NAGOYA - Toyota Motor Corp. is considering offering autonomous driving technologies to ride-hailing firms, sources close to the matter said Thursday, in its latest push to become a company offering not only cars but also various mobility services. The automaker is planning to supply a new driverless system to be developed with U.S. ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. to companies such as Grab Taxi Holdings Pte Ltd. of Singapore and ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd.'s Ola of India, the sources said. Toyota said last month it will jointly invest $1 billion in Uber's new subsidiary to develop autonomous vehicles, together with SoftBank Group Corp. and auto parts supplier Denso Corp. SoftBank Group is the biggest shareholder in Uber and has also invested in Grab and Ola. Toyota is also a stakeholder in Grab, which has a wide range of businesses across Southeast Asia.

As founder and CEO of Appier, a company that uses artificial intelligence to help businesses solve problems, Chih-Han Yu, Ph.D. '10, is immersed in the latest technological trends. But for Yu, who knew nothing about computers during his youth in Taiwan, the journey to becoming a tech-savvy innovator was nearly derailed before it began. While he decided to follow his father's advice and study computer science in college, he didn't enjoy the classes and nearly abandoned the field completely. It wasn't until his junior year, when he took an artificial intelligence class, that Yu became captivated by the seemingly endless potential of computers. His desire to build a program to recognize human faces soon bordered on an obsession, he said.

Not all bubbles have negative consequences for the economy. An AI bubble is more likely to generate value than wreak havoc. With investments in artificial intelligence rising rapidly, especially in China and the United States, two questions arise: Are we heading toward an AI bubble? And if so, how bad would it be if the bubble were to burst? Having studied AI intensely for the past two years, our best guess to the first question is, yes, today's fascination with all things AI has most of the trappings of a financial bubble.

A new report details what privacy experts are calling a dangerous misapplication of facial recognition that uses photos of celebrities and digitally-doctored images to comb for criminals. According to a detailed investigation by Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, one New York Police Department detective attempted to identify a suspect by scanning the face of actor Woody Harrelson. After footage from a security camera failed to produce results in a facial recognition scan, the detective used Google images of what he concluded to be the suspects celebrity doppelganger -- Woody Harrelson -- to run a test. The system turned up a match, says the report, who was eventually arrested on charges of petit larceny. In a new report from Georgetown University, an investigation shows that police have used celebrities to help its facial recognition software identify suspects.

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - A Yemen rebel drone strike this week on a critical Saudi oil pipeline shows that the otherwise-peaceful sandy reaches of the Arabian Peninsula now are at risk of similar assault, including an under-construction nuclear power plant and Dubai International Airport, among the world's busiest. U.N. investigators said the Houthis' new UAV-X drone, found in recent months during the Saudi-led coalition's war in Yemen, likely has a range of up to 1,500 km (930 miles). That puts the far reaches of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two main opponents of the Iranian-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen, within reach of drones difficult to detect and track. Their relatively simple design, coupled with readily available information online, makes targeting even easier, analysts say. "These installations are easily findable, like on Google Earth," said Tim Michetti, an expert on illicit weapons technology with experience in Yemen.

SANAA - The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen carried out several airstrikes on the Houthi-held capital Sanaa on Thursday after the Iranian-aligned movement claimed responsibility for drone attacks on Saudi oil installations. The Sanaa strikes targeted nine military sites in and around the city, residents said, with humanitarian agencies reporting a number of casualties. Rubble filled a populated street lined by mud-brick houses, a Reuters journalist on the scene said. A crowd of men lifted the body of a women, wrapped in a white shroud, into an ambulance. Houthi-run Masirah television quoted the Houthi health ministry as saying six civilians, including four children, had been killed and 60 wounded, including two Russian women working in the health sector.

YOKOHAMA - Nissan Motor Co. said Thursday that from this fall it will start offering a system that allows navigated highway driving and hands-off single-lane driving, in the automaker's latest push toward self-driving vehicles. Nissan said its Skyline sedan for the Japanese market can be equipped with the new driver assistance system, the first of its kind in the world. Aiming to revive its sluggish earnings, the automaker is seeking to enhance the quality and brand image of its vehicles with next-generation technologies under a medium-term business plan unveiled Tuesday. "No other company has this technology of a navigated highway driving system with hands-off single-lane driving," Nissan Executive Vice President Kunio Nakaguro told a news conference at the carmaker's headquarters in Yokohama. Tetsuya Iijima, general manager of Nissan's autonomous drive development, said it would not be easy for other carmakers to commercially offer a more sophisticated assistance system for the moment. To use the new system, drivers will need to first set their destinations in the navigation system before entering the highway.

While blockchain and quantum computing continue to inch up the emerging technologies hype cycle, artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionising the financial services industry by stealth. Fuelled by the three'V's of big data – velocity, volume and variety – AI tools are being deployed across the bank, from the customer front end to deep in the back office. AI is an umbrella term that covers robotic process automation, or the simple automation of processes such as data entry; natural language processing (NLP), most commonly used in chatbots; and machine learning, as is used in robo-advisory services and credit scoring. To date, much of the focus has been on customer benefits, such as improved experience and more personalised products; however, Cathy Bessant, Bank of America's chief operations and technology officer, believes that the more exciting application areas are in risk management and financial forecasting. "AI gives us the ability to take vast amounts of data and produce forecasts and risk assessments based on changing variables to understand their impact. The opportunity for fast, world-class risk management is huge," she says.

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are generally hungry for data, a trend which is accelerating. A new breed of AI approaches, called lifelong learning machines, are being designed to pull data continually and indefinitely. But this is already happening with other AI approaches, albeit with human intervention. A steady stream of data is the fuel for coveted results. But, with the ever-increasing importance of data, the stakes of data bias are growing ever higher.

With leaders increasingly seeing artificial intelligence (AI) as helping to drive the next great economic expansion, a fear of missing out is spreading around the globe. Numerous nations have developed AI strategies to advance their capabilities, through investment, incentives, talent development, and risk management. As AI's importance to the next generation of technology grows, many leaders are worried that they will be left behind and not share in the gains. There is a growing realization of AI's importance, including its ability to provide competitive advantage and change work for the better. A majority of global early adopters say that AI technologies are especially important to their business success today--a belief that is increasing. A majority also say they are using AI technologies to move ahead of their competition, and that AI empowers their workforce. AI success depends on getting the execution right. Organizations often must excel at a wide range of practices to ensure AI success, including developing a strategy, pursuing the right use cases, building a data foundation, and cultivating a strong ability to experiment. These capabilities are critical now because, as AI becomes even easier to consume, the window for competitive differentiation will likely shrink. Early adopters from different countries display varying levels of AI maturity. Enthusiasm and experience vary among early adopters from different countries. Some are pursuing AI vigorously, while others are taking a more cautious approach.