According to Bloomberg, Zhang admitted that he downloaded Apple's driverless car files, so he could still have access to them even if he's not with the company anymore. Reuters also said that he admitted to taking hardware from the lab, because he wanted a new position within Apple and thought it could help him. Zhang designed and tested circuit boards for analyzing sensor data at Apple and was privy to top secret information about its driverless car development. He informed the company that he was permanently moving back to China to work for local EV startup Xiaopeng Motors after he got back from his paternity leave. Apple officials were quick to inform authorities of possible theft, because Zhang's supervisor noticed an increase in his network activities and discovered that he visited its HQ in the middle of his paternity leave when he was supposed to be in China.

IF there are two truths that are universally acknowledged, they are that western populations are ageing and that more jobs are likely to be automated. That is the focus of a new report called "The Twin Threats of Aging and Automation", a collaboration between Marsh & McLennan's Global Risk Centre, Mercer, and Oliver Wyman. The study looks at 15 countries and concludes that Asian workers are most at risk (see chart). By 2050, the UN estimates that more than a third of the world's population will be over 50, up from less than 16% in 1950. As a proportion of the working-age population, those aged between 50 and 64 already make up more than 30% of the workforce in Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan.

Three, it turns out, is better than one. At least that's how it worked for a trio of former rivals who teamed up to claim the just-announced top prize in this year's Data Science Bowl. The fourth annual event focused on one of healthcare's most pressing problems -- the soaring cost and time needed to discover new drugs. A record-setting 18,000 participants battled over 90 days to deliver a deep learning algorithm to accelerate a crucial step in the drug-discovery pipeline: identifying the nucleus of each cell. This year's Data Science Bowl was "driven by a very real need to develop new treatments faster and more accurately," said Anne Carpenter, director of the imaging platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the nonprofit partner for the contest.

China purchased 141,000 industrial robots in 2017, up 58.1 per cent year-on-year, but foreign brands accounted for nearly three-quarters of that, showing that the gap is still widening between Chinese robot makers and their foreign peers. The China International Robot Industry Summit, held in Shanghai, said the sales and growth rate of industrial robots hit records in 2017. Among industrial robots, 37,825 were domestically manufactured, up 29.8 per cent year-on-year. "As robotics is expanding into nearly every industry, Chinese robot makers should realise the gap between them and foreign brands, take advantage of China's robotics development boom and learn from foreign experience to help China grow from the world's largest robot market into a robot manufacturing power," said Qu Daokui, president of China Robot Industry Alliance and chief executive of the Shenyang-based Siasun Robot and Automation company. According to Mr Qu, foreign robot makers sold 103,191 robots to China in 2017, up 71.9 per cent from a year earlier.

At the 2018 Automatica Fair in Munich, the International Federation for Robotics (IFR) presented a preview of the annual sales statistics for the robotics sector at the CEO roundtable. The final statistics will be published by IFR in cooperation with VDMA in October. The preliminary numbers are interesting in many ways. First of all the sales of robots increased by 29% year-over-year during 2017. The total number of shipped robots went up to 381 thousand units, of which 2/3 are sold in Asia.

Unleashing a legal and ethical debate worldwide, AI (artificial intelligence) is progressing with leaps and bounds as it portends to change human society forever. For example, if a driverless car meets with an accident involving fatalities, it is the algorithm operator who faces "product liability" rules. In the case of AI used in conventional war, machines killing humans is an ethically chilling concept. Carrying major implications, it is feared that the proto-AI technologies of today are going to evolve into true AI super-intelligence very rapidly without giving enough time for research into the pros and cons. As apprehensions of a "hyper-war scenario" build up, the main challenge remains: how to place the human factor in AI and prevent a drastic downgrade in military security as combat involving the technology changes the dimensions of warfare.

Apple is about to launch three new iPhones. And that is just the beginning, according to new rumours. The company will update just about every single one of its products around the September event where it usually launches new products, a new report has claimed. Previous reports have suggested that Apple will launch not just one new iPhone at the event, but three. And all of them will be packed with the new features that first arrived with the iPhone X.

Facebook has stopped working, with Android users in particular reporting major problems opening the app. The issue appears to have arrived after a new update was pushed out to users through the Google Play Store. There were hundreds of reports of issues, with problems spread across the world, according to the website Down Detector. 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. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

Twitter users are set to see a dip in their followers, as the firm prepares a major purge of locked accounts. Tens of millions of suspicious accounts will be removed in the cull, with up to 6 per cent of all accounts potentially deleted. Locked accounts are restricted from posting by the social media site when it detects activity such as tweeting a large volume of unsolicited replies or mentions, and must be verified by owners before they can be unlocked. The firm said the removal of locked accounts – believed to number in the millions – is part of effort to "improve the health" of conversation on the platform by deleting suspicious and inactive accounts. Twitter's dark blue Night Mode is a lot easier on your eyes than its regular, vibrant theme. On the site, you can enable it by clicking your profile photo (on the right-hand side of the bar at the top of the screen) and selecting Night Mode.

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) will soon be at the heart of every major technological system in the world including: cyber and homeland security, payments, financial markets, biotech, healthcare, marketing, natural language processing, computer vision, electrical grids, nuclear power plants, air traffic control, and Internet of Things (IoT). While A.I. seems to have only recently captured the attention of humanity, the reality is that A.I. has been around for over 60 years as a technological discipline. In the late 1950's, Arthur Samuel wrote a checkers playing program that could learn from its mistakes and thus, over time, became better at playing the game. MYCIN, the first rule-based expert system, was developed in the early 1970's and was capable of diagnosing blood infections based on the results of various medical tests. The MYCIN system was able to perform better than non-specialist doctors. While Artificial Intelligence is becoming a major staple of technology, few people understand the benefits and shortcomings of A.I. and Machine Learning technologies. Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed.