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French President Emmanuel Macron has set his sights on artificial intelligence as the next technological frontier France cannot afford to miss, and will launch a major “offensive” this week, officials said Monday.

Macron, the 40-year-old who swept to power last May promising to transform France into a “startup nation,” wants to avoid seeing France and Europe fall behind Chinese and U.S. giants such as Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft and Alibaba in this area.

“France missed the boat of all the latest technological revolutions: robotics, the internet. We have no giants in these fields,” a presidential adviser said. “We will do what it takes to move to pole position.”

The officials, who were speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to give more details on the announcements expected Thursday, when Macron will speak at the elite College de France research center.

They said France would invest funds “commensurate with what is at stake”: “This is a technology whose control will give a clear economic advantage to the top ones,” the adviser said, describing the global context as an accelerating “arms race.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the field of computer science that focuses on the creation of machines able to perceive their environment and make logical decisions.

Booming market

France will seek to leverage its traditional strength in mathematics. It is the world’s second recipient of Fields Medals, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics, but has seen many of its top mathematicians recruited by American-based digital giants, sometimes known in France by the acronym GAFA.

“The French have a card to play because if you look at the heads of AI in the GAFAs, they’re often French,” the adviser said.

Yann Lecun, Facebook’s chief AI scientist, is often cited as an example.

So is Luc Julia, vice president for innovation at Samsung Electronics and co-author of Apple’s personal assistant, Siri.

Macron’s plan will follow most of the recommendations of a report led by Cedric Villani, 44, who won the Fields Medal in 2010 and is a member of the president’s majority party in the National Assembly, advisers said.

China has already pledged to become the world leader in AI by 2025.

Venture investors poured more than $10.8 billion into AI and machine learning companies globally in 2017, according to the Pitchbook database.

The research company IDC predicted this month that spending on cognitive and AI systems will reach $19.1 billion in 2018, up 54 percent from last year.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Monday it is investigating the privacy controls of social media giant Facebook in the aftermath of reports that the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users was compromised by the British voter profiling firm Cambridge Analytica.

The consumer agency’s announcement sent Facebook’s stock price down another 2 percent, after a 14 percent plunge last week cut the company’s market value by $90 billion.

The FTC normally does not announce its investigations, but confirmed the probe after numerous news accounts last week said it had been opened.

Acting consumer protection chief Tom Pahl said the FTC “is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers. Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that fail to honor their privacy promises,” including adherence to a joint U.S.-European privacy accord, “or that engage in unfair acts that cause substantial injury to consumers in violation” of U.S. consumer protections.

Facebook’s privacy practices are being questioned on both sides of the Atlantic after revelations that Cambridge Analytica got the cache of information about Facebook users from British researcher Alexsandr Kogan, who had been authorized by Facebook to collect the data as part of an academic study.

Kogan developed an app on which 270,000 Facebook users supplied information about themselves. In all, because of extensive links of friends and associates to the 270,000 Facebook users, 50 million Facebook users may have had their personal data compromised.

Britain has opened an investigation of Cambridge Analytica and seized data from its London headquarters.

German Justice Minister Katarina Barley met Monday with Facebook officials, later calling for stricter regulation and tougher penalties for companies like Facebook.

“Facebook admitted abuses and excesses in the past and gave assurances that measures since taken mean they can’t happen again,” she said. “But promises aren’t enough. In the future we will have to regulate companies like Facebook much more strictly.”

Facebook said Monday it remains “strongly committed” to protecting people’s information and would answer the FTC’s questions.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday apologized to Facebook users in full-page ads in nine British and U.S. for the massive “breach of trust” by the company.

Zuckerberg did not mention Cambridge Analytica, which was paid $6 million by U.S. President Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign for the White House to develop voter profiles.

Zuckerberg said in the ads, “This was a breach of trust, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time” when Kogan passed on the Facebook data to Cambridge Analytica.”We’re now taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

“We have a responsibility to protect your information,” Zuckerberg said. “If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.”
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The controversy over the British-based data mining company, Cambridge Analytica, which faces allegations of using the personal data of millions of Facebook followers to influence the U.S. election, is reverberating in India, which is due to hold national elections next year.

The website of the Indian affiliate of Cambridge Analytica, Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI), has been taken down amid a dispute between the country’s two major political parties over using its services.

Both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the main opposition Congress Party have denied doing so. However Ovleno’s site had listed the BJP, the Congress and a regional party known as the Janata Dal (United) among its clients.

India’s Information Technology Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, last week warned of tough action against social media giants if the data of Indians was misused.

He said India supports freedom of speech, expression and exchange of ideas on social media, “but any attempt, covert or overt, by the social media, including Facebook, of trying to influence India’s electoral process through undesirable means will neither be appreciated nor be tolerated.”

He said that in the wake of recent data theft from Facebook, the stern warning should be heard “across the Atlantic, far away in California.”

Minister Prasad asked Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi, to “explain” the role of Cambridge Analytica in his social media outreach and whether the party had engaged in data trade with the firm.

Congress Party spokesman Randeep Sujrewala called the accusation a “fake agenda and a white lie.” He said it was the BJP that had used the company’s services.

