The animated caper "Despicable Me 3" dominated the Chinese box office over the weekend with $65.1 million in receipts, marking the biggest opening day for an animated film in China. The latest installment in the "Despicable Me" franchise smashed the previous opening-day record, set by "Kung Fu Panda 3" in 2016. It also achieved the fifth-biggest opening weekend of any film in China this year, according to film consulting firm Artisan Gateway. The film's huge weekend debut also outstrips the total ticket sales of its prequel, "Despicable Me 2," in China in 2014. The Universal Pictures film also has been a massive hit in North America and elsewhere across the globe. The Chinese market is expecting to boost its overseas revenues further.

While driverless cars get the glory, an AI startup is shifting gears to tackle a road less traveled: automated trucks. Beijing-based TuSimple, is developing a driverless trucking platform, TuSimple CTO Xiaodi Hou explained in a conversation with Michael Copeland in this week's episode of the AI Podcast. A shortage of drivers in Beijing, coupled with the challenge of finding drivers willing to travel on deserted roads in areas with few amenities, only bolsters TuSimple's business case. "If you can show people that this tool can replace your existing tool and can make your tool chain cheaper, more productive, it's much easier to negotiate with people like that," Xiaodi says. The challenge lies in increasing a fully loaded truck's range of vision to over 200 meters or approximately 0.12 miles, using highly customized cameras and lenses, to ensure safety.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are being regularly used by 18% of organisations, according to consumer information management firm Callcredit Information Group in its Fraud & Risk report. With take-up of AI on the rise, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recently predicted that global gross domestic product (GDP) will be 14% higher in 2030 because of artificial intelligence. This is the equivalent of an additional $15.7trn, or more than the current output of China and India combined, according to PwC research. Data analytics AI technology is in the early stages of deployment but is already set to transform financial markets and could act as a key differentiator in performance, Matthew Hodgson, CEO of Mosaic Smart Data, tells GTNews. Two of the key areas within financial services that are making huge advances in AI are fraud prevention and lending and leasing.

By Ashim Roy For a population of 128 crores, India has 10.12 lakh doctors. Of these, a recent KPMG report says, 74 per cent cater to only a third of the urban residents. In other words, there are only about 2.63 lakh doctors catering to the majority of Indians residing on the fringes of urban settlements and in rural areas. On the other hand, India has more than 90 crore mobile phone connections. Studies show that in 2008 the number of devices connected to the Internet was more than the number of people on Earth!

Google is working on a new'panic' feature for Android. It's designed to protect you from malware, and will let you escape an infected app when it tries to take over your phone. Most people's natural reaction after they first realise that they've opened a dodgy link or launched a malicious app is to return to where they came from by repeatedly bashing the back key. Google appears to have built new functionality specifically around that instinct. 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.

One in 12 British people use public Wi-Fi to access pornographic content, according to a new report. Some of the most popular places to watch pornography in public are restaurants, train stations, offices and libraries, though the street is also a common choice. Norton by Symantec has warned public Wi-Fi users that they risk exposing themselves to hackers, unless they start taking proper precautions. 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. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

The internet is going to stop working properly. For now, it's just for one day, though campaigners warn it might be a preview of the future. The world's biggest websites are going to grind to a halt – slowing down, or stopping working in other ways – in protest against intrusions onto net neutrality. It won't be the first time that companies have sabotaged their own websites in defence of the idea that the internet should remain neutral, and that internet providers and other companies shouldn't be able to privilege some kinds of internet traffic over others. But it comes at an especially contentious time, with campaigners and companies warning that the Federal Communications Commission could be close to undermining one of the internet's central principles. 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.

As with so many things, the pace of change- even in agriculture- is increasing rapidly, and it turns out that even agriculture is not immune to the changes of the digital age. Technological innovations have the ability to transform every link in the food chain, from seed to fork. The need to embrace the opportunities these innovations offer is real: in order to feed the nearly 10 billion people with whom we will be sharing this planet by 2050, crop and livestock productivity improvements are essential. Agricultural efficiency is still relatively poor: 7 tons of feed is needed to produce just 1 ton of meat. It takes 880 gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk.

Private enterprises and companies are likely to be the driver in China's push to catch up with the United States in implementing artificial intelligence across a broad swathe of industries, owing to the size of the Chinese consumer market, fast-developing "smart" infrastructure and a growing focus to innovate by organisations of all sizes, technology experts said. Their views on AI as an opportunity to transform traditional industries, including transportation, financial services, retail and media, took centre stage at the opening of this year's Rise technology conference, which concludes on Thursday. China was the world's second-biggest investor in AI enterprises last year, injecting US$2.6 billion into the sector, according to the state-run Chinese think tank Wuzhen Institute. The US topped the list with US$17.9 billion in investments. Li Zhifei, the founder and chief executive of AI start-up Mobvoi, said conditions are ripe for China to take the lead in rolling out self-driving or autonomous vehicles across the country before the US.

In the summer of 1977, Bobby Fischer was in self-imposed exile in Pasadena, California. The greatest chess player on Earth at the time, Fischer had joined an apocalyptic cult and covered the windows of his grungy apartment with tinfoil. Russian secret police and Israeli intelligence, he insisted, could spy on him through his dental fillings and influence him with radioactive signals. He hadn't played a recorded game of chess for five years, since defeating Boris Spassky and the Soviet machine in the match of the century in Reykjavik, Iceland, capturing the world championship and becoming an American Cold War hero. Nevertheless, gripped by paranoia and hidden away from the rest of the world, Fischer wrote letters. He sent two, never before published, to a Carnegie Mellon professor and computer scientist named Hans Berliner.