text:
Die Käthe-Kollwitz-Schule in Anklam (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), Baustraße 56/58, wurde 1905 gebaut.

Das Gebäude steht unter Denkmalschutz.

Geschichte

Die Hanse- und Lilienthalstadt Anklam mit 12.331 Einwohnern (2019) wurde erstmals 1243 als oppidum (Siedlung) und 1264 als civitas (Stadt) erwähnt.

Seit 1535 gab es eine Ratsschule. 1811 wurde daraus eine Höhere Bürgerschule (Mittelschule).

Unter Bürgermeister Carl Kirstein erhielt Anklam 1847 wieder ein Gymnasium, das 1851 im neuen dreigeschossigen Schulgebäude, Wollweberstraße 1, seinen Sitz hatte (später Rosa-Luxemburg-Schule, ab 2007 Evangelische Schule Peeneburg).

1840 wurde eine "Höhere Töchterklasse" eingerichtet und 1842 mit einer privaten Mädchenschule vereinigt. Von 1843 bis 1855 war Mathilde Büttner Vorsteherin der Schule. 1852 erhielt die Höhere Töchterschule mit vier Klassen die durch den Umzug des Gymnasiums freigewordenen Räume am Nikolaikirchhof. 1858 kaufte die Stadt als Erweiterung der Schule das spätere Postgebäude in der Steinstraße. 1864 zog die Höhere Töchterschule in das neue dreigeschossigen Haus Ecke Baustraße/Brüderstraße um.

Das dreigeschossige Gebäude mit einem seitlichen Giebelrisalit, den zwei Dachreitern, den vielen Fialen auf den drei Giebelseiten wurde 1905 als Höhere Töchterschule (Luisenschule, Städtische gehobene Mädchenschule, seit 1911 Luisenschule, Städtisches Lyzeum, auch Luisen-Lyzeum) gebaut. Im Volksmund hieß sie auch "Grafenschule", da ein Graf von Schwerin als Landrat den Neubau veranlasst hatte. Die Schule hatte zunächst 11 Klassenräume, eine repräsentative Aula, die auch als Konzertsaal für die Aufführungen des Konzertvereins diente, sowie eine Turnhalle.

Im Zweiten Weltkrieg war hier auch ein Lazarett. Von 1945 bis 1949 war hier das provisorische Rathaus der Stadt. Seit September 1949 heißt sie Käthe-Kollwitz-Schule; sie war eine Erweiterte Oberschule (EOS) mit zunächst 400 Mädchen, die im Schichtunterricht lernten. Ab 1950 besuchten Mädchen und Jungen gemeinsam die Schule. Durch einen südlichen, dreigeschossigen Erweiterungsbau wurden weitere Klassenräume geschaffen.

Sie ist heute eine zweizügige Regionalschule mit den Klassen 5 bis 10. Das Gebäude wurde nach 1991 im Rahmen der Städtebauförderung saniert. Vier- bis fünfgeschossige Schulbauten sollen bis 2021 nach Abriss eine Plattenbaus den Schulcampus im Süden bis 2022/23 ergänzen und der Regionalschule wie auch einer Grundschule dienen.

Weblinks
 Kollwitzschule

Literatur
 Nordlicht Verlag (Hrsg.): Festschrift – 750 Jahre Anklam: Momente aus Geschichte und Gegenwart. Karlshagen/Anklam, März 2014.

Einzelnachweise, Hinweise

Anklam
Bauwerk in Anklam
Baudenkmal in Anklam
Schule im Landkreis Vorpommern-Greifswald
Anklam
Erbaut in den 1900er Jahren
Backsteinbauwerk des Historismus in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Organisation (Anklam)


You're swinging too hard. The harder you hit, the more you will try to see what you hit. Immediately slow down to 50%. Hit solid shots then speed up ONLY the lower body to gain more power. Slowing down will get the arms and hitting out of your swing. Tee it up on the range to make it a little easier.
These shots are all found in the Dahsboard under PUSH or PUSH FADE.
Sounds like you are driving your hips too hard. I just did a tip on this.
Very well explained & the special effects were helpful (not to mention pretty cool). Having a "birdie" show up at the end of the lesson is always a good thing too.
I was talking all that time and didn't know it was there. Pretty funny when it showed up.
I have a question about the finish of the swing. In your swing, which I am emulating, you end with the club touching your head at the level of the ears. From above, the club is cutting the target line, at the end, at a 90 degrees angle.
When looking at a lot of pros and top amateur players, I notice that they end with their club close to parallel to the target line or a little less. Michel Wie is an extreme case. She really ends with her club pointing at the target.
Is this something that we should or should not aspire to, or it is simply a result of how flexible these people are and we, older people should not try it?
I want you to go around until you are perpendicular to the line. Any more and you run the risk of hurting yourself. Tiger is paying the price.
Thanks for a great clarification.
Talk about a timely tip! i have been working on powerlees arms by using my lower body, and transferring my weight, and keeping my head down till my shoulders come through. The result of this has been a lot of pulls and pull hooks. i think this tip might be the secret ingredient to a better swing. i may be too focused on keeping my head still and transferring my weight that i am coming over the top. When i am at the range i try to imitate your swing, but haven't picked up on all of the subtleties yet.
Never keep the head still. Taller setup. Rotate shoulder instead of dipping them down and the head should move. As you coil you feel the weight load into the back instep 80%.
If you are over the top you are leaning forward in the downswing. Just work on the tilt behind it then turn to the touch the legs position. Watch your ball and you can tell if you are doing it or not.
i went out yesterday with this tip in mind and there was a huge improvement. As an engineer, i really appreciate the mechanical analogies you use in explaining various aspects of the swing. i just watched the "how to cure a slide" tip, which i think i may be doing occasionally. What i noticed that also made a difference is when i am able to keep the angle of tilt between my upper body and my legs through the shot. i believe on my bad shots i come up and out of the shot too soon. Some of that may be me still trying to hit with my arms or it may be my lack of flexibility. i'll keep plugging away.
Marvelous pictures ,Paul: Great ENGLISH Teacher ,PERCY BOOMER ( He was from the Isle OF WIGHT ) ,prewar WW2 is known as the " TURN IN A BARRELL "Man. ,you" ll be known to posterity as the " TWO BARRELL " Man or " TWO CYLINDER "Man.
It couldn't be better demonstrated .
Now you have to " fire " the two cylinders in succession full Speed to acheive great distance straight shots .
Glad you liked it. I like cylinder as opposed to barrel as the sides of a barrel are curved. Stay within the cylinder and you will achieve great power (loose wrists too).
You may remember that I attended the school Nov 14, 15, & 16 last year. I'm still struggling because of inconsistency I think because of a slide however I'm working on it. This tip struck a chord with me since I tend to pull a lot of shots or push fade. The question I have for you is: should you straighten and lock your left knee when you reach the top of your backswing to act as a post or axis for you to rotate around?
That birdie liked the tip too!
You are thinking about firing the lower body from the top of the backswing. You only have 1/4 of a second to impact. If you start down not thinking about it you will hit the ball then try to do it. This is way too late. The push is sliding so this is definitely important to fix. The pull is you pulling the club down with your arms tilting your whole body forward in the downswing. Firing the lower is like hitting the accelerator on a car. It forces the upper body back creating the tilt through impact. You need to fix one of these problems. Then you work on the other. I would fix the slide first. This shot can get you in a lot of trouble.
Love the tube graphics. I have not played in a while, but when I practice on simulator my mishit is the same. My club coming too far from inside 6 or 7 degree and clubface closed 3 to 5 degrees which causes pulls, pull hooks. Obviously not over top, I turn my hips and do not slide, ive worked on this for years and my knees do touch in follow through, so i know thats not the issue. I feel its coming from decent turn but not enough weight shift. Could you give me your thoughts as well and a list of the best videos i need to watch and work on.
I find it hard to believe you don't slide. You are attacking way from the inside. This means your whole body is tilted too much right as you are attacking the ball. This is from sliding. Some people slide and don't realize they are sliding. The initially slide, the left leg buckles through impact then they lock it. This give them the impressing they are not sliding when really they are.
You need to get your body less tiled back as you hit the ball. Check your back foot to see if your back heel is 3-4 inches off the ground with irons and 5-6″ off with Driver and woods. If so there is not way you are going to be too tilted when you hit the ball. Also, the lead leg need to be locking as soon as you start the downswing. It is 1/4 of a second from the top to impact. If you start locking is as soon as you come down it will still be a little bent at impact. It should be locked at 3/4 through when your back arm is parallel to the ground. So start locking it as soon as you come down knowing full well it will not be locked until the 3/4 through point.
Also hit a few balls in the simulator feeling your whole upper body not leaning back as you hit the ball. When you do you will see the numbers change. Report your findings.
BTW – It took me all day every day for 2 months to cure my slide so as much as you think you may have been working on the right thing you may not have been. If you were not thinking of locking the lead lead at the start of the downswing you may be deceived into thinking you are not sliding. I have seen this many times in the past.
You were exactly right. Pete identified a slight slide on my swing analysis and that is the reason I am coming too much in to out. He also pointed out that the slide is causing the club to be more down my back and not parallel to the ears in the finish. So I am going to change my downswing trigger to locking the leg instead of turn the hips. His analysis was awesome and really pointed out the things I need to be working on. The swing analysis is a great service!
Very good. Glad you liked it. Funny how more members don't take advantage of it. I would have been all over it when I was learning the swing.
I cant find how to get some those of those $20 video lessons. Can you paste a link for me please.
I sent a message to my assistant Pete as he does them.
Look for an email from him.
Paul – thanks for the tips. The tilting makes sense to me and will practice a bit. Lately, I have been hitting the ground behind the ball. Would this mean I am tilting forward too much or not enough.
Any suggestions on making better contact?
It is that transitional process between the backswing and the follow through that is the toughest for me. When i do the tilting coming forward i think i have too much weight on the back foot and i end up hitting it fat. When i try to make sure i'm hitting off my left foot i pull it left or top it. Sometimes i slide and i'm out to the right. (i thought that result was from turning my hips too fast, but another tip made me realize i was sliding.) i am signed up with my golf course to get a bucket every day, so i will be practicing, but is there some other tip that can help me make that transition from one axis to the other? i have lots of other problems, but this one is the hardest for me to overcome.
Hanging back is too much weight on the back foot. Sliding is certainly not great either. Keep in mind you have had a lifetime of trying to hit the ball with your arms. In doing so this tilts your whole body forward in the downswing which sends the club over the top so you need your whole upper body angled behind the ball as you hit the ball. Every pro in the world does this. Yes, if you get the tilt but keep all of the weight on the back foot you will hit it fat but if all pros do this then this is the area you want to focus on. I get this tilt due to rapidly firing the lower body. It is like hitting the accelerator on a car. When I fire my upper body hang back. To get this just take it in 2 stages. This does not mean you are going to hit great shots. Get the first part. Then get the second to hit great shots. This is because you will hit some fat from hanging back too much and some pushes from tilting too much. Who cares though. You are trying to master a piece of the swing. Staying behind the ball is so dramatically different than tilting forward it should only take you a few days to get this. Once you do then working on getting off of the back foot by turning.
Slow down and get the tilt. Then get off the back foot. Then drive the lower body faster for more power.
Being an illustrator and graphic designer, I dig the cardboard tube overlay on the video. I tend not to hang back my torso but to follow through to my finish position with my knees touching and my club behind my ears.
You are in transition until the back arm is at the 3/4 through point. From there you are swiveling your head and starting to look for your ball. in doing so your whole body is being aligned over the lead leg. So yes, anywhere after the release point would be fine. The swing happens so fast though that it is usually at the 3/4 point.
Hi Paul. I like to think of it as going from A (top of the backswing) to B (staying behind the ball) to C (finish point). You like that swing thought?
I used to think A to B but that always got me going over the top and over my front foot too soon.
I like it if you were thinking this way as you do a drill. In your real swing you would be thinking A to B.
Paul…Why not setup in reverse K position with head already over back leg?This seems to make it easier for me to get fully loaded over inside of my back foot in backswing.
Because you are falsely pre-setting this position. This will lead to you over-tilting in the down and through swing hitting pushes and push fades. Do you see any pro doing this? No. Try it. I guarantee in 5 mins. of doing it you will start hitting pushes and push fades. Let me know what happens when you do it.


