China has pledged billions of dollars to boost the development of artificial intelligence in the country's first technology research drive of its kind, highlighting Beijing's commitment to expanding the horizons of the nascent field. During an annual meeting of parliament, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told legislators Sunday that the nation would invest in new technologies and their associated markets. The new initiative was set to devote up to $5.5 billion by 2018, according to an analyst with the South China Post, which reported the story Thursday. In his speech, Li outlined where the funds would likely be appropriated. "We will implement a comprehensive plan to boost strategic emerging industries," Keqiang said.

WikiLeaks is to publish all of the CIA's cyber weapons online, Julian Assange had suggested. The organisation has posted what appears to be the biggest ever leak of CIA spying secrets ever, but had previously refrained from publishing the details of the US spying agency's weapons. Mr Assange had argued that it would be dangerous to do so, since anyone could use them once they are made public. But he has now announced that it will put those previously redacted weapons online. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Elon Musk, the South African-born CEO of Tesla and SpaceX deep in thought during his 2013 SXSW keynote. While Austin is known for its BBQ, this week the tech industry descends on the Texas capital for the best brain food on the tech conference circuit, the South By South West (SXSW) festival which starts on Friday.

Donald Trump's team has aggressively attacked WikiLeaks after it published files from the CIA. The WikiLeaks'Vault 7' documents make up the biggest disclosure of CIA secrets ever. And it wasn't clear how the President would react, given that he had previously told the world: "I love WikiLeaks". But Mr Trump's administration quickly attacked WikiLeaks for having published the CIA documents. White House press secretary Sean Spicer answered questions on the latest WikiLeaks disclosure by saying that leaks of national security or classified information should have everybody "outraged." "This is the kind of disclosure that undermines our country, our security and our well-being," he said.

The CIA is refusing to acknowledge the leak of a huge set of its secrets. This week, WikiLeaks published the first of what it calls the'Vault 7' files, including a whole host of hacking and spying secrets. The more than 9,000 files appeared to contain many of the most sensitive and important pieces of information that the CIA has – and Julian Assange has promised that more is coming. But the CIA has gone almost completely dark and is refusing to react or even acknowledge any disclosure. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

UgCS is easy-to-use software for planning and flying UAV drone-survey missions. It supports almost any UAV platform, providing convenient tools for areal and linear surveys and enabling direct drone control. What's more, UgCS enables professional land survey mission planning using photogrammetry techniques. GSD and area boundaries are usually defined by the customer's requirements for output material parameters, for example by scale and resolution of digital map. Overlap should be chosen according to specific conditions of surveying area and requirements of data processing software.

One of the most consequential pieces of news from the US in early 2017 was not from the White House, or even the Twitter feed of Donald Trump. Rather, it was hidden in a report filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles and made available on the DMV's website. It details the efforts of Google (or more precisely its Waymo subsidiary) to make autonomous driving a reality. According to the report, in 2016 Google's self-driving cars clocked 635,868 miles (1,023,330km), and required human intervention 124 times. That is one intervention about every 5,000 miles (8,047km) of autonomous driving.

Yesterday, the UK government announced their budget plans to invest in robotics, artificial intelligence, driverless cars, and faster broadband. "The UK understand the very real positive impact that RAS [robotics & autonomous systems] will have on our society from now, of all time. It continues to see the big picture and today's announcement by the Chancellor is a clear indication of that. We can have better roads, cleaner cities, healthier oceans and bodies, safer skies, deeper mines, better jobs and more opportunity. That's what machines are for."

Whether an A.I. ought to be granted patent rights is a timely question given the increasing proliferation of A.I. in the workplace. One might argue that Intellectual Property (IP) laws and IP Rights were designed to exclusively benefit human creators and inventors[7] and thus would exclude non-humans from holding IP rights. However, many IP laws were drafted well before the emergence of A.I. and in any case, do not explicitly require that a creator or inventor be'human.' The World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPOs) definition of Intellectual Property talks about creations of the mind[9] but does not specify whether it must be a human mind. Similarly, provisions in laws promoting innovation and IP rights, such as the so-called Intellectual Property Clause of the U.S. Constitution[10], also do not explicitly mention a'human' requirement.

Google's AI-powered health tech subsidiary, DeepMind Health, is planning to use a new technology loosely based on bitcoin to let hospitals, the NHS and eventually even patients track what happens to personal data in real-time. Dubbed "Verifiable Data Audit", the plan is to create a special digital ledger that automatically records every interaction with patient data in a cryptographically verifiable manner. This means any changes to, or access of, the data would be visible. DeepMind has been working in partnership with London's Royal Free Hospital to develop kidney monitoring software called Streams and has faced criticism from patient groups for what they claim are overly broad data sharing agreements. Critics fear that the data sharing has the potential to give DeepMind, and thus Google, too much power over the NHS.