CSI: Immortality (TV Movie 2015) – IMDb

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There is a thing called CSI Effect. People *expect* ultra fast DNA tests, they expect "scientific evidence" very far from reality. This final chapter brings conclusion to the show. But the new case lacks original ideas, it is just as tired as the worst seasons of the show, and and it manages to inherit all the issues the CSI series had.

Old stars and characters return to a "yet another" important and big scene that can showcase it all, but as the show tries to amaze us with "detective fantasy" it manages to serve us more nonsense and an uninteresting plot.

When we watched the show the tale about individual characters added a bit of spice to this bland soup of scientific nonsense. The characters and how they performed added a lot to the "drama" in this series. But as a "service to old fans" they wanted to add conclusion to the show, and brought back (revived) old characters in an attempt to please most of us. Too bad it meant: We lost continuity.

And events in the team and continuity were one of the key redeeming qualities of the original show.

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CSI: Immortality (TV Movie 2015) - IMDb

Gattaca movie review & film summary (1997) | Roger Ebert

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Vincent does not accept his fate. He never has. As a child, he had swimming contests with his brother Anton (Loren Dean), who has all the right scores but needs to be saved from drowning. Now Vincent dreams of becoming a crew member on an expedition to one of the moons of Saturn. Using an illegal DNA broker, he makes a deal with a man named Jerome (Jude Law), who has the right genes but was paralyzed in an accident. Jerome will provide him with blood, urine samples and an identity. In a sense, they'll both go into space. Gattaca is the remarkable debut of a writer-director from New Zealand, Andrew Niccol, whose film is intelligent and thrilling--a tricky combination--and also visually exciting. His most important set is a vast office where genetically superior computer programmers come to work every day, filing into their long rows of desks like the office slaves in King Vidor's The Crowd and Orson Welles' The Trial. (Why are perfect human societies so often depicted by ranks of automatons? Is it because human nature resides in our flaws?) Vincent, as Jerome, gets a job as a programmer, supplies false genetic samples and becomes a finalist for the space shot.

The tension comes in two ways. First, there's the danger that Vincent will be detected; the area is swept daily, and even an eyelash can betray him. Second, there's a murder; a director of the center, who questions the wisdom of the upcoming shot, is found dead, and a detective (Alan Arkin) starts combing the personnel for suspects. Will a computer search sooner or later put together Vincent, the former janitor, with Jerome, the new programmer? Vincent becomes friendly with Irene (Uma Thurman), who works in the center but has been passed over for a space shot because of low scores in some areas. They are attracted to one another, but romance in this world can be dangerous; after kissing a man, a woman is likely to have his saliva swabbed from her mouth so she can test his prospects. Other supporting characters include Gore Vidal, as a mission supervisor, and Tony Shalhoub as the broker (You could go anywhere with this guy's helix under your arm).

Hawke is a good choice for the lead, combining the restless dreams of a Godchild with the plausible exterior of a lab baby. The best scenes involve his relationship with the real Jerome, played by Law as smart, bitter, and delighted to be sticking it to the system that has grounded him. (He may be paralyzed from the waist down, but after all, as the movie observes, you don't need to walk in space.) His drama parallels Vincent's, because if either one is caught they'll both go down together.

Science fiction in the movies has recently specialized in alien invasions, but the best of the genre deals with ideas. At a time when we read about cloned sheep and tomatoes crossed with fish, the science in Gattaca is theoretically possible. When parents can order perfect babies, will they? Would you take your chances on a throw of the genetic dice, or order up the make and model you wanted? How many people are prepared to buy a car at random from the universe of all available cars? That's how many, I suspect, would opt to have natural children.

Everybody will live longer, look better and be healthier in the Gattacan world. But will it be as much fun? Will parents order children who are rebellious, ungainly, eccentric, creative, or a lot smarter than their parents are? There's a concert pianist in Gattaca who has 12 fingers. Don't you sometimes have the feeling you were born just in time?

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Gattaca movie review & film summary (1997) | Roger Ebert

Roger Federer – Wikipedia

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Swiss tennis player (born 1981)

Roger Federer (German: [rdr fedrr]; born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss former professional tennis player. He was ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 310 weeks, including a record 237 consecutive weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 five times. He won 103 ATP singles titles, the second most of all time, including 20 Grand Slam singles titles, a record eight men's singles Wimbledon titles, an Open Era record-tying five men's singles US Open titles, and a record-tying six year-end championships.

Federer played during an era where he dominated men's tennis along with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic as the Big Three, collectively considered by some to be the three most successful male tennis players of all time. Federer's 20 Grand Slam singles titles also put him at third most of all time, only behind Djokovic with 21 and record holder Nadal with 22, as of the end of 2022 season when Federer retired.[c] A Wimbledon junior champion in 1998 and former ball boy, Federer won his first major singles title at Wimbledon in 2003 at age 21.[4]

Between 2003 and 2009 Federer played in 21 out of 28 major singles finals. He won 3 of the 4 majors and the ATP Finals[d] in 2004, 2006, and 2007 as well as 5 consecutive titles at both Wimbledon and the US Open. He completed the career Grand Slam at the 2009 French Open after 3 consecutive runner-up finishes to Nadal, his main rival until 2010. At age 27, he surpassed Pete Sampras' record of 14 major men's singles titles at Wimbledon in 2009.

Although Federer remained in the Top 3 during most of the early 2010s, the success of Djokovic and Nadal ended his dominance over grass and hard courts, winning two majors between 2010 and 2016. During this period of time, he and Stan Wawrinka led the Switzerland Davis Cup team to their first title in 2014, following their Olympic doubles gold victory at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Federer also won a silver medal in singles at the 2012 London Olympics, where he finished runner-up to Andy Murray. After a half-year hiatus in late 2016 to recover from knee surgery, Federer made a stellar return to tennis, winning three more majors over the next two years, including the 2017 Australian Open over Nadal and an eighth singles title at the 2017 Wimbledon Championships. At the 2018 Australian Open, Federer became the first man to win 20 major singles titles and shortly the oldest ATP world No. 1 at age 36. In September 2022, he retired from professional tennis following the Laver Cup.

A versatile all-court player, Federer's perceived effortlessness has made him highly popular among tennis fans. Originally lacking self-control as a junior, he transformed his on-court demeanor to become well-liked for his general graciousness, winning the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award 13 times. He has won the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year award a record five times. Outside of competing, he played an instrumental role in the creation of the Laver Cup team competition. He is also an active philanthropist. He established the Roger Federer Foundation, which targets impoverished children in southern Africa, and has raised funds in part through the Match for Africa exhibition series. He is routinely one of the top ten highest-paid athletes in any sport and ranked first among all athletes with $100 million in endorsement income in 2020.[5]

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Federer was born on 8 August 1981 in Basel, Switzerland.[6][7] A member of the Federer family, his Swiss-German father, Robert Federer, is from Berneck in the canton of St. Gallen, and his Afrikaner mother, Lynette Federer (ne Durand), is from Kempton Park, Gauteng, in South Africa.[8] He has one sibling, his older sister, Diana,[9] the mother of twins.[10] Since Federer's mother is South African, he holds both Swiss and South African citizenship.[11] He grew up in nearby Birsfelden, Riehen, and then Mnchenstein, close to the French and German borders, and speaks Swiss German, Standard German, English, and French fluently as well as functional Italian and Swedish. Swiss German is his native language.[6][12][13][14] He was a ball boy at his hometown Basel event, the Swiss Indoors in 1992 and 1993.[12][15]

Like all male Swiss citizens, Federer was subject to compulsory military service in the Swiss Armed Forces. However, in 2003 he was ruled "unsuitable" and was subsequently not required to fulfill his military obligation.[16] Instead, he served in the civil protection force and was required to pay 3% of his taxable income as an alternative.[17] He grew up supporting FC Basel and the Swiss national football team.[18] He also credits his hand-eye coordination to the wide range of sports he played as a child, including badminton and basketball.[19]

Federer is married to former Women's Tennis Association player Miroslava Federer (ne Vavrinec), whom he met while they were both competing for Switzerland at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Usually called Mirka, she retired from the tour in 2002 because of a foot injury.[20] They were married at Wenkenhof Villa in Riehen near Basel on 11 April 2009, surrounded by a small group of close friends and family.[21] In 2009, she gave birth to identical twin girls.[22] They had another pair of twins in 2014, this time fraternal twin boys.[23][24] Their children were baptized in the Catholic faith by Federer's distant cousin Monsignor Urban Federer, who is the Abbot of Einsiedeln Abbey.[25]

Federer played his first junior match in 1996 at the age of 14 at a grade 2 tournament in Switzerland. His main accomplishments as a junior player came at Wimbledon in 1998 when he won both the boys' singles final over Irakli Labadze,[26] and in doubles teamed with Olivier Rochus defeating the team of Michal Llodra and Andy Ram.[27] In addition he reached the US Open Junior final in 1998, losing to David Nalbandian. Federer won four ITF junior singles tournaments in his career, including the prestigious Orange Bowl, where he defeated Guillermo Coria in the final.[28] By the end of 1998 he attained the No. 1 junior world ranking and was awarded ITF junior World Champion.[29] He ended his junior career at the end of 1998 with a high-ranking of No. 1 in singles and No. 7 in doubles (both attained on December 31, 1998) and a winloss record of 7820 in singles and 3621 in doubles.[30]

Junior Grand Slam results Singles:

Australian Open: SF (1998)French Open: 1R (1998)Wimbledon: W (1998)US Open: F (1998)

Junior Grand Slam results Doubles:

Australian Open: SF (1998)French Open: 1R (1998)Wimbledon: W (1998)US Open: 1R (1998)

Federer made his ATP debut at the 1998 Swiss Open Gstaad in his home country of Switzerland losing to Lucas Arnold Ker in the first round. Later that year, he won his first ATP match in Toulouse against Guillaume Raoux. He got a wildcard into the 1998 Swiss Indoors and lost in the first round to 4th seed and former world number 1 Andre Agassi. Federer finished his career as a 10-time champion of the tournament.

Federer entered the top 100 ranking for the first time on 20 September 1999 and started at the 1999 Marseille Open defeating the reigning champion of the 1998 French Open, Spaniard Carlos Moy. His first final came at the Marseille Open in 2000, where he lost to fellow Swiss Marc Rosset.[31] Federer won the 2001 Hopman Cup representing Switzerland, along with world No. 1 Martina Hingis.[32][33][34] The duo defeated the American pair of Monica Seles and Jan-Michael Gambill in the finals. Federer later said that his experience with Hingis "definitely helped me to become the player I am today."[35]

Federer's first singles win was at the 2001 Milan Indoor tournament, where he defeated Julien Boutter in the final.[31][36] Although he won his first title already in 1999 on the Challenger tour, winning the doubles event in Segovia, Spain with Dutchman Sander Groen, the final was played on Federer's 18th birthday. In 2001, Federer made his first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the French Open, losing to former world No. 2 and eventual finalist lex Corretja. His run to the French quarterfinals launched him into the top 15 for the first time in his career.[37][38]

His international breakthrough came at the 2001 Wimbledon Championships, when the 19-year-old Federer faced the four-time defending champion and all-time Grand Slam leader Pete Sampras. Federer beat the No. 1 seed in a five-set match to reach the quarterfinals.[39] In the quarters he faced Englishman Tim Henman, eventually losing in a fourth-set tiebreaker.[40]

The first final he reached at the Masters level came at the 2002 Miami Masters event, where he lost to former and future No. 1 Andre Agassi on hard court.[41][42] Federer won his first Master Series event at the 2002 Hamburg Masters on clay, over Marat Safin; the victory put him in the top 10 for the first time.[41][43] Federer made 10 singles finals between 1998 and 2002, of which he won four and lost six.[31][41][44][45][37] He also made six finals in doubles. He finished 2001 with an ATP ranking of No. 13, and 2002 was the first year he was ranked within the top 10, finishing at No. 6.[43]

In 2003, Federer won his first Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon, beating Andy Roddick in the semifinals and Mark Philippoussis in the final.[46][47] In August he had a chance to take over the No. 1 ranking for the first time from Andre Agassi if he made it to the Montreal final. However, he fell in the semifinals to Roddick, in a final-set tiebreaker, leaving him 120 points behind Agassi.[48] This, coupled with early losses to David Nalbandian at Cincinnati and the US Open, denied Federer the chance to become No. 1 for the duration of the season.[49]

Federer won his first and only doubles Masters event in Miami with Max Mirnyi[50] and made it to one singles Masters event in Rome on clay, which he lost.[51][52] Federer made it to nine finals on the ATP Tour and won seven of them, including the 500 series events at Dubai and Vienna.[51] Lastly, Federer won the year-end championships over Andre Agassi, finishing the year as world No. 2, narrowly behind Andy Roddick by only 160 points.[51][53]

During 2004 Federer won three Grand Slam singles titles and became the first person to do in one season so since Mats Wilander in 1988. His first major hard-court title came at the Australian Open over Marat Safin, making him the world No. 1 for the first time.[54] He then won his second Wimbledon crown over Andy Roddick.[55] At the US Open, Federer defeated the 2001 champion, Lleyton Hewitt, for his first title there.[56]

Federer won three ATP Masters events, one on clay in Hamburg, and the other two on hard surfaces at Indian Wells and in Canada.[56] Federer took the ATP 500 series event at Dubai and wrapped up the year by winning the year-end championships for the second time.[56] He also won his first tournament on home soil by capturing the Swiss Open in Gstaad. His 11 singles titles were the most of any player in two decades, and his record of 746 was the best since Ivan Lendl in 1986.[57] He reached the year-end No. 1 ranking for the first time.[58]

