Following a four-day trial, lawyers representing Uber and Waymo say they have suddenly come to a settlement in their suit over the theft of autonomous-car technology. What happened: The Verge reports that Waymo attorneys announced the settlement in a San Francisco courtroom this morning to "gasps of shock." Federal judge William Alsup, who is presiding over a trial that was a year in the making, called the case "ancient history." What Waymo says: "We have reached an agreement with Uber that we believe will protect Waymo's intellectual property now and into the future. This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber Advanced Technologies Group hardware and software."

In the 18th century, those operating at the highest levels of society, from London to Moscow, needed to be able to speak French, then the language of status, the nobility, politics, intellectual life and modernisation. A hundred years later, British advances in industry, science and engineering meant that English succeeded French: a tongue with West Germanic origins replaced a romance language as the means of conducting business and diplomacy on the international stage. Today, even in some parts of China, English is still used as the global lingua franca, a leveller that enables deals to get done and the wheels of commerce and technology to spin. Around a decade ago, another type of language – one that was written rather than spoken – was held up as a deterministic factor for those seeking to gain influence or advantage in the digital age: coding. Its champions proselytised that proficiency in programming would determine employability and access to a thrusting, energetic entrepreneurial future.

The thought leadership conference and exhibition AI Expo Global is set to arrive in London's Olympia on April 18-19 and will bring together AI leaders from key industries covering marketing, finance, government, public sector, healthcare, cybersecurity, HR and recruitment, automotive, industrial, developer, enterprise, and consumer sectors. With four dedicated AI conference tracks, over 12,000 attendees, 500 speakers, 300 exhibitors, and three co-located events, the AI Expo is one for technology enthusiasts and business leaders' calendars. Attendees can discover how AI is being implemented and monetized, and network with industry leaders, practitioners, and investors. Topics covered over the two-day conference include deep learning, machine learning, AI algorithms, data analytics, digital transformation, chatbots, virtual assistants, AI enterprise strategy, AI regulation and legislation, AI in the workplace, cybersecurity, AI for social good, and many more. Healthcare: Clinical trial participant identifier, preliminary diagnosis, automated image diagnosis, virtual nursing assistants, robot-assisted surgery, dosage error reduction, security, and connected machines across the industry.

SAN FRANCISCO – Uber is paying $245 million to Google's self-driving car spinoff to end a legal brawl that aired out allegations of a sinister scheme that tore apart the once-friendly companies. The surprise settlement announced Friday came as lawyers for Uber and Waymo, a company hatched from Google, prepared to wrap up the first week of a trial that had attracted international attention. Waymo filed its lawsuit nearly a year ago, adding to Uber's woes with allegations of a bold high-tech heist orchestrated by its former CEO, Travis Kalanick, and a former Google engineer. That engineer, Anthony Levandowski, subsequently went to work for Uber, and was later fired when he declined to answer questions about the theft charges, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Uber and its ride-hailing service had already been tarnished by the company's acknowledgement of rampant sexual harassment within its ranks, a yearlong cover-up of a major computer break-in, and the use of duplicitous software to thwart government regulators.

Police should look at using artificial intelligence to help cope with the scale of information involved in investigations and avoid the kinds of mistakes that have led to a string of collapsed rape trials, a senior police chief said on Wednesday. Sara Thornton, the chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council, said the volume of data held by individuals had massively increased the number of potential lines of enquiry that officers must pursue to understand a case. In recent months, several rape prosecutions have been dropped after it emerged that police had failed to hand over evidence that undermined their cases. Since then, the Crown Prosecution Service has announced a review of all current rape cases and Nick Ephgrave, the NPCC's lead on criminal justice, has admitted that police have a "cultural problem" with disclosure. The attorney general's guidelines on disclosure say that police have a duty to pursue all reasonable lines of investigation, leading both towards and away from a conviction, Thornton said.

Uber is paying $245 million to Google's self-driving car spinoff to end a legal brawl that aired out allegations of a sinister scheme that tore apart the once-friendly companies. The surprise settlement announced Friday came as lawyers for Uber and Waymo, a company hatched from Google, prepared to wrap up the first week of a trial that had attracted international attention. Waymo filed its lawsuit nearly a year ago, adding to Uber's woes with allegations of a bold high-tech heist orchestrated by its former CEO, Travis Kalanick, and a former Google engineer. That engineer, Anthony Levandowski, subsequently went to work for Uber, and was later fired when he declined to answer questions about the theft charges, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Uber and its ride-hailing service had already been tarnished by the company's acknowledgement of rampant sexual harassment within its ranks, a yearlong cover-up of a major computer break-in, and the use of duplicitous software to thwart government regulators.

On Friday, Uber and Google's Waymo self-driving unit announced a settlement in their trade-secrets case. On Friday, Uber and Google's Waymo self-driving unit announced a settlement in their trade-secrets case. Uber has reached a settlement valued at $245 million with Google's self-driving car subsidiary Waymo, in a major trade secrets trial that began Monday. Federal District Judge William Alsup revealed news of the settlement Friday morning in a San Francisco courtroom. Waymo, the company spun off from Google's self-driving project, had accused Uber of poaching its top self-driving car engineer, Anthony Levandowski, who had led Google's efforts on autonomous vehicles since 2011.

After a tense, often absurd week in court, Uber and Waymo on Friday settled a long-running intellectual property lawsuit regarding the alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets. Courtroom highlights included Waymo's lawyers playing the "greed is good" speech from the movie Wall Street (because former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick had texted about it) and Judge William Alsup's no-nonsense smack downs. Uber agreed to pay Waymo a 0.34 equity stake at Uber's $72 billion valuation--the payout should be around $245 million, according to the Verge. Uber has also promised not to use any of Waymo's confidential information. The dispute between the two companies stems from Uber's 2016 acquisition of an A.I. trucks startup owned by Anthony Levandowski, who had recently left his post as a head engineer at Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car branch.

In a year-long litigation process that featured alleged theft, mysterious deleted text messages, and the odd reference to Burning Man, Friday's twist was perhaps the most unexpected of all: On the fifth day in court, Waymo accepted a settlement in its self-driving tech trade secret lawsuit against Uber. In the trial's fifth day, witnesses were set to testify as to how Waymo's trade secrets had appeared in Uber lidar designs, the specialized sensor that helps self-driving cars see. Instead, lawyers hugged in the San Francisco's courtroom well, as the federal judge assigned to the case, William Alsup, declared the whole suit "ancient history." The case had threatened to reshape the race for autonomous vehicle tech. Waymo, by some measures, leads in developing self-driving car technology, with over four million miles of public road testing behind it.

Uber is settling a lawsuit filed by Google's autonomous car unit alleging that the ride-hailing service ripped off self-driving car technology. Both sides in the case issued statements confirming the settlement Friday morning in the midst of a federal court trial in the case. Google's Waymo unit says Uber agreed to take steps to make sure Waymo technology isn't used in Uber's autonomous vehicles. Waymo says Uber also agreed to pay about $245 million. Uber's CEO says in a printed statement that the company doesn't believe trade secrets made their way from Waymo to Uber.