The public cloud division of Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba Group today is introducing new artificial-intelligence (AI) services targeting two specific industries, health care and manufacturing. The Alibaba Cloud is touting an ET Medical Brain and an ET Industrial Brain, each of which encompasses a number of services. The latter will give companies tools for monitoring the production process, improving energy efficiency, and predicting when maintenance will be needed. Also today, Alibaba is announcing the launch of version 2.0 of its PAI machine learning service. Alibaba introduced the original PAI in 2015.

After numerous rejections, Apple finally decided to allow a drone-strike notification app back on the App Store Tuesday after it was pulled in 2015 -- and then took it down again hours later. The app called Metadata, created by Josh Begley from The Intercept, sends a notification every time a U.S. drone strike is reported in the news. Begley, created the app five years ago and called it Drone . He said Tuesday in an article for The Intercept Apple rejected the app three times for "excessively objectionable or crude content." However, the app didn't include graphic images or video and only aggregated news about drone strikes. "If anything about the app is'excessively objectionable or crude,' perhaps it's the airstrikes themselves," wrote Begley.

Are public services ready to exploit artificial intelligence?

Can artificial intelligence (AI) help address global challenges such as poverty, hunger, health, education, equality and the protection of our environment? The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is hosting the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva this June. The summit, to be held in partnership with UN agencies, including OHCHR, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNICRI, UNIDO, UNITAR and UN Global Pulse, will evaluate opportunities presented by AI and how it can benefit humanity. It seeks to convene representatives of government, industry, UN agencies, civil society, and the AI research community to explore the latest developments in AI and their implications for regulation, ethics and security and privacy. Breakout sessions will invite participants to collaborate and propose strategies for the development of AI applications and systems to promote sustainable living, reduce poverty and deliver citizen-centric public services.

UberEats, the food delivery service introduced by ride sharing giant Uber, will expand across more than 40 towns and cities in the UK before the end of the year as it continues to compete with rivals Deliveroo and JustEat. Uber, whose car-hailing app has caused upheaval in the taxi industry, disrupted the takeaway market in London when it launched UberEats in June last year. The app is now also available in Manchester and Birmingham and more than 1 million customers have downloaded it since its launch, according to the company. "It's clear from the response we've seen in London, Manchester and Birmingham that there's huge appetite from people to order food at the touch of a button from their favourite local restaurants," Jambu Palaniappan, regional manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa at UberEats, said. "We're really excited about the future of the business which is why we're investing heavily in an ambitious plan to launch the app in at least 40 towns and cities in the UK by the end of the year," he added.

Yuval Noah Harari's first book, Sapiens, was an international sensation. The Israeli historian's mind-bending tour through the triumph of Homo sapiens is a favorite of, among others, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barack Obama. His new book, Homo Deus: a Brief History of Tomorrow, is about what comes next for humanity -- and the threat our own intelligence and creative capacity poses to our future. I spoke with Harari recently for my podcast, The Ezra Klein Show. To hear our whole conversation, subscribe on iTunes (or wherever you get your podcasts) or stream it off SoundCloud. In this excerpt, which has been edited for length and clarity, Harari and I discuss the rise of artificial intelligence, whether digital consciousness is a necessary byproduct of digital intelligence, and what it will all mean for human beings. As you'll see, I'm a bit less convinced than Harari is that the computers are coming for our jobs, and that human beings are on the edge of economic uselessness.

Early-stage venture fund, pi Ventures has secured an undisclosed amount of investment from venture capital fund Accel Partners. The World Bank's financial arm, International Finance Corporation (IFC) has also proposed to make an equity investment of $3 Mn in the fund. This investment would be made through the IFC Startup Catalyst (ISC) programme. Commenting on the development, Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures said, "Accel has played a key role as they have been good mentors and go to guys for us. We are working on some investments along with them as well. So, it is good to get them on board as investors in the fund. Also, we are excited that IFC is considering us. The process is still on."

The Bonassama District Hospital in Douala, Cameroon and six other African hospitals are adopting SOPHiA to – no matter their experience in genomic testing – get up to speed and analyze genomic data to identify disease-causing mutations in patients' genomic profiles, and decide on the most effective care. A release from the global leader in Data-Driven Medicine, Sophia Genetics, says in addition to the Bonassama district hospital, the modern technology is being adopted by Pharma Process in Casablanca, Morocco; ImmCell in Rabat, Morocco; The Al Azhar Oncology Center in Rabat, Morocco; The Riad Biology Center in Rabat, Morocco; The Oudayas, Medical Analysis Laboratory, Morocco;and The Center for Proteomic & Genomic Research (CPGR) in Cape Town, South Africa. As new users of SOPHiA, they become part of a larger network of 260 hospitals in 46 countries that share clinical insights across patient cases and patient populations, which feeds a knowledgebase of biomedical findings to accelerate diagnostics and care. Speaking about the adoption of SOPHiA in Africa, Jurgi Camblong, Sophia Genetics' CEO and co-founder, declared: "Since inception, our vision has been to develop innovative technological solutions that analyze patients' genomic profiles to offer better diagnosis and care to the greatest number of patients, wherever they live. Today, I am very proud that SOPHiA is triggering a technological leapfrog movement in healthcare across Africa."

Here are some incredibly smart people that are pushing boundaries and/or doing some incredibly inventive things in emerging technology and other areas. Whether it's healthcare, news or immersive technologies - these are the people you'll be hearing a lot more from - collaborate with them now and be a bigger part of the future. Burrell was described as "offering new thinking and fresh ideas to strengthen the future of broadcasting" after taking top honors at the National Association of Broadcasters Innovation Pilot Award for "In Your Shoes" (a broadcast and 360 VR series), Recently working with heavy-hitters like Steven Spielberg's virtual reality company ('The VR Company'), Burrell's work with Oculus has been considered for an Interactive Emmy ("Take Back the Mic: The World Cup of Hip Hop"). Recently returning from South Africa where she created a partnership with Ndaba Mandela (grandson to Nelson Mandela and Founder of Africa Rising), to bring the coding, robotics and emerging technology program permanently to the continent. IN HER OWN WORDS: "There's a strong feeling of uncertainty in the world right now, but when we ask ourselves, 'how can I use the the tools of today and the technology of tomorrow to harness something meaningful and good', we are empowered to reshape our experience of the world."

Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to hit the road in an alternative fashion to driverless cars, thanks to an AI powered concept tyre from Goodyear. The tyre maker debuted the Eagle 360 Urban, a 3D printed sensor-leaden spherical tyre with feeds back road data into an AI'brain' allowing for the tyre to by dynamically adjusted to suit changing road conditions. Covered in a super-elastic polymer that acts as a form of bionic skin for the tyre, and a morphing tread, the Eagle 360 Urban can use actuators to dynamically change the tread design of the tyre without compromising its support of the vehicles it is connected to. This allows the tyre to be adjusted for different driving conditions on the fly, for example in wet conditions dimples can be added to the treads to provide extra grip, while in dry conditions the tyre can be smoothed out to allow for smoother driving. If the bionic skin is damaged, the tyre's sensors will detect the problem and prompt the tyre to rotate to avoid contact of the damaged section with the road, thereby reducing pressure on that section of the tyre and allowing a self-healing process to start through the use of material that react physically and chemically together to form monocular bonds to repair punctures.