text:
Q: instrumentation.retransformClasses() throwing fatal error I am trying to develop a javaagent. It also provides support for annotations.
In the preMain method I am trying to scan the classpath for annotations. Then adding the transformer using instrumentatino.addTransformer() method.
Because the classes are already loaded during the annotation processing, the transformation does not happen (if I remove the annotation processing code and retransformation code {see below}, things work fine).
To overcome this, I am now trying to retransform the classes. All the necessary setup related to manifest entry and enabling canRetransform flag in addTransformer method is done.
My code roughly looks like this:
annotationProcessor.processAnnotation();
instrumentation.addTransformer(new DummyTransformer(), true);
try {
  instrumentation.retransformClasses(instrumentation.getAllLoadedClasses());
} catch (UnmodifiableClassException e) {
  e.printStackTrace();
}

The DummyTransformer does not do anything. It simply returns the classBytes as it is (also I tried it returning null on every call)
What happens here is that I am getting this error
#
# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
#  SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0x000000010c5254dd, pid=5912, tid=0x0000000000001603
#
# JRE version: OpenJDK Runtime Environment (8.0_282) (build 1.8.0_282-bre_2021_01_20_16_06-b00)
# Java VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (25.282-b00 mixed mode bsd-amd64 compressed oops)
# Problematic frame:
# V  [libjvm.dylib+0x5254dd]  Symbol::as_C_string() const+0xd
#
# Failed to write core dump. Core dumps have been disabled. To enable core dumping, try "ulimit -c unlimited" before starting Java again
#
# An error report file with more information is saved as:
# /some/obfuscated/path/hs_err_pid5912.log
#
# If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit:
#   http://bugreport.java.com/bugreport/crash.jsp
#
zsh: abort      java  -cp build/libs/jvm-agent-0.1-all.jar

Initially I thought the transformer is misbehaving, but as I experimented with DummyTransformer, returning null or the same bytes produces similar results.

A: The issue was that I was trying to retransform all the classes using instrumentation.getAllLoadedClasses(). Instead, I filtered out classes of my interest based on the package names and it worked with a limited set of classes.
Maybe there could be some classes that were loaded that were not supposed to be retransformed.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Home › Dog Food Recalls › Warning Issued for Bravo! and Steve's Real Raw Pet Foods
Warning Issued for Bravo! and Steve's Real Raw Pet Foods
FacebookPinEmail
March 12, 2013 – The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) is alerting consumers to avoid feeding or handling two brands of poultry-based raw pet food after the MDA laboratory discovered Salmonella bacteria in routine sample tests.
Bravo! Raw Food Diet
One of the affected products include Bravo! Raw Food Diet 2 lb. Chicken Blend for Dogs and Cats manufactured by Bravo!, LLC, of Manchester, Connecticut.
This is a frozen pet food product with the production code of 06/14/12, which is located on the white tag on the end of the package.
This advisory is for the 2 lb. size of Bravo! Chicken Blend with the "Best Used by Date" of 6/14/14 only.
No other products, sizes, or production dates are involved.
The FDA has confirmed the recall in a news bulletin last updated by the Agency on March 14, 2013.
The recall is confirmed in this news release from the Bravo! website.
For further information, consumers are invited to contact the company at 866-922-9222.
Steve's Real Food
The other affected product includes Steve's Real Food Turducken Canine Diet 8 ounce patties, manufactured by Steve's Real Food, Inc., of Murray, Utah.
This is a frozen pet food product with the "Use By Date" code of 10/27/13 B209, which is located on the lower front panel of package.
For further information, contact the company at 801-540-8481 or [email protected]
There are no reports of human or animal illnesses associated with consumption of these products.
About Salmonella
Salmonella can affect animals eating the product, and there is a risk to humans from handling contaminated products.
People handling contaminated raw pet food can become infected with Salmonella, especially if they have not thoroughly washed their hands after having contact with surfaces exposed to this product.
Pets with Salmonella infections may exhibit decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain.
If left untreated, pets may be lethargic and have diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever and vomiting.
Infected but otherwise healthy pets can be carriers and infect other animals or humans. If your pet has consumed this product and has these symptoms, please contact your veterinarian.
Human symptoms of salmonellosis include diarrhea, abdominal pain and cramps and fever. Symptoms usually begin within 12 to 72 hours after exposure, but can begin up to a week after exposure.
Salmonella infections usually resolve in 5-7 days, but approximately 20 percent of cases require hospitalization.
In rare cases, Salmonella infection can lead to death, particularly in the elderly or those with weakened immune systems.
Anyone who has become ill after handling this product should see their health care provider.
Consumers are asked to discard any of these products they may have.
You can report complaints about FDA-regulated pet food products by calling the consumer complaint coordinator in your area.
Or go to http://www.fda.gov/petfoodcomplaints.
Get Critical Dog Food Recall Alerts
Delivered to You by Email
Get dog food recall alerts delivered right to your Inbox the moment we become aware of them. Subscribe to The Dog Food Advisor's Dog Food Recall Alert email notification list now.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Rams Upset Virginia Union in Five Sets to Advance to CIAA Semifinals
Virginia Union
Winston-Salem (16-14) 25 19 17 25 15 3
Virginia Union (12-15) 20 25 25 15 11 2
K: Alexis Gregson-Hammond - 17
B: Ytae Cobb - 4
D: Myra Wallace - 27
SA: Myra Wallace - 4
K: 2 Players (#4, #8) - 9
B: Ambryanna Moore - 4
D: Jamaica Adams - 21
SA: 2 Players (#8, #14) - 4
RICHMOND, VA – The Winston-Salem State Rams (16-14) pulled off the upset when the team took a five-set win over the Virginia Union Panthers (12-15) in the quarterfinal round of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) Volleyball Championship Tournament. After taking a falling behind, 1-2, the Rams stormed back for back-to-back wins in the final two sets of match to claim the upset victory.
The Rams saved one of their best performances of the season for Tuesday's match. As a team, the Rams totaled 55 kills in the match while holding the Panthers to just 41 kills. WSSU sophomore middle blocker Alexis Gregson-Hammond led the way for the Rams with a career-high 17 kills in the match. Fellow outside hitter Danyale Berry added 10 kills while junior outside hitter Ytae Cobb returned from injury for nine kills and four total blocks (two solo).
Winston-Salem State took control of the match with a dominating opening set. The two teams got the match started in dramatic fashion, playing to a 12-12 tie before the Rams broke out for five unanswered points that included a service ace from freshman Myra Wallace. The effort left the Rams on top, 16-12. Virginia Union would come back to tie the match, 18-18, but the Rams had just the answer. The Rams went on a 6-1 run to take a 24-19 lead. Virginia Union added one more score before freshman Alexis Bynum sealed the set win with a kill that gave the Rams the 25-20 opening set win.
The Rams struggled in the second and third sets. Virginia Union took 25-19 and 25-17 wins in the second and third sets. The Rams struggled to start the second set, falling behind 2-8. The Rams would climb back into the set, 17-18 before allowing the Panthers to outscore them, 7-2 to close the set. The third set saw a bit more of the same as the team struggled early in the set. The Rams fell behind, 2-6 to start the set. The Rams would fight back as a kill from junior Miranda Taylor pulled the Rams to within a point 6-7. Later in the set, the Rams struggled behind by as many as 10 points, 10-20 before staging a late rally. However, in the end, the Rams ended the set with a 19-25 loss.
It was then that the Rams stormed back for dominating performances in the fourth and fifth sets to claim the win. The Rams jumped out early in the third set with a 10-4 lead. After allowing the Panthers to pull to within four points, 13-9, the Rams took control of the set for good with a four-point run that included a pair of Wallace service aces. From there, the Rams cruised to the 25-15 win and tied the match, 2-2 and sent the match into a fifth set.
There wasn't much room for drama for the Rams in the fifth set. The Rams took control of the set early. WSSU jumped out scoring the first three points of the final set to claim a three-point early lead. From there, the Rams kept their three-point cushion at 10-7 before they allowed three points to the Panthers to tie the set, 10-10. After a WSSU timeout, the Rams never looked back as they outscored the Panthers 5-1 to take the set and the match. The run included three kills from Gregson-Hammond.
With the win, the Rams improve to 16-14 overall and pull off the upset win after entering the tournament as the third seed from the CIAA Southern Division and defeating the second seed from the CIAA Northern Division. The team advances to the semifinal round of the 2018 CIAA Volleyball Championship Tournament in Salem, Virginia and will take on the top seeded Shaw Lady Bears, Friday. For more information on Rams volleyball, contact the WSSU Office of Athletic Media Relations at (336) 750-2143 or log on to www.WSSURams.com.