Gandhi is expected to be the main opponent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019. Although Modi’s BJP won a sweeping victory in 2014, many analysts expect next year’s elections to be a much tighter race.

Domestic media reports have said that Cambridge Analytica and its India partner have been in talks with both the Congress and the BJP for a possible collaboration for their 2019 Lok Sabha election campaigns.

On its website, the Indian affiliate of Cambridge Analytica had said it offered services such as “political campaign management,” which includes social media strategy, election campaign management and mobile media management.

Internet experts say India is extremely vulnerable to the misuse of personal data during elections.  

“It’s become a source of micro-targeting. At scale when you can dissect this data and customize messages to individual people to prey on their fears, that kind of campaign is always possible,” said Nikhil Pahwa, a digital rights activist and founder of digital news portal MediaNama.

“The problem is not with one entity [such as Cambridge Analytica] but a system which allows it,” Pahwa said, pointing out that there is too much data floating around.

In an interview with CNN, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said Facebook was committed to stopping interference in the U.S. midterm election in November and elections in India and Brazil.
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The exotic Tasmanian tiger once roamed Australia and New Guinea. It looked like a cross between a tiger and a dog, and is believed to have become extinct in the wild in the 20th century. The last one died in a zoo in the 1930’s. Using preserved Tasmanian tigers, Australian scientists did 3D scans of the animal, which they hope will explain why it evolved to look so much like a canine. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
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On the same day Facebook bought ads in U.S. and British newspapers to apologize for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media site faced new questions about collecting phone numbers and text messages from Android devices.

The website Ars Technica reported that users who checked data gathered by Facebook on them found that it had years of contact names, telephone numbers, call lengths and text messages.

Facebook said Sunday the information is uploaded to secure servers and comes only from Android users who opt-in to allow it. Spokeswomen say the data is not sold or shared with users’ friends or outside apps. They say the data is used “to improve people’s experience across Facebook” by helping to connect with others.

The company also says in a website posting that it does not collect the content of text messages or calls. A spokeswoman told the Associated Press that Facebook uses the information to rank contacts in Messenger so they are easier to find, and to suggest people to call.

Users get the option to allow data collection when they sign up for Messenger or Facebook Lite, the Facebook posting said. “If you chose to turn this feature on, we will begin to continuously log this information,” the posting said.

The data collection can be turned off in a user’s settings, and all previously collected call and text history shared on the app will be deleted, Facebook said.

The feature was first introduced on Facebook Messenger in 2015 and added later on Facebook Lite.

Messages were left Sunday seeking comment about security from Google officials, who make the Android operating system.

Reports of the data collection came as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took out ads in multiple U.S. and British Sunday newspapers to apologize for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The ads say the social media platform doesn’t deserve to hold personal information if it can’t protect it.

According to the ads, a quiz app built by a Cambridge University researcher leaked Facebook data of millions of people four years ago. Zuckerberg said this was a “breach of trust” and that Facebook is taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Facebook’s privacy practices have come under fire after Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-affiliated political consulting firm, got data inappropriately. The social media platform’s stock value has dropped over $70 billion since the revelations were first published.

Among the newspapers with the ads were The New York Times and The Washington Post in the U.S., and The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph in the United Kingdom.

The ads said Facebook is limiting the data apps received when users sign in. It’s also investigating every app that had access to large amounts of data. “We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected,” the ads stated.

Cambridge Analytica got the data from a researcher who paid 270,000 Facebook users to complete a psychological profile quiz back in 2014. But the quiz gathered information on their friends as well, bringing the total number of people affected to about 50 million.

The Trump campaign paid the firm $6 million during the 2016 election, although it has since distanced itself from Cambridge.
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Facebook co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg apologized Sunday in full-page ads in nine major British and U.S. newspapers for the massive “breach of trust” at the social media giant that revealed personal information of millions of Facebook users.

Zuckerberg did not mention the British firm accused of using the data, the voter profiling company Cambridge Analytica that obtained the cache of information from British researcher Alexsandr Kogan, who had been authorized by Facebook to collect the data as part of an academic study.

Cambridge Analytica was paid $6 million by President Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign for the White House to develop voter profiles.

Zuckerberg said in the ads, “This was a breach of trust, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time” when Kogan developed an app on which 270,000 Facebook users supplied information about themselves. “We’re now taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

In all, because of extensive links of friends and associates to the 270,000 Facebook users, 50 million Facebook users may have had their personal data compromised.

“We have a responsibility to protect your information,” Zuckerberg said. “If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.”

The ads ran in six British national newspapers, including the best-selling Mail, The Sunday Times and The Observer, along with The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal in the U.S.

Zuckerberg said Facebook, with 2.2 billion users worldwide, is also investigating “every single app that had access to large amounts of data before we fixed this. We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected.”

A new Reuters-Ipsos poll in the U.S. released Sunday showed that 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information, compared to 66 percent of trust in Amazon; 62 percent in Google; 60 percent in Microsoft and 47 percent in Yahoo.
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Scientists are monitoring a defunct Chinese space station that is expected to fall to Earth around the end of the month, the largest manmade object to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a decade.

