Google will reportedly halt its work on a military project that had fomented an employee revolt. Google Cloud chief Diane Greene told employees that the company would not renew its contract with the US military, according to multiple reports, acceding to a broad backlash against Google developing technology that could be weaponised. A representative of Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Google blasted for listing'Nazism' as tenet of California Republicans Google quietly removes'don't be evil' preface from code of conduct Hundreds of AI experts call on Google to stop weaponizing technology Google blasted for listing'Nazism' as tenet of California Republicans Google quietly removes'don't be evil' preface from code of conduct Thousands of workers had signed a letter asking leadership to end its involvement in a Pentagon pilot programme, known as Project Maven", that uses artificial intelligence to decipher video footage and could be used to improve targeted drone strikes. "We believe that Google should not be in the business of war", the letter read, cautioning that the tool could be used to "assist the US Government in military surveillance - and potentially lethal outcomes".

Google isn't the only company with an artificially intelligent assistant that can place calls. At an AI event in London today, Microsoft showed Xiaoice, the company's social chat bot for Chinese markets, holding a full duplex (two-way) phone conversation with a human on the other end of the line. Xiaoice, unlike Google Duplex, can't make a restaurant reservation or schedule a haircut appointment. But it can converse with someone much in the same way as Google Duplex by predicting what the person will say, and then responding quickly. And, like a human, it can interject to bring attention to important events.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Skydio's R1 can now follow cars, while not crashing into other stuff, of course: Telexistence thinks that having a telepresence robot that's humanoid on the other end will make it more natural to interact with, I'm guessing. And they've done a reasonable job with the design: I have to wonder what kind of latency you get between Japan and Hawaii, though.

For some years now, the date of 2020 has been an arbitrary milestone, the moment when being transported by a self-driving vehicle would be normal in more and more cities around the world. That prediction, that scenario typically prompted denials from short-sighted people unable to understand the exponential development of technology and who preferred to believe that autonomous driving would always be a thing of the future. But technology and competition are nothing if not stubborn. We are in 2018, and the pioneering city of Phoenix, Arizona, where pioneer and leader in the field, Waymo, began testing autonomous vehicles without a safety driver in November 2017 is now being joined by more than 20 US cities, chosen according to their weather and road conditions, while other brands carry out tests in other cities around the world. In Arizona, driverless taxis are now due to start functioning normally in a few months.

For CIOs and CTOs, asking which computing approaches add up to artificial intelligence and which are simply automation or BI is probably not a very useful question. The better question to think about: Do the latest developments in AI and machine learning provide a step change for solving problems and building new products or processes? David Gledhill, group CIO and head of technology and operations at DBS Bank in Singapore, put it this way: "There's a continuum. And moving along that continuum is what we care about," he said. "We'll leave it to the philosophers to determine what intelligence is."

Last year, China said it plans to be a world leader in AI by 2030. Now its capital is building a massive campus to house the AI firms that will power that rise, according to local media outlet Beijing News (link in Chinese). Authorities in Beijing's Mentougou district will build the tech campus along with Zhongguancun Development Group, a company that has built several similar technology parks in China. They plan to invest 13.8 billion yuan (about $2.1 billion) in the 548,700 square-meter park, and hope to to attract over 400 enterprises. Construction will be completed within three to five years. The park, which will count on 5G telecom and have a supercomputer, will focus on developing areas such as high-speed big data, cloud computing, biometric identification, deep learning, state-run news agency Xinhua added.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said she is disappointed by the US's "unjustified decision" to slap tariffs on EU steel and aluminium. The tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium, which affect the EU, Canada and Mexico, came into effect on Friday. All three are planning retaliatory moves. Mrs May said the EU and UK should be exempted and would work together to "protect and safeguard our workers and industries". UK Steel said the tariffs, which apply to a wide range of steel and aluminium products such as sheets, plates, bars, pipes and "semi-finished" products, will damage not only the UK steel sector but also the US economy.

Rumors keep piling up around games coming to one of the world's hottest video game consoles. A new set of leaks makes it seem all-but-certain that a handful of big and small titles will come to Nintendo Switch, likely with an imminent announcement in the next couple of weeks. On Thursday, a list of games that Nintendo will supposedly showcase at the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3) trade show appeared online, with multiple publications such as Destructoid vouching for its legitimacy. The list can be seen below, courtesy of video game industry Twitter tipster Nibellion. Nintendo will host a short E3 presentation focusing on upcoming Switch games on June 12.

Organisations including the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions will be able to see UK citizens' entire internet browsing history within weeks. The Investigatory Powers Bill, which was all but passed into law this week, forces internet providers to keep a full list of internet connection records (ICRs) for a year and to make them available to the Government if asked. Those ICRs in effect serve as a full list of every website that people have visited, rather than collecting which specific pages are visited or what's done on them. ICRs will be made available to a wide range of government bodies. Those include expected law enforcement organisations such as the police, the military and the secret service, but also includes bodies such as the Food Standards Agency, the Gambling Commission, councils and the Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust.

In the race to start the world's first driving business without human drivers, everyone is chasing Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo. The Google sibling has cleared the way to beat its nearest rivals, General Motors Co. and a couple of other players, by at least a year to introduce driverless cars to the public. A deal reached in January to buy thousands of additional Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which get kitted out with sensors that can see hundreds of yards in any direction, puts Waymo's lead into stark relief. No other company is offering for-hire rides yet, let alone preparing to carry passengers in more than one city this year. GM plans to start a ride-hailing service with its Chevrolet Bolt--the one with no steering wheel or pedals, the ultimate goal in autonomous technology--late next year, assuming the U.S. government has protocols in place by then. SoftBank Vision Fund, the gigantic Japanese tech investor, backed that plan on May 31 by dropping $2.25 billion into GM Cruise Holdings, the automaker's autonomous drive unit. Most of the others trying solve the last remaining self-driving puzzles are more cautious, targeting 2020 or later. The road to autonomy is long and exceedingly complicated. It can also be dangerous: Two high-profile efforts, from Uber Technologies Inc. and Tesla Inc., were involved in crashes that caused the death of a pedestrian (in the first known case of a person killed by a self-driving vehicle) and a driver using an assistance program touted as a precursor to autonomy. One of Waymo's autonomous vans was involved in a collision just last week.