text:
Gulf News — #GNTECH
AllExclusiveLocal NewsMoney StuffPartner ContentWWDC 2018
Huawei shipped almost 7 million 5G devices in 2019 itself
Samsung's Galaxy Z promo poster is the foldable smartphone concept of…
Alleged OnePlus 8 Pro leaks in a live photo
Xiaomi's Mi Note 10 comes to the UAE with the world's…
Microsoft Surface Pro 7: How good can a 2-in-1 get?
Realme X2 Pro: Genuine competition to OnePlus?
BenQ Zowie S1 and S2: Ideal mice for high-octane first person…
Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G: The king of 5G smartphones?
Huawei Mate 30 Pro review: Does not having Google matter?
AI in humanity's own image: Google outlines mindfulness strategy
Which cloud storage is best for you?
Modern devices: Is it time to upgrade?
How do you choose a laptop in 2019?
Why should one invest in luxury technologies?
AllNews
Sennheiser and Continental introduce a speakerless audio system for vehicles
Nissan demonstrates a new take on noise-reducing technology in cars
The Sony Vision-S is an electric concept car that no one…
Carasti.com is the newest player in the car subscriptions market in…
AllE3 2016E3 2017
NVIDIA and Asus announce a 360Hz display made for e-sports
Lenovo hosts its first-ever female gamer tournament in the UAE
Gun in 60 seconds: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's frenetic Gunfight…
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2v2 Alpha Test free to play…
Home Features Top 10 changes to Apple's iOS10 (some inspired by Facebook and Google)
Top 10 changes to Apple's iOS10 (some inspired by Facebook and Google)
#GNTECH - Staff Report
iOS10 will be rolled out to Joe Public in the fall
From pre-installed apps that can be deleted to more heartfelt messages with predictive emotions, Apple's newest operating system looks set to tie us kidults ever more closely to our mobile devices.
Unveiled yesterday in San Francisco, iOS10 is the technology giant's largest and most advanced update yet. The annual refresh has been rolled out to developers and a beta version will be made available in July.
Everyone else will get the new OS as a free software update in autumn, notably iPhone 5 and later, as well as all iPad Air and iPad Pro models, fourth-generation iPad, iPad mini 2 and later and sixth-generation iPod touch. The iPhone 4s will not be supported, making the device officially obsolete.
Obligatory iOS10 quote
"iOS10 is our biggest release ever, with delightful new ways to express yourself in Messages, a native app for Home automation, and beautifully redesigned apps for Music, Maps, and News that are more intuitive and more powerful, making everything you love about your iPhone and iPad even better," Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior Vice-President of Software Engineering, said in a media handout.
iOS10 adds Siri intelligence into QuickType and Photos, automates your home with the new Home app and opens up Siri, Maps, Phone and Messages to developers — while increasing security and privacy with powerful technologies like Differential Privacy," he added.
Without further ado, then, here are the 10 most significant changes to the new software.
Don't ever leave Messages
Animation is coming to the Messages, which Apple says is the most frequently used iOS app. In a move that appears to have been inspired by, and paradoxically, a strategy to counter the rise of messenger apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp, Messages is being radically overhauled.
The new Messages will automatically suggest replacing words with emojis, and for that "Aww!" moment on special occasions, messages can be animated to take over the screen, filling it with confetti, balloons or fireworks.
To make sure you don't exit the conversation, rich links will let you read content and play media without leaving the conversation. Developers will also be able to create apps specifically for Messages, so users can peel and paste stickers into conversations, personalise a Gif, edit photos, make an appointment and send payments – all without leaving the app. Are advertisements next?
So far, so meh. The features we really like, though, are invisble ink, where the message only shows up once you've swiped over it, and handwritten notes! (Do post-millennials even write any more?)
Better yet, for those who text and drive (yes, we know you're tempted), a new feature called tapback lets you respond quickly with a single tap – in a way that appears similar to responding to calls from a locked home screen.
Goodbye, default apps! But not quite.
If you've ever been frustrated by the space all those pre-installed apps take up on your 16GB handset, you'll be able to delete up to 23 of them, including Contacts, Compass, Music, Stocks, Videos, Watch, and – perfect for the always-sunny UAE – Weather. So you can free up more space to download more apps – yay!
Yes, Contacts is on that list, and if you remove Contacts, you won't lose your contact information. You can still find all of that information in the Phone app, the company says on its help page for removing built-in apps.
Some apps appear to be too closely tied to the system to be uninstalled: Camera, Clock, Messages (of course!) and frustratingly, Health. Game Center isn't going away either. We feel your pain.
Uber Maps
Ever use Waze or Google Maps because Apple Maps just doesn't cut it? I know I do. In a move designed to make Maps more intuitive – similar to Messages – you'll soon be able to book services such as Uber and Lyft from within the app.
The app has also been simplified. As with the Google home screen, Big Brother will now be suggest – or predict – where you should go next and what you should do, based on information already in your phone, such as calendar appointments, and on routines, such as a prompt to leave for work on time.
You'll also be able to look up coffee shops, restaurants and gas stations en route to your destination, but crucially, the app will tell you how much time each stop will take – so you can figure out if you can fuel up and make your Jafza appointment on time.
Of course, this being Apple, Maps has been redesigned to look prettier than before.
Siri grows up (a little), gets serious
Apple is desperately trying to help its developmentally challenged five-year-old achieve what other little ones are doing better.
Its biggest move has been to open up the talking digital assistant to third-party developers, so you'll be able to order it to do much more. Get your mind out of the gutter now! We're talking Siri for messaging, photo search, payments, workouts (haven't figured out how that would work yet) and ride booking. So yes, you can tell Siri to book you an Uber.
In the car, Siri will be able to control CarPlay apps, access climate controls and adjust radio settings within automakers' home apps.
Siri's also going to improve the QuickType keyboard with suggested replies based on where you are or what's on your calendar. So if your Mum wants to know when you're coming home, Siri will be able to tell her. (We don't recommend trying that, though… Mums are too smart for Siri.)
Photos memories
What's life without a little nostalgia? Like those irritating reminders of where you were three years ago to the day that keep popping up on Facebook, the Photos app's Memories function will "automatically help you remember events, trips and people from the past, grouping them into easy-to-access themed albums.
What we're loving is that the new app allows you to make Instagram-ready mini-movies from your photos with the Memory Movie feature, which automatically provides theme music, titles and transitions between shots. Again, kinda like Facebook.
One way it does this – hello again, Big Brother – is through advanced computer vision that groups together people, places and things inside your images with on-device facial, object and scene recognition. Presumably you'll be able to turn off the feature too. "This intelligence brings Memories and related photos to life in a way that's personal and meaningful to you, while maintaining your privacy," Apple's obligatory handout says.
Home App for Simpler Home Automation
After Apple TV and HomeKit, Apple's bid to become a legend in your living room has been beefed up with a new Home app for your mobile device. Think of it as a remote control for everything in the smart home that automatically triggers events based on time of day or action.
You'll be able manage accessories individually or as a group, so they work together, you'll be able to do it remotely and you'll be able to do it all with Siri. In theory, you should be able to tell Siri to get Apple TV to download and stream the first season of Freej (or Game of Thrones) before you get home.
Apple will continue to provide support for HomeKit, with nearly 100 home automation products now using it, from thermostats and lights to door locks, video cameras and window shades. US developers will begin integrating these devices into new homes this year, although their UAE counterparts are a little behind the times.
Read the funky Music
It may have 15 million paying customers, but Apple Music is still a little clunky, so it's been given a makeover for iOS10. Bigger cards and bolder fonts are a welcome change, and a lovely black and white UI should help everything stand out nicely.
From a software perspective, the Browse function has been modified so music is easier to find. A Hot Album will show you what's trending, while new music, charts, curated playlists and other ways will help you navigate the minefield of new music.
The Library feature comes straight to the front and is divided into five sections: artists, albums, playlists, songs and downloads, a brand-new category that lets you find everything you've ever saved.
Apple also promises that noobs will have an easier time, thanks to a Discovery Mix and a redesigned For You feature, as well as a new Search tab.
Thankfully, Radio isn't going away, and Beats 1 and Elton John's Rocket Hour are both staying.
Our favourite feature? Lyrics that are automatically integrated into Music, so you can read the words as you listen, so 25 years after Smells Like Teen Spirit was released, you might actually be able to understand what he's singing (never mind the marbles in his mouth…)
New News is OK news
In what feels like an afterthought, iOS10 brings some of its intuition to News, with a For You tab that organises everything into distinct sections so you can find things more easily.
Hand-picked stories from Apple's editors are also new; like Facebook, Cupertino's biggest looks like it wants to become one of the world's biggest editors.
It also improves breaking news notifications that appear on the lock screen and pull-down notifications panel, as well as integrating paid subscriptions to over 2,000 publications.
There's more that can be done, such as integrating blogs or allowing citizen journalists to upload content directly, perhaps syncing with a Twitter feed – but clearly even Apple can't keep up with the pace of change in the news business.
Keepin' it private
With all that prediction and automated suggestion, iOS10 promises to keep private things that ought to stay private, partly by encrypting data and partly by avoiding profiling – so it says.
"iMessage and HomeKit use end-to-end encryption to protect your data by making it unreadable by Apple and others. iOS10 uses on-device intelligence to identify the people, objects and scenes in Photos, and power QuickType suggestions. Services like Siri, Maps and News send data to Apple's servers, but this data is not used to build user profiles," the media handout says.
The company is using a technique called differential privacy to sift through users' data while maintaining anonymity. This means injecting noise or spurious information into users' data to scramble what is collected, so Apple's computer scientists can improve product intelligence without being able to identify users. Apple says the technology will help improve QuickType and emoji suggestions, Spotlight deep link suggestions and Lookup Hints in Notes.
"When it comes to performing analysis of your data," Federighi said at the conference. "We're doing it on your devices, keeping your personal data under your control."
Experiential overhaul
Overall, iOS10 claims to improve the way you access everything you need. A host of incremental changes around the UI deliver improvements you didn't know you needed.
The new Raise to Wake feature automatically wakes up the screen as soon as you lift it from (we presume) the bedside table, so you can see all your notifications at a glance on the Lock screen.
And after Night mode, a bedtime alarm in the Clock app lets you set a regular sleep schedule and receive bedtime reminders.
Notifications, Today view and Control Center are all easy to access with just a swipe or a press, while deeper 3D Touch integration is being rolled out for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus – so expect plenty of new app updates.
Phone users will benefit from integration with third-party VoIP calls, voicemail transcription and a new caller ID extension for spam alerts.
Finally, Safari is also being updated. Built-in updates include a split-view for iPad, an integration with Notes and Live Photos editing. You'll also be able to pay for purchases more securely, with Apple Pay being integrated into the browser – so hopefully it's goodbye to those fraudulent phantom transactions in South Korea.
For more information, head over to the Apple site.
Previous articleMicrosoft to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion
Next articleHideo Kojima Unveils His Latest Project Starring Norman Reedus: Death Stranding
https://www.gntech.ae
Gadget soup for the techie soul
Samsung's Galaxy Z promo poster is the foldable smartphone concept of our dreams
Samsung's Galaxy Z promo poster is the foldable smartphone concept of...
Xiaomi's Mi Note 10 comes to the UAE with the world's...
Developed by GN Media, this blog is the online home of #GNTECH, the monthly consumer technology supplement of Gulf News, the region's leading English language newspaper published out of Dubai, UAE.
From the network:
© Al Nisr Publishing LLC . All rights reserved


