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School officials from the Canyons School District changed their book review and selection policy and returned nine titles they removed from the shelves a few months ago. These books were first removed after Utah parents asked school officials in various emails and letters to censor the books because they contained pornographic material. (Andrea Zapata)

Canyons School District school officials returned nine titles to bookshelves after removing them last November because of Utah parents denouncing their pornographic and obscene content.

Utah parents sent several emails and letters to the Canyons School District at the end of 2021, asking them to remove from the shelves some books with content parents claimed were explicit.

We do not want explicit pornographic materials in schools, said Nichole Mason, president of Utah Parents United. Sex does not belong in a public school library, she added, referring to the nine titles parents have targeted for displaying illustrations and content they oppose.

Utah Parents United is one of the groups that led this advocacy mission and was vocal about the schools moral obligation to protect children and remove any harmful material school libraries may have, Mason said.

Utah Parents United has a list of books featuring content they label as pornographic and explicit.

We have been on the news with this, and when we show them the images of these books, they need to blur them out, Mason said. Yet this is what is on our public school library shelves.

In response to the large number of requests and emails Canyons School District received from groups like Utah Parents United, school officials decided to remove the nine most controversial titles from public school library shelves. This action violated the content review policy to which Canyons School District was subject.

There was a feeling that we needed a pause, Canyons School District spokesperson Kirsten Stewart said when asked about why books were pulled off the shelves without following the review process stipulated in their policy.

Librarian associations and First Amendment advocacy groups have been outspoken about the seriousness and illegality of Canyons School Districts actions.

We do believe there is a place for a parent to question what books should be in a library, Utah Library Association Executive Director Mindy Hale said. The problem with these recent attacks and book removals is that they are not following the policies.

Katie Wegner, the Intellectual Freedom Committee co-chair at Utah Library Association, said these actions by the Canyons School District would open the schools to possible civil lawsuits.

One of the groups investigating the situation is the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah.

This action violated the rights of students, said John Mejia, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. It gave us great concern, particularly because a lot of these books were about marginalized and oppressed identities, and its important that students with these identities have access to books that relate to them and put them in a positive light.

According to several librarians from the Utah Library Association, the real motivation of the Utah parents is not to remove obscene content, but to target those books dealing with race and LGBT issues. Many books out of the nine titles removed have queer or people-of-color protagonists such as Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison.

Mason said these allegations are completely false.

These books clearly violate Utah state code, as they are pornographic in nature, she said. It doesnt matter what race or sexuality it is: That is irrelevant, as those images are still pornography.

The new Canyons School District policy for the School Library Materials Selection and Review was published on Jan. 4, and as of Jan. 20, the books pulled off the shelves have been returned to libraries.

No action has been taken on any title at the moment, Stewart said. Those books are now back on the shelves and will be reviewed by the new policy by the board of education.

She said the new policy is balanced and provides clarity and transparency in how school officials select and review books.

Upon being informed of the action to return the books to the shelves, Mejia said the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah is still in the process of investigating and reaching out to school officials. However, Mejia said since the situation changed and there is a new policy, We will most likely not sue them because our priority is that they reconsider, and although we need to confirm that, it seems like they have by returning the books.

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Pornography and censorship: Controversial books returned to Utah school libraries' shelves - The Daily Universe - Universe.byu.edu

Google has asked the High Court of Australia to overturn a 2020 ruling it warns could have a devastating effect on the wider internet. In a filing the search giant made on Friday, Google claims it will be forced to act as censor if the countrys highest court doesnt overturn a decision that awarded a lawyer $40,000 in defamation damages for an article the company had linked to through its search engine, reports The Guardian.

In 2016, George Defteros, a Victoria state lawyer whose past client list included individuals implicated in Melbourne's notorious gangland killings, contacted Google to ask the company to remove a 2004 article from The Age. The piece featured reporting on murder charges prosecutors filed against Defteros related to the death of three men. Those charges were later dropped in 2005. The company refused to remove the article from its search results as it viewed the publication as a reputable source.