The head of the European Space Agency’s debris office, Holger Krag, says China’s Tiangong-1 space station will likely fall to Earth between March 30 and April 3.

Krag said it still not yet known where the space station will hit Earth, but said it would be extremely unlikely for anyone to be injured when it does.

Injury unlikely

“Our experience is that for such large objects typically between 20 and 40 percent of the original mass, of 8.5 tons, will survive re-entry and then could be found on the ground, theoretically,” he said.

“However, to be injured by one of these fragments is extremely unlikely. My estimate is that the probability to be injured by one of these fragments is similar to the probability of being hit by lightning twice in the same year,” Krag added.

He said the space station is expected to fall between the areas of 43 degrees south and 43 degrees north, and everything outside that zone is considered safe.

“Northern Europe including France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland are definitely on the safe side. Southern Europe, the southern part of North America, South Asia, Africa, Australia and also South America are still within the zone today,” he said.

Where will it hit?

Scientists say it is hard to predict where Tiangong-1 will hit Earth in part because of its low orbit and high velocity. They say the space station is traveling 17,400 mph and orbits Earth about every 90 minutes.

Tiangong-1 was launched into orbit in 2011 as China’s first space lab. It carried out orbit experiments in preparation for China’s plan to put a permanent space station into orbit by 2023.

 
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There always seems to be another dating app popping up with promises of helping find romance — just answer this, just swipe that — but one new online dating service is incorporating genetics into the mix and promising something other apps cannot: compatibility through genetics.
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Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. Even more so, when the invention is something a loved one needs. That was the case for a young Syrian woman who invented a GPS-equipped life vest. VOA’s Faith Lapidus reports.
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Increasingly popular wind turbines are getting bigger and making more power, but there is a limit to their size. At some point they become too big, too difficult to transport and install, and strong winds can bend them out of shape. But researchers led by scientists from the University of Virginia say there’s a way around it. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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What does it take to build a thriving technology company – and an environment in which black techies, their financial backers and their markets can flourish?

That question underpins the new VOA documentary “Beyond the Unicorn.”  Subtitled “Africans Making IT in Silicon Valley,” it explores how some Africans and African-Americans are finding their way in the tech sector’s global capital in California.

The 26-minute documentary profiles several entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and how they overcome hurdles. Its screening Wednesday evening, at a VOA event at the San Francisco campus of the French university INSEEC U., served as a springboard for a panel discussion spanning market potential, funding gaps and hiring disparities.

First, a definition for the uninitiated. A unicorn is a private startup technology firm valued at $1 billion or more. Once rare, such companies have proliferated in the last few years, with almost 200 globally as of last May, according to Forbes.

Silicon Valley has spawned herds of unicorns, such as Uber and Airbnb.  

Africa hasn’t. With less readily available investment funding, “a unicorn might be quite unrealistic for an entrepreneur in Africa to build very quickly,” said venture capitalist Mbwana Alliy, who appears in the documentary. He suggested its counterpart might be a “zebracorn.”           

“Does that mean it’s a $100 million startup? Maybe that’s more achievable for an entrepreneur,” said Alliy, founder of the Africa-focused Savannah Fund. “And it’s still a major outcome.”   

Panelist Stephen Ozoigbo proposed another term: gazelle, “something real and indigenous.”

“If it’s a gazelle, then you’re sure it would outrun, it would outhustle” the competition, said Ozoigbo, CEO of the African Technology Foundation.   

​Market potential

The continent has some fast-growing economies – think Ethiopia and Nigeria – and the world’s fastest-growing population. More than half of its countries are expected to double their head counts by 2050, the United Nations reports.

No wonder investment in African tech ventures is surging.

Figures vary: The Disrupt Africa news portal says African tech startups raised more than $195 million last year, up from almost $130 million in 2016.

Partech Ventures reports even stronger growth. The global venture capital firm, which has offices in San Francisco and Dakar, Senegal, reports that 124 tech startups drew $560 million in equity in 2017, up from almost $367 million for 74 startups the previous year.

Still, Africa gets only a very tiny share of global private equity capital, said Andile Ngcaba, a panelist and founder of the African tech investment management fund Convergence Partners.

That’s just one of the challenges for Africans and African-Americans in tech.

Lack of diversity

Blacks account for just 3 percent of the workforce among Silicon Valley’s top 75 tech companies, an underrepresentation so striking that it has drawn public condemnation and scrutiny by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a 2016 report.

The male-dominated tech sector can be even less welcoming to black females.

“Being an African woman in Silicon Valley … has been very difficult. I actually had an easier time in Nigeria,” said Bukola Akinfaderin, a senior developer – and the only black female mobile engineer – for the genealogy website Ancestry.com. She said her homeland’s tech sector has less of a gender imbalance.

Akinfaderin, featured in the documentary, finds support in groups such as dev/color, a nonprofit for black software engineers.

She gets encouragement to revive Jandus Radio, her app enabling the African diaspora to hear live radio from the continent. It had as many as 500,000 users by 2016, when the hosting company’s server malfunctioned and deleted the app’s database. She plans to reboot the app as KinFolk.

