SAN FRANCISCO/HONG KONG/BEIJING – Google is preparing a version of its search engine for China that blocks results Beijing considers sensitive, according to people familiar with the situation. The initiative is code-named Dragonfly and is one of several options the company is pursuing for returning to China, the people said, while noting the timing is still up in the air. They asked not to be identified discussing private plans. The move would mark an abrupt about-face by the Alphabet Inc. unit and a win for China's communist government, which suppresses free speech online. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose parents brought him to the U.S. to escape communist Russia, led a dramatic exit from mainland China in 2010 after the company refused to self-censor search content.

Eight years after their very public falling out, could China and Google be pals once again? Whispers circulating Monday, first reported by The Intercept, suggested that Google would soon launch a Chinese version of its search engine that will kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party by scrubbing various bête noires: not least criticism of its human-rights record, calls for Tibetan independence and the bloodshed around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. Free speech advocates have condemned the rumors, which have since been confirmed by anonymous Google sources to other media. Amnesty International warned complying with the Great Firewall -- the world's most sophisticated state-censorship apparatus, employing at least 2 million online censors -- would constitute "a gross attack on freedom of information and internet freedom." It would also mean Google would have to block search results in China for currently verboten Western media, such as the New York Times, Bloomberg and, indeed, TIME.

The country that wins the global race for dominance in artificial intelligence stands to capture enormous economic benefits, including potentially doubling its economic growth rates by 2035. Unfortunately, the United States is getting bad advice about how to compete. Over the past year, Canada, China, France, India, Japan, and the United Kingdom have all launched major government-backed initiatives to compete in AI. While the Trump administration has begun to focus on how to advance the technology, it has not developed a cohesive national strategy to match that of other countries. This has allowed the conversation about how policymakers in the United States should support AI to be dominated by proposals from advocates primarily concerned with staving off potential harms of AI by imposing restrictive regulations on the technology, rather than supporting its growth.

India is considering the use of Artificial Intelligence for national security and military strategic purposes and the government is studying a report recommending the use of technology in aviation, naval, land systems, cyber, nuclear and biological warfare. Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre told the Lok Sabha that the ministry has initiated the process of preparing Indian defence forces in their use of Artificial Intelligence and leveraging India'' capabilities in machine learning sectors. This, he said, has a potential to fuel technology-driven economic growth and provide military superiority. To study strategic implications of Artificial Intelligence for national security, a task force comprising the government, services, academia, industry, professionals and start-ups was constituted in February this year. The group led by Natarajan Chandrasekharan, Chairman Tata Sons, was tasked to prepare a road map for Artificial Intelligence for national security purposes.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Maltese counterpart Joseph Muscat agreed Wednesday to closely cooperate in maintaining maritime order based on the rule of law. In a news conference after their meeting in Tokyo, Abe said the two leaders confirmed the importance of the issue. Malta is the home of the International Maritime Law Institute aimed at training specialists in the field. Abe said they also agreed to work together in resolving outstanding issues surrounding North Korea, including Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s. On the economic front, Muscat, the first Maltese prime minister to visit Japan in 28 years, expressed hope for an early implementation of a free trade agreement Japan and the European Union signed last month.

Imagine yourself in the future. You get up and your coffee is already made for you, perhaps even your entire breakfast. Smart kitchen utensils are preparing your scrambled eggs, and the smart fridge reorders soy milk as you take out the almost empty bottle. You are probably not reaching for your phone; instead, voice commands will bring up the latest information – messages, news, weather or traffic reports, on any surface you want: the TV, the fridge door, the bathroom mirror. Or no surface at all, if holograms and virtual displays replace OLEDs and plasma devices.

HONG KONG – Alphabet Inc.'s Google is preparing to launch a censored version of its search engine for China that will block results Beijing considers sensitive, The Intercept reported. Google's been working on a project code-named Dragonfly since the spring of 2017 and demonstrated a sanitized version of its search app to Chinese officials, the news outlet reported, citing company documents and unidentified people familiar with the matter. A final version of the app could be launched within six to nine months, it said. "We provide a number of mobile apps in China, such as Google Translate and Files Go, help Chinese developers, and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com. But we don't comment on speculation about future plans," Google said in an emailed statement.

I sometimes also carry an Iridium satellite phone, and I always travel with a power strip in case there aren't enough outlets where I am. I try to keep my backpack light in Gaza. Other items -- armor-plated flak jacket, Kevlar helmet, gas mask and spare filters, and a trauma kit -- add lots of weight to my load. Probably the most vital tech tool I carry is the lightest: a paper clip to switch SIM cards. I've been here less than a year and finally got a local number from the Palestinian provider Jawwal, which has good coverage across Gaza and can be quickly replenished at countless retail shops.

On July 27, 2018, news broke that collaborative efforts in cancer treatment between the Sloan Kettering Research Institute and IBM were producing instances of treatment prescriptions that were unsuited for the patients the treatments were prescribed for. In one case, a 65-year-old man was prescribed a drug that could lead to "severe or fatal hemorrhage" even though he was already suffering from severe bleeding When investigators dug deeper, they found that IBM engineers and Sloan Kettering medical doctors had fed hypothetical patient data to IBM's Watson, which was processing the treatment analytics. Initial thinking was that the use of hypotheticals (instead of real patient data) potentially skewed the AI and resulted in multiple examples of unsafe or incorrect treatment recommendations. At first blush, it is easy to slam the AI--but should we? The most important lesson to be learned from Watson or any other AI technology that is being trialed in business right now is that AI isn't perfect.

In 2010, Google made a moral calculus. The company had been censoring search results in China at the behest of the Communist government since launching there in 2006. But after a sophisticated phishing attack to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, Google decided to stop censoring results, even though it cost the company access to the lucrative Chinese market. Across nearly a decade, Google's decision to weigh social good over financial profit became part of Silicon Valley folklore, a handy anecdote that cast the tech industry as a democratizing force in the world. But to tech giants with an insatiable appetite for growth, China's allure is just as legendary.