Early Monday morning, Uber added an update that lets you rent electric scooters from Lime. What's more, Lime scooters will also now have Uber stickers on them. The last time we saw something like this was with Jump's electric bicycles just before Uber purchased the company outright. With cars, trucks, autonomous vehicles and now bikes and scooters under its wing, it's clear that Uber is no longer just a ride-hailing service. It's looking more like Amazon, but instead of retail, the company is looking to dominate point-to-point transportation.

The next generation of intelligent hospitality is set to arrive in China. InterContinental Hotels & Resorts (IHG) is collaborating with tech firm Baidu to introduce Smart Rooms that are powered by artificial intelligence and aimed at redefining and improving the customer experience. NYC's Historic Plaza Hotel Is Officially Sold Guests at the InterContinental Beijing Sanlitun and InterContinental Guangzhou Exhibition Centre will be among the first to experience the new AI Smart Rooms, IHG said. Within the year, a total of 100 of the new rooms are slated to come online at IHG properties in gateway cities and key destinations across China. The new technology, customized for IHG, integrates AI technology with hotel operations.

Rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions will increase the UAE's GDP by USD 96 billion by 2030, enabling organizations to better meet and predict customer and citizen trends and drive digital business innovation. As the UAE Strategy for AI guides nationwide transformation, AI and machine learning are entering the mainstream. PwC predicts that AI will contribute USD 96 billion in UAE GDP 2030. By industry, Accenture says finance (USD 37 billion), healthcare (USD 22 billion), and transport and storage (USD 19 billion) will see the biggest growth by 2035. "Artificial intelligence solutions can enable new innovations that can augment the existing workforce, optimizing costs, efficiency, and innovation. Banks can analyze credit and loan repayments, hospitals can predict patient treatment success, and government agencies can enhance mega-events management," said Savitha Bhaskar, COO at Condo Protego, the UAE-based IT infrastructure and information management consultancy and solutions provider.

The debate over the effects of artificial intelligence has been dominated by two themes. One is the fear of a singularity, an event in which an AI exceeds human intelligence and escapes human control, with possibly disastrous consequences. The other is the worry that a new industrial revolution will allow machines to disrupt and replace humans in every--or almost every--area of society, from transport to the military to healthcare. There is also a third way in which AI promises to reshape the world. By allowing governments to monitor, understand, and control their citizens far more closely than ever before, AI will offer authoritarian countries a plausible alternative to liberal democracy, the first since the end of the Cold War.

On May 27, a deluge dumped more than 6 inches of rain in less than three hours on Ellicott City, Maryland, killing one person and transforming Main Street into what looked like Class V river rapids, with cars tossed about like rubber ducks. The National Weather Service put the probability of such a storm at once in 1,000 years. Yet, "it's the second time it's happened in the last three years," says Jeff Allenby, director of conservation technology for Chesapeake Conservancy, an environmental group. Floods are nothing new in Ellicott City, located where two tributaries join the Patapsco River. But Allenby says the floods are getting worse, as development covers what used to be the "natural sponge of a forest" with paved surfaces, rooftops, and lawns.

Reddit has seen its biggest ever ban, with more than 350,000 kicked out of a subreddit. What's more, those people specifically wanted to be banned – and many had joined in the hope of doing so. The event all took place because the subreddit in question was themed around the villain from Avengers: Infinity War. The forum advanced the idea that Thanos wasn't actually a villain at all, with the name /r/thanosdidnothingwrong. 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.

Earlier this year, concerns over the development of autonomous military systems -- essentially AI-driven machinery capable of making battlefield decisions, including the selection of targets -- were once again the center of attention at a United Nations meeting in Geneva. "Where is the line going to be drawn between human and machine decision-making?" Paul Scharre, director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C., told Time magazine. "Are we going to be willing to delegate lethal authority to the machine?" "Malicious computer programs that could be described as'intelligent autonomous agents' are what steal people's data."

We live in interesting times. Clean energy-fueled electric race cars are giving their Formula 1 counterparts a run for their money. Robots no longer just take commands, they can even be taught to conduct a symphony orchestra in 14 short hours. The journey has started well in such technologies like electric mobility and artificial intelligence (AI). But how will a country of more than a billion people reap the inclusive benefits of these tools and address relevant issues in deploying them?

What is IQT and how does it make all the connected things smarter? Emerging technologies like Internet of Things (IoT) are redefining the way businesses are generating and consuming data. As these technologies take shape and bring more data sources on line, one of the biggest challenges will be to understand and act on the data generated by anything that can be connected. This data holds paramount importance for the organisations. In fact, successful businesses thrive on the ability to convert data into insights.

In February 2018 Alibaba Cloud launched Cloud and AI Solutions in Europe to meet changing needs in digital transformation. The company rolled out an array of products at the Mobile World Congress to meet the surging demand for powerful and reliable cloud computing services as well as advanced AI solutions among European enterprises to support them to capture opportunities in this digital transformation era. Today, the Alibaba Group has announced the launch of their new retail experience powered by Alibaba FashionAI. Strategically partnering up with GUESS on the FashionAI project, Alibaba has come up with a way for customers to experience personalised mix-and-match recommendations from Alibaba's FashionAI. Scheduled to be open to the public on the 5th- 7th July 2018, the concept store will house garments and accessories by GUESS.