AI Systems and Liability: An Assessment of the Applicability of Strict Liability & A Case for Limited Legal Personhood for AI

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have prompted discussion about whether conventional liability laws can be applicable to AI systems which manifest a high degree of autonomy. Users and developers of such AI systems may meet neither the epistemic (sufficient degree of awareness of what is happening) nor control (control over the actions performed) conditions of personal responsibility for the actions of the system at hand, and therefore, conventional liability schemes may seem to be inapplicable[1]. The recently adopted AI Liability Directive [2022] has sought to adapt EU law to the challenges to conventional liability schemes posed by AI systems by imposing a system of strict, rather than fault-based liability, for AI systems. The goal of this is to be able to more easily hold developers, producers, and users of AI technologies accountable, requiring them to explain how AI systems were built and trained. The Directive aims to make it easier for people and companies harmed by AI systems to sue those responsible for the AI systems for damages. However, the Directive seems to ignore the potential injustice that could result from producers and developers being held accountable for actions caused by AI systems which they are neither aware of nor have sufficient control over.  In this essay, I will critically assess the Directive’s system of fault-based liability for AI systems and argue that, whilst such a system may confer some instrumental advantages on behalf of those suing for damages caused by AI systems, it risks causing injustice on the part of developers and producers by making them liable for events they could neither control nor predict. This is likely to risk both producing unjust outcomes and hindering progress in AI development. Instead, following Visa Kurki’s analysis of legal personhood as a cluster concept divided into passive and active incidents, I will argue that some AI systems ought to be granted a limited form of legal personhood, because they meet some of the relevant criteria for active legal personhood, such as the capacity to perform acts-in-the-law. The legal personhood I propose for AI systems is a kind of dependent legal personhood analogous to that granted to corporations. Such a form of legal personhood would not absolve developers and producers from liability for damages (where such liability is applicable), but at the same time, it would not risk unjustly holding producers and developers liable for actions of an AI system. [1] Mark Coeckelbergh, "Artificial Intelligence, Responsibility Attribution, and a Relational Justification of Explainability." Science and Engineering Ethics, (2020): 2054&nbsp

The Bronze Head of Thracian Ruler Seuthes III

In 2004 Bulgarian archeologists, Dr. Kitov and Dr. Dimitrova, discovered a unique Hellenistic era bronze head in a Royal Thracian burial, outside the Golyamata Kosmatka tomb. Research and visual analysis has shown that this head is most likely a portrait of Seuthes III, the ruler of Odrysian Thrace. This identification is indicated by its close resemblance to realistically sculpted profile images of Seuthes III found on Thracian coins. In both cases the heads are characterized by a thick beard and a crooked nose, which create a singular, individual identity. Traditional Greek bronze heads around 4 B.C. are beardless. The head is a masterpiece of Hellenistic realism, dated to c. 4th Century BCE. The archaeologists further suggest that the bronze head of Seuthes III played a significant part in spiritual rituals of the Odryssian Thracians. Further objects inside the Golyamata Kosmatka tomb reveal the substantial influence of Hellenistic Greek art: a silver pitcher, a silver vial, a gold wreath with oak leaves, and a bronze helmet engraved in Greek script with the name of Seuthes III. Fragmentary images of the Gorgon Medusa were found on the funeral bed and the gold wreath. We conclude that the bronze head of Seuthes III is unique and has no analog in the Greek World.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/durep_lightning/1005/thumbnail.jp

Do health service waiting areas contribute to the health literacy of consumers? A scoping review

Health service waiting areas commonly provide health information, resources and supports for consumers; however, the effect on health literacy and related outcomes remains unclear. This scoping review of the literature aimed to explore the use of waiting areas as a place to contribute to the health literacy and related outcomes of consumers attending health appointments. Articles were included if they focussed on health literacy or health literacy responsiveness (concept) in outpatient or primary care health service waiting areas (context) for adult consumers (population) and were published after 2010. Ten bibliographic databases, one full-text archive, dissertation repositories and web sources were searched. The search yielded 5095 records. After duplicate removal, 3942 title/abstract records were screened and 360 full-text records assessed. Data were charted into a standardized data extraction tool. A total of 116 unique articles (published empirical and grey literature) were included. Most articles were set in primary and community care (49%) waiting areas. A diverse range of health topics and resource types were available, but results demonstrated they were not always used by consumers. Outcomes measured in intervention studies were health knowledge, intentions and other psychological factors, self-reported and observed behaviours, clinical outcomes and health service utilization. Intervention studies overall demonstrated positive trends in health literacy-related outcomes, although the benefit declined after 3-6 months. Research on using waiting areas for health literacy purposes is increasing globally. Future research investigating the needs of consumers to inform optimal intervention design is needed. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press