The matter eventually went to court with Defteros successfully arguing the article and Googles search results had defamed him. The judge who oversaw the case ruled The Ages reporting had implied Defteros had been cozy with Melbournes criminal underground. The Victorian Court of Appeals subsequently rejected a bid by Google to overturn the ruling.

From Googles perspective, at issue here is one of the fundamental building blocks of the internet. A hyperlink is not, in and of itself, the communication of that to which it links, the company contends in its submission to the High Court. If the 2020 judgment is left to stand, Google claims it will make it liable as the publisher of any matter published on the web to which its search results provide a hyperlink, including news stories that come from reputable sources. In its defense, the company points to a 2011 ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada that held a hyperlink by itself is never a publication of defamatory material.

Weve reached out to Google for comment.

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Google claims court ruling would force it to 'censor' the internet - Yahoo Tech

Politicians need to focus on issues that have an impact on Iowans lives, not enforcing the pledge of allegiance.

Yet again, Iowa Republicans are introducing harmful and unnecessary bills in the Legislature.

In an effort to uphold blind patriotism, Sen. Adrian Dickey introduced a bill that would require teachers to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Teachers would also be barred from talking about the pledge in an unpatriotic manner. The only exception is if the teacher has a disability that prevents them from standing and reciting the pledge.

This bill infringes on the freedom of speech of teachers and enforces the harmful censorship that has been used to erase marginalized identities.

Besides the freedom of speech and censorship concerns, teachers respecting the pledge doesnt even seem to be a problem in Iowas public schools.

Without any legislation in place, we started every morning with the Pledge of Allegiance when I was in elementary school. Most students stood and mindlessly recited the words. However, some students did not due to religious beliefs. Nevertheless, it was a daily practice that my teachers never commented on, and students paid very little attention to.

This is not the first time in recent Iowa history that Republicans introduced a bill about the Pledge of Allegiance. At the end of last years legislative session, a bill was passed that required schools to present the flag and require the school to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day.

Ultimately, students cannot be forced to recite the pledge because of their right to free expression. This was established in 1943 with the Supreme Court ruling case, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.

Because it is established that students cannot be forced to recite the pledge, why would teachers be any different? In fact, this bill takes these free speech infringements a step further by censoring the language used surrounding the pledge.

Instead of improving the public school system in Iowa, this seems to be another attempt to uphold conservative ideas of patriotism, which often means erasing minority voices.

Through this proposal, teachers would not be allowed to say any unpatriotic commentary on the United States, or language that has any political influence on students. Along with possible infringement on free speech, this bill is further complicated by how we view patriotism.

Republicans have made attempts left and right to censor teachers. However, it all seems rooted in the same silencing of minorities. Bills were put into place last year to bar teachers from teaching the 1619 Project in schools because of concerns it is not historically accurate and misrepresents the values of America. Iowa schools are also facing increasing attention and possible bans of several books being taught, mostly ones highlighting minority experiences, such as The Hate u Give, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.

The abundance of censorship and backlash when it comes to language or teaching that involves minority experiences suggests this legislature is not about protecting students its about continuing to erase and censor certain identities.

Censoring the language teachers use about the pledge is a step in the same direction, attempting to control unpatriotic language in the classroom. But what do we define as unpatriotic, and who is creating these definitions?

It seems Republicans focus is less about unifying the country and more about making sure certain ways of thinking about America are controlled. This is being done through book bans, attempting to erase the 1619 Project, or controlling speech surrounding the pledge. Conservative powers are infringing on what information can be shared or spoken.

Classrooms can be powerful places to grow through education. Instead of investing in bettering the education system, Republican senators are focused on censoring language and upholding their definition of patriotism.

Columns reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board, The Daily Iowan, or other organizations in which the author may be involved.

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Opinion | Iowa Republicans need to focus on real issues rather than patriotism - UI The Daily Iowan

After decades of extravagant promises and frustrating disappointments, artificial intelligence(AI) is finally starting to deliver real-life benefits to early-adopting companies. Retailers on the digital frontier rely on AI-powered robots to run their warehousesand even to automatically order stock when inventory runs low. Utilities use AI to forecast electricity demand. Automakers harness the technology in self-driving cars.

