The Trump administration has extended the executive order banning American businesses from working with companies that pose a national security risk, extending the muddled relationship between US enterprise and Chinese conglomerates such as smartphone maker Huawei and telecom equipment manufacturer ZTE. The order, called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act which gives the president the authority to regulate commerce during a national emergency, was implemented in May 2019. The result of the ban, which has now been extended until May 2021, means that Google cannot provide Huawei with access to Google Mobile Services and therefore popular apps such as Maps and YouTube are not available on Huawei phones. Google Mobile Services are the commercial aspects to the Android platform that all major smartphones - apart from Apple's iPhones - use. It includes Google's apps and back-end services which powers other apps including Netflix and Citymapper.

Travis Scott performed a virtual concert tour in "Fortnite" that was viewed by almost 28 million people over three days. Live concert publication Pollstar speculates that the Travis Scott performance might end up as the biggest live event of the year. The virtual event was so successful, it even caught the attention of Democratic political consultants. The Post asked if Democratic nominee Joe Biden or his campaign had reached out after comments made by former Pete Buttigieg spokeswoman Lis Smith on Monday. Sweeney said no, but added that they wouldn't stop Biden if he decided to create his own map in the game's Creative Mode.

A probe aboard NASA's InSight space lander finally appears to be making slow and steady progress in its mission to burrow into the surface of Mars. NASA said that its new approach of using a scoop on the end of the space lander's robotic arm to push the 16-inch-long probe – known as the Mole – into the Red Planet's resilient surface is helping it to gain headway. Efforts to penetrate the long thin'self-hammering nail', manufactured by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), into into the Martian surface kicked off in February 2019, but had since stalled. The Mole needs soil to fall into the hole it's digging to give it the necessary friction to able to penetrate and go deeper, in its mission to measure the heat from the planet's interior. But the probe had encountered an unexpected layer of cemented soil – called'duricrust' – that wasn't falling into the hole the device had dug.

Robots and drones equipped with infrared cameras could patrol holiday destinations and enforce social distancing rules under new EU plans to save the summer break. European Commission tourism proposals imaging'artificial intelligence and robotics [to] underpin public health measures', alongside infection tracing mobile apps. Automatons could appear in places like airports, beaches, resorts and restaurants to make sure that people keep at least 5 feet (1.5 metres) away from each other. On-board infrared cameras could allow the robots to measure people's temperatures from a distance and identify people with a fever that need to self-isolate. The plans come after Singapore employed a Boston Dynamics Spot robot to roam parks, broadcasting a message reminding pedestrians to keep their distance.

Resiliency and scalability of contact centers are the key factors to Business Continuity Planning. Contact centers built on legacy systems are expensive to maintain and do not scale well to handle increasing customer anxiety. Contact center operations face dips in agent productivity due to legacy technology and skill gaps. To overcome these business challenges, organizations must implement a flexible solution and leverage automation to enhance operational scalability. Join our upcoming webinar with guest speaker, Analyst Kate Leggett of Forrester Research to learn how to leverage a full suite of AI technologies, including Natural Language Processing and machine and deep learning to create a smarter, and more scalable contact center.

Jean-Francois Gagne is the CEO of Elemental AI, a Montreal-based startup which develops artificial intelligence solutions for all kinds of businesses. Elemental operates in a tough market with serious competition from tech giants such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Yet thanks to its innovative training technique, which harnesses simulated data, it has created a unique proposition that has attracted an impressive roster of blue chip customers. Here Jean-Francois calls for a re-think on the assumptions built into the economic equation of international trade as well explaining why he thinks people will collaborate with machines to create new value. Elemental is a partner of the Global AI Summit, an event which will be hosted by Tortoise on May 15th 2020, that will examine the future of the world and look in depth at the role technology, and AI in particular, will play in shaping it. Which underlying assumptions about globalisation are going to withstand the pandemic, if any?

The United States Patent and Trademark Office officially selected a new partner to support its increasing adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. General Dynamics Information Technology on Monday announced it was awarded a contract worth up to $50 million through USPTO's Intelligent Automation and Innovation Support Services blanket purchase agreement. GDIT is the latest of more than a dozen companies the agency tapped under the future-facing BPA. Other businesses who've made their own recent announcements detailing partnerships via the agreement include Octo and Steampunk. In the announcement, Vice President & General Manager Christopher Hegedus for GDIT's Diplomacy, Commerce and Government Operations business area noted the company's supported the agency for nearly two decades, and through this "new work, [aims to bring its] AI, ML and robotic process automation expertise to help USPTO develop solutions that accelerate the patent and trademark process to benefit American innovators."

For a few fleeting moments during the New York governor Andrew Cuomo's daily coronavirus briefing on Wednesday 6 May, the sombre grimace that has filled our screens for weeks was briefly replaced by something resembling a smile. "We are ready, we're all-in," the governor gushed. "We are New Yorkers, so we're aggressive about it, we're ambitious about it … We realise that change is not only imminent, but it can actually be a friend if done the right way." The inspiration for these uncharacteristically good vibes was a video visit from the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who joined the governor's briefing to announce that he will be heading up a panel to reimagine New York state's post-Covid reality, with an emphasis on permanently integrating technology into every aspect of civic life. "The first priorities of what we're trying to do," Schmidt said, "are focused on telehealth, remote learning, and broadband … We need to look for solutions that can be presented now, and accelerated, and use technology to make things better." Lest there be any doubt that the former Google chair's goals were purely benevolent, his video background featured a framed pair of golden angel wings.

The graph represents a network of 4,023 Twitter users whose tweets in the requested range contained "(Artificial Intelligence) OR #AI", or who were replied to or mentioned in those tweets. The network was obtained from the NodeXL Graph Server on Thursday, 14 May 2020 at 04:33 UTC. The requested start date was Thursday, 14 May 2020 at 00:01 UTC and the maximum number of days (going backward) was 14. The maximum number of tweets collected was 5,000. The tweets in the network were tweeted over the 1-day, 1-hour, 46-minute period from Tuesday, 12 May 2020 at 04:35 UTC to Wednesday, 13 May 2020 at 06:22 UTC.

On Saturday, the US Air Force is expected to launch its secret space plane, X-37B, for a long-duration mission in low Earth orbit. The robotic orbiter looks like a smaller version of the space shuttle and has spent nearly eight of the past 10 years in space conducting classified experiments for the military. Almost nothing is known about what X-37B does up there, but ahead of its sixth launch the Air Force gave some rare details about its cargo. In addition to its usual suite of secret military tech, the X-37B will also host a few unclassified experiments during its upcoming sojourn in space. NASA is sending up two experiments to study the effects of radiation on seeds, and the US Air Force Academy is using the space plane to deploy a small research satellite.