Facial recognition is a multi-billion dollar business in China, not to mention a key component of the government's sprawling surveillance ambitions. The New York Times reported in late July that investors collectively poured more than a billion dollars into the Chinese companies SenseTime and Megvii, both of which are leaders in facial recognition and artificial intelligence (AI), adding to their already sky-high valuations. SenseTime is "the world's highest-valued AI company," according to TechCrunch. It has received investments from Alibaba, Qualcomm, and other high-profile names, and has partnerships with the Chinese government and with globally recognized brands. Megvii is looking to expand its business into Southeast Asian countries Thailand and Malaysia, as well.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. After HRP-1, HRP-2, HRP-3, HRP-4, and HRP-4C, Japan's AIST is finally ready to unveil HRP-5P. Looks very impressive, and we'll be getting more details at IROS next week.

The promise of artificial intelligence is immense, but the roadmap to achieving those goals still remains unclear. Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, some of AI's leading minds shared their thoughts on current competition in the market, how to ensure algorithms don't perpetuate racism and the future of human-machine interaction. The meteoric rise in China's focus on AI has been well-documented and has become impossible to ignore these days. With mega companies like Alibaba and Tencent pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into home-grown businesses, American companies are finding less and less room to navigate and expand in China. AI investor and Sinnovation CEO Kai-Fu Lee described China as living in a "parallel universe" to the U.S. when it comes to AI development.

Artificial intelligence--the technology that powers Siri and Alexa, guides self-driving cars, and helps Netflix and Amazon tailor your search results--is already embedded in our lives. Here's how it will help you maximize your travels in the coming years. The next stage of AI online is hyperpersonalization: Websites and search engines will use data about you--or a group of people similar to you--to make recommendations for how and where to travel. "Nuance is going to refine the experience," says Gilad Berenstein, CEO of UTrip, a company that builds AI recommendation engines for the travel industry. Say you want to go to New York City.

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NOA doesn't want you to read the news. It wants to read it to you. The Irish company's full name is News Over Audio and it does exactly what that suggests: collects up the best of the world's news and turns it into nuggets of audio, allowing you to catch up on them while listening rather than having to read at a screen. The news you can get is already among the best in the world: it includes the Financial Times and Bloomberg, as well as The Independent. And it is continuing to grow, with other publishers that are among the world's biggest and most important, having announced in recent days that the Economist and the New York Times are arriving, too. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 28, 2018--Schwarzman Scholars yesterday hosted a high level international dialogue on artificial intelligence (AI), aimed at encouraging greater discourse and cooperation on complicated topics associated with the development of AI. The event was held in conjunction with the release of the English language version of Tsinghua University's Chinese Institute for Science and Technology Policy's Artificial Intelligence Development Report. The report outlines China's AI development from four different perspectives: technological development, market applications, policy environment and social impact. It offers a multi-dimensional comparison between China and developed countries regarding AI development, and analyzes China's strengths, weaknesses and its position in the international AI competitive landscape. "Schwarzman Scholars is pleased to have served as the convening organization for this important international dialogue. I commend Dean Xue Lan on the release of his important report and thank the participants for their insightful comments and engagement," said Stephen A. Schwarzman, Founding Trustee of Schwarzman Scholars and Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone.

China's second space station, Tiangong-2, is coming back to Earth as planned. It will finish its two-year mission as a temporary space station and start de-orbiting for a controlled destruction in the middle of next year. After a year of delay, Tiangong-2 blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert of northern China, in September 2016. This 8.6-tonne spacecraft serves as a laboratory for 14 experiments including a plant cultivation study, a quantum communication experiment, and a robotic arm.

Now do the same with tanks, helicopters and biped/quadruped robots. Welcome to the not-so-distant future of LAWs, or lethal autonomous weapon systems. A conclusion reached at the UN conference on regulating LAWs in warfare that took place this August in Geneva was that, instead of outright banning them, the topic should be revisited in November. The stall was initiated by the U.S., Russia, Israel, South Korea and Australia. Until the revision meeting one thing is sure -- AI-controlled robotic warfare isn't too far off.

In a month, prestigious auction house Christie's will invite the upper crust of the art collector world to their Manhattan showroom to bid on a gold-framed impressionistic portrait of a European gentleman. It would be an ordinary affair in the world of high art, except for one detail: The portrait for sale was generated by AI, not a famous painter. It will be the first AI-produced artwork to be sold at a major auction house -- and is estimated to sell for $7,000 to $10,000. AI-generated art has existed for years -- remember those weird, trippy Google projects? Now -- with the Christie's auction, an AI-specific show at the Grand Palais museum in Paris earlier this year and another at one of the largest contemporary commercial galleries in India where artwork was priced at over $30,000 -- AI artwork is being appreciated and valued by the most elite art institutions.