Detectability of biosignatures in a low-biomass simulation of martian sediments

Discovery of a remnant habitable environment by the Mars Science Laboratory in the sedimentary record of Gale Crater has reinvigorated the search for evidence of martian life. In this study, we used a simulated martian mudstone material, based on data from Gale Crater, that was inoculated and cultured over several months and then dried and pressed. The simulated mudstone was analysed with a range of techniques to investigate the detectability of biosignatures. Cell counting and DNA extraction showed a diverse but low biomass microbial community that was highly dispersed. Pellets were analysed with bulk Elemental Analysis - Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (EA-IRMS), high-resolution Laser-ablation Ionisation Mass Spectrometry (LIMS), Raman spectroscopy and Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR) spectroscopy, which are all techniques of relevance to current and future space missions. Bulk analytical techniques were unable to differentiate between inoculated samples and abiotic controls, despite total levels of organic carbon comparable with that of the martian surface. Raman spectroscopy, FTIR spectroscopy and LIMS, which are high sensitivity techniques that provide chemical information at high spatial resolution, retrieved presumptive biosignatures but these remained ambiguous and the sedimentary matrix presented challenges for all techniques. This suggests challenges for detecting definitive evidence for life, both in the simulated lacustrine environment via standard microbiological techniques and in the simulated mudstone via analytical techniques with relevance to robotic missions. Our study suggests that multiple co-incident high-sensitivity techniques that can scan the same micrometre-scale spots are required to unambiguously detect biosignatures, but the spatial coverage of these techniques needs to be high enough not to miss individual cellular-scale structures in the matrix

Decent Work’s Association With Job Satisfaction, Work Engagement, and Withdrawal Intentions in Australian Working Adults

The present research is focused on the measurement properties of the Decent Work Scale (DWS) in Australia and adds to the cumulative evidence of the measure’s international utility for psychological research into the role of work in people’s lives. The study contributes new evidence via a survey of a sample of workers (N ¼ 201) who completed the DWS and criterion measures of career-related factors including job satisfaction, work engagement, and withdrawal intentions. Correlated factors, higher order, and bifactor models were tested using confirmatory factor analysis. All models were satisfactory and the bifactor model evinced preferable fit. The DWS Values Congruence subscale predicted all criterion measures. Workers’ incomes and ratings of their occupations’ prestige had no main effects or interaction effect on the DWS subscales. Recommendations for future research include testing the DWS’s relations with measures of mental health which are known correlates of career-related outcomes

Data Assimilation Enhancements to Air Force Weathers Land Information System

The United States Air Force (USAF) has a proud and storied tradition of enabling significant advancements in the area of characterizing and modeling land state information. 557th Weather Wing (557 WW; DoDs Executive Agent for Land Information) provides routine geospatial intelligence information to warfighters, planners, and decision makers at all echelons and services of the U.S. military, government and intelligence community. 557 WW and its predecessors have been home to the DoDs only operational regional and global land data analysis systems since January 1958. As a trusted partner since 2005, Air Force Weather (AFW) has relied on the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA/GSFC to lead the interagency scientific collaboration known as the Land Information System (LIS). LIS is an advanced software framework for high performance land surface modeling and data assimilation of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) information

Urban case studies : general discussion

Urban case studies: general discussio

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Addressing the climate challenge

In 2021, colleagues from across the University of Birmingham community were invited to write articles about topics relevant to the COP26 climate change summit. In this series of articles, experts from across many different disciplines provide new insight and evidence on how we might all understand and tackle climate change

A prenylated dsRNA sensor protects against severe COVID-19

Inherited genetic factors can influence the severity of COVID-19, but the molecular explanation underpinning a genetic association is often unclear. Intracellular antiviral defenses can inhibit the replication of viruses and reduce disease severity. To better understand the antiviral defenses relevant to COVID-19, we used interferon-stimulated gene (ISG) expression screening to reveal that OAS1, through RNase L, potently inhibits SARS-CoV-2. We show that a common splice-acceptor SNP (Rs10774671) governs whether people express prenylated OAS1 isoforms that are membrane-associated and sense specific regions of SARS-CoV-2 RNAs, or only express cytosolic, nonprenylated OAS1 that does not efficiently detect SARS-CoV-2. Importantly, in hospitalized patients, expression of prenylated OAS1 was associated with protection from severe COVID-19, suggesting this antiviral defense is a major component of a protective antiviral response