The COVID-19 public health crisis is enriching a murky nexus of technology surveillance firms linked to senior Government officials – at the expense of people's lives. The financial adventures of a former MI5 spymaster and the medical fantasies of Boris Johnson's top advisor point toward an unnerving endgame: an artificially intelligent (AI) corporate super-state, with a special focus on NHS genetic research inspired by eugenics. The tale begins with Britain's security services – and ends with Dominic Cummings. It uncovers the extent to which democracy and public health are now under threat from a series of Government failures rooted in a bankrupt ideology, influenced by the modern relics of scientific racism. On Sunday 12 April, the Government announced that the NHS would be launching a new COVID-19 contact tracing app.

THE BOOKS strewn around Pearse Keane's office at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London are an unusual selection for a medic. "The Information", a 500-page doorstop by James Gleick on the mathematical roots of computer science, sits next to Neal Stephenson's even heftier "Cryptonomicon", an alt-history novel full of cryptography and prime numbers. Nearby is "The Player of Games" by the late Iain M. Banks, whose sci-fi novels describe a utopian civilisation in which AI has abolished work. Dr Keane is an ophthalmologist by training. But "if I could have taken a year or two from my medical training to do a computer-science degree, I would have," he says.

The quest for making machines, to think, and act like humans has evolved from movie-fiction to real-world applications. Yet we are far from replicating the cognitive thinking of humans with accuracy and precision. Although the bots, cobots, robots, humanoids, and digital humans can either outplay or coordinate with us in many ways, unlike human intelligence, they need to be fed with data regularly. While our minds cannot beat machines in terms of computational power and speed of execution, the level of complex cognitive skills still makes us superior to the machines. The programmed and trained models fail when it comes to making a rational decision.

Amazon announced on Wednesday it was implementing a "one-year moratorium" on police use of Rekognition, its facial-recognition technology. Lawmakers and civil liberties groups have expressed growing alarm over the tool's potential for misuse by law enforcement for years, particularly against communities of color. Now, weeks into worldwide protests against police brutality and racism sparked by the killing of George Floyd, Amazon appears to have acknowledged these concerns. In a short blog post about the decision, the tech giant said it hopes the pause "might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules" for the use of facial-recognition technology, which is largely unregulated in the US. Critics have said that the tech could easily be abused by the government, and they cite studies showing tools like Rekognition misidentify people of color at higher rates than white people.

When he testified before Congress, Facebook CEO Mark ZuckerbergMark Elliot ZuckerbergHillicon Valley: Biden calls on Facebook to change political speech rules Dems demand hearings after Georgia election chaos Microsoft stops selling facial recognition tech to police The Hill's Campaign Report: Biden campaign goes on offensive against Facebook Biden campaign calls on Facebook to change political speech rules MORE loved to tell legislators that his team would "follow up with you" on that, or that his team is building AI tools for that. These AI tools would supposedly solve many content moderation problems, ranging from misinformation to terrorism to fake accounts. Today, you could add coronavirus misinformation to that list, but you could also ask if these AI tools have actually solved any of these problems (or if Zuckerberg's team ever did follow up). Many decisions today, such as ranking a website in search results, are made by algorithms. These algorithms are perceived as objective, mechanical and unbiased, while humans are perceived as subjective, fallible and full of bias.

When progressive technologies start to deliver on their potential, we can expect a wholesale shift of vendors looking to get on the bandwagon. First the technology enthusiasts and early adopters will come to validate the promises of the newest technology and hone its potential into something viable for the mainstream. Once that is done, the early majority, late adopters and finally, even the skeptics jump in as well. Finally the time is here for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML) in cyber. There is a widespread move out of the early adopter stage and into the early majority stage of adoption.

OpenAI, the machine learning nonprofit co-founded by Elon Musk, has released its first commercial product: a rentable version of a text generation tool the organisation once deemed too dangerous to release. Dubbed simply "the API", the new service lets businesses directly access the most powerful version of GPT-3, OpenAI's general purpose text generation AI. The tool is already a more than capable writer. Feeding an earlier version of the opening line of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four – "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" – the system recognises the vaguely futuristic tone and the novelistic style, and continues with: "I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science."

Massachusetts-based supermarket chain Market Basket has announced plans for a second Rhode Island store. The 89,000-square-foot store in Warwick expected to open next year will be located at a site that was previously home to a Sam's Club and later an At Home store, according to a statement from Mayor Joseph Solomon and Market Basket President and CEO Arthur T. Demoulas. "Our city's central location in the state, combined with our growing business climate, continue to make Warwick a natural choice for multiple companies looking to expand their reach in the Ocean State," Solomon said in a statement. Privately-owned Market Basket currently has 81 stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. The company in March announced plans for a store in Johnston.

Schools and libraries have been closed for months, but some kids aren't going to get away with playing video games all summer. Kelly Passek -- a middle school librarian in Montgomery County, Virginia -- is sending out summer reading via drones. After using the quadcopters from Wing to get some home essentials, she realized that she could use the service to literally drop some knowledge on local students. Passek does have to resort to some manual labor to get books to kids, though. She takes requests via a Google Form, then packs up the books and drops them off at Wing's facility.

June 2020 is off to a hot start for developers of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). Yesterday, OTTO Motors announced a $29 million Series C, and today Locus Robotics closed $40 million in Series D funding. The Series D brings Locus' total amount of funding raised to $105 million. Locus' latest round was led by Zebra Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Zebra Technologies. Existing investors such as Scale Venture Partners also participated in the round.