That's the rough amount of money that counterfeiters displaced last year by selling phony products. Some 2.5% of all trade is for fake goods. The United States is hit hardest by the scourge of counterfeit products -- U.S. brands accounted in 2013 for 20% of the world's infringed intellectual property. When most people think about counterfeiting, they think of knock-off Louis Vuitton handbags sold on the sidewalk. But fake products also include business and enterprise products, as well as everyday consumer goods.

Two Japanese national research institutes have succeeded in using artificial intelligence to identify early stage stomach cancer with a high accuracy rate. The breakthrough may help extend the lives of patients in Japan, where stomach cancer is one of the leading causes of death. According to the National Cancer Center, 45,531 people died of stomach cancer in 2016. According to Riken and the National Cancer Center, it took AI only 0.004 seconds to judge whether an endoscopic image showed early stage cancer or normal stomach tissue. AI correctly detected cancer in 80 percent of cancer images, while the accuracy rate was 95 percent for normal tissue.

The BEAD sensor device analyzes and learns the daily use cycle, energy consumption, user behavior and occupancy changes in all kinds of buildings, and then provides feedback to its automation systems, connecting them to the real-time operation of the building in order to optimize marketing, operations, and energy efficiency. Energy consumption in buildings currently accounts for over 40% of all energy consumed in Europe and the US. This makes for the largest share of the total energy consumption, ahead of transport and industrial production. Europe alone wastes over EUR 43 billion worth of energy in commercial buildings annually. The reason for this is that traditional automation technologies operate on fixed schedules and standard assumptions of occupancy in commercial and residential buildings. But in reality, only about one-third of these assumptions are true.

Those deficiencies were made clear in April when the United States forbade American companies to sell chips, software and other technology to ZTE, a Chinese telecom company. ZTE was found to have violated American sanctions by selling products to Iran and North Korea. The ban brought the company to a virtual standstill. Chinese people shouldn't lose touch with reality, warned Liu Yadong, chief editor of the state-run Science and Technology Daily. In a recent speech, he said that China still lagged the United States in tech, and that those who argued otherwise ran the risk of "tricking leaders, fooling the public and even fooling themselves."

TensorFlow, the open source software library developed by the Google Brain team, is a framework for building deep learning neural networks. It is also considered one of the best ways to build deep learning models by machine learning practitioners across the globe. In deep learning models, which rely on a lot of data and computing resources, TensorFlow is used significantly. Given its flexible architecture for easy deployment on various platforms such as CPUs, GPUs and TPUs, TensorFlow remains one of the favourite libraries to get into ML. Its huge popularity also means that tech enthusiasts are on a constant lookout to learn more and work more with this library.

For banks, the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) have always been evident. The only question is when and how to implement them in a way that reaps the best returns. Banks, for instance, have always had large volumes of data, over which it performs monitoring, analysis and insights-generating functions. Yet AI now presents banks with a future worth considering: what will it look like for banks to integrate advanced machine learning capabilities to help with all those processes? AI, with its wide spectrum of technologies could either remain a passing trend today or transform banking for ever.

Recently I was honoured to be invited by Huawei to the CeBIT 2018 conference in Hannover, to be part of their KOL program (Key Opinion Leaders Program). The KOL program is a program where Huawei gives the opportunity to a select group of domain experts and media people to get an understanding of their solutions and technology, and how it can make a difference on our society. I knew Huawei from the smartphones we see popping up, and an initial contact from about 6 years ago, talking to one of the HR people, asking to come to work for them. At that time, I thought, What do I have to look for in China, working for a telecom operator? Well that was the image I had from Huawei.

According to the UN, the world's population is estimated to increase by 29% to 9.8 billion in 2050. There is therefore an immense pressure on the world's agriculture sector to develop sustainable measures of increasing their output so as to meet the demands of the ever increasing population around the world. Agriculture has always been one of the core economic activities in Thailand, with over 40% of Thai workers employed in the industry. However, this sector contributes to only 10% of the economy and is on a decline. Fortunately, Thailand, having been backed by its government, is developing new technology to help transform its agriculture industry.

Fifty years ago this month, in the midst of the Cold War, nations began signing an international treaty to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Today, as artificial intelligence and machine learning reshape every aspect of our lives, the world confronts a challenge of similar magnitude and it needs a similar response. There is a danger in pushing the parallel between nuclear weapons and AI too far. But the greater risk lies in ignoring the consequences of unleashing technologies whose goals are neither predictable nor aligned with our values. The immediate prelude to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.