. Its latest law enforcement software will be integrated with a variety of third-party biometric capture systems and its Multi-Biometric Identification System (MBIS) platform, according to the announcement. Tech5 is supplying kiosks for both civilian and criminal enrollment, backed by its software-as-a-service open architecture solution.