There's a lot to consider when you're moving your Orlando business. On top of all the moving woes of getting your employees prepared for the move, sorting and packing your furnishings, equipment, inventory, and supplies, along with the other daunting tasks of relocating, you'll also need to ensure your paper and online presence moves with you to your new location. The last thing you want is to experience a drop in business during the moving process.
In part one of our short blog series, we will look at five tips from our moving pros at J & J Metro Moving and Storage to keep in mind before and during your business relocation. Following these simple steps will help ensure all your bases are covered for a smooth relocation of your business every step of the way.
Moving a business takes a lot of planning. Early planning and detailed preparation are the best ways to tackle your commercial move in the most efficient and organized way. Additionally, getting a head-start on tackling the numerous tasks that come along with relocating a business can save you time and money in the long run. Getting a jump in your planning will allow you to establish a realistic budget to work with, while also giving you the opportunity to consider, and plan for, any unforeseen circumstances that may occur in the time leading up to, and during, your move.
Once you have determined that you will be relocating your business, you should start letting people know about the big move right away. Along with making your existing and potential customers and clients aware of your relocation, you will also want to notify your current neighbors, community partners, and friends that you will be relocating. Make sure to inform vendors, suppliers, and any businesses that rely on your company about your move. Give them an estimated move date, provide them with your new address, and any other pertinent information they may need. If you utilize email marketing, send out emails to customers and businesses letting them know about the move ahead. Use your social media accounts to tell people you are moving, and keep them updated on your progress.
Temporary signs can be very helpful during your move. Interior and exterior signs work as an additional method of telling people that you will be relocating. Place window decals and small, poster-sized signs at entrances and in high-traffic areas or on bulletin boards telling people about your eventual move. You can provide as much or as little information as you choose on these signs, but the more information, the better. If possible, include the approximate (or specific) move date, the address of your new location, and any other information that may help people find you once you have moved.
Early planning gives you time to determine whether or not you have enough storage space for the move so you can plan for additional storage space accordingly. It is always a good idea to start taking stock of your company's equipment, specialized goods, furnishings, supplies, and inventory long before you physically move these items. You will want to make sure you have sufficient place for everything at your new location, and you will also want to consider if anything will need to be stored temporarily or long-term, at any given point during your move. A commercial storage facility can be incredibly useful if you are having renovations done on your new building that may continue after you move in. If you will need extra storage, contact a local commercial storage facility in Orlando, like us. We can store your company's goods for as long as you need in our vaulted, state-of-the-art storage facility. Whether you're relocating your boutique and need to store display and inventory items, or you're a local construction company with large equipment that needs to be stored, J & J Metro has you covered.
As your trusted commercial movers in Orlando since 1968, the J & J Metro Moving and Storage team is here for you. We can provide you with professional packing and moving services to make your commercial move as straightforward and stress-free as possible. From hospitals to industrial companies, or a small chiropractic office or retail boutique, there is no job too big or too small for the J & J Metro team. We will handle everything from coordinating each step of the move and carefully packing your property, to relocating computer networks and reinstalling office furnishings.
If you have a commercial move in your future, call your friendly and reliable commercial movers in Orlando at J & J Metro Moving and Storage to request a free, no-obligation estimate. Join us next time as we continue looking at more helpful tips to make your commercial move as painless as possible.


text:
Q: Is $\{\{1\}\}\subseteq A$ true or false when $A=\{ 2, 3, 4, 5, \{1\}, 6 \}$ Can someone please explain how you are supposed to think when you encounter questions like this:
$A=\{ 2, 3, 4, 5, \{1\}, 6 \}$
Is the following statement true or false:

*

*$\{1\}\subseteq A$

*$\{\{1\}\}\subseteq A$

*$\{\{\{1\}\}\}\subseteq A$
I would say that the first is true and the other two are false. But I don't know for certain that it is correct and I also don't know how to explain why. Please help, thanks.

A: $S\subseteq A$ means that for every $x\in S$, we have $x\in A$. So now:

*

*Is $1\in A$?

*Is $\{1\}\in A$?

*Is $\{\{1\}\}\in A$?

A: Hint: by the definition of subset, $\{x\}\subseteq A$ if and only if $x\in A$.

A: using the axiom of pairing:
$\{x,y\}=w\iff (\exists w)(\forall x)(z \in w \iff z=x \lor z=y)$.
thus:
$\{x\}=\{x,x\}$.
every bracket indicates "belonging":
Thus:
$x\in \{x\}$.
$\{x\}\in \{\{x\}\}$.


