Following the unveiling of China's AI roadmap, some of the region's most tech-savvy nations followed suit. South Korea, a country boasting nearly 100% internet penetration and the first country to implement a nationwide Internet of Things (IOT) network has pledged to invest ₩2.2 trillion (US$2 billion) on AI-related R&D by 2022. Singapore, which in the past has boasted the highest smartphone adoption rates in the world, and which is already considered a regional AI leader, recently announced the formation of a high-level council that will advise the government on legal and ethical issues related to the continued adoption of AI. The council's formation is indicative of the Singaporean government's recognition that one of the key challenges facing the large-scale implementation of AI is reconciling its many benefits with its potential implications for societal norms and expectations. We should expect similar initiatives across the region.

In the past month, workers in Silicon Valley have demanded that the large tech companies where they work stop doing business with federal agencies associated with the ghastlier policies of the Trump administration and local governments--and in some cases it's worked. Google said it would not renew a contract with the Pentagon to build an A.I. system for military drones after thousands of employees signed a petition and dozens quit in protest. Orlando, Florida's police department dropped Amazon's facial-recognition tech after a public outcry that included criticisms from Amazon employees opposed to the activity. Microsoft is keeping a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement despite demands from more than 100 of its employees who believe doing so signals a complicity with the administration's hard-line immigration policy. This activity has been facilitated by the Tech Workers Coalition, a volunteer group of professionals in the tech industry that has worked on a number of labor, justice, and equality issues in recent years.

Over the last 20 years, the ongoing digital revolution has brought massive changes to the way most of us work and live. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will offer even faster and deeper change. Forward-looking government leaders are acting now to prepare public sector organizations to fulfill of the full promise of AI. They are blazing a trail for AI to free up their employees and serve citizens more effectively. AI is on track to make a bigger impact on business and society than any previous technology.

The US military has to expand its use of AI to stay ahead of its enemies and deter war, a top Air Force general has warned. Gen. James Holmes, who leads Air Combat Command, pledged that despite a Silicon Valley backlash'AI is a big part of our future'. Holmes told a a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington he was concerned that the recent row with Google over Project Maven might prompt other tech firms to boycott military contracts, but said'this is part of being an American.' Google has been winding down its involvement with the Pentagon's controversial Project Maven, but its Cloud team is now talking with the US special operations community'Americans have expectations about what their government does and whether the government uses technology and tools to infringe upon their rights or not,' he said, according to Defence One. 'We have really high standards as a nation that that things that we being forward as military tools have to live up to.' 'The benefit of this will be: it will free up people to focus on thinking about what they see and what it means in the intelligence field and on passing that information to decision makers more timelty because you're able to do it faster,' Holmes said.

Yesterday, NHK (the Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reported that Honda has decided to cancel further development of its flagship humanoid robot, Asimo. A Honda representative who spoke with AFP said, "We will still continue research into humanoid robots, but our future robots may not be named Asimo. We have obtained lots of technologies while developing Asimo, and how to utilize them is one issue." It's not like Honda is abandoning robotics completely, or even abandoning the idea of humanoid robots. Instead, it sounds like the company want to start focusing on how to apply the technology that it has to make robots that don't just promote its brand, but actually help out with things like elder care and disaster relief.

Today at Google's AI Symposium in Beijing, Tsinghua University revealed plans to open a center for artificial intelligence research and development in China. In a related announcement, it said that Jeff Dean, Google's AI chief, will serve on the University's computer science advisory committee. The Tsinghua University Institute for Artificial Intelligence, led by Dean Bo Zhang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Turing Award Laureate Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, will focus on new types of AI hardware and core algorithms, according to the university, and collaborate with tech companies such as Tencent and Horizontal Robotics. It'll also work closely with Google, which opened an AI center in Beijing in December 2017. Mountain View company is already involved in research at Peking University, the University of Science and Technology of China, and other institutions in the region.

Nikolay Manolov is a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of XOR.ai, a leading chatbot and AI company that helps turbocharge recruitment and hiring efforts. Nikolay has a long history of working in the computer software industry and was first prize winner at a 2018 nationwide chatbot and AI competition in Russia.

"That will be our differentiator," said Tan. "Anyone can build a transaction platform." Currently, the Singapore-based company is available only to business customers, but says it will roll out to residential consumers from Fall 2018, in line with the liberalization of Singapore's retail energy market. The company then plans to expand to Japan and Australia, where there are many power-generating households that Tan said will benefit from the sharing model by selling their excess power to other homes. It's a model that has investors interested, too: Electrify said it raised $30 million in an initial coin offering in March. According to industry analyst Mark Hutchinson, that could be a sign of growing demand for energy disruptors. But, as ever, that will likely mean leaving some traditional players behind.

Preventative medicine is all the rage. It can cut long-term healthcare costs, help patients avoid painful procedures, and overall drives longer, better quality lives. So when does preventative medicine make the move from yearly checkups and traditional tests like mammograms and colonoscopies to something more high tech? We may be standing at that turning point right now. Several new AI tools are currently being introduced that have the potential to detect future heart attack risks or even prioritize and direct emergency calls based on the likelihood the patient is having a cardiac event.

Alex Honnold has his own verb. "To honnold"--usually written as "honnolding"--is to stand in some high, precarious place with your back to the wall, looking straight into the abyss. The verb was inspired by photographs of Honnold in precisely that position on Thank God Ledge, located 1,800 feet off the deck in Yosemite National Park. Honnold side-shuffled across this narrow sill of stone, heels to the wall, toes touching the void, when, in 2008, he became the first rock climber ever to scale the sheer granite face of Half Dome alone and without a rope. Had he lost his balance, he would have fallen for 10 long seconds to his death on the ground far below. Honnold is history's greatest ever climber in the free solo style, meaning he ascends without a rope or protective equipment of any kind. Above about 50 feet, any fall would likely be lethal, which means that, on epic days of soloing, he might spend 12 or more hours in the Death Zone. On the hardest parts of some climbing routes, his fingers will have no more contact with the rock than most people have with the touchscreens of their phones, while his toes press down on edges as thin as sticks of gum. Just watching a video of Honnold climbing will trigger some degree of vertigo, heart palpitations, or nausea in most people, and that's if they can watch them at all. Even Honnold has said that his palms sweat when he watches himself on film. All of this has made Honnold the most famous climber in the world.