Over the past year, more nations have come to realize the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping the economics of the future. With Russia, the United States, and the United Emirates all funding serious efforts to advance AI tech, China has established a three-year program to secure AI as a major economic driver by 2020. This is part of the nation's overarching plan to become an industry leader in AI by 2030. As a first step towards this goal, the Chinese government is preparing to build a technology park in Beijing dedicated to AI development research. The government is investing some $2.12 billion (13.8 billion yuan) to build the industrial park, located in west Beijing, according to state press agency Xinhua and as first reported by Reuters.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. You won't want to miss the 2028 Pan-Asian Deep Learning Conference in Kuala Lumpur: Call me a hater if you want, but at least for now, pretty sure that's fake. What's funny, though, is that those first five demos are straight out of the standardized humanoid robot demo handbook (which doesn't exist).

The Pentagon has launched a new competition for the design of laser-powered drones inspired by bats and insects. In an announcement this week, the Department of Defense revealed its new DESI pilot program is seeking proposals for a number of topics that currently stand as'defense challenges,' including highly maneuverable drones. The competition aims to pave the way for autonomous craft that can operate more efficiently with little intervention from a human pilot, and make swift decisions to change direction and avoid obstacles. Over the last decade, researchers have increasingly been working to mimic natural processes in robotic systems to improve efficiency, like Caltech's BatBot (pictured). High-tech weapons that the Secret Service is not trained to cope with pose a'grave threat' to the White House, a former agent has warned.

Joe Kennedy, father of the late President John F. Kennedy, once said that, when shoeshine boys start giving you stock tips, the financial bubble is getting too big for its own good. By that same logic, when Hollywood actors start tweeting about a once-obscure part of artificial intelligence (A.I.), you know that something big is happening, too. That's exactly what occurred recently when Zach Braff, the actor-director still best known for his performance as J.D. on the medical comedy series Scrubs, recorded himself reading a Scrubs-style monolog written by an A.I. Braff reads, adopting the thoughtful tone J.D. used to wrap up each episode in the series. "A hospital is a lot like a high school: the most amazing man is dying, and you're the only one who wants to steal stuff from his dad. Being in a hospital is a lot like being in a sorority. You have greasers and surgeons. And even though it sucks about Doctor Tapioca, not even that's sad."

While machine learning might be the enabling technology of the future, for the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, it's old school. Founded in 2006 to drive research and innovation within the federal government's intelligence agencies, IARPA has been researching machine learning from the beginning. "Machine learning has been a priority research area since we were created 10 years ago," IARPA Director Jason Matheny said. "In fact, most of our first programs were in machine learning." Some of these early efforts include the Biometrics Exploitation Science and Technology program, which developed tools for facial recognition that have since been widely adopted.

In December 2017, two years after the Paris climate accord was adopted, French President Emmanuel Macron led government, business and civic leaders in a conference called The One Planet Summit. President Trump, who earlier in the year announced his commitment to withdraw the U.S. from the historic climate accord, was not invited. At this event, Microsoft's President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith announced the company would be committing $50 million over the following five years as part of a new strategy to provide access to artificial intelligence (AI) for groups and people who want to use it for the good for the planet. Microsoft's AI for Earth, a program with the goal of using AI to address environmental challenges, launched six months before this announcement. "Fundamentally, AI can accelerate our ability to observe environmental systems and how they are changing at a global scale, convert the data into useful information and apply that information to take concrete steps to better manage our natural resources," Smith writes in a related post on the Microsoft website.

Military officials and industry experts have long discussed how artificial intelligence can benefit the warfighter. The technology promises to crunch mountains of data into easily digestible bites of actionable information and to predict when parts on a vehicle are about to wear out. However, there has been less emphasis on how it can improve modeling and simulations for training purposes -- a market area that is becoming increasingly important as service leaders across the board call for more investment to improve readiness. During the recent National Training and Simulation Association's Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Florida, military officials and industry experts discussed the benefits of applying the emerging technology to such scenarios. Retired Rear Adm. James Robb, president of NTSA, the host of I/ITSEC and an affiliate of the National Defense Industrial Association, said there was a strong emphasis during the show on big data and artificial intelligence.

May I be the first to wish you a Happy New Year? For me anyway, 2017 seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye. I almost can't believe it's late December and we are about to put this one into the books. The pending start of a new year means that it's prediction season once again, where pundits and columnists make their calls about what they expect to see in the coming year. And unlike most others, I actually go back over my work and fact check everything at the end of each year, so I need to be careful with my predictions.

When humans are finally ready to relocate civilization to Mars, they won't be able to do it alone. They'll need trusted specialists with encyclopedic knowledge, composure under pressure, and extreme endurance--droids like Justin. Built by the German space agency DLR, such humanoid bots are being groomed to build the first martian habitat for humans. Engineers have been refining Justin's physical abilities for a decade; the mech can handle tools, shoot and upload photos, catch flying objects, and navigate obstacles. Now, thanks to new AI upgrades, Justin can think for itself.

The New York City Council met early in December to pass a law on algorithmic decision-making transparency that could have real significance for cities and states in the rest of the nation. With the passage of an algorithmic accountability bill, the city gains a task force that will monitor the fairness and validity of algorithms used by municipal agencies. The public is in the dark about AI (artificial intelligence) and how it is deployed and used, said Bronx City Council representative James Vacca. "I strongly believe the public has a right to know when decisions are made using algorithms," said Vacca during the December City Council Technology Committee meeting. New York uses algorithms to determine if a lower bail will be assigned to an indigent defendant, where firehouses are established, student placement for public schools, accessing teacher performance, identifying Medicaid fraud and to determine where crime will happen next.