In 2005, Federer failed to reach the finals of the first two Grand Slam tournaments, losing the Australian Open semifinal to eventual champion Safin after holding match points, and the French Open semifinal to eventual champion Rafael Nadal.[59] However, Federer reestablished his dominance on grass, winning Wimbledon for a third time by defeating Andy Roddick.[60] At the US Open, Federer defeated Andre Agassi in the latter's last major final.[61][62]

Federer also took four Masters wins: Indian Wells, Miami and Cincinnati on hard court, and Hamburg on clay.[61] The win in Miami was particularly noteworthy as it was the first final contested between Federer and Nadal. Federer recovered from two sets and a break down to take the final in five sets. Furthermore, Federer won two ATP 500 series events at Rotterdam and Dubai.[61] Federer lost the year-end championships to David Nalbandian in five sets while playing through a foot injury that sidelined him for almost the rest of the season after September.[63] He maintained his position as No. 1 for the entire season.[61]

Federer won 11 singles titles, which ties his 2004 season. Federer's 81 match victories were the most since Pete Sampras in 1993, and his record of 814 (95.2%) remains the third-best winning percentage in the Open Era behind John McEnroe's 1984 and Jimmy Connors's 1974.[57]

The 2006 season was statistically the best season of Federer's career. In November 2011, Stephen Tignor, chief editorial writer for Tennis.com, ranked Federer's 2006 season as statistically the second-best season of all time during the Open Era, behind Rod Laver's Grand Slam year of 1969.[64]

Federer won 12 singles titles (the most of any player since Thomas Muster in 1995 and John McEnroe in 1984) and had a match record of 925 (the most wins since Ivan Lendl in 1982). Federer reached the finals in an astounding 16 of the 17 tournaments he entered during the season.[65]

In 2006, Federer won three Grand Slam singles titles and reached the final of the other, with the only loss coming against Nadal in the French Open.[65] This was Federer and Nadal's first meeting in a Grand Slam final. He was the first man to reach all four finals in a calendar year since Rod Laver in 1969. Federer defeated Nadal in the Wimbledon Championships final. In the Australian Open, Federer defeated Marcos Baghdatis,[66] and at the US Open, Federer defeated 2003 champion Roddick.[65] In addition, Federer reached six Masters finals, winning four on hard surfaces and losing two on clay to Nadal. Federer, however, consistently pushed Nadal to the limit on clay throughout the season taking him to fourth-set tiebreakers in Monte-Carlo and Paris, and a thrilling match in Rome that went to a deciding fifth-set tiebreaker.[67]

Federer won one ATP 500 series event in Tokyo and captured the year-end championships for the third time in his career, again finishing the year as world No. 1.[66] Federer only lost to two players during 2006, to Nadal four times in finals, and to 19-year-old Andy Murray in the second round of the 2006 Cincinnati Masters, in what was Federer's only defeat before the final of a tournament that year.[68] Federer finished the season on a 29-match winning streak, as well as winning 48 of his last 49 matches after the French Open.[69]

Near the end of the season he won his hometown tournament, the Swiss Indoors in Basel, Switzerland for the first time, having finished runner up in 2000 and 2001, and missing the tournament in 2004 and 2005 due to injuries.[70]

In 2007, Federer reached all four Grand Slam singles finals, winning three of them again. He won the Australian Open without dropping a set, beating Fernando Gonzlez in the final. This made him the first man in the 21st century to accomplish the feat, as Bjrn Borg at the 1980 French Open was the last to win a Grand Slam tournament without the loss of a set.[71] Federer had entered the year on a huge winning streak and after capturing his fourth Dubai crown Federer's winning streak stood at 41 matches, the longest of his career and only five shy of the record. Federer entered Indian Wells as the three-time defending champion, but his streak ended in controversy. He was defeated by an Argentine, Guillermo Caas, who had failed a drug test for illegal doping.[72]

This surprising first-round loss marked the first time he was defeated since August 2006, a period spanning over 7 months.[73]

During the clay season Federer's victory in the Hamburg Masters final was particularly impressive, as it snapped Nadal's 81-match winning streak on clay, an Open-era record. Federer turned the match around from a set down to sweep 12 of the final 14 games, including a final set bagel.[74] At the French Open, some anticipated that Federer could become the first man in almost 40 years to hold all four majors simultaneously, having just resoundingly defeated young rival Nadal on clay entering the tournament. However, in a repeat of the previous year Federer played a tough four-set final against Nadal, but was undone by going 1/17 on break-point chances.[75]

At Wimbledon Federer entered the tournament not only as the four-time defending champion, but also riding a 48-match winning streak on grass. Once again, he defeated Rafael Nadal for a second consecutive year in the final, this time in a thrilling five-set encounter that many analysts hailed as the greatest Wimbledon final since 1980. Victory at Wimbledon equaled him with Bjrn Borg for the record of five consecutive championships at the All England Club.[76]

Federer reached the final in Montreal before playing a young and relatively unknown Serbian named Novak Djokovic. Djokovic proved his potential by beating the world No. 1 in a final-set tiebreaker upset. Federer rebounded in Cincinnati to capture his fifth title of the year. Federer entered the US Open as the three-time defending champion and faced Djokovic in the final. This time, Federer prevailed in a close straight-set match.[77] Victory in New York moved him ahead of Laver and Borg for third on the all-time list of major championship victories. Throughout the tournament the American press nicknamed him Darth Federer for his all-black attire (which included tuxedo-striped shorts) and the tournament played "The Imperial March" from Star Wars when he was announced onto the court for each of his matches.[78] He closed out the year with victories in Basel and the year-end championships in Shanghai.[79]

He finished the season as the year-end No. 1 for the fourth year in a row, demonstrating his dominance, and during these four years he won 11 Grand Slam singles titles. After his phenomenal triple Grand Slam season yet again, Federer became the only player in history to win three majors in a year for three years (2004, 2006, 2007).[80][81][82][83] It was the third consecutive season that Federer held the No. 1 ranking for all 52 weeks of the year.[58]

Federer's success in 2008 was severely hampered by a lingering bout of mononucleosis, which he suffered during the first half of the year.[84] At the end of the year he suffered a back injury.[85]

In 2008, Federer captured one Grand Slam, a singles title at the US Open over Andy Murray.[86] Federer was defeated by Nadal in two Grand Slam finals, the French Open and Wimbledon, which was regarded as the best match of tennis history by many, when he was going for six straight wins to break Bjrn Borg's record. He came back from two sets down to force a fifth set, where he fell just two points from the title.[86] At the Australian Open Federer lost in the semifinals to eventual winner Djokovic, which ended his record of 10 consecutive finals.[86] He lost twice in Masters finals on clay to Nadal, at Monte Carlo and Hamburg.[86] Federer captured three titles playing in 250-level events at Estoril, Halle, and Basel.[87][88][89]

At the Olympic Games Federer and Stan Wawrinka won the gold medal in doubles, after beating the Bryan brothers American team in the semifinals and the Swedish duo of Simon Aspelin and Thomas Johansson in the final.[90] However, Federer could reach only the quarterfinals in the singles draw, bowing out to then No. 8 James Blake, ceding his No. 1 ranking to Nadal after being at the top for a record 237 consecutive weeks.[91] He ended the year ranked No. 2.[92]

Federer entered the 2009 season with 13 Grand Slams, only one behind Pete Sampras' all-time record. The season began with a loss to Nadal in the final of the Australian Open in a hotly contested five-set match.[93] Federer struggled following the defeat in Melbourne and entered the clay season without a title.[94]

Federer's season turned around in the final Masters event of the clay season when he defeated Nadal on clay for only the second time to capture the Madrid Masters.[95] Federer entered the French Open with few predicting him to win the elusive Parisian title having lost to Nadal in the final weekend for the past four seasons. After Nadal's unexpected defeat to Robin Sderling, Federer became the overwhelming favorite. In his next match, he came from two sets and break point down in the third set to defeat Tommy Haas in five sets.[96] He also fought back from a two-sets-to-one deficit against a young Juan Martn del Potro to win a five setter in the semifinals.[97] In the final, he faced Sderling, and with straight sets victory, he finally captured the Coupe des Mousquetaires and career Grand Slam.[98] This victory also tied him with Pete Sampras for the most Grand Slam singles titles.[99][98]

Federer turned his sights to the grass courts of Wimbledon, where he breezed his way up to the final.[100] In the championship match he faced long-time rival Andy Roddick in what was their eighth and final meeting at a Grand Slam. Roddick pushed Federer into a record-setting fifth set, which Federer claimed 1614 to win his 15th Grand Slam singles title, breaking the all-time record of Pete Sampras.[101][102]

Federer continued his summer run by winning his third title on the lightning-fast courts of the Cincinnati Masters, defeating Novak Djokovic in the final.[103] At the US Open he defeated Sderling in the quarters and Djokovic, for the third consecutive year, in the semifinals. On the penultimate point of the Djokovic match he hit what many consider to be the greatest shot of his career, a tweener winner, to set up match points.[104] Federer was defeated by del Potro in the final despite leading two sets to one and falling just two points from the title in the fourth set.[103]

The 2009 season was perhaps the most historically relevant of Federer's career as he completed a career Grand Slam by winning his first French Open title and won a men's record fifteenth Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon, surpassing Pete Sampras's mark of fourteen.[103] The Wimbledon final was also historic for being the longest Grand Slam final in terms of games played with Federer prevailing 1614 in the fifth set.[102]

Federer finished the season as the year-end No. 1 for the fifth time in his career.[105]

Federer started the year with a win at the Australian Open,[106] where he defeated Andy Murray in the final, extending the Grand Slam singles record to sixteen titles and matching Andre Agassi's record of four Australian Open titles.[86] Since Wimbledon 2005 Federer had made 18 out of 19 finals in Grand Slam tournaments, a period of sustained excellence unparalleled in the Open Era. This tournament, however, marked the end of his dominance at the majors.[107]

At the French Open, Federer won his 700th tour match and 150th tour match on clay.[106][108] However, he failed to reach a Grand Slam semifinal for the first time since the 2004 French Open,[109] losing to Sderling in the last 8 and relinquishing his No. 1 ranking,[106] having been just one week away from equaling Pete Sampras's record of 286 weeks as world No. 1. In a huge upset at Wimbledon, Federer lost in the last 8 again to Tom Berdych and fell to No. 3 in the rankings for the first time in 6 years and 8 months.[106][110][111]

Towards the middle of July, Federer hired Pete Sampras' old coach Paul Annacone on a trial basis to put his tennis game and career back on track.[112] At the 2010 US Open Federer reached the semifinals, where he lost a five-set match to Novak Djokovic after holding two match points.[106] Federer made it to four Masters finals prevailing against Mardy Fish at the Cincinnati Masters.[113]

Federer finished the year in strong form, winning indoor titles at the Stockholm Open, Swiss Indoors, and the ATP Finals in London bringing his tally to 66 career titles. Federer won the year-end championships in London by beating rival Rafael Nadal for his fifth title at the event.[114] He beat all contenders except Nadal in straight sets. It remains the only tournament in his career where Federer defeated all fellow members of the Big Four.[115] In 2010 Federer finished in the top two for the eighth consecutive season.[116]

The year 2011 was a lean year for Federer, although great by most player's standards. He was defeated in straight sets in the semifinals of the 2011 Australian Open by eventual champion Novak Djokovic,[117] marking the first time since July 2003 that he did not hold any of the four major titles. In the French Open semifinals, Federer ended Djokovic's undefeated streak of 43 consecutive wins with a four-set victory.[118] Federer then lost in the final to Rafael Nadal.[119] At Wimbledon Federer advanced to his 29th consecutive Grand Slam quarterfinal, losing to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. It marked the first time in his career that he had lost a Grand Slam tournament match after winning the first two sets.[120]

At the US Open Federer lost in the semifinals to Novak Djokovic in five sets. In a repeat of previous year's semifinal event, Federer again squandered two match points on his own serve before losing after winning first two sets for second consecutive time in the year. The loss meant that it was the first time since 2002 that Federer had not won any of the four grand slam titles.[121]

In September 2011, in a South African poll, Federer was voted the second most trusted and respected person in the world next to Nelson Mandela.[122][123]

Federer finished the season successfully in the indoor season, winning his last three tournaments of the year at the Swiss Indoors, Paris Masters, and ATP Finals, forming a 16 match winning streak. Federer finished the year ranked No. 3.[124]

The 2012 season for Federer had his most match wins since 2006 and his highest winning percentage and number of titles won since 2007.[125]

Federer reached the semifinal of the 2012 Australian Open, setting up a 27th career meeting with Nadal, a match he lost in four sets.[126]He then won the Rotterdam Open for the first time since 2005, defeating Juan Martn del Potro.[127] Federer played in the 2012 Dubai Tennis Championships, where he defeated Andy Murray in the final and won the championship title for the fifth time in his career.[128] Federer then moved on to the Indian Wells Masters, where he defeated Rafael Nadal in the semifinals, and John Isner in the final. Federer won the title for a record fourth time, and, in doing so, equalled Nadal's record of 19 ATP Masters titles.[129]

Federer went on to compete at the Madrid Masters on the new blue clay surface, where he beat Tom Berdych in the final, thus regaining the No. 2 ranking from Rafael Nadal. In the French Open, Federer made the semifinals before losing to Djokovic in straight sets, in a rematch of previous year's semifinal.[130][131]