text:
Conclave Flashback 2002-19
India Today Conclave Event Coverage DAY 2 March 19, '11 Story
Information is a revolution if handled with tact: Internet stalwarts
Joel Rai | New Delhi, March 19, 2011
(from left) Sir Tim Berners Lee, Kalli Purie and Josh Klein.
It did not require theoreticians to answer the questions whether access to information can lead to a revolution or is a revelation.
At the India Today Conclave 2011 session, Wael Ghonim, the Internet activist who rallied the tens of thousands that overthrew Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, had one emphatic answer: information is a revolution. And he said this with the assertion born in the actual cauldron of revolution in Egypt.
Corroborating this view, with caveats, were the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners Lee, and technologist-hacker Joshua Klein.
Over video from Cairo, Ghonim recalled how technology not only provided a platform for millions of Egyptians at a time when they wanted their voice heard, but also catalysed a social unity that eventually ended a three-decade-old regime under which people lost their rights and dignity.
"Even before Tahrir Square, we all wanted change, but we disagreed on how to go about achieving this. Facebook gave us a platform on which we began with one simple idea of marching together silently in black for one hour." In the event, miles-long queues formed and the revolution was well underway. "But we also used Facebook to democratize the movement," added Ghonim. "We shared ideas, discussed programmes and voted on how and when to do things."
Ghonim, who headed Google's marketing in Egypt, felt that the single most important lesson from the events at Tahrir Square was that technology ensures that voices are heard. It allows communication between masses and between individuals. "There is no mainstream media," he said, "the media is the people."
Asked by Sir Tim how the Egyptians were using the tools offered by technology to strengthen their new-found democracy, Ghonim first thanked Sir Tim for inventing the WWW that facilitated the revolution. He then pointed out that the new leaders in Egypt, namely the Prime Minister, the Attorney General and the Army Supreme Council all had Facebook pages. He remarked cheekily that the regime itself had announced the ouster of several ministers of the time on Facebook.
"The government is now communicating online with the people. The common man is in a position to give feedback to the government, while 1.5 million people have submitted ideas on development and economic initiatives post the revolution," he said to applause. He added that the Internet was a tool that facilitated the collection of ideas and increased political awareness.
While appreciating how the Internet was a tool of empowerment, Sir Tim talked about two issues that were crucial to the future of digital information. He said that while online data and access to it would bring about transparency and could curb government corruption, he also said that it was important to progress towards the idea of the Internet as a neutral media that was not controlled by large corporates or governments or an international court. The Net allowed the user to be anonymous and this was important for a society. "Whistle-blower rights are important for democratic functions," said. However, the same right to anonymity could also be abused and used for spying, to control and for commercials gains.
Sir Tim felt it was increasingly the need of the people across the world to consider access to the Internet a right as much as any other civil right. "Already, Finland has accepted the right to the Internet as a human right, as has Estonia," he said. But he also stressed that the debate of how much and who should control the Net must continue since he had no definite answer to those questions at the moment.
Joshua Klein, with a reputation for being able to break down anything and redesign it, spoke about how the digital information came coded with democracy. The Net allows a two-way communication, but when this flow was impeded by governments or companies, hackers stepped in to destroy such walls, he said. While also warning that anonymity on the Net can be anarchic, he said that "despite these frightening trends, there is a huge opportunity of governments and leaders to leverage technology for the good of the people".
He pointed out how data made available over the Internet can become the bricks for public service edifices, as happened in New York's subway system. The company that runs the city rail had no resources to create a system of alerting users to train timings or the expertise. But once it opened up its data online, several applications were created using this information.
Klein was emphatic that spying on the Net and audience intelligence gathering was worrying, but he chose to turn the argument on its head. "They can profile users, but they themselves can also be profiled," he said. Profiling , therefore, can also be used positively.
The Internet compiles information and shares this indiscriminately, said Klein. And its reach can be used to take specific services to data groups that required them.
Also referring to the issue of invasion of privacy, Sir Tim said, "I am okay with my agent spying on my needs and acts, but when someone else, a third party, accesses that information, I am definitely not okay with that."
Asked how technology can be leveraged to resolve social challenges, Sir Tim said that choosing what to do with technology was a crucial decision. Different places need different answers to how to employ technology for development, he said, citing the example of farmers in Sahel who used information technology to learn how to green their desert fields instead of being herded as a group in a truck to an urban location for training in farming.
Sir Tim brought the debate on whether the Internet should be controlled and by whom to a conclusion by saying that decentralization was the best way forward. Control can be advantageous or a bane depending on the impetus for it, he pointed out. Don't forget, control can often lead to the nabbing of the "bad boys", he said. But eventually a system of checks and balances in a decentralized set-up was what would help the information revolution bring about positive changes in the world, he said.
Kashmir - What next?
Can the burqa co-exist with the bikini?
Ideas: My India, Our future
Politics and Business: The odd couple?
American Decline: Myth and Reality
My Vision of America
Message Not Sent
Enter the Code Shown: :
Disclaimer: Please note that all your comments, feedback and suggestions are published on our websites unless found libellous, inciteful, defamatory, vulgar, pornographic and abusive. We also like to specify that the comments are views of the surfers alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the India Today Group.
Photos: Best moments from Conclave
See the best pictures from the two-day India Today Conclave.
Best moments of Conclave 2011
Watch the best speakers, sessions and highlights from the two-day India Today Conclave in this special package.
- Amit Agarwal
Notes from India Today Conclave
Aloo Techie
- Satrajit Sen
MediaNama
- Nikhil Pahwa
Wael Ghonim On Egypt 2.0
Sarah Palin wins hearts with India pitch
Why America can't be successful imperial power
'Happy marriage' of biz & politics will help India grow
Delegates at Lunch on Day 1
Leaders from various walks of life meet at lunch.
Inaugural Gala Dinner
Mohamed ElBaradei, Leader of the Opposition, Egypt and Nobel Peace Laureate 2005, was the chief guest
Stars, politicians and sportspersons meet at Lunch on Day 2.
Concluding Gala Dinner
Sarah Palin, the first Female Governor of Alaska (2006-2009) and 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential Nominee, was the chief guest
I feel intellectual when I come to Conclave: Shah Rukh Khan
The superstar feels that India Today Conclave is a great place where speakers from all over the world come together and talk on various topics.
There is a lot to learn from Conclave: Modi
Gujarat CM Narendra Modi congratulates Editor in Chief, India Today Aroon Purie for organising such a huge event every year.
Future of cinema lies in the story, not technology: James Cameron.
Leadership For The 21st Century
Al Gore looks to India to lead climate change fight.
Challenges of Change
LoC is Berlin Wall, tear it down: Pervez Musharraf.
Moral Imperatives of Change
Compassion will show the way: Dalai Lama.
Conclave Sponsor
Conclave Co-Sponsor
Conclave Associates
Conclave Partners


text:
Child on Child crimes
By Shaffer & Engle Law Offices LLC
W. Pa. middle schooler fondled another, police say
PA State Wire
Published: Yesterday
GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) - Police have charged a 13-year-old western Pennsylvania middle school student with fondling a 12-year-old student when they sneaked away to a band equipment room during school hours.
Greensburg police aren't identifying the suspect charged in Westmoreland County Juvenile Court. They say his actions are criminal even though the younger female student consented to the fondling because, under the law, she is deemed too young to consent.
Police tell the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the incident happened Dec. 16 after the students met in a hallway and walked together to the band room at Greensburg Salem Middle School. The school is about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh.
The school board will also investigate and could discipline the boy with penalties up to expulsion.
Under Title 42 Pa.C.S. Section 6301, et seq., also known as the Juvenile Act, a child is defined as one who is under the age of 18 years or is under the age of 21 years who committed an act of delinquency before reaching the age of 18 years. The purpose of juvenile proceedings is to seek treatment, reformation and rehabilitation, and not to punish, and to this end, the juvenile court system is designed to provide distinctive procedure and setting to deal with the problems of youth. In most instances, the juvenile offender will not be placed into a confined setting. Rather, if they have no history of committing offenses, are subject to rehabilitative efforts, have a reasonably well-adjusted social life and family support system in place, they will be placed into a probationary setting and allowed to remain in the community.
The punishment that they may receive through a school setting is separate and apart from any sentence that they may receive through the juvenile justice system.
At Shaffer & Engle Law Offices, LLC our criminal law attorney,Elisabeth Pasqualini, has extensive experience with the Juvenile Justice System. Contact the experienced team at Shaffer & Engle Law Offices, LLC at www.shafferengle.com or toll free at 1-866-765-0706.


Call it the Year of Living Warmly.
It'll be a few more days before it's official, but 2015 will go down in the record books as the warmest year since those books were first kept 135 years ago.
In parts of the U.S., this year will be remembered for unusually warm weather when the season typically brings snow and ice. On much of the East Coast, December has felt like spring, complete with early blooming flowers and sprouting daffodils.
But the warming trend also has brought more extreme weather in other parts of the country, with severe storms causing tornadoes across the Midwest and snowstorms in Texas and New Mexico.
Last month brought the highest monthly temperature, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with the average global surface temperature running 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.0 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 135-year average.
The difference was even greater in the northern hemisphere, where much of the developed world lives. Despite those who reject mainstream climate science, the majority of the world's climate scientists attribute the warming trend to increased man-made carbon dioxide.
"Global climate is changing and this is apparent across the United States in a wide range of observations," according to the third U.S. National Climate Assessment. "The global warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuels."
The trend over the last 135 years is clear, with average global temperatures rising every decade. More recently, the impact has been felt in more severe weather events with costly — and deadly — results. Since 1980, the number of extreme weather events bringing economic losses of more than $1 billion each has been rising, according to a NOAA report.
Earlier this month, a long-running effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions and slow the warming trends produced an agreement in Paris among more than 190 countries to join the effort.
The agreement set a long-term goal of keeping global warming "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and works toward limiting the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
To reach that target, governments pledged to set national targets limiting emissions "as soon as possible" but stopped short of setting specific targets.


The Chinese economy grew at a slightly slower rate last year than previously estimated, the country's National Bureau of Statistics has said. China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 7.3% in the whole of 2014, down from an earlier estimate of 7.4%.
The revision is down to weaker-than-estimated services sector output. The statistics agency previously said services output had expanded by 8.1%, but output was now estimated to have grown only at a 7.8% annual rate. The services sector accounts for roughly 50% of Chinese economic activity. Manufacturing and construction growth was left unchanged at 7.3%.
"China revises growth data every year, but it's usually upwards. In that regard, it is unusual that the revision was downwards," Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist at Credit Agricole, told US television channel CNBC. "Rationally speaking, a 0.1% revision isn't a big deal – and it doesn't tell us much about the Chinese economy, but when it comes to sentiment, this is a negative development."
Fears over China's slowing economy have sent the mainland's financial markets on a steep downward curve in recent months, with Chinese equities losing almost 40% of their value since June.
Beijing has devalued its currency, cut interest rates and pumped billions into the equity market in a bid to spark a rebound. But none of those measures have worked so far as investors remain concerned over the flagging economic growth.
On 5 September, China's central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan told finance chiefs from the G20 group of largest economies that the "correction in the stock market is almost done" during a two-day meeting in Ankara, Turkey.
"We think it's pretty close to the end," Zhu Jun, head of the international department at the People's Bank of China, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. "To some extent the leverage in the market has been decreased substantially, and we think there would be no systemic risk."
China's benchmark stock index, the Shanghai Composite, closed 2.5% lower on 7 September as trading resumed on the mainland following a four-day break.