A confluence of developments is driving this new wave of AI development. Computer power is growing, algorithms and AI models are becoming more sophisticated, and, perhaps most important of all, the world is generating once-unimaginable volumes of the fuel that powers AIdata. Billions of gigabytes every day, collected by networked devices ranging from web browsers to turbine sensors.

The entrepreneurial activity unleashed by these developments drew three times as much investment in 2016between $26 billion and $39 billionas it did three years earlier. Most of the investment in AI consists of internal R&D spending by large, cash-rich digital-native companies like Amazon, Baidu, and Google.

For all of that investment, much of the AI adoption outside of the tech sector is at an early, experimental stage. Few firms have deployed it at scale. In a McKinsey Global Institute discussion paper, Artificial intelligence: The next digital frontier?, which includes a survey of more than 3,000 AI-aware companies around the world, we find early AI adopters tend to be closer to the digital frontier, are among the larger firms within sectors, deploy AI across the technology groups, use AI in the most core part of the value chain, adopt AI to increase revenue as well as reduce costs, and have the full support of the executive leadership. Companies that have not yet adopted AI technology at scale or in a core part of their business are unsure of a business case for AI or of the returns they can expect on an AI investment.

However, early evidence suggests that there is a business case to be made, and that AI can deliver real value to companies willing to use it across operations and within their core functions. In our survey, early AI adopters that combine strong digital capability with proactive strategies have higher profit margins and expect the performance gap with other firms to widen in the next three years.

This adoption pattern is widening a gap between digitized early adopters and others. Sectors at the top of MGIs Industry Digitization Index, such as high tech and telecoms or financial services, are also leading AI adopters and have the most ambitious AI investment plans. These leaders use multiple technologies across multiple functions or deploy AI at the core of their business. Automakers, for example, use AI to improve their operations as well as develop self-driving vehicles, while financial-services companies use it in customer-experience functions. As these firms expand AI adoption and acquire more data, laggards will find it harder to catch up.

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Governments also must get ahead of this change, by adopting regulations to encourage fairness without inhibiting innovation and proactively identifying the jobs that are most likely to be automated and ensuring that retraining programs are available to people whose livelihoods are at risk from AI-powered automation. These individuals need to acquire skills that work with, not compete against, machines.

The future of AI will be innovative, but may not be shared equally. Companies based in the United States absorbed 66 percent of all external investments into AI companies in 2016, according to our global review; Chinawas second, at 17 percent, and is growing fast. Both countries have grown AI ecosystemsclusters of entrepreneurs, financiers, and AI usersand have issued national strategic plans in the past 18 months with significant AI dimensions, in some cases backed up by billions of dollars of AI-funding initiatives. South Korea and the United Kingdom have issued similar strategic plans. Other countries that desire to become significant players in AI would be wise to emulate these leaders.

Significant gains are there for the taking. For many companies, this means accelerating the digital-transformation journey. AI is not going to allow companies to leapfrog getting the digital basics right. They will have to get the right digital assets and skills in place to be able to effectively deploy AI.

Download the discussion paper on which this article is based, Artificial intelligence: The next digital frontier? (PDF3MB).

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How artificial intelligence can deliver real value to ...

Can common business sense be programmed into AI? Many are certainly trying to do just that. But there are decisions that often require a level of empathy -- let alone common sense -- that may be too difficult to embed into algorithms. In addition, while AI and machine learning are the hot tickets of the moment, technologists and decision makers need to think about whether it offers a practical solution to every problem or opportunity.

These points came up at a panel at the recentAI Summit, in which participants agreed that AI shouldn't be considered the default solution to every business situation that arises. (I co-chaired the conference and moderated the panel.) For starters, AI is still a relatively immature technology, saidDrew Scarano, a panelist at the session and vice president of global financial services atAntWorks. "We might be too reliant on this technology, forgetting about the humans in the loop and how they play an integral part in complementing artificial intelligence in order to get desired results."