At Wimbledon, Federer had a five-set match in the third round against Julien Benneteau on his way to the winning the tournament. Federer defeated Andy Murray in four sets in the 2012 Wimbledon final,[132] regaining the No. 1 ranking in the process.[133] "It's amazing. It equals me with Pete Sampras, who's my hero. It just feels amazing," Federer said of winning his seventh Wimbledon championship, tying Sampras' Open Era record.[134] By defeating top-ranked Djokovic in the semifinals and winning in the finals, Federer returned to the top spot in the world rankings and, in doing so, broke Sampras' record of 286 weeks atop the list.[135]

In the 2012 Summer Olympics, Federer played a 4-hour 26-minute semifinal against del Potro where Federer won 1917 in the third and final set.[136] In a lopsided match, he lost to Murray in straight sets in the final, winning a silver medal for his country.[137]

Federer won the Cincinnati open in August, beating Novak Djokovic in the final.[138] In the US Open, five-time champ Federer was defeated by Tom Berdych in the quarterfinals.[139] At the Shanghai Masters after defeating Wawrinka in the third round, Federer confirmed his 300th week at No. 1. Federer made it to the finals of the ATP Finals, where he lost to Djokovic in two sets.[140][141]

Federer developed back injuries in March and July and his ranking dropped from No. 2 to No. 6.[142][143] Federer's first and only title of 2013 came at the Gerry Weber Open (defeating Mikhail Youzhny), where he also played doubles with good friend Tommy Haas. With the victory in Halle, he tied John McEnroe for the third-most ATP titles won by a male player in the Open Era.[144] Federer, however, was unable to maintain his form into Wimbledon, suffering his worst Grand Slam tournament defeat since 2003 in the second round against Sergiy Stakhovsky. Not only did the loss end Federer's record streak of 36 consecutive quarterfinals at Grand Slam tournaments,[145] it meant he would drop out of the top 4 for the first time since July 2003.[146]

During the summer, he experimented with various different racquets and played the German Open with a blacked-out 98-inch Wilson racquet, instead of his regular Pro Staff 6.1 90 BLX racquet with the smaller 90-inch hitting area. He returned to his regular racquet for the second half of the season.[147][148] After Wimbledon, Federer continued to be upset early in tournaments in Hamburg and Gstaad because of a serious back injury through October, when he announced that he was parting ways with Paul Annacone, his coach for the last three years.[149] Federer made the final in Basel, succumbing to Juan Martn del Potro in three sets, and indicated it was a mistake to have played certain tournaments while suffering from a back injury.[150]

On 27 December 2013, Federer announced that Stefan Edberg was joining his team as co-coach with Severin Lthi.[151]

Federer began the season by changing rackets for the first time in his career, from his longtime frame of 90 square inches to one measured at 97 square inches. He had long been at a comparative disadvantage in equipment as almost the entire tour, including his top rivals Nadal and Djokovic, used more powerful frames of between 95 and 100 square inches.[147][152] At the Australian Open, Federer defeated Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Andy Murray to reach his 11th consecutive semifinal in Melbourne, before losing to Rafael Nadal in straight sets.[153]

At the Dubai Tennis Championships, he defeated Novak Djokovic in the semifinals, and then defeated Tom Berdych in the final to win his sixth Dubai crown and his first title since Halle in 2013.[154] Federer made the final at the Indian Wells Masters, but lost to Novak Djokovic in a final-set tiebreaker.[155] At the Davis Cup quarterfinals, Federer won both of his singles rubbers against Kazakhstan, the second of which was the first live deciding rubber of his Davis Cup career.[156] Federer then took a wild card into the Monte-Carlo Masters defeating Novak Djokovic on his way to the finals, but lost to compatriot Stan Wawrinka in a tight final.[157]

In June, Federer announced that after the end of his third term, he would resign as President of the ATP Players Council, a position he had held since 2008.[158][159][160] At the Halle Open, Federer reached both the singles and the doubles finals and won his seventh Halle singles title, beating Alejandro Falla in the final.[161] At Wimbledon, Federer reached a record ninth final, but he was defeated by Djokovic in an epic five-set match.[162][163]

Federer made the final of the Canadian Open but was defeated by Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.[164] Federer defeated Spain's David Ferrer in three sets to capture his sixth Cincinnati crown and 22nd ATP Masters title, his first in Cincinnati since 2012.[165] He then reached the semifinals at the US Open but lost in straight sets to eventual champion Marin ili.[166] At the Davis Cup semifinals, Federer won both his singles matches against Italy in straight sets and led Switzerland to the final for the first time since 1992.[167]

Federer then played in the Shanghai Masters. He beat Novak Djokovic in the semifinals, ending the Serb's 28-match unbeaten run on Chinese soil. He battled Frenchman Gilles Simon in his second Shanghai final, defeating him in two tiebreak sets and collected the 23rd Masters title of his career.[168] The victory saw Federer return to the No. 2 ranking for the first time since May 2013. Federer then played the Swiss Indoors in October, where he won a record sixth title and his 82nd ATP men's singles title overall. Federer also reached the finals of the 2014 ATP Finals to face Djokovic again, but withdrew from the final because of another back injury from his semifinal match against Stan Wawrinka.[169]

Despite his injury, Federer finished the season on a high by defeating Richard Gasquet to clinch the Davis Cup for Switzerland for the first time in its history.[170] The final was held at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Lille, France attracting over 27,000 spectators per match; this broke attendance record for the highest ever officially sanctioned competition tennis match.[171]

Federer started his season at the Brisbane International. He defeated Milos Raonic in the final, thereby becoming only the third man in the Open Era to have 1,000 or more wins, joining Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl, as well as the first man in the Open Era to win at least one title in each of 15 consecutive years.[172] In Dubai, Federer successfully defended his title with a straight-set victory over Novak Djokovic in the final, marking his seventh title at the tournament and, after Wimbledon and Halle, was the third time he had won seven or more titles in a tournament.[173] Additionally, Federer became the fourth person since 1991 to surpass 9,000 career aces.[174] In March, he reached the final of the Indian Wells but lost in three sets to defending champion Djokovic.[175]

Federer won his third title of the season at the inaugural Istanbul Open clay-court tournament, ending a title drought on red clay since the 2009 French Open. Federer made it to the final of the Italian Open in May, but was unable to win his first title there, losing to Djokovic in the final.[176] In the French Open, he made it through the first rounds losing just one set, to Gal Monfils in the 4th. In the quarterfinals, he was eventually beaten in straight sets by the later champion Stan Wawrinka.[177]

As the new expanded grass season began, Federer won his record eighth Gerry Weber Open and become only the third man in the Open Era to win a title eight times.[178] Federer entered Wimbledon as the second seed. He played a flawless match to defeat Andy Murray in straight sets in the semifinals and advance to his tenth Wimbledon final in a repeat against Novak Djokovic. Federer lost the match in four sets.[179]

He defeated Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic in straight sets to win the Cincinnati Masters for the seventh time. This marked the first time that Federer defeated the top two players in the world at the same event.[180] At the US Open, he advanced to his first final there since 2009 without dropping a set, including a win over Stan Wawrinka in the semifinals.[181] In the final, he was once again beaten by top seed Djokovic in four sets.[182] At the Swiss Indoors tournament in Basel, Federer won his sixth singles title of the year, and his 88th ATP title, defeating his old rival Rafael Nadal in the final.[183] It was the seventh time he won his hometown tournament.[184]

In December, Federer announced that he would enter the 2016 ATP Tour season with a new-look coaching team, having additionally announced that Stefan Edberg would not be travelling with him next year. While countryman Severin Lthi remained Federer's head coach, joining the team in 2016 was Croatian former world No. 3 player Ivan Ljubii. Federer revealed that Edberg originally signed on to the coaching team for one season only in 2014 but agreed to stay on in 2015.[185]

Federer started his season in the Brisbane International as the defending champion, despite having a virus when the tournament started. However, in a rematch of the previous year's final, he lost in the final to Milos Raonic in straight sets.[186] Federer then participated at the 2016 Australian Open and rebounded from his third round defeat by Andreas Seppi in 2015 by reaching the semifinals but lost to eventual champion Novak Djokovic in four sets.[187] The day after his loss to Djokovic, Federer sustained a knee injury and in early February, he underwent arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his knee and missed the tournaments in Rotterdam, Dubai, and Indian Wells in February and March. He was scheduled to return to action in Miami.[188] Due to a stomach virus he had to withdraw from the Miami Open thus prolonging his time on the sidelines.[189]

Federer made his comeback at the Monte-Carlo Masters, losing in the quarterfinals to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in three sets. In Madrid, he suffered a back injury during practice and withdrew shortly after arriving. He then participated in the Internazionali BNL d'Italia where he lost in the third round to Dominic Thiem. His withdrawal from the French Open broke a record run of 65 consecutive participations in the main draw of Grand Slam tournaments, stretching back to the 2000 Australian Open.[190]

Still suffering from recurring knee pain during the grass season he lost in the semifinals of Stuttgart and Halle. On 6 July, he came back from two sets down to defeat Marin ili in five sets in the 2016 Wimbledon quarterfinals, equalling Jimmy Connors' all-time records of eleven Wimbledon semifinals and 84 match wins.[191] He suffered his first defeat in a Wimbledon semifinal two days later in a five-set loss to Raonic, re-injuring his knee in the fifth set.[192]

On 26 July, Federer announced that he would miss the 2016 Summer Olympics and the remainder of the 2016 season to fully recover from his knee injury.[193] The sudden withdrawal not only implied that 2016 was his first season since 2000 that Federer failed to win a title, but it also meant that he would have to drop out of top ten for the first time in fourteen years. This, combined with a grand slam drought spanning over four years, led to many analysts believing that his outstanding career was finally coming to an end and he would never win any major titles again.[194][195]

Federer's 2017 season marked a return to Grand Slam wins since 2012, the most titles since 2007, and the highest win percentage since 2006. Statistically, this season was his best since 2007.[196][197]Federer played in the Hopman Cup and Australian Open in January 2017.[198] His withdrawal from most of the injury affected 2016 season lead his ranking slip to No. 17 at the start of Australian Open, his lowest in over fifteen years. At the Australian Open, he beat top-10 players Tom Berdych and Kei Nishikori on his way to semifinals, making Federer the oldest man to compete in a grand slam semi-final since Jimmy Connors in 1991.[199] In the semi-finals, he defeated Stanislas Wawrinka in five sets, making him the oldest player to compete in a Grand Slam final since Ken Rosewall in 1974.[200][201] Coming back from a break down in the fifth set, Federer defeated Rafael Nadal to win the Australian Open, which also marked Federer's 100th match at the Australian Open; it was the first time Federer had won a match against Nadal in a Grand Slam event since the 2007 Wimbledon final, and also marked Federer's first ever Grand Slam victory over Nadal outside the grass courts of Wimbledon. With this victory, he re-entered the top ten.[202][203][204]

In March, Federer won his 25th Masters title at Indian Wells, defeating Wawrinka in the final and gaining another victory over Nadal in the 4th round. This was also Federer's 90th career title and he climbed to No. 6 in the ATP rankings.[205] Federer collected his 26th Masters title by defeating Nadal in the final of the Miami Masters in straight sets and climbed to No. 4 in the ATP rankings. This marked the third time Federer had won in Indian Wells and Miami back-to-back, colloquially referred to as the Sunshine Double (2005, 2006 and 2017).[206]

Due to concerns about his longevity, Federer decided that he would skip the entire clay-court season.[207] He returned to the tour at the beginning of the grass-court season in Stuttgart, where he suffered a shock defeat to Tommy Haas in the second round despite holding match points, the lowest-ranked player (No. 302) to beat him since No. 407 Bjoern Phau in 1999.[208] He rebounded the following week by winning a record-extending ninth title at the Gerry Weber Open in Halle, doing so without the loss of a set.[209] In the 2017 Wimbledon Championships, Federer made it to the final without dropping a set, defeating Milos Raonic in the quarterfinals and Tom Berdych in the semifinals. In the final, Federer defeated a physically and mentally out of sorts Marin ili in straight sets to win a record-breaking eighth Wimbledon gentlemen's singles title and his record-extending 19th major title overall, becoming the oldest male player to win Wimbledon in the Open era.[210] Federer became the second man in the Open era to win Wimbledon without dropping a set after Bjrn Borg in 1976.[211] It marked the second time in his career that he had won a grand slam tournament without losing a set, matching his performance at the 2007 Australian Open.[212] Federer moved up to become No. 3 in the ATP rankings after the event and qualified for the ATP Finals for a record 15th time.[213]

At the opening of the summer hard court swing Federer was defeated in the final of the Montreal Masters by Alexander Zverev after injuring his back during the match.[214] Due to the injury, he opted to withdraw from the Cincinnati Masters to be fit for the US Open. However, Federer lost to del Potro in the quarterfinals at the US Open, in a tournament characterized by inconsistent play from Federer, unlike the major portion of the season.[215]

Federer's next participation was in September in the inaugural Laver Cup, representing team Europe. Federer won both his singles matches against Sam Querrey and Nick Kyrgios, with the latter win sealing the cup for Europe.[216] The tournament was also notable for Federer playing doubles teaming with longtime rival Nadal for the first time. The two legends emerged victorious against world duo of Sam Querrey and Jack Sock.[217]

