The British government this week unveiled plans for an ambitious AI simulator to be used to test self-driving cars. It's part of a stated mission to make the UK the world's leading destination for testing autonomous vehicles. The simulator, called OmniCAV, recreates a virtual version of 32km of Oxfordshire roads. "It's a synthetic digital model of the real world," Mark Stileman, bid manager at one of the partners involved, Ordnance Survey, told us. The OS already knows where a lot things are, and the sim adds "feature classification and retrieval" of road furnitures like gantries and white lines, and crucially, road intersections.

It has become increasingly apparent that there is a tremendous opportunity when it comes to infusing artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain platforms. AI, otherwise known as machine learning in some circle, as the ability to take blockchain operations and effectiveness to the next level. Alternatively, blockchain technology can also work in the opposite direction, allowing cutting-edge tech leaders to understand AI in greater depths and essentially create more efficient and smarter intelligence platforms. By decentralizing the market, blockchain and AI will work together to make transactions more secure, while simultaneously generating large amounts of new revenues. Already multi-billion dollar industries on their own, blockchain and AI are poised to benefit on a high scale financially as the two become more intertwined.

Google has pledged not to use its powerful artificial intelligence (AI) to create weapons of war, illegal surveillance or to cause "overall harm". On Thursday, Sundar Pichai, CEO for Alphabet Inc.'s Google, set out a series of principles about AI at the company. The announcement follows more than 4,500 Google employees having written a letter in April, calling on the company to get out of the "business of war" and cancel Pentagon work. Pichai said in Thursday's post that Google recognizes that its powerful technology "raises equally powerful questions about its use". AI is being used for good, he said, citing use cases such as machine-learning sensors being built by higher schoolers to predict the risk of wildfires; farmers using it to monitor their cows' health; and doctors who are using it to diagnose breast cancer and to prevent blindness.

Princeton Univ, $29.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-691-18351-0 The Greeks thought of everything, including sci-fi tropes such as androids and artificial intelligence, according to this lively study of mythology and technology. Stanford classicist Mayor (The Amazons) surveys myths from ancient Greece (with excursions to India and China) about bio-techne, life crafted by artifice. She finds a trove of them, including those of the bronze warrior-robot Talos, who patrolled Crete, hurling boulders at ships and roasting soldiers alive; statues by the legendary engineer Daedalus, so lifelike that they had to be tethered to stay put; and marvels by the blacksmith god Hephaestus, including automated rolling tripods that served Olympian feasts and talking robot servants to help at his forge. Taking a more organic approach, the witch Medea, after defeating Talos with sweet talk and trickery, invented herbal drugs to reverse aging. Mayor also looks at real-life automata in ancient Alexandria--mechanical beasts and people that moved, vocalized, and dispensed milk to bemused onlookers.

An issue across every sector, from market research to employee engagement and government relations, is how to truly understand large groups of people across political, geographical, and cultural divides and amplify their collective voice. This problem is intensified when challenging issues arise and sending out a survey doesn't provide the opportunity to discover what you don't know to ask. On the other hand, focus groups don't represent enough people to justify action. We've come a long way in learning how to better understand massive groups of people utilizing artificial intelligence (AI). This piece outlines key advantages of AI in market research resulting from my work with a number of organizations facing the challenge of transitioning from traditional market research to modern representative intelligence; that is intelligence capable of engaging, understanding and authentically representing massive groups of stakeholders (customer, employees, citizens, etc.).

When Kory Mathewson began his PhD in computing science at the University of Alberta, he didn't think it would lead to doing improv on stage with a robot--but that's exactly what happened. Mathewson has two shows in this year's Edmonton Fringe Fest: TEDxRFT, an improv show that riffs on the popular TED Talks videos, and Human Machine, an AI improv show. "The Human Machine AI improv show is part of my PhD work. I'm studying how humans and machine-learning systems interact, and so this show is a little bit of a play on the work that I've been doing," he said. "I've been building dialogue systems, and this show explores how humans and these dialogue systems--like Siri, Alexa or Google Home--play into our lives, and the funny things they say."

In the legend, John Henry beat the machine, but died in the process. Humans have been struggling against machines since they were invented. American folk hero John Henry trying valiantly to dig faster than a steam drill really is not that different from the story of cabdrivers striking against Uber. What all of us need to realize, however, is that the winning play in a digital economy is not fighting against robots and artificial intelligence, but using our new tools to improve productivity. In our book, What To Do When Machines Do Everything, we call it "enhancement."

There are about a million games releasing, Gamescom is next week, PAX in two weeks--it's starting to get pretty damn busy around here again. Both Brad Chacos and I will be in Germany for Gamescom next week, so keep an eye out for previews, announcements, and maybe even a video or two. It's mostly QuakeCon news this week, including 25 minutes of Doom talk, but you'll also find a smattering of early Gamescom trailers below, a tease for Vermintide II's first DLC, and a surprise TimeSplitters acquisition by Deep Silver. This is gaming news for August 13 to 17. As I said, Gamescom is still four or five days away--but not for everyone, evidently. Tropico 6 got out ahead of the competition and dropped this so-called "Gamescom Trailer" this week.

CAIRO – Al-Qaida's chief bomb maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, who was behind the 2009 Christmas Day plot to down an airliner over Detroit and other foiled aviation-related terror attacks, was killed in a U.S. drone strike, Yemeni officials and a tribal leader said Friday. The killing of al-Asiri deals a heavy blow to the group's capabilities in striking western targets and piles pressure on the group that already lost some of its top cadres over the past years in similar drone strikes. A Yemeni security official said that al-Asiri is dead; a tribal leader and an al-Qaida-linked source also said that he was killed in a U.S. drone strike in the eastern Yemeni governorate of Marib. The tribal leader said that al-Asiri was struck, along with two or four of his associates, as he stood beside his car. He added that al-Asiri's wife, who hails from the well-known al-Awaleq tribe in the southern governorate of Shabwa, was briefly held months ago by the UAE-backed forces and later released. Al-Qaida itself has remained silent about its top bomb maker.

You might know motion capture as the tech that transformed Andy Serkis into Gollum, but now it can transform everyday people into animated avatars in virtual worlds, and all in real-time. Motion capture--which uses body sensors, ultra-precise cameras, and modeling software to create 3D animations from real-life human movement--is now taking on location-based virtual reality, or LBVR. PCWorld visited a leading motion capture company called Vicon in Oxford, England to learn how mocap has evolved to take on this new frontier in entertainment. If you've watched behind-the-scenes footage of how motion capture (or mocap) works, you've probably seen actors in skintight lycra suits covered with golf ball-sized sensors. Normally, dozens of infrared cameras track these sensors to model an actor's movements.