China is planning to build a 13.8 billion yuan (US$2.1 billion) technology park dedicated to developing artificial intelligence (AI), state-backed news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday. The campus will be constructed within five years and situated in the suburban Mentougou district in western Beijing. It will cover 54.87 hectares, Xinhua said. The technology park will be home to around 400 businesses and is expected to create an annual output value of about 50 billion yuan. High-speed big data, cloud computing, biometrics and so-called deep learning, a strand of AI, will be the focus of the new park.

Artificial intelligence, AI, has grabbed headlines, hype, and even consternation at the beast we are unleashing. Every powerful technology can be used for good and bad, be it nuclear or biotechnology, and the same is true for AI. While much of the public discourse from the likes of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking reflects on sci-fi like dystopian visions of overlord AI's gone wrong (a scenario certainly worth discussing), there is a much more immediate threat when it comes to AI. Long before AI goes uncontrollable or takes over jobs, there lurks a much larger danger: AI in the hands of governments and/or bad actors used to push self-interested agendas against the greater good. For background, as a technology optimist and unapologetic supporter of further development, in 2014 I wrote about the massive dislocation in society AI may cause, and while our economic metrics like GDP, growth, and productivity may look awesome as a result, it may worsen the less visible, but in my opinion, far more critical metrics around income disparity and social mobility.

One of the world's most valuable start-ups got that way by using artificial intelligence to satisfy Chinese internet users' voracious appetite for news and entertainment. Every day, its smartphone app feeds 120 million people personalized streams of buzzy news stories, videos of dogs frolicking in snow, GIFs of traffic mishaps and listicles such as "The World's Ugliest Celebrities." Now the company is discovering the risks involved, under China's censorship regime, in giving the people exactly what they want. The makers of the popular news app Jinri Toutiao unveiled moves this week to allay rising concerns from the authorities. Last week, the Beijing bureau of China's top internet regulator accused Toutiao of "spreading pornographic and vulgar information" and "causing a negative impact on public opinion online," and it ordered that updates to several popular sections of the app be halted for 24 hours.

American authorities have decided that Alibaba's digital payment firm, Ant Financial, won't be allowed to acquire the cash transfer company Moneygram. Ant Financial, which was one of our 50 Smartest Companies in 2017, is a Chinese tech company that handles mountains of data generated by its mobile payment business and other banking services. It was created in 2014 by e-commerce giant Alibaba to operate Alipay, a dominant mobile payment platform in China with 520 million users, and uses tools like computer vision and natural-language processing to reimagine financial services (see "Meet the Chinese Finance Giant That's Secretly an AI Company.") In 2017, Ant Financial tried to expand its international footprint, by buying U.S. money transfer company MoneyGram in a $1.2 billion deal. But on Tuesday, the two companies said that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States rejected their proposals to merge.

If Planet Earth were the back of our hand, we'd disprove the truism about knowing it well pretty quickly. The problem: 71 percent of our planet is covered by ocean, and only about 15 percent of the features under the deep sea have been accurately mapped. These unknowns pose a problem for creating safe navigational charts for boats and underwater vehicles, inhibit scientists from identifying habitats that could host unknown or endangered biodiversity, and even affect our estimates of how the oceans are influencing climate change. Leaders in science and industry are rallying to remedy this imbalance. In June 2017, Japan's grant-making Nippon Foundation and the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) announced a joint project to map the deep sea, and gave the scientific community a deadline: 100 percent of the ocean floor mapped by 2030.

Fast Retailing Co., the parent company of major retailer Uniqlo, has put out the welcome mat for Japan's small number of recognized refugees, offering job opportunities for some who might dream of careers in fashion or sales. Even so, for most refugees, language barriers and other issues remain hurdles as they try to establish their lives in Japan, often far from home. Refugees sometimes get jobs in factories, including auto manufacturers, and in the construction and nursing industries, but most are employed in washing and cleaning jobs, according to data from the Tokyo-based Refugee Assistance Headquarters (RHQ), which helps legally recognized refugees find jobs. "They work at places where work can be done without speaking Japanese," said Hiroaki Ito, an official at RHQ. As of March 2016, RHQ, which also provides Japanese language and basic lifestyle education to refugees in the initial months after they arrive in Japan, had helped 396 refugees get work in Japan. Until 2016, Fast Retailing was the only high-profile company in the country employing refugees in Japan and abroad.

Scientists, technologists, engineers, and visionaries are building the future. Amazing things are in the pipeline. But you already knew all that. "Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley, Silicon Dock, all of the Silicons around the world, they are dreaming the dream. They are innovating," Catherine Wood said at Singularity University's Exponential Finance in New York.

The news media is full of stories today concerning China's announcement of their $2.1 billion investment in a technology park dedicated to AI research. China is investing such a large amount in order to obtain their goal of being the global leader in AI by 2030. I also read in a separate article post today that China's president Xi Jinping, easily one of the most powerful leaders in the world, has two books on his reading list specific to AI. One is Augmented by the best selling author and my friend Brett King. I have to admit, that is ridiculously cool.

Chennai: Why pay a common motor insurance premium if you're statistically safer than the rest of the demographic? Insurance companies are aggregating customer data to gauge premiums dynamically. If you are a middle aged man with two kids and drive an SUV, your premiums will be lesser than a 25 year old youth who just got his first sedan. AI and data analytics is changing the sales game rapidly, equipping sales personnel with the right tools and data so they improve conversions and save time. The next time you go to a shop and your favourite dress is out of stock, the salesperson at the counter would take in your order and source it from the neighbouring retail store and earn brownie points.

Here's a surprise: at our Disrupt Berlin event, Ulrich Spiesshofer, the CEO of 125-year old automation giant ABB, argued that automation is nothing to fear. "I think we need to take this fear extremely seriously and get people out of this fear," he said. In his view, automation and robotics has allowed millions of people to move beyond the extreme poverty line and it's the countries that embraced automation -- including the likes of China and India -- that are doing much better than some of their counterparts that have resisted automation. "Technology can be really good if you play it right," Spiesshofer noted. "The truth is that the countries with the highest robot density -- South Korea, Germany, Japan -- have the lowest unemployment rates."