text:
Response to the European Commission's consultation on AI
by Haydn Belfield, José Hernández-Orallo, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Matthijs M. Maas, Alexa Hagerty, Jess Whittlestone
Consultation on the White Paper on AI – a European approach
Submission by Haydn Belfield, José Hernández-Orallo, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Matthijs M. Maas, Alexa Hagerty, Jess Whittlestone
On February 19, 2020, the European Commission published its White Paper on Artificial Intelligence and launched a public consultation. We welcome the European Commission's effort to create an ecosystem of trust to ensure trustworthy, safe and beneficial uses of AI . Read the response that our researchers submitted to the Commission (also available as PDF file).
An ecosystem of trust
Concerns about AI
High risk applications of AI
Feedback on mandatory requirements
Conformity assessments
Additional answers
We are a group of academic researchers on AI, with positions at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Cambridge, and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence – a leading international centre in AI ethics. We have published dozens of technical papers on machine learning and artificial intelligence and reports and white papers on the ethics and governance of artificial intelligence.
Our submission mainly focuses on the "Ecosystem of Trust: Regulatory Framework for AI", and in particular the mandatory conformity assessments for high-risk AI applications carried out by independent testing centres. Our key recommendation is to keep this proposed framework and not water it down.
In this submission we 1) support the Commission's proposed structure, defend this approach on technical, policy, practical, and ethical grounds, and offer some considerations for future extensions; and 2) offer some specific recommendations for the mandatory requirements.
There are several important concerns about current AI systems, such as safety, security, impact on fundamental rights, discrimination, and explainability. These concerns cannot be adequately addressed by current legislation, so we need new rules: mandatory requirements and conformity assessments by independent testing centres. The introduction of these new rules should begin with AI systems used in sectors and high-risk application areas where the general concerns are particularly acute. It is a sensible approach to determine high-risk application areas with the two cumulative criteria, while providing for exceptional instances that should be considered high-risk as such. It is reasonable to begin with high-risk sectors including healthcare, transport, energy, and parts of the public sector, while retaining the flexibility to review and amend this list. The proposed mandatory requirements are proportionate, important, and practical on a technical and operational level. Self-assessment cannot ensure that AI is trustworthy. Compliance should mainly be assessed ex-ante by means of an external conformity assessment procedure by an independent testing centre. There should also be provision for additional ex-post market surveillance and enforcement, for example for software updates and systems that keep learning during operation.
With this framework, the EU will demonstrate global leadership and profoundly shape global standards. It will help dissolve the presumed tension between respecting citizen's rights and company competitiveness, creating a more level playing field for EU companies. This framework strikes the right balance between overly burdensome regulation and allowing citizens to be placed in harm's way.
Our recommendations are summarised here:
Consider including security explicitly in the list of concerns.
High-risk application areas
Keep "significant immaterial damage".
Keep "periodic reviews and amendments".
Keep the "exceptional instances" clause.
Consider other sectors, such as political advertising on social networks and airborne swarms.
Consider adding 'replacing professionals with specific legal responsibilities' as an 'exceptional instance'.
Consider extending to a multi-tier risk determination.
Consider societal risks and how they scale.
Mandatory requirements
Keep the requirements around broad data sets - this can and should be done in ways that respect GDPR and copyright
Further specify and provide clear benchmarks for "all relevant scenarios", "dangerous situations" and "sufficiently representative".
Keep the requirements around data set record-keeping and sharing - this can and should be done in ways that respect GDPR and copyright.
Consider adding record-keeping of the computational resources (or 'compute') used to build, test and validate the AI systems.
Consider adding record-keeping of AI incidents.
Consider options for audit trail requirements and documentation of AI systems.
Keep the requirement for citizens to be proactively informed whenever they are interacting with an AI system.
Consider adding that if a citizen is interacting with a human, but an AI system is playing a substantive role in decision-making, then the citizen should be informed.
Robustness and accuracy
Robustness should be interpreted as whether it in fact adequately deals with errors (safety) and attacks (security)
Consider requirements that prohibit unexpected system behaviours, including preventing the system from operating, if inputs or outputs fall outside a predefined "safe" range.
Consider also paying attention to 'systemic' safety risks.
Further specify and provide clear benchmarks for "reproducible outcomes".
Further specify and provide clear benchmarks for "mitigating measures", such as red-teaming, bias or safety 'bug bounties', and hardware security.
Human oversight
Consider requirements to ensure the efficacy of human oversight.
Further specify in which areas particular forms of human oversight will be required.
'Fauxtomation' should not allow companies to dodge the requirements.
These requirements should also apply to suppliers of multi-purpose AI components.
Keep the commitment to ex-ante, external conformity assessments by independent testing centre(s), supplemented with additional ex-post market surveillance and enforcement.
Do not consider a 'grandfather clause' for AI systems deployed before the regulation comes into place.
Consider only allowing limited confidential testing and piloting in coordination with the independent testing centres.
More detail on all of these points can be found below.
In your opinion, how important are the following concerns about AI?
All very important: Safety, fundamental rights, discrimination, explainability, redress (compensation) and accuracy.
Do you think that the concerns expressed above can be addressed by applicable EU legislation? If not, do you think that there should be specific new rules for AI systems?
There is a need for a new legislation
There are several very important concerns about current AI systems. To a limited extent, these concerns can be addressed through applying and adapting existing EU legislation. However, these concerns cannot be adequately addressed by current legislation, so we need specific new rules.
There are serious concerns about AI, as shown by a series of scandals over the last few years. AI systems have been criticised for contributing to the addiction of consumers and the hijacking of their attention. AI business models have been criticised for relying on work that is exploitative, insecure, low-paid, and degrading, as well as engaging in extractive "surveillance capitalism." AI systems have been criticised for fueling polarisation and political violence, upsetting elections and referendums. Other concerns include the amplification of biases in datasets, contributing to discriminatory hiring, loss of privacy, emergent manipulative behavior, at-scale generation of disinformation, and social harms associated with facial recognition, predictive policing, migration management and criminal risk assessment. Other risks could involve powerful systems adopted for malicious use, safety failures in critical infrastructure (such as major failures in traffic safety or energy grids), the development of advanced systems that are difficult to understand and control, and the disruption of economic and social stability, including through large-scale work displacement and changes in the nature of work itself. A recent survey of businesses suggests that, despite pushes for responsibility, the majority of organisations using AI are not taking efforts to mitigate the full range of risks that they may cause. Studies and polls indicate a lack of trust in AI development.
It is our assessment that these concerns are not being, and cannot be, adequately addressed through existing EU legislation. As such, we need new legislation: mandatory conformity assessments for high-risk AI applications carried out by independent testing centres.
As AI is increasingly used in real-world contexts, processes using AI should be subject to similar safety and impact expectations as other engineering processes. In other engineering disciplines, it is reasonable and expected to fulfill stringent requirements when operating in a high-risk application area. One has to fulfill these requirements before building a bridge or a power plant. It does not make sense for the self-driving car driving over the bridge, or the AI system operating the plant, to have to fulfill less stringent - or even no - requirements.
Recommendation: Consider including security explicitly in the list of concerns.
The concerns raised in the White Paper - safety, fundamental rights, discrimination, explainability, redress (compensation) and accuracy - are all very important. It would be appropriate to also include security as one of the concerns. "Safety" generally refers to proper internal functioning of an AI system and the avoidance of unintended harms, while "security" addresses external threats to an AI system and the malicious use of AI as a tool for attacks. Security challenges are a major concern, and the problem surface of security threats (the actors and kind of solutions needed) is arguably quite distinct from the problem surface of safety or ethics challenges. The importance of security to attacks and manipulation attempts is mentioned several times throughout the White Paper, especially in the mandatory requirements around robustness (5.D.d).
If you think that new rules are necessary for AI system, do you agree that the introduction of new compulsory requirements should be limited to high-risk applications (where the possible harm caused by the AI system is particularly high)?
Do you agree with the approach to determine "high-risk" applications of AI?
Concerns about AI are particularly acute in high-risk application areas, so new compulsory requirements should be introduced in these high-risk areas. It is a sensible approach to determine high-risk application areas with the two cumulative criteria, while making provision for exceptional instances. It is reasonable to begin with healthcare, transport, energy, and parts of the public sector, while keeping the flexibility to review and amend this list.
It is reasonable that the introduction of new requirements be limited to high-risk application areas. The high-risk areas are those where it is particularly urgent and pressing that we act now to prevent serious harm to EU citizens. Furthermore, the concerns about applying AI in a range of areas are often particularly concerning in high-risk areas. We should be concerned by AI-enabled discrimination, or any safety failure, but they are particularly concerning in a situation where people's liberty or lives are at stake. On a practical level, we can make sure the system of requirements and conformity assessments is working well, then consider to what extent to extend.
Determining high-risk application areas using the two cumulative criteria and "exceptional instances" clause is a flexible, sensible, and proportionate approach. Identifying application areas within sectors is sensible, as it incorporates an assessment of severity and likelihood within itself - the application areas are those in which severe harm is so probable that conformity assessments are the only way to protect EU citizens. It is good that the White Paper specifies how it will determine 'high-risk'. It is not enough for case-by-case assessments of whether a product or service is high risk to be made by the developers and deployers themselves, as this creates legal, regulatory and operational uncertainty.
The determination of high-risk sectors and application areas should not be affected by operational factors, such as the degree of human control and internal governance. These operational factors form part of the conformity assessment as to whether a particular AI system should be allowed in the EU, but they should not contribute to the determination of whether a particular application area is high-risk. The application area as such is so high-risk that only systems that meet the mandatory requirements are acceptable - fulfilling these requirements doesn't make the application area itself less high-risk.
Recommendation: Keep "significant immaterial damage"
This is needed to cover significant effects for the rights of an individual or company, damages in the form of significant economic loss or reputational effects, and damages relating to data protection and privacy, non-discrimination, defamation and freedom of expression.
Recommendation: Keep "periodic reviews and amendments"