AI is being used for many purposes across all industries, but the risk is in de-humanizing the interpersonal qualities that help build and sustain companies. "Today we can use AI for anything from approving a credit card to approving a mortgage to approving any kind of lending vehicle," said Scarano. "But without human intervention to be able to understand there's more to a human than a credit score, there's more to a person than getting approved or denied for a mortgage."

Scarano poo-poos the notion that AI systems comprise anything close to a "digital workforce," noting that "it's just a way to sell more stuff. I can sell 50 digital workers rather than one system. But digital workforce is just a bunch of code that does a specific task, and that task can be repeatable, or be customized." Another panelist,Rod Butters, chief technology officer forAible, agrees, noting that "at the end of the day, it's a machine. In the end, it's all 1s and 0s." The way to make AI more in tune with the business "is to get better tooling, craft, and experience with applying these machines in ways that first and foremost is transparent, and secondly understandable in some way, and ultimately something that is achieving an outcome that is business oriented or community oriented."

AI may be able to deliver fine-grained results based on logic beyond the capacity of human brains, but this may actually "run counter to what the business needs to be doing strategically," says Butters. "Because you can't have the visibility, you get unintended consequences, which can lead to complete disparities and equity in the application of processes to your customer base." Importantly, "there needs to be a feedback loop to ensure solutions you're implementing are resonating with your customers, and they're enjoying the experience as much as you're enjoying creating the experience," according to panelistRobert Magno, solutions architect withRun:AI.

Other experts across the industry also voice concern that AI is being pushed too hard in ways in may not be needed. "AI is not the solution to every business problem," says Pieter Buteneers, director of engineering in machine learning and AI at Sinch. "It sounds sexy, but there are going to be times when it's better to lean into how to best address customer needs rather than blindly investing in new technology."

While AI has the potential to make business processes more efficient and affordable, "at the end of the day, it is still a machine," Buteneers says. "AI lacks human emotion and common sense, so it can make certain mistakes that humans, instinctively, would not. AI can be easily fooled in certain ways that humans would spot from a mile away. For those who worry that AI will replace human jobs, we invariably need people working alongside AI bots to keep them in check and maintain a human touch in business."

AI initiatives "must be aligned with the company's operational needs and workflows to ensure a high level of adoption," agrees Sameer Khanna, senior vice president of engineering at Pager. "Identifying real world problems with user feedback is essential. Once the product is rolled out, there must be a continuous effort to engage users, monitor performance and improve solutions over time."

There are areas worth exploring with AI, however. For instance, "AI can reach and even surpass human performance in strictly defined tasks such as image recognition and language understanding," Buteneers says. "Harnessing the power of natural language processing enables AI systems to understand, write and speak languages like humans do. This offers tremendous benefits for businesses -- deploying an NLP-equipped chatbot or voicebot to complement the work of live service agents, for example, frees up those live agents to respond to complicated inquiries that require a more human approach."

Buteneers notes that "breakthroughs in NLP are making an enormous difference in how AI understands input from humans. I've helped design chatbots that can now understand 100+ languages at once, with AI assistants that can search for answers within any given body of text. AI can even make live customer service agents more effective by reading along during a conversation and offering them suggested responses based on previous conversations, customer context or from a larger knowledge base. Different algorithms in the NLP field can identify and analyze a message that may be fraudulent, which can allow organizations to weed out any spam messages before they get sent to consumers. The applications of NLP can provide countless benefits to any business: it can help save time and money, enhance the customer experience, and automate processes."

Still, human oversight is essential to ensuring these solutions serve customers. "Reviewing AI results should be the standard design process of algorithms -- it's ignorant to believe that once you've set up your model, your job is done," Buteneers says.

Khanna relates how his own company's ideas for AI projects "come primarily from collaboration between our data scientists and internal and client business stakeholders." This partnership "generates well-defined and feasible AI projects that are grounded in business realities," he adds. "Our data engineers, data scientists, and machine learning engineers then implement these projects using open-source technologies and proprietary products from cloud providers."

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The never-ending effort to bake common business sense into artificial intelligence - ZDNet