Two titans of Japanese industry, Toyota Motor Corp. and SoftBank Group Corp. said Thursday they are setting up a new joint venture to develop autonomous driving technologies and other on-demand services, including food deliveries, medical care and office space. Funded with an initial investment of ¥2 billion (around $17.5 million), the new company, Monet Technologies Corp., will begin operations as early as next March. While the on-demand services will initially roll out using traditional vehicles, by 2020 the company is aiming to utilize Toyota's driverless concept vehicle, E-Palette. Both Toyota President Akio Toyoda and SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son painted the partnership as part of a broader vision to embrace new business ideas in an age of artificial intelligence. Speaking before a throng of reporters, SoftBank founder Son said that the partnership will be able to harness the synergy and strengths offered by each company.

A new report claims that China managed to spy on large swathes of the world by smuggling tiny computer chips into electronic hardware used to power iPhones and many other products. If true, the allegations from Bloomberg News represent the probably the biggest and most destructive hacks ever to have happened. They would allow the Chinese government to have access to devices not by exploiting loopholes but from the very beginning, letting them listen in on people's communications over the internet with ease. But the companies involved have already strenuously denied the reports, and claimed no such attack has actually happened. The report claimed that Chinese operatives from the People's Liberation Army had infiltrated a manufacturer of motherboards for servers, Supermicro, and placed tiny chips onto them.

Toyota and Softbank have established a joint venture that could offer various autonomous vehicle services in the future. Softbank already has several self-driving partnerships with other companies. But this one called MONET (a portmanteau for "mobility network") will combine the powers of Toyota's Mobility Services Platform, which serves as its information infrastructure for connected vehicles, and of SoftBank's Internet of Things platform. Well, for the first phase of the partnership, they're planning to roll out a "just-in-time" vehicle dispatch service for companies and public agencies in Japan. However, MONET's ultimate goal is to roll out Autono-MaaS (autonomous mobility as a service) businesses using Toyota's e-Palette electric vehicle, which is still just a concept.

RealFace was looking for a tech partner who could integrate their library written in C and take over development from a previous company. Their real challenge, however, was to find developers who could understand the logic of the AI face recognition system and deal with GPUImage and the dlib face detector. The partnership between RealFace and STX Next started with one developer working on the iOS platform. After receiving the MVP, Realface decided to entrust STX Next with the development of the Android version. In a short time the team expanded to 5 people.

The long and confusing set of numbers that follow every WiFi name is finally disappearing. And it is being swapped for something far more simple. Anyone who has ever tried to buy a WiFi device has probably struggled with the arcane naming system that each of them is given. Each begins with 802.11, and then is followed by letters like "ac" – it's those letters that matter, but it can be hard to work out how and why. The codes actually refer to something very useful: different generations of WiFi technology, which bring with them upgrades and updates to things like the speed they can transmit data.

Dr. Lee is the author of AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World OrderSinovation Ventures Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, has two daughters. One is a fashion designer. The other is a photographer. Instead of following their father into computer science, they followed their heart, passion and skills. Lee encouraged them to do what they love because his work in making a machine more like a human has given him a unique glimpse into what separates humans from machines.

The Japanese government is teaming up with businesses and academia to set up hospitals enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI). Participants will develop AI-assisted programmes that will automatically enter information into patients' medical records and also analyse blood tests. The government is expected to invest more than USD100mn over the next five years, with a target of establishing 10 model hospitals by the end of fiscal year 2022. The main aim is for the government to address structural challenges in healthcare in Japan, including the shortfall of medical personnel and rising medical expenses. Implications: We believe that Japanese medical device manufacturers will aspire to develop more advanced equipment that can be used in these modern hospitals.

Google has provided a service for many years which provides alerts about natural disasters. This has been in the form of warnings provided by government agencies, which have been incorporated into its apps like Maps and Search. Google is now moving a stage beyond this regurgitation of information towards providing its own alerts based on its own analysis of climatic conditions. As the first wave of Google's use of artificial intelligence to predict natural disasters, The Verge reports how the technology firm will be working with the Central Water Commission of India. The service will inform Google users about impending floods.

Indian actress Priyanka Chopra will invest in dating app Bumble as the service prepares to expand into her native country later this year. She will also act as an adviser to the app - which requires women to make the first move - for its Indian launch. Bumble's expansion comes as firms push to make women feel safe using dating apps in India. The actress becomes the latest in a string of celebrities to take a stake in a tech venture. Bumble said Chopra will become "partner, advisor, and investor" to the tech firm.

"It's a fight for talent…It's like'Game of Thrones' out there," Erik Caldwell, chief operating officer for supply chain in the Americas and Asia Pacific at XPO Logistics Inc., XPO 2.83% said at an industry conference earlier this year, discussing the company's use of robots to fulfill online orders. The use of robotics and other automation technology in industrial operations is growing, although the vast majority of warehouse work remains largely manual. About 16.5% of organizations across several industries including warehousing are now using commercial service robots, and 21.5% have them in pilot programs, according to a 2018 survey of 600 respondents by research firm IDC. The holiday shopping season highlights a warehouse-worker squeeze that is driving more logistics operators to embrace automation, as the growth of online commerce pushes more retail sales from storefronts to distribution centers. Online fulfillment centers--where companies like Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.94% pick, pack and ship consumer orders--require two to three times as many workers as traditional warehouses.