At the Shanghai Masters Federer captured his third Masters title of the season, defeating No. 1 Rafael Nadal in the final. This was Federer's fifth straight victory over Nadal in their rivalry and his 94th career title, drawing him level with 2nd-placed Ivan Lendl.[218] During the indoor season, Federer defeated Juan Martn del Potro in the final of his hometown tournament, the Swiss Indoors in Basel, earning a record eighth championship there and winning his 95th career title, surpassing Ivan Lendl in number of career titles.[219] Federer qualified for the 2017 ATP Finals, but was beaten by David Goffin in the semifinals in three sets.[220]

Federer started his season winning the Hopman Cup partnering with Belinda Bencic. This was his second Hopman Cup title, having won previously in 2001 with Martina Hingis.[221] At the 2018 Australian Open, Federer reached the final without dropping a set, and successfully defended his title beating Marin ili in a five-set final. It was Federer's sixth title at the Australian Open, equaling the then record held by Roy Emerson and Novak Djokovic, which was surpassed by Djokovic in 2019. He also became the first man to win twenty Grand Slam titles. It was also the first time since the 2008 US Open that Federer successfully defended a major title.[222]

In mid-February, Federer won his third Rotterdam Open title to return to No. 1 in the ATP rankings, clinching the spot with a quarterfinal victory over Robin Haase.[223] He beat Grigor Dimitrov in straight sets in the final. At 36 years and 195 days of age, he became the oldest ATP world No. 1 by more than three years. He also broke the ATP record for the longest span between a player's first and last weeks to attain the No. 1 ranking at 14 years and 17 days apart, as well as the most time between two successive reigns at No. 1 at 5 years and 106 days.[224]

In March, Federer entered the Indian Wells Masters as defending champion. He defeated Chung Hyeon in the quarterfinals, ensuring that he retained the world No. 1 ranking, and Borna ori in the semifinals, solidifying a career-best start to a season at 170. His previous best season start was n 160 during the 2006 season.[225] Despite holding three championship points, Federer was defeated by Juan Martn del Potro in a close three-set final. At the Miami Open Federer received a first-round bye, but lost in the second round to Thanasi Kokkinakis. With this early exit from the tournament, Federer lost his No. 1 ranking to Nadal on 2 April. He announced that he would miss the clay court season, including the French Open, for the second consecutive season.[226] Nevertheless, he regained the No. 1 ranking in May after Nadal failed to defend one of his Masters titles at the Madrid Open.[227] He then lost the top spot the following week after Nadal won the title at the Italian Open.[228]

In June, Federer regained the No. 1 ranking after defeating Nick Kyrgios in the semifinals at the Stuttgart Open.[229] He won the tournament, defeating Milos Raonic in the final in straight sets.[230] However, he lost his No. 1 ranking the following week when he failed to defend his Halle Open title, losing in the final to Borna ori in three sets.[231] At Wimbledon, Federer was looking to defend his 2017 title and was seeded first at a Grand Slam for the first time since the 2012 US Open but lost in the quarterfinals against South African Kevin Anderson in five sets, despite winning the first two sets and having a match point in the third set.[232] This was only his second Wimbledon defeat after winning the first two sets, the other being his defeat to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the 2011 Wimbledon Championships.[233]

Federer next played in Cincinnati where he lost in the final to Novak Djokovic, who won a record Career Golden Masters, in straight sets.[234] The loss ended Federer's run of 100 consecutive service holds and 14-match winning streak in Cincinnati. Federer entered the US Open as the second seed but was upset by John Millman in the 4th round, citing extreme conditions of heat and humidity that took a toll on his body.[235] Federer then played at the Laver Cup where he successfully helped Team Europe defend their title, winning both his singles matches against Nick Kyrgios and John Isner.[236] He also paired up with Djokovic for the first time in doubles, losing their match against Jack Sock and Kevin Anderson in three sets.[237] Federer then played at the 2018 Shanghai Masters as the defending champion but lost in the semifinals to Borna ori in straight sets.[238]

At the Swiss Indoors in October, Federer shared that he had sustained a hand injury in training prior to the grass season that had caused severe pain up his forearm. He stated that this injury significantly hindered his play, particularly his forehand, since the Stuttgart Open.[239][240] Federer went on to defend his title with a straight-sets win over Marius Copil in the final, winning his ninth title at the event and his 99th career singles title.[241] Federer entered the Paris Masters, continuing his good run of form defeating Fabio Fognini and Kei Nishikori in straight sets. In the semi-finals, he played a very close match with Novak Djokovic, but ultimately lost to him in three sets. At the Nitto ATP Finals, Federer lost in straight sets to Alexander Zverev in the semifinal.[242]

Federer opened his campaign by retaining the Hopman Cup alongside Belinda Bencic, becoming the first player to win the mixed-gender event three times.[243]

Federer was seeded third at the 2019 Australian Open, entering as the two-time defending champion. He defeated Denis Istomin, Dan Evans, and Taylor Fritz to reach the fourth round, where he faced 14th seed Stefanos Tsitsipas. In a stunning upset, Tsitsipas defeated Federer in four close sets. Critically, Federer was unable to convert any of the twelve break points he held throughout the match, including four set points in the second set. After the match Federer announced he would play the clay court season for the first time since 2016.[244][245]

At the Dubai Tennis Championships Federer won his 100th Career Singles Title, beating Tsitsipas in straight sets in the final. It was his eighth title in Dubai and he became only the second man after Jimmy Connors to reach the three figure mark in the Open Era.[246] Federer then reached the final of the 2019 Indian Wells Masters where he lost to Dominic Thiem in three sets.[247] On 31 March, Federer defeated John Isner at the 2019 Miami Open in straights sets to win his 4th Miami Open title and 28th Masters title.[248] Federer then played his first clay court tournament in three years at the 2019 Madrid Open and secured his 1200th career win, beating Gal Monfils in the third round. In the quarterfinals he lost to Dominic Thiem again in three sets, despite having two match points in the second set.[249]Federer then played at the Italian Open and reached the quarterfinals but was forced to withdraw from his quarterfinal match against Stefanos Tsitsipas due to a right leg injury.[250]

Federer next played at the French Open for the first time in 4 years and seeded 3rd in the draw. Federer achieved comfortable straight-set victories against Lorenzo Sonego, Oscar Otte, Casper Ruud and Leonardo Mayer to reach the quarterfinals, where he faced good friend and compatriot Stan Wawrinka. Federer managed to avenge his loss to Wawrinka at the same stage of the tournament 4 years ago, winning in 4 sets after 3 hours and 35 minutes. With the victory Federer returned to the semifinals of the French Open for the first time since 2012, where he lost to defending and 11-time champion Rafael Nadal in straight sets.[251]

Federer then began his grass court season at the Halle Open where he won his tenth title at the event, defeating David Goffin in the final in straight sets. This marked the first time Federer had won a singles tournament ten times or more.[252] At Wimbledon, Roger Federer reached his record 12th final at the tournament after ousting his nemesis Rafael Nadal in four sets in the semifinal; thus, exacting revenge for his earlier defeat to him at the French Open. This was also the first time Federer played Nadal at Wimbledon since the 2008 Wimbledon final, a match regarded by some as the greatest match in the history of tennis.[253] Federer then faced Novak Djokovic in the final, against whom he lost in a five set thriller lasting 4 hours and 57 minutes, despite having two championship points on serve in the fifth set. The match also marked the first time a fifth set tiebreaker was played at 12 games all in the men's singles and was the longest men's final in Wimbledon history.[254]

Federer next played at the 2019 Cincinnati Masters and reached the third round where he lost in straight sets to Andrey Rublev. This was his quickest defeat in 16 years, taking just 62 minutes.[255] At the 2019 US Open, he was seeded third. He dropped the first set against both Sumit Nagal and Damir Dumhur in the first two rounds, but pulled out convincing straight sets wins over Dan Evans and David Goffin in the third and fourth. In the quarterfinals, he faced Grigor Dimitrov, who was ranked No. 78 going into the tournament. Despite taking a two sets to one lead, Federer ultimately lost the match in five sets.[256][257] At the 2019 Shanghai Masters, Federer defeated David Goffin in straight sets to reach the quarterfinals.[258] However, he lost the quarterfinal to Alexander Zverev in three sets.[259]

Federer advanced to the Swiss Indoors as the two-time defending champion. His first round match, against Peter Gojowczyk, was remarkable for being the 1500th match of his career. In the final, he defeated Alex de Minaur in straight sets for a record-extending tenth Swiss Indoors title.[260] Federer then played in the Bjrn Borg group at the 2019 ATP Finals where in the round robin, he lost his opening match to Dominic Thiem in straight sets but beat Matteo Berrettini and Djokovic (his first win over Djokovic since 2015) in straight sets to qualify for the semifinals.[261] He then lost the semifinal to Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets.[262]

Federer began his 2020 season at the 2020 Australian Open. He reached the semifinals after straight sets wins over Steve Johnson and Filip Krajinovi, a five-set win over John Millman and a four-set win over Mrton Fucsovics. Federer saved seven match points in his five-set quarterfinal win over Tennys Sandgren.[263] Federer then lost his semifinal match to Djokovic in straight sets, having sustained a groin injury earlier in the tournament.[264] In February, Federer underwent arthroscopic surgery for a right knee injury and subsequently withdrew from the Dubai Championships, Indian Wells, Miami Open, and the French Open to give time for his knee to recover, announcing that he would return in the grass season.[265] On 10 June, due to a setback from his initial rehabilitation from the knee injury suffered earlier in the year, Federer announced that he had to have an additional arthroscopic procedure on his right knee. He officially shut down his season to take the necessary time to recover, vowing to return in 2021. This was only the second year in Federer's career since he won his first title that he finished without a title.[266]

In January, Federer withdrew from the 2021 Australian Open due to still recovering from knee surgery and strict COVID-19 quarantine measures in Australia.[267][268] On 8 March, Novak Djokovic surpassed him for the most career weeks spent as the ATP number 1 ranked player.[269] On 10 March, he made his return to the ATP Tour at the Qatar Open. He won his first ATP match in 14 months against Dan Evans, but lost to Nikoloz Basilashvili in the quarterfinals.[270]

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CBD: Safe and effective? – Mayo Clinic

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A prescription cannabidiol (CBD) oil is considered an effective anti-seizure medication. However, further research is needed to determine CBD's other benefits and safety.

CBD is a chemical found in marijuana. CBD doesn't contain tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient found in marijuana that produces a high. The usual CBD formulation is oil, but CBD is also sold as an extract, a vaporized liquid and an oil-based capsule. Food, drinks and beauty products are among the many CBD-infused products available online.

Currently, the only CBD product approved by the Food and Drug Administration is a prescription oil called Epidiolex. It's approved to treat two types of epilepsy. Aside from Epidiolex, state laws on the use of CBD vary. While CBD is being studied as a treatment for a wide range of conditions, including Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and anxiety, research supporting the drug's benefits is still limited.

CBD use also carries some risks. Though it's often well-tolerated, CBD can cause side effects, such as dry mouth, diarrhea, reduced appetite, drowsiness and fatigue. CBD can also interact with other medications you're taking, such as blood thinners.

Another cause for concern is the unreliability of the purity and dosage of CBD in products. A recent study of 84 CBD products bought online showed that more than a quarter of the products contained less CBD than labeled. In addition, THC was found in 18 products.

If you plan to use products containing CBD, talk to your doctor.

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CBD: Safe and effective? - Mayo Clinic

CBD Oil for Cats: What You Need to Know | PetMD

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By Kate Hughes

As cat owners look for ways to keep their kitties happy and healthy, theyre starting to explore alternative treatments not previously considered by Western medicine. Among these alternative treatments is cannabis oil.

This isnt much of a surprise, considering that more people are turning to cannabis as a natural treatment for their health issuesand research studies have consistently shown the plants positive impact on inflammation and other ailments. However, as studied as cannabiss effect on humans may be, there have been no official major scientific studies into its impact on pets.

So, is cannabis safe for cats? And what sorts of ailments might it treat?

Cannabis plants contain more than 100 active compounds, but the one most often used for medicinal purposes is cannabidiol, or CBD. CBD differs from cannabiss major active compound, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), in that it does not have a psychoactive affect, meaning it will not get users high. CBD oils contain a high concentration of CBD and can be used for therapeutic purposes.

There are not many classical medical studies that explore the effects of CBD oil in cats, says Dr. Daniel Inman, a veterinarian at Burlington Emergency Veterinary Specialists in Williston, Vermont. While we dont recommend CBD oil for our patients, holistic veterinarians are using it to treat a variety of ailments, including inflammation, anxiety and pain.

Inman is careful to specify that CBD oil is often used to subjectively increase comfort and improve quality of life in pets, not necessarily cure ailments. This type of treatment should be advised by your veterinarian and not initiated without their consent.

Although there have been no scientific studies that specifically investigate the impact of cannabis on pets, Dr. Gary Richter, a holistic veterinarian and owner and medical director of Montclair Veterinary Hospital and Holistic Veterinary Care in Oakland, California, says that CBD oil is generally safe for cats. However, there can be some adverse effects to giving your cat CBD oil, including gastrointestinal upset and some sedation, both of which can be relieved by discontinuing the use of the oil.

I think the bigger issue, from a medical perspective, is making sure that animals are dosed appropriately. This means that the CBD oil is having the affect you want it to have, and that youre not accidentally overdosing, he says.

Dr. Liza Guess, a clinical assistant professor at the Ohio State University Department of Veterinary Medicine in Columbus, Ohio, says that the lack of official, documented research into the affects of cannabis products for cats would make her hesitant to recommend them.