Akinfaderin touts the value of being an African woman engineer working in Silicon Valley. “When you’re building a product – especially if it’s a consumer-facing product, one that’s international – you are going to need perspective from everyone.”

Need for helping hands

Mentoring and networking can make all the difference in finding opportunities, said Nate Yohannes, a Microsoft business development director for artificial intelligence – and the evening’s keynote speaker.

“Coming to the United States as a child of [Eritrean] refugees,” he said, he couldn’t always rely on his parents’ guidance because of their unfamiliarity with the new setting. So, he sought out mentors, who helped shape his trajectory from law school to a Wall Street job to the U.S. Small Business Association to Microsoft.

“It’s on us” to help each other and connect the continents, Yohannes told the scores of people, including other Africans, in the screening room.

Other concerns

Africa’s rapid population growth heightens the need to educate African youths so they can compete for work globally, said Convergence Partners’ Ngcaba. He added that those aspiring to the tech sector will need training in, say, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

“That’s the only way we can position ourselves in the global landscape,” Ngcaba said.

Skills, opportunity and capital are vital for entrepreneurs, agreed Yonas Beshawred, founder and CEO of StackShare, an online marketplace for comparing engineering tools and software.

But, he added, “I think the most important thing is that you have something that you’re passionate about and you start working on it … instead of just talking.”

A VOA showcase

The “Unicorn” screening event also served as a showcase for VOA’s commitment to “telling America’s story” along with providing accurate news and information to countries without independent media, VOA director Amanda Bennett said. 

“And what is more American than the American diaspora, the people who come here from places around the world looking for something and looking to give something, looking to be someone? And what is more American than technology?” she asked rhetorically in her introductory remarks, pointing out that VOA opened a Silicon Valley office last spring.
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The semi-government agency behind India’s national identity card project on Saturday denied a report by news website ZDNet that the program has been hit by another security lapse that allows access to private information.

ZDNet reported that a data leak on a system run by a state-owned utility company, which it did not name, could allow access to private information of holders of the biometric “Aadhaar” ID cards, exposing their names, their unique 12-digit identity numbers and their bank details.

But the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which runs the Aadhaar program, said “there is no truth in this story” and that it was “contemplating legal action against ZDNet.”

ZDNet could not immediately be contacted for comment on the UIDAI’s response.

“There has been absolutely no breach of UIDAI’s Aadhaar database. Aadhaar remains safe and secure,” the agency said in a statement late Saturday.

Even if the claim purported in the story were taken as true, it would raise security concerns about the database of the utility company and would have “nothing to do with the security of UIDAI’s Aadhaar database,” it said.

More than 1 billion users

ZDNet had reported that even though the security lapse was flagged to some government agencies over a period of time, it had yet to be fixed. It said it was withholding the name of the utility and other details.

Karan Saini, a New Delhi security researcher, said that anyone with an Aadhaar number was affected.

“This is a security lapse. You don’t have to be a consumer to access these details. You just need the Uniform Resource Locator where the Application Programming Interface is located. These can be found in less than 20 minutes,” Saini told Reuters.

In recent months, researchers and journalists who have identified loopholes in the identity project have said they were slapped with criminal cases or harassed by government agencies because of their work.

Aadhaar, a biometric identification card with over 1.1 billion users, is the world’s biggest database. But it has been facing increased scrutiny over privacy concerns following several instances of breaches and misuse.

Last Thursday, the CEO of UIDAI said the biometric data attached to each Aadhaar was safe from hacking because the storage facility was not connected to the internet.

“Each Aadhaar biometric is encrypted by a 2,048-key combination and to decode it, the best and fastest computer of our era will take the age of the universe just to hack into one card’s biometric details,” Ajay Bhushan Pandey said.
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Britain’s information regulator said Saturday that it was assessing evidence gathered from a raid on the office of data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, part of an investigation into alleged misuse of personal information by political campaigns and social media companies like Facebook.

More than a dozen investigators from the Information Commissioner’s Office entered the company’s central London office late Friday, shortly after a High Court judge granted a warrant. The investigators were seen leaving the premises early Saturday after spending about seven hours searching the office.

The regulator said it would “consider the evidence before deciding the next steps and coming to any conclusions.”

“This is one part of a larger investigation by the ICO into the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial actors,” it said.

Authorities in Britain as well as the U.S. are investigating Cambridge Analytica over allegations the firm improperly obtained data from 50 million Facebook users and used it to manipulate elections, including the 2016 White House race and the 2016 Brexit vote in Britain.

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny wrongdoing. 

​Chief executive suspended

The data firm suspended its CEO, Alexander Nix, this week after Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast footage that appeared to show Nix suggesting tactics like entrapment or bribery that his company could use to discredit politicians. The footage also showed Nix saying Cambridge Analytica played a major role in securing Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Cambridge Analytica’s acting chief executive, Alexander Tayler, said Friday that he was sorry that SCL Elections, an affiliate of his company, “licensed Facebook data and derivatives from a research company [Global Science Research] that had not received consent from most respondents” in 2014.

