Can AI solve the big problems confronting healthcare? Healthcare is a personal experience that's intrinsically part of our shared human experience. Even healthy people at some point see a doctor of some sort, get vaccinated for school or travel, be prescribed medicines, undergo tests, maybe even get stitches or surgery. Small wonder, healthcare is the fastest growing sector in our economy. Access to care, and the quest for preventative care and to cure the currently uncurable conditions that affect 40% of Americans are among the biggest problems facing medicine and the society it serves. Technology in healthcare as in other user sectors has always been a R&D enabler helping researchers to work faster and collaborate better.

The Trump administration Monday banned six Chinese companies that work on artificial intelligence from doing business with US firms, accusing the companies of helping to violate the human rights of Muslims in China's northwestern province of Xinjiang. Four of the companies, SenseTime, Megvii, iFLYTEK, and Yitu, make software for facial recognition and voice transcription that's reportedly been used in a campaign of repression and control in Xinjiang that has drawn international condemnation. The other companies, Hikvision and Dahua Technology, make surveillance equipment such as cameras that incorporates AI. Besides drawing attention to an important issue, the ban is also the latest effort by the US to curb China's progress in an increasingly important technology. "This is part of the broader tech cold war," says Rebecca Fannin, a technology consultant and author of Tech Titans of China, a book that charts China's recent progress in technology and innovation. The rise of China's tech industry has coincided, in recent years, with a revolution in AI.

The UK government went ahead with a face-detection system for its passport photo checking service, despite knowing the technology failed to work well for people in some ethnic minorities. Face recognition technology has a record of failing to recognise people with certain skin tones. For example, Google had to apologise in 2015 when its photos app labelled a black couple as gorillas. Now, documents released by the Home Office this week show it was aware of problems with its website's passport photo checking service, but decided to use it regardless. "User research was carried out with a wide range of ethnic groups and did identify that people with very light or very dark skin found it difficult to provide an acceptable passport photograph," the department wrote in a document released in response to a freedom of information (FOI) request.

Washington State University researchers have developed a novel way to identify previously unrecognized antibiotic-resistance genes in bacteria. By employing machine learning and game theory, the researchers were able to determine with 93 to 99 percent accuracy the presence of antibiotic-resistant genes in three different types of bacteria. The increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a growing problem around the world. Every year, millions of people in the U.S. are infected with drug-resistant pathogens, and thousands of people die from pneumonia or bloodstream infections that become impossible to treat. In recent years, researchers have been working to make use of genome sequencing to identify antibiotic-resistant genes, looking for similar sequences of genes in public databases.

Over the next decade, innovative technologies such as edge computing, 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality and Internet of things will combine to create deeply connected relationships between people and computers, resulting in fully augmented human beings. This is according to the Future of Connected Living report commissioned by Dell Technologies and conducted by Vanson Bourne. The research firm surveyed 4 600 director- to C-suite-level business leaders across four countries, including SA, to uncover their views on the impact of emerging technologies. The research found the gap between human and machines is shrinking, presenting a new era of human-machine alliances on the horizon. Over the next decade, it says, everything around us will become more intelligent, communicative and connected, with new kinds of networks, devices, interfaces and AI expected to help people augment, enhance and optimise their personal lives and working environment.

Hapag-Lloyd, the fifth-largest container shipping line in the world by market share, has agreed a partnership with PortChain, specialists in AI solutions for the maritime industry, to improve its fleet planning operations. According to a statement, the two partners will work closely in order to simplify and optimize workflows within voyage control and execution. PortChain's predictive algorithms will assist Hapag-Lloyd's Marine Operations teams to identify potential issues in schedules earlier, leading to greater reliability and a reduction in costs. It will combine large amounts of data with their propriety machine learning algorithms to provide live insights on issues affecting the schedules of Hapag-Lloyd's vessels. As well as that, it will allow for a more proactive and collaborative way of working which both parties believe will being benefits for Hapag-Lloyd's partners and customers.

Just over two years ago, China announced an audacious plan to overtake the US and lead the "world in AI [artificial intelligence] technology and applications by 2030". It is already widely regarded to have overtaken the EU in many aspects. But now its plans may be knocked off course by the US restricting certain Chinese companies from buying technologies developed or manufactured in the States. Washington's justification is that the organisations involved have made products used to commit human rights abuses against China's Muslim ethnic minorities. But it is notable that those on its blacklist include many of China's official "national AI champions", among them: Like the telecoms firm Huawei before them, they now face major disruption as a consequence of the Trump administration's intervention.

Robotics is a combination of engineering and technology, which includes mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, computer science, and other engineering domains. Robotics is one of the emerging fields now in the industry. Now in approximately every sector robots are using for making simple the situations. For a robotic process, the system requires a combination of software and physical components such as power supply, actuators, sensors, locomotive parts, storage devices, and control software. Robotics is now widely used in military, security, construction, and field of medical, agriculture, household operation, and education.

The Trump administration is adding a group of Chinese tech companies that develop facial recognition and other artificial intelligence technology to a U.S. blacklist over concerns that the tech is being used to repress China's Muslim minority groups. The move comes ahead of trade talks between the U.S. and China later this week, which one analyst said sets a "negative tone" for the negotiations. The 28 companies added to the blacklist include Hikvision and Dahua, both of which are global providers of video surveillance technology, as well as prominent Chinese AI firms such as Sense Time, Megvii and iFlytek. The Commerce Department on Monday placed the companies on a so-called Entity List for acting contrary to American foreign policy interests. The blacklist effectively bars U.S. firms from selling technology to the Chinese companies without government approval.

The US Commerce Department has said it is adding 28 Chinese government organizations and private businesses, including eight tech giants, to its so-called Entity List for acting against American foreign policy interests. The move effectively bars any US companies from selling technology to the blacklisted firms and organizations without US government approval. The US says they have been involved in human rights violations against Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region. The list notably includes several companies that serve on China's national AI team, which the government formed as part of its strategy to become a global leader in the technology. These are video surveillance company Hikvision, voice recognition giant iFlytek, image recognition companies Megvii and SenseTime, and machine vision and voice recognition company Yitu.