I have heard that, in humans, marijuana products can be used for neuropathic pain, intractable seizures, anxiety, and appetite stimulation. I have plenty of medications in each of those categories [that are not cannabis] that have been safely used in cats for years that I am very comfortable using and understand well, she says. These medications have gone through rigorous studies and are approved by the FDA. Why would I want to use a poorly understood treatment that I cant guarantee is safe or even effective?

She adds that the FDA does not regulate the CBD products that are available on the market, so consumers cant be sure that theyre giving their pets the dosage that they think they are.

Pet owners looking to give their animals CBD oil should do their due diligence before purchasing anything online, Richter says. The marketplace is very much a buyer beware environment, and people should be sure that the product theyre buying has been laboratory tested for both content, as well as contaminants like bacteria, fungus, and heavy metals.

Also, its worth nothing that while CBD oil is typically quite safe for cats and dogs, cannabis plants are not. There is plenty of documentation of marijuana toxicity in cats, for those that nibble on the plants, Guess says.

Inman adds that as an ER veterinarian, he often sees marijuana toxicity in the animals that come into his practice. You can usually tell if a pet has gotten into someones marijuana. And, in more severe instances, I have had to hospitalize animals until the affects have worn off.

Regardless of how well CBD products work for cats, there is also the issue of legality. If a cannabis product contains less than 0.3 percent THC, its classified as hemp, which is not a restricted substance. Most, if not all, CBD oil fits this description. The bigger issue is discussing this course of treatment with your veterinarian.

In a perfect world, your veterinarian would be able to discuss this treatment as an option for your pet, but depending on where you live, your veterinarian may or may not be legally at liberty to have this conversation with you, Richter says. Even if you live in a state where cannabis is legal, it can be illegal for a veterinarian to tell a pet owner how to appropriately use these products.

There are activists looking to change these laws, Richter among them.

For example, theres a bill being brought to the California State Legislature to debate the use of medical cannabis for animals and veterinarian involvement, he says. Theres a very robust conversation going on right now about it whether or not veterinarians should be able to discuss and recommend cannabis for their patients, and, if so, exactly what that looks like.

Being able to discuss all types of treatments with your veterinarian is key, and Richter advises checking in with your vet before giving your pet any sort of cannabis. Theres no reason to ever start giving any kind of medication or supplement without having a conversation with your veterinarian first, he says.

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CBD Oil for Cats: What You Need to Know | PetMD

Surge in Remote Working Leads iManage to Launch Virtual AI University for Companies that Want to Harness the Power of the RAVN AI Engine -…

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CHICAGO, April 09, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- iManage, the company dedicated to transforming how professionals work, today announced that it has rolled out a virtual Artificial Intelligence University (AIU), as an adjunct to its customer on-site model. With the virtual offering, legal and financial services professionals can actively participate in project-driven, best-practice remote AI workshops that use their own, real-world data to address specific business issues even amidst the disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

AIU helps clients to quickly and efficiently learn to apply machine learning and rules-based modeling to classify, find, extract and analyze data within contracts and other legal documents for further action, often automating time-consuming manual processes. In addition to delivering increases in speed and accuracy of data search results, AI frees practitioners to focus on other high-value work. Driven both by the need of organizations to reduce operational costs and to adapt to fundamental shifts toward remote work practices, virtual AIU is playing an important role in helping iManage clients continue to work and collaborate productively. The curriculum empowers end users with all the skills they need to quickly ramp up the efficiency and breadth of their AI projects using the iManage RAVN AI engine.

Participating in AIU was a huge win for us. We immediately saw the impact AI would have in surfacing information we need and allowing us to action it to save time, money and frustration, said Nikki Shaver, Managing Director, Innovation and Knowledge, Paul Hastings. The workshop gave us deep insight into how to train the algorithm effectively for the best possible effect. And, very quickly, more opportunities came to light as to how AI could augment our business in the longer term, continued Shaver.

AI is a transformation technology thats continuing to gain momentum in the legal, financial and professional services sectors. But many firms dont yet have the internal knowledge or training to deliver on its promise. iManage is committed to helping firms establish AI Centers of Excellence not just sell them a kit and walk away, said Nick Thomson, General Manager, iManage RAVN. Weve found the best way to ensure client success is to educate and build up experience inside the firm about how AI works and how to apply it to a broad spectrum of business problems.

Deep Training Delivers Powerful Results

iManage AIUs targeted, hands-on training starts with the fundamentals but delves much deeper enabling organizations to put the flexibility and speed of the technology to work across myriad scenarios. RAVN easily helps facilitate actions like due diligence, compliance reviews or contract repapering, as well as more sophisticated modeling that taps customized rule development to address more unique use cases.

The advanced combination of machine learning and rules-based extraction capabilities in RAVN make it the most trainable platform on the market. Users can teach the software what to look for, where to find it and then how to analyze it using the RAVN AI engine.

Armed with the tools and training to put AI to work across their data stores and documents, AIU graduates can help their organizations unlock critical knowledge and insights in a repeatable way across the enterprise.

Interactive Curriculum Builds Strong Skillsets

The personalized, interactive course is delivered over three half-day sessions, via video conferencing, to a small team of customer stakeholders. Such teams may include data scientists, knowledge managers, lawyers, partners, contract specialists, and trained legal staff. AIU is also available to firms that are considering integrating the RAVN engine and would like to see AI in action as they assess the potential impact of the solution on their businesses.

Expert iManage AI instructors, with deep technology and legal expertise, work with clients in advance to help identify use cases for the virtual AIU. The iManage team fully explores client use cases prior to the training to facilitate the most effective approach to extraction techniques for client projects.

The daily curriculum includes demonstrations with user data and individual and group exercises to evaluate and deepen user skills. Virtual breakout rooms for project drill down and feedback mechanisms, such as polls and surveys, help solidify learning and make the sessions more interactive. Recordings and transcripts allow customers to revisit AIU sessions at any time.

For more information on iManage virtual AIU or on-site training read our AI blog post or contact us at AIU@imanage.com.

Follow iManage via: Twitter: https://twitter.com/imanageinc LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/imanage

About iManageiManage transforms how professionals in legal, accounting and financial services get work done by combining artificial intelligence, security and risk mitigation with market leading document and email management. iManage automates routine cognitive tasks, provides powerful insights and streamlines how professionals work, while maintaining the highest level of security and governance over critical client and corporate data. Over one million professionals at over 3,500 organizations in over 65 countries including more than 2,500 law firms and 1,200 corporate legal departments and professional services firms rely on iManage to deliver great client work securely.

Press Contact:Anastasia BullingeriManage +1.312.868.8411press@imanage.com

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Surge in Remote Working Leads iManage to Launch Virtual AI University for Companies that Want to Harness the Power of the RAVN AI Engine -...

True AI cannot be developed until the ‘brain code’ has been cracked: Starmind – ZDNet

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Marc Vontobel, CTO & Pascal Kaufmann, CEO, Starmind

Artificial intelligence is stuck today because companies are likening the human brain to a computer, according to Swiss neuroscientist and co-founder of Starmind Pascal Kaufmann. However, the brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge, or store memories like a computer does.

When companies claim to be using AI to power "the next generation" of their products, what they are unknowingly referring to is the intersection of big data, analytics, and automation, Kaufmann told ZDNet.

"Today, so called AI is often just the human intelligence of programmers condensed into source code," said Kaufmann, who worked on cyborgs previously at DARPA.

"We shouldn't need 300 million pictures of cats to be able to say whether something is a cat, cow, or dog. Intelligence is not related to big data; it's related to small data. If you can look at a cat, extract the principles of a cat like children do, then forever understand what a cat is, that's intelligence."

He even said that it's not "true AI" that led to AlphaGo -- a creation of Google subsidiary DeepMind -- mastering what is revered as the world's most demanding strategy game, Go.

The technology behind AlphaGo was able to look at 10 to 20 potential future moves and lay out the highest statistics for success, Kaufmann said, and so the test was one of rule-based strategy rather than artificial intelligence.

The ability for a machine to strategise outside the context of a rule-based game would reflect true AI, according to Kaufmann, who believes that AI will cheat without being programmed not to do so.

Additionally, the ability to automate human behaviour or labour is not necessarily a reflection of machines getting smarter, Kaufmann insisted.

"Take a pump, for example. Instead of collecting water from the river, you can just use a pump. But that is not artificial intelligence; it is the automation of manual work ... Human-level AI would be able to apply insights to new situations," Kaufmann added.

While Facebook's plans to build a brain-computer interface and Elon Musk's plans to merge the human brain with AI have left people wondering how close we are to developing true AI, Kaufmann believes the "brain code" needs to be cracked before we can really advance the field. He said this can only be achieved through neuroscientific research.

Earlier this year, founder of DeepMind Demis Hassabis communicated a similar sentiment in a paper, saying the fields of AI and neuroscience need to be reconnected, and that it's only by understanding natural intelligence that we can develop the artificial kind.

"Many companies are investing their resources in building faster computers ... we need to focus more on [figuring out] the principles of the brain, understand how it works ... rather than just copy/paste information," Kaufmann said.

Kaufmann admitted he doesn't have all the answers, but finds it "interesting" that high-profile entrepreneurs such as Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, none of whom have AI or neuroscience backgrounds, have such strong and opposing views on AI.

Musk and Zuckerberg slung mud at each other in July, with the former warning of "evil AI" destroying humankind if not properly monitored and regulated, while the latter spoke optimistically about AI contributing to the greater good, such as diagnosing diseases before they become fatal.

"One is an AI alarmist and the other makes AI look charming ... AI, like any other technology, can be used for good or used for bad," said Kaufmann, who believes AI needs to be assessed objectively.

In the interim, Kaufmann believes systems need to be designed so that humans and machines can work together, not against each other. For example, Kaufmann envisions a future where humans wear smart lenses -- comparable to the Google Glass -- that act as "the third half of the brain" and pull up relevant information based on conversations they are having.

"Humans don't need to learn stuff like which Roman killed the other Roman ... humans just need to be able to ask the right questions," he said.

"The key difference between human and machine is the ability to ask questions. Machines are more for solutions."

Kaufmann admitted, however, that humans don't know how to ask the right questions a lot of the time, because we are taught to remember facts in school, and those who remember the most facts are the ones who receive the best grades.

He believes humans need to be educated to ask the right questions, adding that the question is 50 percent of the solution. The right questions will not only allow humans to understand the principles of the brain and develop true AI, but will also keep us relevant even when AI systems proliferate, according to Kaufmann.

If we want to slow down job loss, AI systems need to be designed so that humans are at the centre of it, Kaufmann said.

"While many companies want to fully automate human work, we at Starmind want to build a symbiosis between humans and machines. We want to enhance human intelligence. If humans don't embrace the latest technology, they will become irrelevant," he added.

The company claims its self-learning system autonomously connects and maps the internal know-how of large groups of people, allowing employees to tap into their organisation's knowledge base or "corporate brain" when they have queries.

Starmind platform

Starmind is integrated into existing communication channels -- such as Skype for Business or a corporate browser -- eliminating the need to change employee behaviour, Kaufmann said.

Questions typed in the question window are answered instantly if an expert's answer is already stored in Starmind, and new questions are automatically routed to the right expert within the organisation, based on skills, availability patterns, and willingness to share know-how. All answers enhance the corporate knowledge base.

"Our vision is if you connect thousands of human brains in a smart way, you can outsmart any machine," Kaufmann said.

On how this is different to asking a search engine a question, Kaufmann said Google is basically "a big data machine" and mines answers to questions that have been already asked, but is not able to answer brand new questions.

"The future of Starmind is we actually anticipate questions before they're even asked because we know so much about the employee. For example, we can say if you are a new hire and you consume a certain piece of content, there will be a 90 percent probability that you will ask the following three questions within the next three minutes and so here are the solutions."

Starmind is being currently used across more than 40 countries by organisations such as Accenture, Bayer, Nestl, and Telefonica Deutschland.

While Kaufmann thinks it is important at this point in time to enhance human intelligence rather than replicate it artificially, he does believe AI will eventually substitute humans in the workplace. But unlike the grim picture painted by critics, he doesn't think it's a bad thing.

"Why do humans need to work at all? I look forward to all my leisure time. I do not need to work in order to feel like a human," Kaufmann said.

When asked how people would make money and sustain themselves, Kaufmann said society does not need to be ruled by money.

"In many science fiction scenarios, they do not have money. When you look at the ant colonies or other animals, they do not have cash," Kaufmann said.

Additionally, if humans had continuous access to intelligent machines, Kaufmann said "the acceleration of human development will pick up" and "it will give rise to new species".

"AI is the ultimate tool for human advancement," he firmly stated.

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True AI cannot be developed until the 'brain code' has been cracked: Starmind - ZDNet

Why AI is now at the heart of our innovation economy | TechCrunch – TechCrunch

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Andrew Keen is the author of three books: Cult of the Amateur, Digital Vertigo and The Internet Is Not The Answer. He produces Futurecast, and is the host of Keen On.

There are few more credible authorities on artificial intelligence (AI) thanHilary Mason the New York-based founder and chief executive of the data science and machine learning consultancyFast Forward Labs.

So, I asked Mason, who is also theData Scientist in Residenceat Accel Partners and theformer Chief Scientist at Bitly, whether todays AI revolution is for real? Or is it, I wondered, just another catch-all phrase used by entrepreneurs and investors to describe the latest Silicon Valley mania?