“The company believed that the data had been obtained in line with Facebook’s terms of service and data protection laws,” Tayler said.

His statement said the data were deleted in 2015 at Facebook’s request, and he denied that any of the Facebook data that Cambridge Analytica obtained were used in the work it did on the 2016 U.S. election.
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Austin, Texas, is not California’s Silicon Valley technology corridor. But companies from Silicon Valley and other major U.S. hubs are taking notice of Austin’s growing tech scene. Austin’s lower cost of living and doing business, combined with its smaller size, are just a few reasons that people are attracted to the area. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains other reasons that tech companies are opening up shop there.
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Being black and working in the tech industry can be an isolating experience. But at the Afrotectopia festival in New York, it’s what everyone has in common. Tina Trinh meets with the creative people exploring the intersection of race and technology.
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Now that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken publicly about the firm’s data controversy, the chief question remains whether the changes he outlined will be enough to restore the public’s trust in the social media giant.

In a series of media interviews this week, Zuckerberg went into full damage control mode about how the company handled user data when it discovered in 2015 that 50 million users’ data had been shared with Cambridge Analytica, a consultancy that advises political campaigns, thus breaking the company’s rules.

He apologized. He called the recent controversy “a major breach of trust.”

What now?

Congressional leaders have already called on Zuckerberg to testify in Congress — something that Zuckerberg appeared willing to do, according to the interviews, if he was “the right person.”

Some Facebook critics argue the firm, which relies on advertising revenue, isn’t able or willing to curtail practices that may improve users’ privacy but potentially hurt its bottom line. The company needs some sort of regulatory oversight, they say, or new laws about users’ personal data.​

But for now, Zuckerberg outlined a series of measures that would limit the amount of data collected on users, something that many privacy advocates have argued for. The firm’s revenue model, he said, is here to stay.

“I don’t think the ad model is going to go away because I think fundamentally, it’s important to have a service like this that everyone in the world can use, and the only way to do that is to have it be very cheap or free,” Zuckerberg told the New York Times.

Going back to 2014

Facebook plans to turn the clock back to 2014, before it changed its rules stopping a developers’ ability to tap into users’ friends’ data.

With the help of forensic auditors, the company plans to investigate all “large apps” — “thousands,” by Zuckerberg’s estimate, that scooped up data then.

This includes users whose data was gathered by a researcher and given to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook plans to inform affected users. Cambridge Analytica has denied that it improperly used user data.

If a developer doesn’t want to comply with Facebook’s audit, Facebook will ban it from the social network, Zuckerberg said.

“Even if you solve the problem going forward, there’s still this issue of: Are there other Cambridge Analyticas out there,” Zuckerberg told the Times. “We also need to make sure we get that under control.”

Remove access to data

In addition, the company plans to remove a developer’s access to a person’s data if someone hasn’t used the developer’s app in three months. And the company plans to reduce the amount of information collected when users sign in.

Finally, the company says it plans to make it easier to see who has access to their data and to revoke permissions. The moves are intended to curtail what critics have long complained about Facebook’s role in enabling the ongoing collection of more data on users than is needed.

Feeling ‘uncomfortable’

Zuckerberg told Recode that Facebook, with more than two billion users, has become so big and important in the lives of many around the world that he doesn’t always feel comfortable making blanket decisions.

“I feel fundamentally uncomfortable sitting here in California at an office, making content policy decisions for people around the world,” he said. “Things like where is the line on hate speech?”

He has to make the decisions he said, because he runs Facebook.

“But I’d rather not.”
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Being black and working in the tech industry can be an isolating experience.

New York nonprofit Ascend Leadership analyzed the hiring data of hundreds of San Francisco Bay-area tech companies from 2007 and 2015 and issued a report last year, detailing the lack of diversity in tech.

Based on data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Ascend found that the black tech professional workforce declined from 2.5 percent in 2007 to 1.9 percent in 2015. The outlook was even bleaker at the top. Despite 43 percent growth in the number of black executives from 2007 to 2015, blacks accounted for 1.1 percent of the total number of tech executives in 2015.

“You’re one in a sea full of people that just don’t look like you,” said Ari Melenciano, a graduate student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Melenciano decided to do something about it and created Afrotectopia.

Recently held at NYU, the inaugural 2-day festival brought together black technologists, designers and artists to discuss their work and the challenges of navigating the mostly white world of technology and new media.

“It’s really important for us to be able to see ourselves and build this community of people that actually look like us and are doing amazing things,” Melenciano said.

Glenn Cantave, founder and CEO of performance art coalition Movers and Shakers NYC, was on hand to demonstrate the group’s use of augmented reality and virtual reality, with apps that address racism and discrimination.

“My parents told me from a very young age that ‘You will not be treated like your white friends. There are certain privileges that you do not have,'” said Cantave. “It’s affected my conduct, it affects how I navigate spaces. I stay hyper-aware of my surroundings at all times, in terms of safety.”

Cantave and his team are working on an augmented reality book for children entitled, White Supremacy 101: Columbus the Hero? The book will contain various images that become animated when viewed with an augmented reality app. Each excerpt is intended to be a counterpoint to traditional history lessons which tell American history from a white perspective.

