Huawei has released its Atlas computing platform, which is powered by its new Ascend series of artificial intelligence chips. It announced the new devices during Huawei Connect 2018, its annual conference in Shanghai. "The Atlas intelligent computing platform integrates various forms of products, such as modules, cards, boards, edge stations, and appliances, to build an all-scenario AI infrastructure covering the end, edge, and cloud," Huawei said. Huawei also said that the new Atlas platform is an evolution of the cloud hardware platform it released last year, and consists of several devices. These include the Atlas 200 AI accelerator module aimed at terminals, the Atlas 300 AI accelerator card designed for data centre use, the Atlas 500 AI edge station, and the Atlas 800 AI appliance, positioned for enterprises. The key features of Huawei's new Atlas product line are summarised below:

Rolls-Royce revealed its plans to deploy autonomous ships back in 2016, outlining its strategy and a general overview of how the vessels would work. Now, the ship designer -- Rolls-Royce for shipping and Rolls-Royce the luxury automaker are separate corporate entities -- has announced that it's working with Intel to create cargo vessels that can navigate the oceans without a human crew onboard. Instead, the ships will have LIDAR, radar, thermal cameras and HD cameras as part of its intelligence awareness system. They'll also have server rooms to power the company's AI and to store the massive amounts of data all those sensors will collect. Intel's Field Programmable Gate Array technology will help Rolls-Royce solve design challenges and provide the components needed for obstacle detection and navigation. The ships' AI will also rely on Intel's Xeon Scalable processors for decision-making based on the information gathered by the sensors.

The multilateral system urgently needs to help build a new social contract to ensure that technological innovation, in particular artificial intelligence (AI), is deployed safely and aligned with the ethical needs of a globalizing world. Swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts and fake news websites have claimed online territory, with significant repercussions globally. Just consider a few recent events: in the 2016 US presidential elections, Russia empowered one candidate over another through a massive campaign that included paid ads, fake social media accounts and polarizing content. In China, tech giants Alibaba and Tencent have deployed millions of cameras equipped with facial recognition to commodify continuous streams of intimate data about citizens. In Myanmar, a UN report confirmed that Facebook posts have fuelled virulent hate speech directed at Rohingya Muslims.

The introduction of 5G is set to revolutionise the world we live in, du's chief infrastructure officer has claimed. Saleem Al Balooshi said the next generation of cellular communication had the potential to be the biggest change to human life since the industrial revolution. Speaking at Gitex Technology Week in Dubai this week, the telecom executive said 5G would allow for an unprecedented level of interaction between man and machine. He added that the technology was now in its final stages of preparation, and could be rolled out across the UAE as early as the end of March 2019. "It is going to allow us to connect billions of devices," he said. "We will see massive changes to society once 5G goes live.

Google's internal tests developing a censored search engine in China have been very promising, CEO Sundar Pichai said on stage on Monday as part of the WIRED 25 Summit. "It turns out we'll be able to serve well over 99 percent of the queries," that users request. What's more, "There are many, many areas where we would provide information better than what's available," such as searching for cancer treatments, Pichai said. "Today people either get fake cancer treatments or they actually get useful information." While onstage at the event, Pichai did not back away from Google's controversial decision to build a censored search engine in China.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said China has persecuted minorities on a massive scale. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley accused China of persecuting religious and ethnic minorities on a massive scale Monday in her first public remarks since announcing she would leave office last week. "It is the largest internment of civilians in the world today," Haley said in keynote remarks at the Chiefs of Defense Conference Dinner in Washington. "It may be the largest since World War II." The former South Carolina governor was particularly critical of Beijing's crackdown on Uighur and other Muslim minorities in China's northwest, which she described as being "straight out of George Orwell."

More than 50,000 jobs in data science and machine learning are lying vacant due to shortage of qualified talent, says an industry report. Such is the situation that the market has twice the number of jobs as jobseekers, indicating an urgent need for professionals to upskill, said the study by online and hybrid education company Great Learning, shared exclusively with ET. "India lacks massively when it comes to talent in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence," Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder of Great Learning, said. "With more and more jobs increasingly becoming data-driven, the need of the hour is for professionals to upskill themselves to stay relevant." The primary reason for the demand supply gap, according to Nair, is that the kind of projects companies are implementing require a higher order of data skills that do not exist. "What people learn in colleges is not in sync with what is being used in industry," he said.

Graphs Future Agenda First published September 2018 by: Future Agenda Limited 84 Brook Street London W1K 5EH www.futureagenda.org

Except for the sexism that continues to persist throughout the market, toys have evolved a lot in recent decades. Children are now having fun with new tech-heavy toys -- a trend that has only grown stronger with the digital revolution. Dolls, fire trucks, electric trains, and many other toys are not just "lifeless" miniature replicas of their real-life inspirations like they used to be. For one thing, electronic chips have become omnipresent in toys, adding more and more features, functions, and interactivity to them. But this was only the start of the toy tech revolution.

According to Lee, it is a well known belief within the tech industry that American innovation sets the standard for the rest of the world. China will often take new technologies created by American companies, copy them, and sell them as Chinese products -- usually under a very similar name and near identical design. Because of this strategy, American tech companies often see Chinese companies as cheap knock-offs and view their practices as dishonorable and untasteful. Lee argues that America's attitude toward the situation contributes to the reason they can't stay in Chinese markets for very long. He asserts that this is one reason among many that China will dominate the the developing AI market and emerge as the new technological world leader.