We need a flexible approach to determining risk for this fast-changing and rapidly-improving technology. It is especially welcome that the White Paper foresees that the framework will be "periodically reviewed and amended where necessary in function of relevant developments in practice". Frequent and timely evaluations - indeed ongoing evaluation - of the regulatory framework are appropriate for this rapidly-developing issue-area.
On the specific proposed sectors: it is sensible for the initial sector list to be healthcare, transport, energy, and parts of the public sector (asylum, migration, border controls, judiciary, social security, employment services). However, "parts of the public sector" should include policing.
Sensibly, the White Paper does not exhaustively list all the high-risk application area within these sectors. However as indicative examples, some of the high-risk application areas within these sectors include:
Application of 'black-box medicine'
Public health (e.g. pandemic) modelling
Autonomous shipping
'Last-mile' delivery robots in the public space
Grid management
Nuclear power plant operations
Public sector - Policing
Recommendation: Keep the "exceptional instances" clause.
It is also sensible to have an 'exceptional instances' clause, determining that the use of AI applications for certain purposes should be considered as high-risk as such, irrespective of the sector concerned. It covers cross-cutting exceptional instances, while providing sufficient clarity for companies to have confidence about whether a specific application is in or out of scope. It is also a flexible structure that could be added to with future 'exceptional instances' as and when these emerge. In particular, due to their impact on fundamental rights it is sensible to always consider as "high-risk" the use of AI applications for recruitment processes as well as in situations impacting workers' rights, and for the purposes of remote biometric identification and other intrusive surveillance technologies. This latter exceptional instance clearly addresses concerns about some forms of persistent facial recognition in public spaces. But it is also usefully 'technology-neutral', as it prima facie applies to other concerning forms of remote, continuous AI surveillance, including gait analysis and laser-measured heartbeat identification.
We are strongly supportive of the introduction of this framework. As time goes on and the framework proves its usefulness, the Commission should expand the framework. We make the following recommendations for areas the Commission should consider in the near future.
Recommendation: Consider other sectors.
Other sectors and application areas worth future consideration as either 'high-risk application areas', or as 'exceptional instances' include: automated trading, political advertising on social networks, cybersecurity and airborne swarms.
Recommendation: Consider adding 'replacing professionals with specific legal responsibilities' as an 'exceptional instance'.
The use of AI applications to replace professionals with specific responsibilities could always be considered as "high-risk", under 'exceptional instances'. If a system performs a portion of, or replaces entirely, a function of a human actor that has certain legal responsibilities to another individual, those legal responsibilities should be reciprocated by the responsible agent making use of the AI system. To be specific, if a system is providing financial, legal or medical information, advice or recommendations (such as through personal assistants or other 'AI extenders') then a human responsible for that system should have the same fiduciary obligations, client obligations or patient obligations as a human financial advisor, lawyer or doctor would. The Commission should specify how those obligations are distributed amongst the developer and operator of the AI system.
Recommendation: Consider extending to a multi-tier risk determination.
The Commission should consider extending its framework to include different tiers of risk, as proposed by the German Data Ethics Commission. Moving beyond a binary 'high-risk or not' determination would allow more nuance and distinctions, and enable the application of more precise and targeted regulatory interventions. It would also be consistent with the EU's approach to a multi-layered risk assessment framework for medical devices in the Medical Device Directive (MDD) and Medical Device Regulations (MDR).
Recommendation: consider societal risks and how they scale.
It will be important to consider application areas that may not pose immediate "high-risk" to an individual, but do pose substantial societal risks because of their wider effect. Beyond accidents and misuse, AI poses societal (or 'structural') risks that change the environment and incentives people face. Widespread disinformation and manipulation, amongst other psychological or cultural effects, should also be considered high-risk. For example, synthetic media such as deepfakes and AI-generated text can undermine our "political security".
This consideration should take into account how scale affects risk. It seems reasonable that systems that affect tens of millions of EU citizens should receive more scrutiny than those that affect thousands. Some systems (e.g. recommender systems used in social media) may not be high-risk when they affect thousands, but pose high societal risks when they affect tens of millions. Acknowledging scale could also help SMEs.
In your opinion, how important are the following mandatory requirements of a possible future regulatory framework for AI?
All very important: Data quality, record-keeping, information, robustness and accuracy, human oversight, clear liability and safety.
The proposed mandatory requirements are proportionate, important, and practical on a technical and operational level. In the below we offer further commentary on the specific mandatory requirements.
"reasonable assurances that the subsequent use of the products or services that the AI system enables is safe. AI systems should be trained on data sets that are sufficiently broad and cover all relevant scenarios needed to avoid dangerous situations."
"obligations to use data sets that are sufficiently representative, especially to ensure that all relevant dimensions of gender, ethnicity and other possible grounds of prohibited discrimination are appropriately reflected in those data sets"
Recommendation: Further specify and provide clear benchmarks for "all relevant scenarios", "dangerous situations" and "sufficiently representative".
As the overall framework is put in place, it will be helpful, as the White Paper suggests, to provide further specification of these terms. It would also be useful to specify the treatment of data sets where synthetic data is used to complement training data.
Recommendation: Keep the requirements around broad data sets - this can and should be done in ways that respect GDPR and copyright.
Requiring the use of broad data sets, that promote safety and reduce discrimination and bias, can and should be done in ways that respect GDPR and copyright. As systems are often trained on several datasets, the Commission could clarify that all relevant dimensions should be reflected across those data sets.
Prescribe that the following should be kept:
"accurate records regarding the data set used to train and test the AI systems, including a description of the main characteristics and how the data set was selected"
"in certain justified cases, the data sets themselves"
"documentation on the programming [objective function, weights] and training methodologies, processes and techniques used to build, test and validate the AI systems"
Record-keeping will be essential for fulfilling the other requirements, providing information to the independent testing centres on, for example, the extent to (and methods by) which the AI systems were tested for safety, security or ethical concerns, and the sources of data, labour, and other resources used.
Recommendation: Keep the requirements around data set record-keeping and sharing - this can and should be done in ways that respect GDPR and copyright.
This may not be used in all cases, but in some cases the full details about AI models, the underlying code or data sets themselves will need to be shared for testing and inspection by competent authorities. In many cases, testing the system (by an independent testing centre) against clear benchmarks, performance standards and confidence levels may be sufficient. But there will be some cases in which the training data itself will have to be assessed. As the White Paper notes, sensible safeguards should be put in place so that this can happen while protecting business confidentiality, not enabling adversarial gaming, and not infringing GDPR or copyright.
Recommendation: Consider adding record-keeping of the computational resources (or 'compute') used to build, test and validate the AI systems.
We strongly suggest that measures of the computational resources (or 'compute') used to build, test and validate the AI systems also be kept. Compute is a key driver of AI progress and performance, of similar importance to data and better algorithms. Better compute tracking and reporting was one of the key recommendations of our Toward Trustworthy AI: Mechanisms for Supporting Verifiable Claim report. The report notes that compute reporting is a "building block of credible third party oversight of AI projects: an auditor might note, for example, that an organization has more computing power available to it than was reportedly used on an audited project, and thereby surface unreported activities relevant to that project."
Recommendation: Consider adding record-keeping of AI incidents.
Records and data of AI 'incidents' (such as any notable bugs, unexpected behaviours, 'edge' cases', overfitting, or reward hacking) should also be kept. These incidents could be encountered during the development process or in the deployed final product. These could contribute to an AI incident-sharing database, in which incidents are shared in an anonymous (and even aggregated) way, to create common knowledge of risks, vulnerabilities and failure modes of AI systems. Such information-sharing could improve system design and the conformity assessments. This could build on the pilot database started by the Partnership on AI, and several public compilations.
Recommendation: Consider options for audit trail requirements and documentation of AI systems.
Another recommendation of the report was to adopt audit trail requirements. An audit trail is a traceable logs of steps taken in problem-definition, design, training and development, testing and system operation. Audit trails are used in several high-risk application areas, such as flight data recorders on commercial aircraft. IEC 61508 is a basic functional safety standard, used in many application areas, that specifies a required audit trail. Several tools can be useful in managing recordkeeping and compliance claims, such as the Assurance and Safety Case Environment (ACSE), or version control tools such as GitHub or GitLab, or proposed tools such as the Verifiable Data Audit. The Commission should allow some flexibility in the records or evidence that the independent testing centres can accept to satisfy traceability requirements (such as test logs or verification and validation activities).
The Partnership on AI has a useful workstream on Annotation and Benchmarking on Understanding and Transparency of Machine learning Lifecycles (AboutML). It is collating best-practice on record-keeping and documentation. Other interesting frameworks on which to build include outcomes- or claim-based "assurance frameworks" such as the Claims-Arguments-Evidence framework (CAE) and Goal Structuring Notation (GSN), which are already in wide use in safety-critical auditing contexts.
"Ensuring clear information to be provided as to the AI system's capabilities and limitations, in particular the purpose for which the systems are intended, the conditions under which they can be expected to function as intended and the expected level of accuracy in achieving the specified purpose. This information is important especially for deployers of the systems, but it may also be relevant to competent authorities and affected parties."
"Citizens should be clearly informed when they are interacting with an AI system and not a human being. Whilst EU data protection legislation already contain certain rules of this kind, additional requirements may be called for to achieve the above mentioned objectives."
Recommendation: Keep the requirement for citizens to be proactively informed whenever they are interacting with an AI system.
Citizens should be clearly and proactively informed whenever they are interacting with an AI system. This should not be limited to that fact being merely discoverable (for example, buried in the terms and conditions), or to a situation in which an AI system is playing a substantive role in decision-making. Due to rapid improvements in video, voice and text generation, it is becoming less and less "immediately obvious" to citizens that they are interacting with an AI system. As a clear example, whenever a citizen is interacting with a chatbot (video, voice or text) they should be proactively informed of that fact.
Recommendation: Consider adding that if a citizen is interacting with a human, but an AI system is playing a substantive role in decision-making, then the citizen should be informed.