“If these false narratives are perpetuated for generations in the future, you’re going to have a collective consciousness that doesn’t see black people as human beings,” Cantave said. “You see it with mass incarceration, you see it with police brutality, you see it with unsympathetic immigration policy.”

But technology offers an opportunity to change that, according to Idris Brewster, creator of the app and CTO of Movers and Shakers NYC.  

“Augmented reality and virtual reality … really provides us with a unique opportunity to use very immersive technology and tell a story in a very different and engaging way,” Brewster said.

Public response has been positive. “It’s blown the kids’ minds just to see animations. A lot of kids will be like, ‘Wow, this is like Harry Potter,'” he said.

Brewster also works as a computer science instructor at Google, where in 2016, blacks made up 1 percent of the company’s U.S. tech workers. He wants to see more minorities become tech creators, not just end users.

“There’s algorithms being created in our world right now that are detrimental to people of color because they’re not made for people of color,” Brewster said. “We need to start being able to figure out how we can get our minds and our perspectives in those conversations, creating those algorithms.”

Virtual reality filmmaker Jazzy Harvey attended Afrotectopia to present her virtual-reality film, Built Not Bought, which profiles the custom-car enthusiasts of south central Los Angeles.

Harvey said she felt greater creative freedom working with the new medium. “There’s no rules, and the fact that I have no rules and no restrictions … I get to choose which story is worth telling,” Harvey said.

Afrotectopia panelists and attendees tackled a variety of topics including digital activism, entrepreneurship and education, but ultimately, it was about getting everyone in the same room together.

“To come into a space where you don’t have to assimilate culturally, you can just be yourself and talk the way that you actually talk and really have people that can connect with you culturally is so important,” Melenciano said. “Especially when you’re talking about things that you’re passionate about like tech, it’s a space where we’re so often dismissed from.”
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A public apology by Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg failed Thursday to quell outrage over the hijacking of personal data from millions of people, as critics demanded that the social media giant go much further to protect user privacy.

Speaking out for the first time about the harvesting of Facebook user data by a British firm linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Zuckerberg admitted Wednesday to betraying the trust of its 2 billion users and promised to “step up.”

Vowing to stop data leaking to outside developers and to give users more control over their information, Zuckerberg also said he was ready to testify before US lawmakers — which a powerful congressional committee promptly asked him to do.

With pressure ratcheting up on the 33-year-old CEO over a scandal that has wiped $60 billion off Facebook’s value, the initial response suggested his promise of self-regulation had failed to convince critics he was serious about change.

“Frankly I don’t think those changes go far enough,” Matt Hancock, Britain’s culture and digital minister, told the BBC.

“It shouldn’t be for a company to decide what is the appropriate balance between privacy and innovation and use of data,” he said. “The big tech companies need to abide by the law, and we are strengthening the law.”

In Brussels, European leaders were sending the same message as they prepared to push for tougher safeguards on personal data online, while Israel became the latest country to launch an investigation into Facebook.

The data scandal erupted at the weekend when a whistle-blower revealed that British consultant Cambridge Analytica had created psychological profiles on 50 million Facebook users via a personality prediction app, developed by a researcher named Aleksandr Kogan.

The app, downloaded by 270,000 people, scooped up their friends’ data without consent — as was possible under Facebook’s rules at the time.

‘Breach of trust’

Facebook said it discovered last week that Cambridge Analytica might not have deleted the data as it certified, although the British firm denied wrongdoing.

“This was a major breach of trust and I’m really sorry that this happened,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with CNN, after publishing a blog post outlining his response to the scandal.

“Our responsibility now is to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

With Facebook already under fire for allowing fake news to proliferate during the U.S. election, Zuckerberg also said “we need to make sure that we up our game” ahead of midterm congressional elections in November, in which American officials have warned Russia can be expected to meddle as it did two years ago.

Cambridge Analytica has maintained it did not use Facebook data in the Trump campaign, but its now-suspended CEO boasted in secret recordings that his company was deeply involved in the race.

WATCH: Facebook Under Fire for Data Misuse

And U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race, is reportedly looking into the consultant’s role in the Trump effort.

‘Abused and misused’

Zuckerberg’s apology followed a dayslong stream of damaging accusations against the world’s biggest social network, which now faces probes on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Washington on Thursday, leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee urged Zuckerberg to testify without delay, saying a briefing a day earlier by Facebook officials had left “many questions” unanswered.

“We believe, as CEO of Facebook, he is the right witness to provide answers to the American people,” said a statement from the panel, calling for a hearing “in the near future.”

America’s Federal Trade Commission is reportedly investigating Facebook over the scandal, while Britain’s information commissioner is seeking to determine whether it did enough to secure its data.

On Thursday, Israel’s privacy protection agency said it had informed Facebook of a probe into the Cambridge Analytica revelations, and was looking into “the possibility of other infringements of the privacy law regarding Israelis.”

Meanwhile, European Union leaders were due to press digital giants “to guarantee transparent practices and full protection of citizens’ privacy and personal data,” according to a draft summit statement obtained by AFP.

