Welcome to the February 5, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Government Data Deletions Set Off 'Mad Scramble'
• Google Drops Pledge Not to Use AI for Weapons, Surveillance
• DOGE Gains Access to Sensitive Government Databases
• AI Pioneers Awarded 2025 QE Prize for Engineering
• ChatGPT Rolled Out at California State University
• NASA Tests Wildland Fire Tech Ahead of Demo
• U.S. Army 3D-Prints Barracks
• Sweat Sensors Track Health with Printed Nanoparticle Ink
• Federated Learning Under Siege
• Robots Recover Dumped Explosives from Baltic Sea
• AI-powered Drone Company to Assist in Demining Ukrainian Farmlands
• Chick-fil-A's Quest to Make Fast Food Faster
• Waymo to Test Autonomous Driving Tech in 10 New Cities

Government Data Deletions Set Off 'Mad Scramble'

Numerous federal government webpages were taken down last week as agencies rushed to comply with an executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump to remove gender and transgender terminology. As the sites go back online, researchers are finding it difficult to determine what was altered or removed. Some have downloaded data from federal websites for preservation purposes.
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Google Drops Pledge Not to Use AI for Weapons, Surveillance

Google on Tuesday updated its AI ethical guidelines, removing commitments to not apply the technology to weapons or surveillance. In a blog post, Google executives wrote, “We believe democracies should lead in AI development, guided by core values like freedom, equality, and respect for human rights. And we believe that companies, governments, and organizations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security.”
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DOGE Gains Access to Sensitive Government Databases

Concerns are being raised that Elon Musk and his associates at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have installed a commercial server at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, giving them control over a federal database with the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and medical histories of government employees. Critics argue the commercial server was installed illegally and that the DOGE team lacks the security clearance necessary to view such data.
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AI Pioneers Awarded 2025 QE Prize for Engineering

The 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering was bestowed upon seven pioneers of AI technology on Tuesday. The annual prize, awarded to engineers whose innovations have benefited humanity on a global scale, was presented in recognition of contributions to the development of modern machine learning (ML). Recipients included ACM A.M. Turing Award laureates Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun, who were recognized for groundbreaking research into the artificial neural networks that have become the dominant model for ML.
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ChatGPT Rolled Out at California State University

OpenAI is rolling out an education-specific version of its ChatGPT to about 500,000 students and faculty at California State University as it looks to expand its user base in the academic sector. The rollout will enable students to access personalized tutoring and study guides through the chatbot, while faculty will be able to use it for administrative tasks.
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NASA Tests Wildland Fire Tech Ahead of Demo

A portable airspace management system (PAMS) developed by researchers at NASA's Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations may be used to ensure safe drone operations during wildfire response. The PAMS units are equipped with a computer for airspace management, a radio for information-sharing among units, an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast receiver to detect nearby air traffic, and NASA software that helps prevent airborne drone collisions.
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U.S. Army 3D-Prints Barracks

The U.S. Army has unveiled 3D-printed barracks at Fort Bliss, TX, each of which houses 72 soldiers. Constructed using mold-resistant materials, the barracks were engineered to withstand environmental challenges, including severe weather and seismic activity. The project is part of an initiative that aims to explore new construction methods that could deliver durable and energy-efficient housing solutions for service members at lower costs.
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Sweat Sensors Track Health with Printed Nanoparticle Ink

Wearable sweat sensors developed by researchers at the California Institute of Technology are equipped with special nanoparticles that inkjet-print a biomarker, enabling real-time monitoring. The “printable molecule selective nanoparticles” rely on core-shell cubic nanoparticles including the molecule researchers want to measure, such as a drug or vitamin C. They imprint the shape of the desired molecule, which captures the levels of the targeted biomarker inside the human body through an electrical exchange with sweat.
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Federated Learning Under Siege

Researchers in the U.S. and China demonstrated a poisoning attack targeting federated unlearning. The attack, BadUnlearn, ensures the unlearned model closely resembles the poisoned one through the strategic injection of malicious model updates that align with aggregation rules. The researchers then introduced a federated unlearning framework intended to maintain a global model's integrity. The framework, UnlearnGuard, uses historical model updates stored by the server to help detect and filter out poisoned updates.
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Robots Recover Dumped Explosives from Baltic Sea

The German government is funding a project to recover and dispose of World War II-era munitions that were dumped in the Baltic Sea's Bay of Lübeck. For much of September and October 2024, underwater vehicles, fitted with cameras, powerful lights, and sensors, hunted for the explosives, as experts watching from a nearby platform, assessing and identifying each item before disposal. Ultimately, the researchers hope to automate the process.
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AI-powered Drone Company to Assist in Demining Ukrainian Farmlands

U.S.-based AI company Safe Pro Group and Ukrainian agricultural company Nibulon will deploy AI-powered drones to detect landmines embedded in Ukraine's farmland. The partnership will use Safe Pro’s SpotlightAI platform, hosted on Amazon Web Services, to survey affected farmland. Safe Pro’s AI has processed over 931,000 drone images, identifying more than 18,000 explosive remnants across 10,500 acres, to facilitate mine detection.
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Chick-fil-A's Quest to Make Fast Food Faster

Fast-food chain Chick-fil-A uses technology and specialist teams to study drive-through traffic and kitchen operations to identify bottlenecks and suggest improvements to speed up service. Chick-fil-A established a Film Studies unit in 2020 that uses drone pilots to capture footage of parking lots during busy periods. This footage is combined with video from security cameras in the kitchen to produce "game films" that can help restaurants improve their workflow.
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Waymo to Test Autonomous Driving Tech in 10 New Cities

Alphabet's Waymo said its autonomous driving technology will be tested in at least 10 new cities this year, including San Diego and Las Vegas. A company spokesperson said "a limited fleet of vehicles" will be deployed to each city for testing, with trained human autonomous specialists stationed behind the wheel. The firm is under scrutiny from safety regulators following several incidents involving its technology.
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