Digital Gems

A drone that can select and engage targets on its own attacked soldiers during a civil conflict in Libya.Why it matters: If confirmed, it would likely represent the first-known case of a machine-learning-based autonomous weapon being used to kill, potentially heralding a dangerous new era in warfare.Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.Driving the news: According to a recent report by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya, a Turkish-made STM Kargu-2 drone may have "hunted down and ... engaged" retreating soldiers fighting with Libyan Gen. Khalifa Haftar last year.It's not clear whether any soldiers were killed in the attack, although the UN experts — which call the drone a "lethal autonomous weapons system" — imply they likely were.Such an event, writes Zachary Kallenborn — a research affiliate with the Unconventional Weapons and Technology Division of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism — would represent "a new chapter in autonomous weapons, one in which they are used to fight and kill human beings based on artificial intelligence."How it works: The Kargu is a loitering drone that uses computer vision to select and engage targets without a connection between the drone and its operator, giving it "a true 'fire, forget and find' capability," the UN report notes.Between the lines: Recent conflicts — like those between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Israel and Hamas in Gaza — have featured an extensive use of drones of all sorts. The deployment of truly autonomous drones could represent a military revolution on par with the introduction of guns or aircraft — and unlike nuclear weapons, they're likely to be easily obtainable by nearly any military force.What they're saying: "If new technology makes deterrence impossible, it might condemn us to a future where everyone is always on the offense," the economist Noah Smith writes in a frightening post on the future of war. The bottom line: Humanitarian organizations and many AI experts have called for a global ban on lethal autonomous weapons, but a number of countries — including the U.S. — have stood in the way.More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

Facebook has ended its ban on posts asserting Covid-19 was man-made or manufactured, reflecting a deepening debate over the origins of the pandemic.

The doctor is in

Artificial intelligence ethics teams are playing a greater role at tech companies and helping them deal with bias and fairness issues that have cropped up at companies such as Twitter.

Almost 2.5 million people signed up to Dr. B with the promise of getting leftover vaccines. Months later, the site won’t disclose how many doses it helped deliver—or what it plans to do with user data.

Understanding the timing and determinants of age at menarche is key to determining potential linkages between onset of puberty and health outcomes from a lifecourse perspective. Tiziana Leone and Laura Brown show that the age at menarche is declining across low- and middle- income countries and discuss implications.

The company says it was not suppressing certain points of view

Because fatigue can corrode mission performance, a new physical training manual tells soldiers to grab 40 winks when they can, part of a new holistic approach to health in the ranks.

Los-Angeles based startup Canoo revealed its newest — and now third — electric vehicle, a pickup truck that does away with the sharp corners and huge engine housing of both comparable EV trucks and legacy diesel pickups and is aimed at both commercial customers and weekend warrior-minded consumers.…

Listen to this episode from Recode Daily on Spotify. From the Recode Daily archives (April 9, 2021): Dark patterns, the design tricks websites and apps use to get you to click “yes,” are all over the digital world. Recode’s Sara Morrison (@SaraMorrison) explains the movement to regulate them. You can read Sara’s story on dark patterns here. Enjoyed this episode? Rate Recode Daily ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. What do you want to learn on Recode Daily? Send your requests and questions to recodedaily@recode.net. We read every email!  Support Recode Daily by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of Recode Daily by subscribing in your favorite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices This episode was made by:  Host: Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) Producer: Will Reid (@WillR56) Engineer: Paul Mounsey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gleyber Torres is the eighth person (and the first player) from the Yankees organization to test positive for the coronavirus this week. All had been vaccinated.

Lead screenings for children plummeted last spring, and stay-at-home orders may have increased household exposure to the toxic metal.

Some researchers are up in arms about a U.S. Census Bureau proposal to add privacy protections by manipulating numbers in the data most widely used for economic and demographic research

A brain–computer interface enables rapid communication through neural decoding of attempted handwriting movements in a person with paralysis.

A family used their car to stay warm when a storm brought down the Texas power grid. In a state that doesn’t require CO alarms, they had no warning they were poisoning themselves.

Just 6% of respondents said they ensure AI is used ethically and responsibly by making development teams diverse.

This tool draws from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (2000-2016) to provide a snapshot of the U.S. Psychology Workforce on race/ethnicity, age and disability status.

I have had the privilege of being at Google for the past six years. One of the most impressive things I’ve seen there was an Ethical AI…

Overview of the demographic and educational characteristics, employment settings, direct patient/client care provision, and other provider-related information for licensed health service psychologists in the United States.

The cache includes data on 1.7 million incidents, giving insight into the scale of Citizen around the country.

This report describes racial and ethnic disparities in stress and worry, mental health, and substance use during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The social network expands punishments for misleading posts to individuals for the first time.