A movement to quit the social network has already gathered momentum — with the co-founder of the WhatsApp messaging service among those vowing to #deletefacebook — while a handful of lawsuits risk turning into class actions in a costly distraction for the company.

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee described it as a “serious moment for the web’s future.”

“I can imagine Mark Zuckerberg is devastated that his creation has been abused and misused,” tweeted the British scientist.

“I would say to him: You can fix it. It won’t be easy but if companies work with governments, activists, academics and web users, we can make sure platforms serve humanity.”
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Two experts say video of a deadly crash involving a self-driving Uber vehicle shows the sport utility vehicle’s laser and radar sensors should have spotted a pedestrian, and computers should have braked to avoid the crash.

Authorities investigating the crash in a Phoenix suburb released the video of Uber’s Volvo striking a woman as she walked from a darkened area onto a street.

Experts who viewed the video told The Associated Press that the SUV’s sensors should have seen the woman pushing a bicycle and braked before the impact.

Also, Uber’s human backup driver appears on the video to be looking down before crash and appears startled about the time of the impact.

“The victim did not come out of nowhere. She’s moving on a dark road, but it’s an open road, so Lidar [laser] and radar should have detected and classified her” as a human, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies autonomous vehicles.

Sam Abuelsmaid, an analyst for Navigant Research who also follow autonomous vehicles, said laser and radar systems can see in the dark much better than humans or cameras and that the pedestrian was well within the system’s range.

“It absolutely should have been able to pick her up,” he said. “From what I see in the video it sure looks like the car is at fault, not the pedestrian.”

The video could have a broad impact on autonomous vehicle research, which has been billed as the answer to cutting the 40,000 traffic deaths that occur annually in the U.S. in human-driven vehicles.

Proponents say that human error is responsible for 94 percent of crashes, and that self-driving vehicles would be better because they see more and don’t get drunk, distracted or drowsy.

But the experts said it appears from the video that there was some sort of flaw in Uber’s self-driving system.

The video, Smith said, may not show the complete picture, but “this is strongly suggestive of multiple failures of Uber and its system, its automated system, and its safety driver.”

Tempe police, as well as the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are investigating the Sunday night crash, which occurred outside of a crosswalk on a darkened boulevard.

The crash was the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle. The Volvo was in self-driving mode traveling about 40 mph (64 kph) with a human backup driver at the wheel when it struck 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, police said.

The lights on the SUV did not illuminate Herzberg until a second or two before impact, raising questions about whether the vehicle could have stopped in time.

Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this week that the SUV likely would not be found at fault.

But Smith said that from what he observed on the video, the Uber driver appears to be relying too much on the self-driving system by not looking up at the road.

“The safety driver is clearly relying on the fact that the car is driving itself. It’s the old adage that if everyone is responsible no one is responsible,” Smith said. “This is everything gone wrong that these systems, if responsibly implemented, are supposed to prevent.”

The experts were unsure if the test vehicle was equipped with a video monitor that the backup driver may have been viewing.

Uber immediately suspended all road-testing of such autos in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.

An Uber spokeswoman, reached Wednesday night by email, did not answer specific questions about the video or the expert observations.

“The video is disturbing and heartbreaking to watch, and our thoughts continue to be with Elaine’s loved ones. Our cars remain grounded, and we’re assisting local, state and federal authorities in any way we can,” the company said in a statement.

Tempe police have identified the driver as 44-year-old Rafael Vasquez. Court records show someone with the same name and birthdate as Vasquez spent more than four years in prison for two felony convictions — for making false statements when obtaining unemployment benefits and attempted armed robbery — before starting work as an Uber driver.

Tempe police and the NTSB declined to say whether the Vasquez who was involved in the fatal crash is the same Vasquez with two criminal convictions.

Attempts by the AP to contact Vasquez through phone numbers and social media on Wednesday afternoon were not successful.

Local media have identified the driver as Rafaela Vasquez. Authorities declined to explain the discrepancy in the driver’s first name.

The fatality has raised questions about whether Uber does enough to screen its drivers.

Uber said Vasquez met the company’s vetting requirements.

The company bans drivers convicted of violent crimes or any felony within the past seven years. Records show Vasquez’ offenses happened before the seven-year period, in 1999 and 2000.

The company’s website lists its pre-screening policies for drivers that spell out what drivers can and cannot have on their record to work for Uber.

 Their driving history cannot have any DUI or drug-related driving offenses within the past seven years, for instance. They also are prevented from having more than three non-fatal accidents or moving violations within the past three years.
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Facebook is coming under intense criticism following reports that information from 50 million users was gathered by a voter data firm. Lawmakers are demanding answers, and Facebook stock has lost about $35 billion in its value. Michelle Quinn reports on the threats the company faces.
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A British tech company is using donated human heart tissue to replicate the “beating” action of heart muscle to aid preclinical testing of new drugs. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Silicon Valley is less than 3% black, with an even smaller numbers of Africans. The race gap is actually much larger than the gender gap, and it’s growing. Join us for a live screening of “Beyond the Unicorn,” a VOA documentary about the issue, followed by a Q&A session from Silicon Valley, the capitol of the U.S. technology sector.
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has released a statement about the social network’s part in an illegal data collection scandal. 

