Teams of scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tackling bias in facial recognition technology have two recommendations for its developers: more external oversight and more representative training data.

Much of urban America is in the market for ways to handle the pressures that come with growing and changing populations. Enter “smart cities:” The movement to make municipal planning more efficient and effective for residents, which has a lot of champions but no one-size-fits-all program.

In 2018 we were made very proud by our users, partners, and reporters, who all helped to start some terrific investigations and resources. Take a look at some of the ongoing work.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, supported by a multimillion dollar donation from a hedge fund CEO and a history of expertise in artificial intelligence, wants to become a world leader in examining AI’s impact and lead its integration in all aspects of professional and social life.

Governments and private companies using artificial intelligence to make significant decisions should be much more transparent about their work - and quit claiming the details are trade secrets they can keep from public scrutiny, says a new report from the AI Now Institute, based at New York University.

Today we’re publishing the first piece in an ongoing collaboration between MuckRock and the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law exploring local government use of big data, artificial intelligence, and algorithms. Sign up now for regular updates, or submit a tip on public policy algorithms you’d like to see added to our open database.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, emails show correspondence between Amazon and Immigration and Customs Enforcement representatives regarding the tech giant’s facial recognition software, public and confidential data from Chicago revealed a decade of sexual abuse of students throughout public schools, and a significant amount of National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s historical artifacts have gone missing or been taken in the agency’s lifetime, highlighting flawed storage and tracking procedures.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation file on famed artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky documents what appears to be a 1964 investigation into the wife of one of Minsky’s acquaintances, whom the Bureau suspected of being a Soviet spy. Though details are scarce and redactions heavy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor does manage to add some fuel to an ancient Ivy League rivalry.

Though local police departments have policies governing their own social media use and have slowed their purchases of online monitoring software, changes in immigration policy offer growing markets for the technology.

“Follow the money” is great on paper but can often feel tedious in real life, but this week there were a number of great examples showing how following a paper trail, whether documents regarding the incorporation of a religion or a parking ticket database, can lead to interesting stories.