General Motors announced Thursday that Japan's SoftBank will pour $2.25 billion in the automaker's self-driving business, in a significant deal experts say boosts GM's chances to be the first company to deploy autonomous cars nationwide. In exchange for the investment, GM said the investment firm will receive a nearly 20 percent equity stake in GM Cruise, the Detroit company's autonomous vehicle unit. GM's stock soared following the announcement, climbing more than 10 percent in morning trading. The partnership comes as leading technology companies and automakers, including Alphabet's self driving division Waymo, and Tesla are scrambling to pioneer the market for fully autonomous cars. GM said in a press release Thursday the investments are expected to provide the capital necessary to "reach commercialization at scale" next year.

New price forecasting application combines Alpaca's technology with Bloomberg's real-time market data Tokyo – Bloomberg today announced the launch of a new price forecasting application for investment professionals powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The "Alpaca Forecast AI Prediction Matrix" is an application (app) that provides short-term market price forecasts for major markets such as USD/JPY, EUR/USD, AUD/JPY, CME Nikkei 225 Futures Index and US 10-year treasury bonds, using Bloomberg's Market Data Feed (B-PIPE). Developed jointly with AlpacaJapan, a startup that specializes in AI solutions for financial trading, the app uses a cutting-edge deep learning engine to analyse tick data at a speed and volume beyond the ability of the human eye. AlpacaJapan's AI technology recognizes patterns in the waves of price movements instantly, making market predictions possible. Kuni Ishibashi, Bloomberg's head of Japan said, "We are thrilled to introduce this new app as it embodies our mission to fuel innovation in the financial market place. By bringing Bloomberg's real time market data and AlpacaJapan's specialized technology together, we have developed a leading-edge forecasting tool which can help financial professionals make better investment decisions and improve trade workflow efficiency."

DETROIT – Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank will spend $2.25 billion (about ¥245 billion) to secure a nearly 20 percent stake in General Motors' autonomous vehicle unit. GM said Thursday that it will also sink another $1.1 billion into its GM Cruise automated division. The capital infusion is designed to speed large-scale deployment of self-driving'robotaxis' next year. The move widens the SoftBank Vision Fund's influence in ride-hailing services. The fund closed a deal in January to spend about $9 billion for a 15 percent stake in Uber, and also owns a stake in China's top ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing.

SenseTime, the world's highest-valued AI company with a valuation of over $4.5 billion, is back in the money again. The company raised $600 million in an Alibaba-led financing round announced last month, and now it has added a further $620 million to that with a "Series C " round announced today. Alibaba led the previous deal, and this time around the investors include more traditional names such as Fidelity International, Hopu Capital, Silver Lake and Tiger Global. Qualcomm, which previously backed the firm, was also in this round, SenseTime confirmed. The new money takes SenseTime to $1.6 billion from investors to date.

In the AI arms race, Google's I/O conference is akin to Russia's Victory Day parade -- an annual, carefully-orchestrated pullback of the curtains hiding otherwise-secret projects, designed to showcase technical prowess and achievements. This years I/O highlight was Duplex, Google Assistant feature that-- using recurrent neural-network-based AI (and a telephone) -- will schedule appointments for you. To demonstrate, Duplex called two businesses: a hair-salon and a restaurant. With lifelike voices and natural conversation flow -- including appropriate disfluencies (the technical term for "hmms," "uh's", etc.) --Duplex appeared to fool both humans into thinking a living, breathing, potential customer was on the line. By displaying behavior indistinguishable from that of a human, some think Duplex could pass the Turing test.

Apple has prevented Telegram from updating its app ever since Russian authorities ordered its removal from the App Store, the CEO of the popular messaging app has revealed. Telegram has been banned in Russia since April after the app refused to provide decryption keys to the country's security agencies, which would have allowed them to monitor the communications of Telegram users. "We believe we did the only possible thing, preserving the right of our users to privacy in a troubled country," Telegram boss Pavel Durov said in a statement on Telegram on Thursday, 31 May. While Russia makes up only 7 per cent of Telegram's user base, Apple is restricting updates for all Telegram users around the world since mid-April." Mr Durov added that issues with features like stickers were unable to be fixed, despite an update being available. The inability to update the iOS app also means that Telegram is unable to properly comply with GDPR for its users in the EU, Mr Durov said.

Even though SoftBank has spread billions across multiple ride-hailing and autonomous vehicle companies, it has no plans to integrate them, said Michael Ronen, a managing partner. "Each company will make its own decisions about what's in the best interest of the company."

Chinese facial recognition firm SenseTime has topped up its accounts and retained its position as the world's most valuable artificial intelligence startup with a second funding round in two months, while gaining the firm a valuation of USD4.5 billion. The Series C round raised USD620 million and gathered domestic and foreign institutional investors, such as HOPU Investment Management, Yinhu Investment Management, Tiger Fund, and US asset manager firm Fidelity Investments, state-backed The Paper reported. China's government has vowed to turn AI into a USD150 billion industry by 2030. SenseTime has two domestic rivals, Megvii and Yitu, and each have over billion-dollar valuations, which is more than any American AI firm has reached so far. SenseTime has deployed its technologies in smart cities, mobile phones, internet entertainment, automobiles, finance, retail, and other industries.

Catching a wildlife poacher in the act is a tricky business. Just ask the officials and groups who have spent decades and millions of dollars searching for criminal animal hunters and traders operating covertly from South Africa to China. Their work is complicated by several factors, from government corruption that foils anti-poaching efforts to extreme poverty that draws people into the industry in the first place. Poachers tend to go about their illicit business under cover of night, and it's hard to find people among millions of square miles of pitch-black forest. "Eighty percent of poaching happens under the cover of darkness."

TORONTO, ON - APRIL 30: Saudi Arabian citizen Humanoid Robot Sophia is seen during the Discovery exhibition on April 30, 2018 in Toronto, Canada. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is nothing if not controversial. Whether the subject of scrutiny behind hair-raising advances in sex robots which was heavily reported the other week or the topic of the latest disgruntled executive voicing opinions about Elon Musk's crusade against AI's perceived perils, all eyes are on this new area in tech. While no one is yet absolutely sure of AI's definitive path, one thing is certain. Value and expenditures pertaining to this area of emerging technology are on a definite upward curve.