“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg said in a lengthy Facebook post. “The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”

Facebook disclosed on Friday that it has known since 2015 that British researcher Aleksandr Kogan illegally shared users’ information with a research firm, after collecting that data legally through an application for a personality quiz. The research firm is alleged to have illegally used the data of an estimated 50 million Facebook users to build profiles for U.S. political campaigns, including the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Facebook has been criticized for failing to alert its users to the incident in 2015. Wednesday was the first time Zuckerberg publicly addressed the issue.

Included in his statement was a timeline of events that said Facebook demanded in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica delete all improperly acquired data. He said last week he learned from news outlets that the company may not have deleted the data, despite providing certification of having done so. 

Cambridge Analytica has denied that it kept the data. One Facebook executive in charge of security is reportedly leaving the firm as a result the matter.

Zuckerberg said the incident amounted not only to a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook but also “a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it.”

New safeguards

The Facebook founder outlined new precautions his social media platform will take to protect user data in future: identifying any other application developers found to have misused personal data, restricting the types of data available to developers, and ending their access to a user’s data if the user has not used the app in the past three months. He also said Facebook will make it easier for users to revoke apps’ permission to use their data, by putting the tool at the top of a user’s news feed.

Within an hour of its posting, Zuckerberg’s message had garnered more than 32,000 “likes” or other reactions and had been shared more than 10,000 times. User comments varied from fan club-style expressions of support to bitter complaints about Zuckerberg’s failure to speak sooner.

While controversy has swirled, Facebook’s stock value has taken a significant hit. The company has lost more than $45 billion of its stock market value over the past three days. 

Questions about regulation

The probe over Cambridge Analytica is just the latest flashpoint around Facebook’s role in the 2016 election and comes as the company faces questions about how it should be regulated and monitored going forward.

With its more than 2 billion monthly users and billions of dollars in profit, Facebook has become a powerful conduit of news, opinion and propaganda, much of it targeted at individuals based on their own data. The social media site and investigators have found that Russia-backed operatives had used Facebook to spread disinformation and propaganda. 

In recent months, the company, along with YouTube and Twitter, has changed some of its practices to reduce the power of automated accounts and propaganda.  Facebook has said it would hire 10,000 security employees.
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a rare television interview Wednesday that Facebook clearly made a mistake in its part in an illegal data collection scandal.

“This was a major breach of trust. I am really sorry this happened. We have a basic responsibility to protect people’s data,” he told CNN.

Zuckerberg did not elaborate on what mistake Facebook made, but he promised to check all apps and do a full forensic audit.

He also told CNN he is sure someone is trying to meddle in the upcoming November midterm U.S. congressional elections. He said Facebook is “really committed” to stop anyone from interfering in the elections through Facebook, including upcoming votes in Brazil and India.

WATCH: Facebook Under Fire for Data Misuse

Since 2015

Facebook disclosed on Friday that it has known since 2015 that British researcher Aleksandr Kogan illegally shared users’ information with a research firm, after collecting that data legally through an application for a personality quiz. The research firm is alleged to have illegally used the data of an estimated 50 million Facebook users to build profiles for U.S. political campaigns, including the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Facebook has been criticized for failing to alert its users to the incident in 2015. Wednesday was the first time Zuckerberg publicly addressed the issue.

Included in his statement was a timeline of events that said Facebook demanded in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica delete all improperly acquired data. He said last week he learned from news outlets that the company may not have deleted the data, despite providing certification of having done so. 

Cambridge Analytica has denied that it kept the data. One Facebook executive in charge of security is reportedly leaving the firm as a result the matter.

Zuckerberg said the incident amounted not only to a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook but also “a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it.”

New safeguards

The Facebook founder outlined new precautions his social media platform will take to protect user data in future: identifying any other application developers found to have misused personal data, restricting the types of data available to developers, and ending their access to a user’s data if the user has not used the app in the past three months. He also said Facebook will make it easier for users to revoke apps’ permission to use their data, by putting the tool at the top of a user’s news feed.

Within an hour of its posting, Zuckerberg’s message had garnered more than 32,000 “likes” or other reactions and had been shared more than 10,000 times. User comments varied from fan club-style expressions of support to bitter complaints about Zuckerberg’s failure to speak sooner.

While controversy has swirled, Facebook’s stock value has taken a significant hit. The company has lost more than $45 billion of its stock market value over the past three days. 

Questions about regulation

The probe over Cambridge Analytica is just the latest flashpoint around Facebook’s role in the 2016 election and comes as the company faces questions about how it should be regulated and monitored going forward.

With its more than 2 billion monthly users and billions of dollars in profit, Facebook has become a powerful conduit of news, opinion and propaganda, much of it targeted at individuals based on their own data. The social media site and investigators have found that Russia-backed operatives had used Facebook to spread disinformation and propaganda. 

In recent months, the company, along with YouTube and Twitter, has changed some of its practices to reduce the power of automated accounts and propaganda.  Facebook has said it would hire 10,000 security employees.
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