China estimates that by 2030, AI-related activities will generate 26% of its GDP. The UAE has set up a ministry of AI. The US has created a strong ecosystem comprising advanced research institutions, universities, labs, start-up hubs and institutional capital. The French government will spend €1.5 billion over five years to support research in the field, encourage start-ups, and collect data that can be used and shared by engineers. The UK plans to nurture 1000 government-supported PhD researchers by 2025.

This year, we have seen an acceleration of Silicon Valley tech giants opening AI research labs around the world as they seek to gain traction among researchers and fulfill their global ambitions. In the past six months or so, Google brought labs to China and France, Facebook opened labs in Pittsburgh and Seattle, and Microsoft announced plans to open labs near universities in Berkeley, California and Melbourne, Australia. This trend shows no signs of slowing down. Last month, Samsung announced labs in Cambridge, Moscow, and Toronto. This week, Nvidia announced plans to open a new lab in Toronto, while Google shared plans to open a lab in Accra, Ghana, Google's first in Africa and perhaps the first of any tech giant in Africa.

Artificial intelligence could give internet giants like Facebook and Amazon even more power to reshape the Canadian economy, threatening the viability of domestic businesses, researchers warn. A December presentation to senior civil servants said that Canadian companies were losing ownership of -- and access to -- data to the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, requiring a federal policy response. Artificial intelligence "will reinforce this trend," presenters from the National Research Council warned top officials, adding that a national data strategy would be necessary to prevent Canada from becoming "a nation of'data cows' for other countries." The presentation, among other documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, provides a window into the scale of the problem the Liberals are trying to tackle by crafting a national data strategy, and the breadth of departments involved in its creation. The Liberals took another step towards the creation of the strategy by launching online and in-person consultations that will run through the summer in order to inform a final policy.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning cybersecurity technologies hold the key to stopping today's advanced threats. Enterprises are failing to keep up with the evolving threat landscape, massive data breaches and global cyberwarfare, the speed and magnitude of which are constantly increasing. Too many businesses still rely on internal resources and hardware that has a short shelf life and limited capacity. Hackers, on the other hand, are innovative. The only way to fight back is to use their own tactics against them, replacing antiquated and obsolete systems with adaptive technology.

The European Parliament is about to vote on a new law that campaigners claim could completely change "the free and open internet as we know it." It would potentially mean that tech companies would be forced to scan every single thing posted to their sites – and take down anything they think might be stolen. Prominent figures from the tech industry wrote an open letter to the President of the European Parliament warning that Article 13 represented an "imminent threat" to the future of the internet. "Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users," the open letter warns. "We support the consideration of measures that would improve the ability for creators to receive fair remuneration for the use of their works online. For the sake of the internet's future, we urge you to vote for the deletion of this proposal."

Google is banning the development of artificial-intelligence software that can be used in weapons, chief executive Sundar Pichai said on Thursday, setting strict new ethical guidelines for how the tech giant should conduct business in an age of increasingly powerful AI. The new rules could set the tone for the deployment of AI far beyond Google, as rivals in Silicon Valley and around the world compete for supremacy in self-driving cars, automated assistants, robotics, military AI and other industries. "We recognize that such powerful technology raises equally powerful questions about its use," Pichai wrote in a blog post. "As a leader in AI, we feel a special responsibility to get this right." The ethical principles are a response to a firestorm of employee resignations and public criticism over a Google contract with the Defense Department for software that could help analyze drone video, which critics argued had nudged the company one step closer to the "business of war." Google executives said last week that they would not renew the deal for the military's AI endeavor, known as Project Maven, when it expires next year.

Google recently announced it would be pulling out of a high profile DARPA Artificial Intelligence (AI) program called MAVEN citing ethics concerns and a petition from 4,000 of its employees. This decision came just before The Economist ran a cover story detailing the Chinese government's brutal oppression of the Uyghur population in the Zinjang province of western China. Uyghurs are a Muslim Turkic minority, ethnically and religiously distinct from the ruling Han Chinese. The Chinese government has turned the province into a technologically enabled police state, with invasive monitoring of all forms of communication, biometric identity controls, and novel applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence. In December, Google announced it would be opening a new AI research center in China, expanding its existing presence in the country.

Companies are relatively abstract entities, created by an amalgam of diverse individuals, and largely dedicated to making money along the lines of shareholder value. Throughout history, there have been many companies that, in one way or another, have put profits over ethics, from IBM's collaboration with Hitler's Germany, helping facilitate the holocaust, more recently, Volkswagen's systematic poisoning of the planet. The closest thing to corporate ethics is corporate social responsibility, which in too many cases has proved to be little more than a propaganda tool to justify a few worthy words in an annual report. In the absence of corporate ethics employees are increasingly speaking out against their company when they feel it has crossed the line: Google staff have spoken out against the Department of Defense's Maven Project, a lucrative image recognition contract that many other technology companies have chosen to keep quiet about. Opposition to Google's role in a project clearly designed to kill people began with some resignations, continued with a letter signed by thousands of employees, and ended with the non-renewal of the contract with the Department of Defense as well as the publication of a series of ethical principles that will supposedly guide the company's role in developing artificial intelligence.

Mars and the Earth are nestling closer than they have for 15 years. The phenomenon – known as a Mars approach – should allow people to see the Red Planet with the naked eye. For Nasa, it is also a perfect opportunity to take advantage of the relatively short distance and send off missions to explore Mars. That is why Mars missions tend to launch roughly every two years – since that is how often the close approaches happen. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater.

Billionaire Elon Musk has said cash handouts'will be necessary' if robots take human jobs, in his latest flurry of tweets. Musk made the comment in response to a question from a Twitter user about whether he supported universal basic income (UBI) - a cash handout that could be given to people irrespective of their employment. Musk believes UBI could be a possible solution for unemployment caused by machines taking over the workforce. Billionaire Elon Musk has said cash handouts'will be necessary' if robots take human jobs, in his latest flurry of tweets A universal basic income would give a standard amount of money to every citizen to cover basic expenses like food and living costs each month. Musk first joined the growing list of tech executives supporting the payment system in 2016 when he spoke about the concept in an interview.