Mason who sees AI as theumbrella term to describemachine learning andbig data acknowledges that it has become avery trendy area of start-up activity. That said, she says, there has been such rapid technological progress in machine learning over the last five years to make the fieldlegitimately exciting. This progress has been so profound, Mason insists, that it is making AIclose to the heart of our new innovation economy.

But in contrast withthe fearsof prominent technologists like Elon Musk, Mason doesnt worry about the threat to the human species of super intelligent machines. We humans, she says, use machines as tools and the advent of AI doesnt change this.Machines arent rational, she thus argues, implying that there are many more important things for us to worry about than an imminent singularity.

What does concern Mason, however, are questions about the role of women in tech. Thats a question interviewers like myself should be asking men rather than women, she insists. It just createsextra burden for female technologists and thus isnt something that she wants to publicly discuss.

Many thanks to the folks at theGreater Providence Chamber of Commercefor their help in producing this interview.

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Why AI is now at the heart of our innovation economy | TechCrunch - TechCrunch

Implication Of AI And IoT Enabled Electric Scooters For Smart Delivery Services – Inc42 Media

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Many electric vehicle companies are enabling modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence and IoT in their vehicles

AI and IoT have transformed the entire delivery services especially with the electric vehicles

The implication of AI and IoT in electric vehicles ensure efficiency and safety

Urban logistics and delivery services are one of the main issues of every big and small city. From grocery to food items to everything, the delivery market has grown rapidly with the growth of technology and the Internet. It moves vehicles in rush hours and on roads which are already congested by private traffic.

According to the data of MDS Transmodal Limited, the impact of delivery services is that they represent between 8 and 18% of urban traffic flows and they decrease by 30% the road capacity because of pick-up and deliveries operations and it continues to grow in the coming years. Delivery operations have a high impact on congestion and urban environmental quality. They are responsible for about 25% of CO2 mobility emissions in urban areas.

A new venture that has joined the delivery services is that Electric Vehicles. The electric vehicle industry is growing rapidly to combat pollution. Electric vehicles (EVs) is seen as a catalyst to the reduction of CO2 emissions and more intelligent mode of transportation systems. The Government of India is also pushing for a shift towards electric vehicles for every purpose. The Indian government has claimed that India will move to 30% electric vehicles by 2030.

The Government of India has the vision of making the country electrically mobile. The government of India has encouraged mainstream electric mobility by dedicating INR 10,000 Cr to boost EV usage under Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (FAME) II scheme and a 5% reduction of GST on electric vehicles.

As the technology is growing and many industries are adopting the changes, many electric vehicle companies are enabling modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence and IoT in their vehicles. They are providing these e-scooters for many purposes, from personal use to now in the smart delivery ecosystem.

Use of e-bikes, e-cargo bikes and e-scooters is extremely positive for the enhancement of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), visibility and green image among customers and clients, cost savings because it consumes low energy and it is low maintenance and performances are very good. It is easy to access any location in urban areas and reliability is too high with these e-vehicles. This is the reason, nowadays more delivery giants are opting for e-scooters instead of petrol or diesel scooters.

Some problems are related to the usage of electric vehicles like the lack of adequate charging stations, limited autonomy especially in hilly areas and some technical malfunctions of engines and batteries. But the AI and IoT technologies have even come with the solution to all these problems.

AI and IoT have transformed the entire delivery services especially with the electric vehicles (EVs). Now, the electric scooters of the delivery executives are AI and IoT enabled. So that the drivers behaviour can be monitored for safe and timely delivery of goods. Companies have started using Telematics devices for tracking & monitoring vehicle movement during the delivery. These technologies will not only monitor the movement of vehicles but also ensure the safety of drivers in case of any kind of road accidents.

Using AI and IoT, it will be easy to contact the driver and a consumer in case of an emergency. These scooters can be controlled by a mobile application, GPS which are installed on the vehicles and an accelerometer can tell the company every single movement of a scooter during the delivery of the goods.

Using the AI and IoT, e-scooters which are equipped with cellular, GPS, and accelerometer technology, they use machine learning to interpret the habits of their riders and either notify dangerous habits of the drivers or alter their machines to produce safer conditions. Artificial Intelligence has now made it possible for the driver to look at the app after delivery and see where they went, how fast they drove, if they made any dangerous moves, and also give tips for a safer delivery next time.

Attachment of an accelerometer to a scooter with AI and IoT, also made it possible for the company or consumer to see when a rider accelerates too quickly or brakes too sharply. Electric vehicles also come with features like navigation assist, ride statistics, remote diagnostics, voice-enabled app, anti-theft alarm and lock, speedometer call alerts, ride behaviour-based artificial intelligence suggestions, which can be used in case of emergency. AI and IoT have helped the electric scooter to connect the drivers smartphone and store all vehicle-related data on the cloud.

Next level of tech revolution can be seen in the electric vehicle sector. There is 247 connectivity to a cloud server which allows a user to monitor the performance of the vehicle even when the driver is not around. Data analytic algorithms employed by the server analyses the data and notifies the user about possible service needs.

Modern technologies like AI and IoT have also improved the battery charging technology of Electric Vehicles (EV) and reduced the time it takes to stop at a gas station. It is the result of that Electric Vehicles companies are using artificial intelligence to monitor the state of the battery as it is charging. This improvement in battery technology has not only made delivery services faster but also safe for the consumers as well as delivery companies.

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Implication Of AI And IoT Enabled Electric Scooters For Smart Delivery Services - Inc42 Media

Clearview AI Wants To Sell Its Facial Recognition Software To Authoritarian Regimes Around The World – BuzzFeed News

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Facebook confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Clearview AI, asking the company to stop using information from Facebook and Instagram.

Last updated on February 5, 2020, at 8:51 p.m. ET

Posted on February 5, 2020, at 6:09 p.m. ET

As legal pressures and US lawmaker scrutiny mounts, Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that claims to have a database of more than 3 billion photos scraped from websites and social media, is looking to grow around the world.

A document obtained via a public records request reveals that Clearview has been touting a rapid international expansion to prospective clients using a map that highlights how it either has expanded, or plans to expand, to at least 22 more countries, some of which have committed human rights abuses.

The document, part of a presentation given to the North Miami Beach Police Department in November 2019, includes the United Arab Emirates, a country historically hostile to political dissidents, and Qatar and Singapore, the penal codes of which criminalize homosexuality.

Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That declined to explain whether Clearview is currently working in these countries or hopes to work in them. He did confirm that the company, which had previously claimed that it was working with 600 law enforcement agencies, has relationships with two countries on the map.

Its deeply alarming that they would sell this technology in countries with such a terrible human rights track record."

Clearview is focused on doing business in USA and Canada, Ton-That said. Many countries from around the world have expressed interest in Clearview.

Albert Fox Cahn, a fellow at New York University and the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told BuzzFeed News that he was disturbed by the possibility that Clearview may be taking its technology abroad.

Its deeply alarming that they would sell this technology in countries with such a terrible human rights track record, enabling potentially authoritarian behavior by other nations, he said.

Clearview has made headlines in past weeks for a facial recognition technology that it claims includes a growing database of some 3 billion photos scraped from social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, and for misrepresenting its work with law enforcement by falsely claiming a role in the arrest of a terrorism suspect. The company, which has received cease-and-desist orders from Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook argues that it has a First Amendment right to harvest data from social media.

There is also a First Amendment right to public information, Ton-That told CBS News Wednesday. So the way we have built our system is to only take publicly available information and index it that way.

Cahn dismissed Ton-Thats argument, describing it as more about public relations than it is about the law.

No court has ever found the First Amendment gives a constitutional right to use publicly available information for facial recognition, Cahn said. Just because Clearview may have a right to scrape some of this data, that doesnt mean that they have an immunity from lawsuits from those of us whose information is being sold without our consent.

Scott Drury, a lawyer representing a plaintiff suing Clearview in Illinois for violating a state law on biometric data collection, agreed. Clearviews conduct violates citizens constitutional rights in numerous ways, including by interfering with citizens right to access the courts, he told BuzzFeed News. The issue is not limited to scraping records, but rather whether a private company may scrape records with the intent of performing biometric scans and selling that data to the government.

Clearviews conduct violates citizens constitutional rights in numerous ways."

Potentially more problematic is Clearviews inclusion of nine European Union countries among them Italy, Greece, and the Netherlands on its expansion map. These countries have strict privacy protections under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a 2016 law that requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens. Joseph Jerome, a policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said it was unclear whether Clearview AI's technology would violate the GDPR.

Jerome said that GDPR protects any information that could be used to identify a person biometric data included but that the EU made exceptions for law enforcement and national security. Clearview also highlighted other non-EU European countries on its map that it hoped to do business with, including the United Kingdom and Ukraine.

Beyond the map which also points to plans to expand to Brazil, Colombia, and Nigeria Clearview has boasted about its exploits abroad. Its website has a large testimonial from a detective constable in the sex crimes unit in Canadian law enforcement who claims that Clearview is hands-down the best thing that has happened to victim identification in the last 10 years. When asked, Ton-That declined to identify the detective or the agency they serve.

Clearview and Ton-That have on occasion exaggerated the company's business relationships, and the presentation sent to North Miami Beach has a few misrepresentations, including two examples in which it suggested that it was used in the investigation of crimes in New York. An NYPD spokesperson previously denied that the department has any relationship with the company and said that the software was not used in either investigation.

Clearview AI has also encouraged law enforcement to test its facial recognition tool in unusual situations, such as identifying dead bodies. The presentation shows graphic images of a dead man and mugshots of a person whom Clearview claimed matched the deceased victim.

Clearview AI has been aggressively promoting its service to US law enforcement. It has suggested that police officers run wild with the tool, encouraging them to test it on friends, family, and celebrities. Emails obtained via a public record request show the company challenging police in Appleton, Wisconsin, to run 100 searches a week.

Investigators who do 100+ Clearview searches have the best chances of successfully solving crimes with Clearview in our experience, the email said. Its the best way to thoroughly test the technology. You never know when a search will turn up a match.

There are currently no federal laws that restrict facial recognition or scraping biometric data from the internet. On Thursday, the House Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing to examine the Department of Homeland Security's use facial recognition technology. Ton-That has previously said Clearview is working with DHS.

On Wednesday, Facebook told BuzzFeed News that it had sent multiple letters to Clearview AI to clarify the social network's policies and request information about what the startup was doing. In those letters, Facebook, which owns Instagram, asked that Clearview cease and desist from using any data, images, or media from its social networking sites. Facebook board member Peter Thiel is an investor in Clearview.

Scraping peoples information violates our policies, which is why weve demanded that Clearview stop accessing or using information from Facebook or Instagram," a Facebook spokesperson said. A spokesperson for Thiel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Feb. 06, 2020, at 00:28 AM

The House Committee on Homeland Security will hold the hearing on facial recognition. An earlier version of this post misstated the committee.

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Clearview AI Wants To Sell Its Facial Recognition Software To Authoritarian Regimes Around The World - BuzzFeed News

Security Think Tank: Artificial intelligence will be no silver bullet for security – ComputerWeekly.com

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Published: 03 Jul 2020

Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence (AI) is able to support organisations in tackling their threat landscape and the widening of vulnerabilities as criminals have become more sophisticated. However, AI is no silver bullet when it comes to protecting assets and organisations should be thinking about cyber augmentation, rather than just the automation of cyber security alone.

Areas where AI can currently be deployed include the training of a system to identify even the smallest behaviours of ransomware and malware attacks before it enters the system and then isolate them from that system.

Other examples include automated phishing and data theft detection which are extremely helpful as they involve a real-time response. Context-aware behavioural analytics are also interesting, offering the possibility to immediately spot a change in user behaviour which could signal an attack.

The above are all examples of where machine learning and AI can be useful. However, over-reliance and false assurance could present another problem: As AI improves at safeguarding assets, so too does it improve attacking them. As cutting-edge technologies are applied to improve security, cyber criminals are using the same innovations to get an edge over these defences.

Typical attacks can involve the gathering of information about a system or sabotaging an AI system by flooding it with requests.

Elsewhere, so-called deepfakes are proving a relatively new area of fraud that poses unprecedented challenges. We already know that cyber criminals can litter the web with fakes that can be almost impossible to distinguish real news from fake.

The consequences are such that many legislators and regulators are contemplating the establishment of rule and law to govern this phenomenon. For organisations, this means that deepfakes could lead to much more complex phishing in future, targeting employees by mimicking corporate writing styles or even individual writing style.

In a nutshell, AI can augment cyber security so long as organisations know its limitations and have a clear strategy focusing on the present while constantly looking at the evolving threat landscape.

Ivana Bartoletti is a cyber risk technical director at Deloitte and a founder of Women Leading in AI.

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Security Think Tank: Artificial intelligence will be no silver bullet for security - ComputerWeekly.com

Businesses are finding AI hard to adopt – The Economist

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Jun 13th 2020

FACEBOOK: THE INSIDE STORY, Steven Levys recent book about the American social-media giant, paints a vivid picture of the firms size, not in terms of revenues or share price but in the sheer amount of human activity that thrums through its servers. 1.73bn people use Facebook every day, writing comments and uploading videos. An operation on that scale is so big, writes Mr Levy, that it can only be policed by algorithms or armies.

In fact, Facebook uses both. Human moderators work alongside algorithms trained to spot posts that violate either an individual countrys laws or the sites own policies. But algorithms have many advantages over their human counterparts. They do not sleep, or take holidays, or complain about their performance reviews. They are quick, scanning thousands of messages a second, and untiring. And, of course, they do not need to be paid.

