Last year, China said it plans to be a world leader in AI by 2030. Now its capital is building a massive campus to house the AI firms that will power that rise, according to local media outlet Beijing News (link in Chinese). Authorities in Beijing's Mentougou district will build the tech campus along with Zhongguancun Development Group, a company that has built several similar technology parks in China. They plan to invest 13.8 billion yuan (about $2.1 billion) in the 548,700 square-meter park, and hope to to attract over 400 enterprises. Construction will be completed within three to five years. The park, which will count on 5G telecom and have a supercomputer, will focus on developing areas such as high-speed big data, cloud computing, biometric identification, deep learning, state-run news agency Xinhua added.

The hysteria about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. There seems to be no shortage of sensationalist news about how AI could cure diseases, accelerate human innovation and improve human creativity. Just looking at the media headlines, you might think that we are already living in a future where AI has infiltrated every aspect of society. While it is undeniable that AI has opened up a wealth of promising opportunities, it has also led to the emergence of a mindset that can be best described as "AI solutionism". This is the philosophy that, given enough data, machine learning algorithms can solve all of humanity's problems.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said she is disappointed by the US's "unjustified decision" to slap tariffs on EU steel and aluminium. The tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium, which affect the EU, Canada and Mexico, came into effect on Friday. All three are planning retaliatory moves. Mrs May said the EU and UK should be exempted and would work together to "protect and safeguard our workers and industries". UK Steel said the tariffs, which apply to a wide range of steel and aluminium products such as sheets, plates, bars, pipes and "semi-finished" products, will damage not only the UK steel sector but also the US economy.

Organisations including the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions will be able to see UK citizens' entire internet browsing history within weeks. The Investigatory Powers Bill, which was all but passed into law this week, forces internet providers to keep a full list of internet connection records (ICRs) for a year and to make them available to the Government if asked. Those ICRs in effect serve as a full list of every website that people have visited, rather than collecting which specific pages are visited or what's done on them. ICRs will be made available to a wide range of government bodies. Those include expected law enforcement organisations such as the police, the military and the secret service, but also includes bodies such as the Food Standards Agency, the Gambling Commission, councils and the Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust.

The Times talked to a bunch of Googlers and reviewed Gmails and Google Docs and unearthed a growing rift in the company over the initiative. It all started when Google's A.I. department won a contract to work on Project Maven, a Pentagon program that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and which could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes. Helping the military blow up humans and buildings in distant lands is extremely upsetting to employees who joined the company, which is famous for its original "don't be evil" motto. According to the Times, the deal has caused a rift in the company between those who love the pure science of artificial intelligence and the business development team, whose eyes turn into dollar signs when they ogle defense contracts. The internal debate has already prompted a slew of resignations and a petition signed by about 4,000 employees who want the company to agree "that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology."

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have created a new method using machine learning to accelerate the design of microbes that produce biofuel. To speed up the production of biofuels, the scientists developed a computer algorithm that begins with abundant data about the proteins and metabolites in a biofuel-producing microbial. However, the algorithm does not contain information about how the pathway actually work and instead uses data from previous experiments to learn how the pathway will behave. This new technique enables scientists to automatically predict the amount of biofuel produced by pathways that have been added to E. coli bacterial cells. A pathway is a series of chemical reactions in a cell that produce a specific compound, which researchers have sought to find ways to re-engineer and import from one microbe to another.

In the race to start the world's first driving business without human drivers, everyone is chasing Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo. The Google sibling has cleared the way to beat its nearest rivals, General Motors Co. and a couple of other players, by at least a year to introduce driverless cars to the public. A deal reached in January to buy thousands of additional Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which get kitted out with sensors that can see hundreds of yards in any direction, puts Waymo's lead into stark relief. No other company is offering for-hire rides yet, let alone preparing to carry passengers in more than one city this year. GM plans to start a ride-hailing service with its Chevrolet Bolt--the one with no steering wheel or pedals, the ultimate goal in autonomous technology--late next year, assuming the U.S. government has protocols in place by then. SoftBank Vision Fund, the gigantic Japanese tech investor, backed that plan on May 31 by dropping $2.25 billion into GM Cruise Holdings, the automaker's autonomous drive unit. Most of the others trying solve the last remaining self-driving puzzles are more cautious, targeting 2020 or later. The road to autonomy is long and exceedingly complicated. It can also be dangerous: Two high-profile efforts, from Uber Technologies Inc. and Tesla Inc., were involved in crashes that caused the death of a pedestrian (in the first known case of a person killed by a self-driving vehicle) and a driver using an assistance program touted as a precursor to autonomy. One of Waymo's autonomous vans was involved in a collision just last week.

Life-Science companies are obsessed with hording documents. These documents are filled with meaningless data. Axendia research shows that 85% of companies surveyed rely on document driven processes. Much of these meaningless data are unstructured, untagged and untapped. Data are spread across countless repositories.

Dubai: Thousands of CCTV cameras of various Dubai government agencies will now provide live feed to a central command centre, officials said. Under a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) network, security cameras across will relay live images of security breaches live to the central command centre, Dubai Police said. The cameras will monitor criminal behaviour in three sectors -- tourism, traffic and bricks and mortar facilities. The network, said the police, is being phased in via different stages to meet the Dubai 2021 Vision requirements of a smart city. Announcing the programme, Major-General Khalil Ebrahim Al Mansouri, Assistant Commander-in-Chief for Criminal Investigation Affairs, said the new project called'Oyoon' (eyes) will tackle crimes in the city and help reduce traffic accident deaths and congestion. Earlier, different agencies managed their command centres to receive live feed from the CCTV cameras.

In a sweeping bid to restore his country's image and elevate its standing in the global business community, French president Emmanuel Macron has hosted a string of international summits since taking office on issues such as tech and entrepreneurship to lure foreign investors with an overriding message: France is back. But to fuel the country's economic upswing, Macron's administration is also looking inward. Last month, it laid out a comprehensive blueprint authored by Fields Medal recipient Cedric Villani called "For a Meaningful Artificial Intelligence," which outlined a national strategy to become a leader in the field, overhaul digital innovation around AI and make sure labor-market and technological disruptions support inclusivity and diversity. "AI is not just a sector; it will shape an unprecedented transformation of society and the economy, and we're very proud to be ushering in a new AI era for France" Mounir Mahjoubi, France's secretary of state for digital affairs, told Adweek. "France is regarded as a leader in AI but needs to mobilize substantially more resources to bring in scientists, tech firms and dedicated research centers from the largest corporations," he said.