If a citizen is interacting with a human, but an AI system is playing a substantive role in decision-making, then the citizen should also be clearly informed of that fact. A clear example would be when a citizen is informed of social security or employment services decisions by a human, but an AI system played a substantive role in those decisions.
"Requirements ensuring that the AI systems are robust and accurate, or at least correctly reflect their level of accuracy, during all life cycle phases"
"Requirements ensuring that outcomes are reproducible;
"Requirements ensuring that AI systems can adequately deal with errors or inconsistencies during all life cycle phases.
"Requirements ensuring that AI systems are resilient against both overt attacks and more subtle attempts to manipulate data or algorithms themselves, and that mitigating measures are taken in such cases."
Recommendation: Robustness should be interpreted as whether it in fact adequately deals with errors (safety) and attacks (security).
Robustness should not be interpreted as intentionally engineering or designing the AI system to cope with failure and adapt to new situations, but rather whether it in fact adequately deals with errors (safety) and attacks (security). There should be extensive processes for testing, evaluation, verification and validation (TEVV) processes for both safety and security risks. These should happen pre-launch, and at appropriate intervals post-launch.
Recommendation: Consider requirements that prohibit some unexpected system behaviours, including preventing the system from operating, if inputs or outputs fall outside a predefined "safe" range.
On adequately dealing with errors or inconsistencies: the high-risk application areas to which these requirements apply are definitionally those in which mistakes are hard to reverse and have extreme consequences. In recognition of that fact, there need to be measures in place that prohibit some classes of unexpected system behaviours, including preventing the system from operating, if inputs or outputs fall outside a predefined "safe" range. It is not adequate to just check for anomalies and errors and have remediation processes.
Recommendation: Consider also paying attention to 'systemic' safety risks.
Focus should also be paid to 'systemic' safety risks from interaction amongst AI systems. For example, an algorithmic trading AI system on its own may be considered 'safe', but interactions between many such systems can lead to emergent behaviour such as 'flash crashes'. AI services and products that are tightly coupled with other AI systems should not be assessed or tested in isolation.
Recommendation: Further specify and provide clear benchmarks for "reproducible outcomes".
As the overall framework is put in place, it will be helpful, as the White Paper suggests, to further specify and provide clear benchmarks for "reproducible outcomes". Most AI systems are not deterministic, so outcomes may not be exactly reproducible. Operationalisation could address which outcomes should be reproducible (e.g. the underlying techniques, or the individual results or patterns of a behaviour of a specific system), and what standards of reproducibility (as there are different statistical measures).
Recommendation: Further specify and provide clear benchmarks for "mitigating measures", such as red-teaming, bias or safety 'bug bounties', and hardware security.
We suggest several "mitigating measures" to attacks and manipulation attempts in Toward Trustworthy AI: Mechanisms for Supporting Verifiable Claims, such as red-teaming and bias or safety 'bug bounties'. We also made suggestions at the hardware level, such as new hardware security features for specialised AI chips, or the use of secure general computing hardware, including secure enclaves (also known as Trusted Execution Environments). Also useful are threat modelling, and testing in an adversarial setting.
Human oversight could have the following, non-exhaustive, manifestations:
"the output of the AI system does not become effective unless it has been previously reviewed and validated by a human (e.g. the rejection of an application for social security benefits may be taken by a human only)"
"the output of the AI system becomes immediately effective, but human intervention is ensured afterwards (e.g. the rejection of an application for a credit card may be processed by an AI system, but human review must be possible afterwards)"
"monitoring of the AI system while in operation and the ability to intervene in real time and deactivate (e.g. a stop button or procedure is available in a driverless car when a human determines that car operation is not safe)"
"in the design phase, by imposing operational constraints on the AI system (e.g. a driverless car shall stop operating in certain conditions of low visibility when sensors may become less reliable or shall maintain a certain distance in any given condition from the preceding vehicle)"
Recommendation: Consider requirements to ensure the efficacy of human oversight.
AI systems interact with humans and organizations in complicated ways that can lead to new risks. This problem has been tackled by the wide and vibrant fields of, amongst others, human-computer interaction (HCI), user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design - which we hope the Commission is drawing from. One particular sub-problem that we wish to highlight is the tendency of AI systems to induce 'automation bias': errors made when decision makers rely on AI cues and systems instead of vigilantly seeking and processing information. These issues may become more acute as the average performance of AI systems increase, leaving operators unprepared for unlikely, unexpected errors. Absent broader measures, human oversight can simply set up an operator to take the fall - to serve as 'moral crumple zone' - once accidents happen.
The Commission should consider requirements to counteract automation bias. This could include prompting for human oversight on a random subset of outputs, requirements around the system's opacity, or limits on the system's autonomy (or speed) when deployed outside of intended environments.
Recommendation: Further specify in which areas particular forms of human oversight will be required.
Human oversight will be necessary for trustworthy AI in many areas. However, the clarification that human oversight might take very different manifestations is very positive, to avoid a simplistic human-in-the-loop approach, which in some high-risk areas might even be dangerous (e.g., transportation, energy, etc.)
For the second manifestation listed, it will be important to specify whether the human intervention is required afterwards in all cases, or should merely be possible afterwards. There should also be a requirement for this intervention to occur within a reasonable time period. For example if a job applicant is appealing a decision taken by an AI system, the applicant could suffer if it takes too long for the human to complete the review of the decision.
Recommendation: 'Fauxtomation' should not allow companies to dodge the requirements.
'Fauxtomation', also known as 'clickwork' or 'ghost work', is when products or services that present themselves (or are perceived) as AI systems actually rely heavily on human labour, normally poorly paid and insecure. A fauxtomation system should also meet some of the mandatory requirements. The requirements in terms of the information they must provide, their robustness and oversight by peers should not vanish merely because of a homunculus inside the system. Otherwise, this raises what we would call the 'puppet problem' - that companies may use human 'puppets' to circumvent some AI regulations. These considerations will become more and more important as hybrid and collective intelligences abound, such as through the use of human computation (e.g., Amazon mechanical turks).
Recommendation: These requirements should also apply to suppliers of multi-purpose AI components.
A complication is raised by the (increasingly common) use by an AI application provider of multi-purpose AI components from a third-party. One could propose that the provider is solely responsible, and the only requirement for suppliers of multi-purpose AI components should be to ensure that the terms and conditions of sale do not prevent meeting such obligations. However this is clearly insufficient, as it may be precisely these multi-purpose component that require testing and inspection. The direction of progress in the field is for AI systems and components to become more general and to become integrated and combined into larger systems. So suppliers should also be required to follow these requirements.
What is the best way to ensure that AI is trustworthy, secure and in respect of European values and rules?
Compliance of high-risk applications should be assessed ex-ante by means of an external conformity assessment procedure
Ex-post market surveillance after the AI-enabled high-risk product or service has been put on the market and, where needed, enforcement by relevant competent authorities
A combination of ex-ante compliance and ex-post enforcement mechanisms
To ensure that AI is trustworthy, compliance should mainly be assessed ex-ante by means of an external conformity assessment procedure by an independent testing centre. There should also be provision for additional ex-post market surveillance and enforcement, for example for software updates and systems that keep learning during operation.
We also strongly support the other proposals around governance in section H. The wider governance structure should exchange information and best practice, identify emerging trends, advise on standardisation activity, and issue guidance, opinions and expertise on implementation. This should include the meaningful participation of affected communities.
Recommendation: Keep the commitment to ex-ante, external conformity assessments by independent testing centre(s), supplemented with additional ex-post market surveillance and enforcement.
Self-assessment cannot ensure trustworthy AI. Firstly, AI development needs to be a level playing field - SMEs should not be disadvantaged by having to build a self-assessment system. Secondly, developers are often not experts in the risks their systems could cause. It is better to build up assessment expertise in dedicated, independent centres. Thirdly and unfortunately, there are many examples of a failure of self-assessment, including Volkswagen, Boeing, Google and Amazon. These companies shouldn't be "marking their own homework" for AI systems used in high-risk application areas.
The testing centres should focus on certification, but they should do this in a collaborative way, especially with SMEs. Before, during and after the conformity assessment they should be able to provide advice and suggestions. The assessment should not just be a simple pass/fail but a way to support companies, especially SMEs, towards developing trustworthy AI systems.
It is important that the testing centres have stringent cybersecurity and confidentiality standards, to allay any concerns about trade secrets or industrial espionage.
Recommendation: Do not consider a 'grandfather clause' for AI systems deployed before the regulation comes into place.
The conformity assessments will need to be retroactive. The Commission should not include a grandfather clause. If an AI system is being used in a high-risk application area, it needs to pass the requirements. It is irrelevant whether it was deployed before or after the regulation came into force. This is also needed to ensure technological neutrality.
Recommendation: Consider only allowing limited confidential testing and piloting in coordination with the independent testing centres.
While there should be some allowance for confidential testing and piloting of an AI application, this should be done in coordination with the independent testing centre. When used in a high-risk application area, an AI system could still cause unacceptable harm at a testing and piloting stage.
Do you think that the use of remote biometric identification systems (e.g. face recognition) and other technologies which may be used in public spaces need to be subject to further EU-level guidelines or regulation?
Use of Biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces, by way of exception to the current general prohibition, should not take place until a specific guideline or legislation at EU level is in place.
We need a moratorium. Moratoria have been successful in other areas, from the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA to gain-of-function experiments in disease research. Use of remote biometric identification systems is currently being reassessed by companies from Amazon to IBM, and from Axon to Microsoft.
Do you believe that a voluntary labelling system (Section 5.G) would be useful for AI systems that are not considered high-risk in addition to existing legislation?
Yes very much.
A voluntary labelling system can promote trust and uptake. It should be specified that the labels are specified by the conformity assessment, and it is the decision to submit one's AI system for assessment that is voluntary.
Jess Whittlestone
Former Senior Research Associate
Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
Haydn Belfield
Academic Project Manager
Report by Haydn Belfield, José Hernández-Orallo, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Matthijs M. Maas, Alexa Hagerty, Jess Whittlestone