And it is not just Facebook. Google uses machine learning to refine search results, and target advertisements; Amazon and Netflix use it to recommend products and television shows to watch; Twitter and TikTok to suggest new users to follow. The ability to provide all these services with minimal human intervention is one reason why tech firms dizzying valuations have been achieved with comparatively small workforces.

Firms in other industries woud love that kind of efficiency. Yet the magic is proving elusive. A survey carried out by Boston Consulting Group and MIT polled almost 2,500 bosses and found that seven out of ten said their AI projects had generated little impact so far. Two-fifths of those with significant investments in AI had yet to report any benefits at all.

Perhaps as a result, bosses seem to be cooling on the idea more generally. Another survey, this one by PwC, found that the number of bosses planning to deploy AI across their firms was 4% in 2020, down from 20% the year before. The number saying they had already implemented AI in multiple areas fell from 27% to 18%. Euan Cameron at PwC says that rushed trials may have been abandoned or rethought, and that the irrational exuberance that has dominated boardrooms for the past few years is fading.

There are several reasons for the reality check. One is prosaic: businesses, particularly big ones, often find change difficult. One parallel from history is with the electrification of factories. Electricity offers big advantages over steam power in terms of both efficiency and convenience. Most of the fundamental technologies had been invented by the end of the 19th century. But electric power nonetheless took more than 30 years to become widely adopted in the rich world.

Reasons specific to AI exist, too. Firms may have been misled by the success of the internet giants, which were perfectly placed to adopt the new technology. They were already staffed by programmers, and were already sitting on huge piles of user-generated data. The uses to which they put AI, at least at firstimproving search results, displaying adverts, recommending new products and the likewere straightforward and easy to measure.

Not everyone is so lucky. Finding staff can be tricky for many firms. AI experts are scarce, and command luxuriant salaries. Only the tech giants and the hedge funds can afford to employ these people, grumbles one senior manager at an organisation that is neither. Academia has been a fertile recruiting ground.

A more subtle problem is that of deciding what to use AI for. Machine intelligence is very different from the biological sort. That means that gauging how difficult machines will find a task can be counter-intuitive. AI researchers call the problem Moravecs paradox, after Hans Moravec, a Canadian roboticist, who noted that, though machines find complex arithmetic and formal logic easy, they struggle with tasks like co-ordinated movement and locomotion which humans take completely for granted.

For example, almost any human can staff a customer-support helpline. Very few can play Go at grandmaster level. Yet Paul Henninger, an AI expert at KPMG, an accountancy firm, says that building a customer-service chatbot is in some ways harder than building a superhuman Go machine. Go has only two possible outcomeswin or loseand both can be easily identified. Individual games can play out in zillions of unique ways, but the underlying rules are few and clearly specified. Such well-defined problems are a good fit for AI. By contrast, says Mr Henninger, a single customer call after a cancelled flight hasmany, many more ways it could go.

What to do? One piece of advice, says James Gralton, engineering director at Ocado, a British warehouse-automation and food-delivery firm, is to start small, and pick projects that can quickly deliver obvious benefits. Ocados warehouses are full of thousands of robots that look like little filing cabinets on wheels. Swarms of them zip around a grid of rails, picking up food to fulfil orders from online shoppers.

Ocados engineers used simple data from the robots, like electricity consumption or torque readings from their wheel motors, to train a machine-learning model to predict when a damaged or worn robot was likely to fail. Since broken-down robots get in the way, removing them for pre-emptive maintenance saves time and money. And implementing the system was comparatively easy.

The robots, warehouses and data all existed already. And the outcome is clear, too, which makes it easy to tell how well the AI model is working: either the system reduces breakdowns and saves money, or it does not. That kind of predictive maintenance, along with things like back-office automation, is a good example of what PWC approvingly calls boring AI (though Mr Gralton would surely object).

There is more to building an AI system than its accuracy in a vacuum. It must also do something that can be integrated into a firms work. During the late 1990s Mr Henninger worked on Fair Isaac Corporations (FICO) Falcon, a credit-card fraud-detection system aimed at banks and credit-card companies that was, he says, one of the first real-world uses for machine learning. As with predictive maintenance, fraud detection was a good fit: the data (in the form of credit-card transaction records) were clean and readily available, and decisions were usefully binary (either a transaction was fraudulent or it wasnt).

But although Falcon was much better at spotting dodgy transactions than banks existing systems, he says, it did not enjoy success as a product until FICO worked out how to help banks do something with the information the model was generating. Falcon was limited by the same thing that holds a lot of AI projects back today: going from a working model to a useful system. In the end, says Mr Henninger, it was the much more mundane task of creating a case-management systemflagging up potential frauds to bank workers, then allowing them to block the transaction, wave it through, or phone clients to double-checkthat persuaded banks that the system was worth buying.

Because they are complicated and open-ended, few problems in the real world are likely to be completely solvable by AI, says Mr Gralton. Managers should therefore plan for how their systems will fail. Often that will mean throwing difficult cases to human beings to judge. That can limit the expected cost savings, especially if a model is poorly tuned and makes frequent wrong decisions.

The tech giants experience of the covid-19 pandemic, which has been accompanied by a deluge of online conspiracy theories, disinformation and nonsense, demonstrates the benefits of always keeping humans in the loop. Because human moderators see sensitive, private data, they typically work in offices with strict security policies (bringing smartphones to work, for instance, is usually prohibited).

In early March, as the disease spread, tech firms sent their content moderators home, where such security is tough to enforce. That meant an increased reliance on the algorithms. The firms were frank about the impact. More videos would end up being removed, said YouTube, including some that may not violate [our] policies. Facebook admitted that less human supervision would likely mean longer response times and more mistakes. AI can do a lot. But it works best when humans are there to hold its hand.

This article appeared in the Technology Quarterly section of the print edition under the headline "Algorithms and armies"

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Businesses are finding AI hard to adopt - The Economist

What an artificial intelligence researcher fears about AI – CBS News – CBS News

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Arend Hintzeis assistant professor of Integrative Biology & Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University.

As an artificial intelligence researcher, I often come across the idea that many people are afraid of what AI might bring. It's perhaps unsurprising, given both history and the entertainment industry, that we might be afraid of a cybernetic takeover that forces us to live locked away, "Matrix"-like, as some sort of human battery.

And yet it is hard for me to look up from the evolutionary computer models I use to develop AI, to think about how the innocent virtual creatures on my screen might become the monsters of the future. Might I become "the destroyer of worlds," as Oppenheimer lamented after spearheading the construction of the first nuclear bomb?

I would take the fame, I suppose, but perhaps the critics are right. Maybe I shouldn't avoid asking: As an AI expert, what do I fear about artificial intelligence?

The HAL 9000 computer, dreamed up by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke and brought to life by movie director Stanley Kubrick in "2001: A Space Odyssey," is a good example of a system that fails because of unintended consequences. In many complex systems the RMS Titanic, NASA's space shuttle, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant engineers layer many different components together. The designers may have known well how each element worked individually, but didn't know enough about how they all worked together.

That resulted in systems that could never be completely understood, and could fail in unpredictable ways. In each disaster sinking a ship, blowing up two shuttles and spreading radioactive contamination across Europe and Asia a set of relatively small failures combined together to create a catastrophe.

I can see how we could fall into the same trap in AI research. We look at the latest research from cognitive science, translate that into an algorithm and add it to an existing system. We try to engineer AI without understanding intelligence or cognition first.

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Systems like IBM's Watson and Google's Alpha equip artificial neural networks with enormous computing power, and accomplish impressive feats. But if these machines make mistakes, they loseon "Jeopardy!" or don't defeat a Go master. These are not world-changing consequences; indeed, the worst that might happen to a regular person as a result is losing some money betting on their success.

But as AI designs get even more complex and computer processors even faster, their skills will improve. That will lead us to give them more responsibility, even as the risk of unintended consequences rises. We know that "to err is human," so it is likely impossible for us to create a truly safe system.

I'm not very concerned about unintended consequences in the types of AI I am developing, using an approach called neuroevolution. I create virtual environments and evolve digital creatures and their brains to solve increasingly complex tasks. The creatures' performance is evaluated; those that perform the best are selected to reproduce, making the next generation. Over many generations these machine-creatures evolve cognitive abilities.

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Right now we are taking baby steps to evolve machines that can do simple navigation tasks, make simple decisions, or remember a couple of bits. But soon we will evolve machines that can execute more complex tasks and have much better general intelligence. Ultimately we hope to create human-level intelligence.

Along the way, we will find and eliminate errors and problems through the process of evolution. With each generation, the machines get better at handling the errors that occurred in previous generations. That increases the chances that we'll find unintended consequences in simulation, which can be eliminated before they ever enter the real world.

Another possibility that's farther down the line is using evolution to influence the ethics of artificial intelligence systems. It's likely that human ethics and morals, such as trustworthiness and altruism, are a result of our evolution and factor in its continuation. We could set up our virtual environments to give evolutionary advantages to machines that demonstrate kindness, honesty and empathy. This might be a way to ensure that we develop more obedient servants or trustworthy companions and fewer ruthless killer robots.

While neuroevolution might reduce the likelihood of unintended consequences, it doesn't prevent misuse. But that is a moral question, not a scientific one. As a scientist, I must follow my obligation to the truth, reporting what I find in my experiments, whether I like the results or not. My focus is not on determining whether I like or approve of something; it matters only that I can unveil it.

Being a scientist doesn't absolve me of my humanity, though. I must, at some level, reconnect with my hopes and fears. As a moral and political being, I have to consider the potential implications of my work and its potential effects on society.

As researchers, and as a society, we have not yet come up with a clear idea of what we want AI to do or become. In part, of course, this is because we don't yet know what it's capable of. But we do need to decide what the desired outcome of advanced AI is.

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One big area people are paying attention to is employment. Robots are already doing physical work like welding car parts together. One day soon they may also do cognitive tasks we once thought were uniquely human. Self-driving cars could replace taxi drivers; self-flying planes could replace pilots.

Instead of getting medical aid in an emergency room staffed by potentially overtired doctors, patients could get an examination and diagnosis from an expert system with instant access to all medical knowledge ever collected and get surgery performed by a tireless robot with a perfectly steady "hand." Legal advice could come from an all-knowing legal database; investment advice could come from a market-prediction system.

Perhaps one day, all human jobs will be done by machines. Even my own job could be done faster, by a large number of machines tirelessly researching how to make even smarter machines.

In our current society, automation pushes people out of jobs, making the people who own the machines richer and everyone else poorer. That is not a scientific issue; it is a political and socioeconomic problem that we as a society must solve. My research will not change that, though my political self together with the rest of humanity may be able to create circumstances in which AI becomes broadly beneficial instead of increasing the discrepancy between the one percent and the rest of us.

There is one last fear, embodied by HAL 9000, the Terminator and any number of other fictional superintelligences: If AI keeps improving until it surpasses human intelligence, will a superintelligence system (or more than one of them) find it no longer needs humans? How will we justify our existence in the face of a superintelligence that can do things humans could never do? Can we avoid being wiped off the face of the Earth by machines we helped create?

tenaciousme, CC Wikimedia Commons

The key question in this scenario is: Why should a superintelligence keep us around?

I would argue that I am a good person who might have even helped to bring about the superintelligence itself. I would appeal to the compassion and empathy that the superintelligence has to keep me, a compassionate and empathetic person, alive. I would also argue that diversity has a value all in itself, and that the universe is so ridiculously large that humankind's existence in it probably doesn't matter at all.

But I do not speak for all humankind, and I find it hard to make a compelling argument for all of us. When I take a sharp look at us all together, there is a lot wrong: We hate each other. We wage war on each other. We do not distribute food, knowledge or medical aid equally. We pollute the planet. There are many good things in the world, but all the bad weakens our argument for being allowed to exist.

Fortunately, we need not justify our existence quite yet. We have some time somewhere between 50 and 250 years, depending on how fast AI develops. As a species we can come together and come up with a good answer for why a superintelligence shouldn't just wipe us out. But that will be hard: Saying we embrace diversity and actually doing it are two different things as are saying we want to save the planet and successfully doing so.

We all, individually and as a society, need to prepare for that nightmare scenario, using the time we have left to demonstrate why our creations should let us continue to exist. Or we can decide to believe that it will never happen, and stop worrying altogether. But regardless of the physical threats superintelligences may present, they also pose a political and economic danger. If we don't find a way to distribute our wealth better, we will have fueled capitalism with artificial intelligence laborers serving only very few who possess all the means of production.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

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What an artificial intelligence researcher fears about AI - CBS News - CBS News

AWS vs. Microsoft Azure will be about sales scale, AI, multi-cloud realities – ZDNet

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Amazon Web Services is ramping its sales and marketing investments amid signs that the battle with Microsoft Azure is accelerating. The big question is whether the laws of large numbers is catching up to both cloud titans in terms of growth.

With both Amazon and Microsoft earnings out of the way this week, there is a bit more color on how the cloud wars are playing out. The storyline here is pretty straightforward in that AWS reports as a separate unit within Amazon and Microsoft growth is broken out in the software giant's report, but still tucked away in the commercial cloud.A new Microsoft cloud category to watch: The Microsoft 365 number

The upshot:

So here we are. Microsoft Azure vs. AWS and the cloud market has matured enough to where we're seeing a sales ground war. Let's just say Microsoft gets that sales thing well and a partnership with SAP to co-sell isn't going to hurt.

