In the early hours of January 11, 2000, US Coast Guard helicopter pilot Mark Ward responded to a distress call from a ship taking on water, caught in a Nor'easter off the North Carolina coast. Battling 70-mph winds and 30-foot seas, Ward struggled to keep the chopper steady as he and his crew pulled all five fishermen to safety. Ward recalls the mission as one of the most harrowing is the 22 years he spent as a search-and-rescue pilot. And now, he's got a gig ensuring his successors won't face the same dangers: He's the chief test pilot in Sikorsky's autonomous helicopter program. "Even a modest degree of autonomy, your workload goes way down and your stress and apprehension disappears," he says.

The British University in Dubai (BUiD) has launched the country's first bachelors degree in artificial intelligence to support the UAE's 2031 AI strategy. BUiD, the research-based university, said the degree has been developed in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and is open to both Emiratis and expatriates. It told media at a press conference attended by Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, that the four-year degree course will start at the end of September, and tuition fees will total AED230,000. The course follows the announcement last year by the UAE of the appointment of the world's first Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence which followed the unveiling of the UAE 2031 AI strategy, which aims to make the government more efficient and streamlined by developing AI technologies. In May, Al Olama said the UAE government is expected to save $3 billion per year, thanks to AI and blockchain. The technologies are two of the most powerful tools revolutionizing the UAE's pace of innovation, he said at the Future Blockchain Summit.

But fear looms as A.I. continues to penetrate the very essence of who we are. As world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking once said: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race….It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate." In an interview with Joy FM's Nhyira Addo, A.I. and space expert Einstein Ntim said that technology will only continue to accelerate exponentially. "My grandmother died when she was 105, and in her lifetime, she got to see the world go from no cars, to cars, to airplanes, to mobile phones. All those changes she saw in her lifetime we will experience in the next 10 years." Computer processing speed doubles every 18 months.

Mark Zuckerberg has defended the rights of holocaust deniers to stay on Facebook – because they are being genuine. The Facebook boss said that he found the belief that the holocaust did not happen was deeply offensive. But he said that the people using his site to promote should be allowed to use it and that the posts should stay up. There are many things that people get wrong and those that claim that the holocaust did not happen are one of them, he suggested during an interview. He claimed that since the people are mistaken in their belief, rather than intending to harm anyone, they will continue to be allowed to post on the site.

While at King Edward Medical University (KEMU), one of my responsibilities was giving a series of lectures on cardiac surgery to the final year MBBS class every year. Cardiac surgery is not an examination subject so attendance in my lectures was rather thin and the atmosphere a bit relaxed. In my first lecture to the new class, I often started off with asking students three questions not related to cardiac surgery. The first question was about Pakistan history. The question was, who was the second prime minister of Pakistan, and who was the second governor general of Pakistan.

A couple of years ago, as Brian Brackeen was preparing to pitch his facial recognition software to a potential customer as a convenient, secure alternative to passwords, the software stopped working. Panicked, he tried adjusting the room's lighting, then the Wi-Fi connection, before he realized the problem was his face. Brackeen is black, but like most facial recognition developers, he'd trained his algorithms with a set of mostly white faces. He got a white, blond colleague to pose for the demo, and they closed the deal. It was a Pyrrhic victory, he says: "It was like having your own child not recognize you."

Huawei Consumer Business Group (CBG), the global smartphone giant, has announced the launch of its new HUAWEI nova 3 and HUAWEI nova 3i in the UAE. Both smartphones are powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its overall functioning and camera features. With dual front camera (24MP 2MP), users can expect the best-in-technology'selfie' that a smartphone can offer. HUAWEI nova 3 series was initially designed with the younger and trendier consumers in mind, for whom a smartphone is not just part of their lifestyle but also represents their personal style. The series is designed to offer an AI-enhanced lifestyle, which includes a huge focus on an outstanding selfie experience with its AI beautification features and front camera that allows one to capture AI selfies.

Salesforce announced Monday that it has agreed to buy Datorama, which employs artificial intelligence to provide marketing intelligence and analytics. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Reuters cites Israeli media reports that it was over $800 million. Although the company is headquartered in New York City, about half of its 400 employees are in Israel. While there is no shortage of firms offering analytics and marketing intelligence, Datorama has emphasized it can present the advertising and marketing data from a variety of tools -- the company says the average marketer has an average of 70 data streams -- inside one cloud-based dashboard, where AI helps generate automated reporting, insights for decision-making and ways to optimize campaigns.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has massive potential for future applications. Looking at the pace with which AI is entering different areas of our life, it is definite to say that soon it is going to be present all over the place, and there's nothing to worry about that! For those cautious of a robotic evolution shouldn't fear anything – the arrival of AI into the healthcare industry is more about the expansion, sharpening, and easing the minds of the physician so that the doctors can do the same to their patients. From intense symptomatic calculations to finely-tuned careful robots, the innovation is making its essence known across medical verticals. Unmistakably, AI has a place in the pharmaceutical industry – what we don't know yet is its worth.

Not long ago, when Americans faced the possibility of being left behind by other countries' advancing tech, the federal government stepped in with nearly endless resources to stimulate the creation of vast new industries. Thanks to government funding, we got the nuclear industry, the space program, the aviation industry and the internet, which was initially sponsored by the Defense Department. Just about every key component in a smartphone, from the battery to GPS, is based on research first done for the American government. It's not an understatement to say that, for better or worse, the American government invented the modern world. But today in the United States, venture capitalists and multinational corporations lead the development of -- and will own -- tomorrow's technologies.