China is developing large, smart and relatively low-cost unmanned submarines that can roam the world's oceans to perform a wide range of missions, from reconnaissance to mine placement to even suicide attacks against enemy vessels, according to scientists involved in these artificial intelligence (AI) projects. The autonomous robotic submarines are expected to be deployed in the early 2020s. While not intended to entirely replace human-operated submarines, they will challenge the advantageous position established by Western naval powers after the second world war. The robotic subs are aimed particularly at the United States forces in strategic waters like the South China Sea and western Pacific Ocean, the researchers said. The project is part of the government's ambitious plan to boost the country's naval power with AI technology.

Imagine you're the president of a European country. You're slated to take in 50,000 refugees from the Middle East this year. Most of them are very religious, while most of your population is very secular. You want to integrate the newcomers seamlessly, minimizing the risk of economic malaise or violence, but you have limited resources. One of your advisers tells you to invest in the refugees' education; another says providing jobs is the key; yet another insists the most important thing is giving the youth opportunities to socialize with local kids.

A report by accountants, Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC), predicts that as many jobs will be created by artificial intelligence (AI) than will be lost. AI, according to Klaus Schwab, is part of the fourth industrial revolution/second machine age. It builds upon the third industrial revolution (i.e the digital revolution), which began during the 1980's, in which the world moved from analog technologies and mechanical devices to digital technology (i.e. The fourth industrial revolution will, says Schwab, involve the fusion of physical, digital, and biological technologies, brought about by advances in nanotechnology, robotics, quantum computing, biotechnology, 3D printing, blockchain, the internet of things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, and yes – artificial intelligence. Schwab asserts that this industrial revolution is greater in scale, impact, and complexity than anything that has proceeded it, and will have a profound impact on all areas of society.

Companies are waging an invisible data war online. And your phone might be an unwitting soldier. Retailers from Amazon and Walmart to tiny startups want to know what their competitors charge. Brick and mortar retailers can send people, sometimes called "mystery shoppers," to their competitors' stores to make notes on prices. Online, there's no need to send people anywhere.

On this week's episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke to Annie Lowrey, a contributing editor at the Atlantic and the author of the new book Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World. It's about universal basic income--the idea that the government would give all its citizens checks every month. Versions of this proposal have caught on with people on the left as well as tech leaders in Silicon Valley and even some hardcore libertarians. Lowrey has written for many years now about economics, but Give People Money is both a reported work--she travels to Kenya, South Korea, and India to view their economic experiments--and a policy brief on what she believes can help alleviate some of the social and political discontent that has arisen from economic change and dislocation. Below is an edited excerpt from the show. In it, we discuss the benefits and drawbacks of UBI, whether or not we should be skeptical that so many Silicon Valley titans have embraced the idea, and how to make the safety net less vulnerable to political attacks.

Science fiction has a bizarre habit of predicting our future. Star Trek famously predicted sliding doors, and Minority Report forecasted the use of gestures as part of user experiences. If only the genre could be so optimistic about artificial intelligence (AI). Over the last twenty years, technology's progress has twinned with some utterly devastating views on how AI could ultimately impact human lives. The likes of 2001: Space Odyssey, The Terminator, The Matrix, Westworld and even i-Robot all presented automation and machine learning as ultimately terrifying prospects; innovations that would bring about our eventual demise.

Enter Industry 4.0, where every sector matters.Economic Development Board Welcome to Industry 4.0, the new age where smart technology and smart appliances are moving us closer and closer to a fully digitized society. Potentially valued at almost $4 trillion by 2020, studies show that businesses everywhere will be able to benefit by embracing the fourth industrial revolution. What is Industry 4.0 ("i4.0") Industry 4.0 is not a new technology, nor is it a new business structure. It is our society's current trend of data exchange and automation in the creation and development of new technologies. It is simply an acknowledgement that technology had advanced so much since the 19th century, where we saw the beginnings of mass production.

When you discover the ways Chinese company Alibaba, the world's largest e-commerce marketplace with $248 billion in transactions (more than eBay and Amazon combined), invests in artificial intelligence and machine learning, you realize quickly that the list of what it doesn't impact is much shorter. Since 1999 when the company was launched in founder Jack Ma's apartment, Alibaba's core business remains to sell goods, but its influence and operations have expanded to make it one of the most valuable tech companies in the world. One of the reasons Alibaba and other Chinese tech companies such as Tencent and Baidu, collectively known as BAT, are making extraordinary gains in artificial intelligence is the support, investment and commitment of the Chinese government to become the dominant AI player in the world. With plans to build a $1 trillion AI industry by 2030, China is on a path to overtake the United States as the world's leader in technology. Along with an enormous population that generates critical data to inform AI algorithms and help make them better as well as a society who is keen on technological change and not as pushy on regulation, China is fertile ground to develop AI applications, and Alibaba is moving full throttle ahead. In fact, Alibaba invested in seven research labs that will focus on artificial intelligence, machine learning, network security, natural language processing and more.

To learn about the innovation in MedTech industry, Cédric travelled to Bern and conducted a must-see interview with Carlos Ciller, CEO & co-founder of RetinAI. In this episode, we are discovering how AI can be applied to healthcare and what are the current trends in ophthalmology. Carlos Ciller is a PhD holder in Machine Learning & Medical Imaging in Ophthalmology. He studied at EPFL in Lausanne and also spent a year at Imperial College in London. As he explains, he was always looking for a way to put technology and innovation at the service of humanity.

With the varying degrees of privacy norms of each country, there is a significant impact on the amount of big data collected and utilised by private and public entities with regard to AI innovations. In China, low safeguards on personal data has resulted in an increase in AI innovations. Whereas in Europe, with the enforcement of the GDPR, there are increased privacy and security guidelines resulting in a negative impact on the growth of the AI sector. While acknowledging the need to intensify AI actions, India requires tailored guidelines which is a blend of international principles along with existing local privacy standards to achieve to an effective and responsible AI ecosystem. The curated blend of AI strategies is mandatory as India is currently investing in AI for its defence, legal and financial sectors.