For now, there is enough cloud growth to go around, but there are signs that IT spending is slowing. Cloud providers are likely to see some of that slowdown. That reality means that the battle between AWS and Azure is going to get interesting.

Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives summed up Microsoft's incursion on AWS following the company's most recent report:

This quarter was a major positive data point for Redmond as well as overall cloud spending, which has been a concern among investors given some cracks in the armor of cloud plays such as Workday and ServiceNow and fears that IT spending is hitting a speed bump heading into 2020. On the contrary, Microsoft delivered strength across the board with no blemishes and importantly gave stronger than expected December quarter guidance which speaks to an inflection point in deal flow as more enterprises pick Redmond for the cloud and thus further narrowing the competitive gap vs. Bezos and AWS.

Indeed, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said: "In our commercial business, we again saw increased customer commitment across our cloud platform. In Azure, we had material growth in the number of $10 million-plus contracts."

Hood added that Azure gross margins improved as commercial cloud delivered gross margins of 66%. That tally includes Office 365. It appears that the Microsoft 365 strategy is going to pull along Azure sales too. That approach is hard for other cloud providers to replicate.

Meanwhile, Brian Olsavsky, CFO of Amazon, explained that the company is investing in AWS and has banked savings from infrastructure investments made in 2017. He said:

We continue to feel really good about not only the top line but also the bottom line in that business, but we are investing a lot more this year in sales force and marketing personnel mainly to handle a wider group of customers, a increasingly wide group of products. We continue to add thousands of new products and features a year, and we continue to expand geographically.

So the biggest impact that we saw in Q3 year-over-year in the AWS segment was tied to costs related to sales and marketing year-over-year and also, to secondary extent, infrastructure, which, if you look at our capital leases or equipment leases line, it grew 30% on trailing 12-month basis in Q3 of this year, and that was 9% last year. So there's been a step-up in infrastructure cost to support the higher usage demand. So we see those trends continuing into Q4, and that's essentially probably the other element of operating income year-over-year that's shorter than in prior quarters.

Olsavsky said that AWS margins will likely be under pressure.

We will price competitively and continue to pass along pricing reductions to customers both in the form of absolute price reductions and also in the form of new products that will, in effect, cannibalize the old ones. what we're doing is renegotiating or negotiating incremental price decreases for customers who didn't commit to us long term. And if you look in our disclosure on our 10-Q, it shows that we have $27 billion in future commitments for AWS -- from AWS customers, and that's up 54% year-over-year.

Now we'd love to give you that tech zero-sum storyline because it's easy. But AWS vs. Azure is way more complicated. Here are the moving parts that'll determine how this battle plays out going forward.

The sales ground war. AWS is ramping its sales team, but there has to be a talent shortage. Google Cloud Platform is hiring aggressively. Microsoft Azure is drafting off its parent's sales team and enterprise footprint already. And then there are other cloud providers that'll retool sales teams. Rest assured new ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott is going to be recruiting heavily. It's a good time to be a cloud sales person.

Artificial intelligence. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned AI and Azure a bevy of times. Compute, storage and infrastructure frequently is just a cloud precursor to more the AI and machine learning upsell. Azure, AWS and Google Cloud are all betting AI and machine learning will differentiate them.

Multi-cloud realities. The dream is that enterprises will all mix and match the public cloud providers based on needs and pricing. The reality in the short term is going to be that enterprises are likely to bet on one cloud provider with others being involved as leverage. The battle between AWS and Azure will be about which vendor is preferred in the enterprise.

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AWS vs. Microsoft Azure will be about sales scale, AI, multi-cloud realities - ZDNet

Sorting Lego sucks, so here’s an AI that does it for you – Engadget – Engadget

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You see, Mattheij decided he wanted in on the profitable cottage industry of online Lego reselling, and after placing a bunch of bids for the colorful little blocks on eBay, he came into possession of 2 tons (4,400 pounds) of Lego -- enough to fill his entire garage.

As Mattheij explains in his blog post, resellers can make up to 40 ($45) per kilogram for Lego sets, and rare parts and Lego Technic can fetch up to 100 ($112) per kg. If you really want to rake in the cash, however, you have to go through the exhaustive process of manually sorting through your bulk Lego before selling it in smaller groupings online. Instead of spending an eternity sifting through his own, intimidatingly large collection, Mattheij set to work on building an automated Lego sorter powered by a neural network that could classify the little building blocks. In case you were wondering, Lego comes in more than 38,000 shapes and over 100 shades of color, which amounts to a lot of sorting even with the aid of AI.

Starting with a proof of concept (built using Lego, naturally), Mattheij spent the following six months improving upon his prototype with a lot of DIY handiwork. In his own words, he describes his present setup as a "hodge-podge of re-purposed industrial gear" stuck together using "copious quantities of crazy glue" and a "heavily modified" home treadmill.

The current incarnation uses conveyor belts to carry the Lego past a web camera that is set up to take images of the blocks. These are then fed to the neural network as part of its classification training, and all Mattheij has to do is spot the errors in its judgement.

"As the neural net learns, there are fewer mistakes, and the labeling workload decreases," he states. "By the end of two weeks I had a training data set of 20,000 correctly labeled images."

With his prototype up and running, Mattheij claims he is just waiting for the machine learning software to reliably class all of the images itself, and then he can start selling off the lucrative toy. If Matthiej manages to get the system working, he could then rechannel those profits into new expensive Lego projects.

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Sorting Lego sucks, so here's an AI that does it for you - Engadget - Engadget

AI Could Target Autism Before It Even EmergesBut It’s No … – Wired – WIRED

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AI Could Target Autism Before It Even EmergesBut It's No ... - Wired - WIRED

Facebook says AI helped reduce hate speech on its platform last quarter – The Hindu

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Facebook said nearly 97% of the hate speech and harassment content taken down in the final three months of last year were detected by automated systems, before any human flagged it. In the July to September quarter, AI helped detect 94% of hate content; and 80% were spotted in late 2019.

The social network, in its Community Standards Enforcement Report, noted that in the fourth quarter ending December 2020, hate speech prevalence dropped to about 0.08% of total content from nearly 0.11%.

This means, there were about seven to eight views of hate speech for every 10,000 views of content in Q4, Facebook said in a statement.

Also Read | Facebook to temporarily reduce political content for some users in few countries

The California-based technology company introduced several artificial intelligence-powered systems last year to help detect misinformation. It started using AI technologies to identify hateful online content in 2016, and has since been adding several updates to its systems which now extends to images and other forms of media.

The company said its multilingual systems helped moderate content in several languages including Arabic and Spanish, targeting nearly 27 million piece of hateful content last quarter.

Also Read | Facebook faces new UK class action after data harvesting scandal

Facebook has faced criticism previously for its inability to curb hate speech on the platform. Most recently, the social network said it would reduce the distribution of all content and profiles run by Myanmars military after it seized power and detained civilian leaders in a coup earlier in February.

Facebook also said last year it will undertake an independent audit third-party audit of content moderation systems to validate the numbers it publishes.

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Facebook says AI helped reduce hate speech on its platform last quarter - The Hindu

Heres how AI can help you sleep – The Next Web

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Modern life is turning us into sleep-deprived zombies.

The traditional distractions of jobs, family, and friends have been exacerbated in recent years by irregular work, long commutes, smartphones, and all-night benders leaving us with little time to snooze. And thats without mentioning what keeps us up at night, whether its drunken revelers in the street, existential angst, or the horrifying screams next door.

Its therefore unsurprising that two-thirds of adults in developed nations dont get the nightly eight hours of kip recommended by the World Health Organization, which doctors warn is leading us down a cheery path towards chronic diseases, mental health disorders, and dysfunctional relationships.

But dont worry my fellow insomniacs, restful nights may soon be on the way. And its all thanks to AI of course, the digital ages panacea/snake oil.

Thats according to the boffins at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, who believe AI can improve the treatment of sleep disorders.

[Read: If your employees dont get enough sleep, thats on you]

In a statement published yesterday, they explain that the vast volumes of data collected through sleep studies are ripe for algorithmic analysis.

The first application they suggest is in polysomnograms tests, which diagnose sleep disorders by analyzing brain waves, oxygen levels in the blood, heart rates, respiration, and eye and leg movements. Adding AI could both streamline the process and unearth new insights that can predict health outcomes.

But they also envision AI transcending the sleep lab to develop personalized treatments.

TheAmerican Academy of Sleep Medicine isnt the first group of academics to support using AI to help you sleep. In 2018, researchers from Stanford University found that a neural network could detect sleep issues more accurately than a human technician.

Right now [sleep test scoring] is done by technicians, and clearly, there is no reason why it couldnt be done by a computer, Dr Emmanuel Mignot, an author of the study and the director of the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, told the Sleep Review journal last year.

These scientific endorsements will help legitimize the growing list of products using AI to help you sleep.

They include SleepScore, an app that tracks your breathing rate and movements through your smartphones microphone and speaker; DREEM, a headband that sends you soporific sounds through bone conduction; HEKA, a smart mattress that adjusts its position when you toss and turn; and Sleep.ai, an armband that detects snoring and then emits a vibration that pushes you onto your side.

Their combined efforts show that theres a vast range of ways that AI could help you sleep even if it cant yet mute the drunks shouting outside your window.

Published March 3, 2020 15:43 UTC

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Heres how AI can help you sleep - The Next Web

Have We Reached Peak AI Hysteria? – Niskanen Center (press release) (blog)

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July 21, 2017 by Ryan Hagemann

At the recent annual meeting of the National Governors Association, Elon Musk spoke with his usual cavalier optimism on the future of technology and innovation. From solar power to our place among the stars, humanitys future looks pretty bright, according to Musk. But he was particularly dour on one emerging technology that supposedly poses an existential threat to humankind: artificial intelligence.

Musk called for strict, preemptive regulations on developments in AI, referencing numerous hypothetical doomsaying scenarios that might emerge if we go too far too fast. Its not the first time Musk has said that AI could portend a Terminator-style future, but it does seem to be the first time hes called for such stringent controls on the technology. And hes not alone.

In the preface to his book Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom contends that developing AI is quite possibly the most important and most daunting challenge humanity has ever faced. Andwhether we succeed or failit is probably the last challenge we will ever face. Even Stephen Hawking has jumped on the panic wagon.

These concerns arent uniquely held by innovators, scientists, and academics. A Morning Consult poll found that a significant majority of Americans supported both domestic and international regulations on AI.

All of this suggests that we are in the midst of a full blown AI techno-panic. Fear of mass unemployment from automation and public safety concerns over autonomous vehicles have only exacerbated the growing tensions between man and machine.

Luckily, if history is any guide, the height of this hysteria means were probably on the cusp of a period of deflating dread. New emerging technologies often stoke frenzied fears over worst-case scenariosat least at the beginning. These concerns eventually rise to the point of peak alarm, followed by a gradual hollowing out of panic. Eventually, the technologies that were once seen as harbingers of the end times become mundane, common, and indispensable parts of our daily lives. Look no further than the early days of the automobile, RFID chips, and the Internet; so too will it be with AI.

Of course detractors will argue that we should hedge against worst-possible outcomes, especially if the costs are potentially civilization-ending. After all, if theres something the government could do to minimize the costs while maximizing the benefits of AI, then policymakers should be all over that. So whats the solution?

Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) asked that very question: Youve given some of these examples of how AI can be an existential threat, but I still dont understand, as policymakers, what type of regulations, beyond slow down, which typically policymakers dont get in front of entrepreneurs or innovators should be enacted. Musks response? First, government needs to gain insight by standing up an agency to make sure the situation is understood. Then put in place regulations to protect public safety. Thats it. Well, not quite.

The government has, in fact, already taken a stab at whether or not such an approach would be an ideal treatment of this technology. Last year, the Obama administrations Office of Science and Technology Policy released a report on the future of AI, derived from hundreds of comments from industry, civil society, technical experts, academics, and researchers.

While the report recognized the need for government to be privy to ongoing developments, its recommendations were largely benignand it certainly didnt call for preemptive bans and regulatory approvals for AI. In fact, it concluded that it was very unlikely that machines will exhibit broadly-applicable intelligence comparable to or exceeding that of humans in the next 20 years.

In short, put off those end-of-the-world parties, because AI isnt going to snuff out civilization any time soon. Instead, embracing preemptive regulations could just smother domestic innovation in this field.

Despite Musks claims, firms will actually outsource research and development elsewhere. Global innovation arbitrage is a very real phenomenon in an age of abundant interconnectivity and capital that can move like quicksilver across national boundaries. AI research is even less constrained by those artificial barriers than most technologies, especially in an era of cloud computing and diminishing costs to computer processing speedsto say nothing of the rise of quantum computing.

Musks solution to AI is uncharacteristically underwhelming. New federal agencies that impose precautionary regulations on AI arent going to chart a better course to the future, any more than preemptive regulations for Google would have paved the way to our current age of information abundance.

Musk of all people should know the future is always rife with uncertaintyafter all, he helps construct it with each new revolutionary undertaking. Imagine if there had been just a few additional regulatory barriers for SpaceX or Tesla to overcome. Would the world have been a better place if the public good demanded even more stringent regulations for commercial space launch or autopilot features? Thats unlikelyand, notwithstanding Musks apprehensions, the same is probably true for AI.

Original post:

Have We Reached Peak AI Hysteria? - Niskanen Center (press release) (blog)