Now, this illiberal government is directly challenging the United States in the arms' race for Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has quickly become the technological buzzword of the decade, permeating all aspects of our lives.

The world is rapidly getting closer to a future in which low-level tasks can be performed cheaply by machines that never get sick or need a day off.

Once the domain of science fiction films and novels, artificial intelligence has moved beyond the realm of the fantastic into everyday life.

Apple has reported a decline in both revenue and profits in its latest quarterly financial results, as the company feels the pinch from slowing demand for its star product, the iPhone. The results showed a 15 per cent fall in sales of the iPhone in the three months ending to 29 December, diving from $61.1bn (£46.8bn) in 2017, down to £51.9bn dollars (£39.8bn) a year later. Mac, iPad and the Wearables, Home and Accessories category all experienced an increase in net sales, but the most notable growth came from Apple's services - which includes its Apple Music streaming platform, the App Store, iCloud storage and Apple Pay - jumping 19 per cent, from $9.1bn (£7bn) to $10.9bn (£8.3bn) year-on-year. However, combined, the hole left by weak iPhone sales resulted in a total drop to $84.3bn (£64.5bn), Profits also fell slightly to $19.9bn (£15.3bn),

The World's Most Watched TV Show Will Be Hosted By Artificial IntelligencesObEN An audience of over one billion people worldwide is expected to tune into the Chinese state broadcaster's Spring Festival Gala marking the Chinese lunar new year on February 5. The four well-known human hosts – Beining Sa, Xun Zhu, Bo Gao, and Yang Long – will each be joined by an "AI copy" of themselves – in effect, their very own digital twin. The "personal artificial intelligences," created by ObEN Inc., are being touted as the world's first AI hosts. Rather than simply being computer generated avatars, AI technologies including machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and speech synthesis have been used to "rebuild" the virtual copies of the celebrities from the ground up. I spoke to ObEN CEO Nikhil Jain, who told me that while the TV event will showcase his company's technology to the largest TV audience in the world, the potential of personal AIs – PAIs – goes further still, and could revolutionize many areas of society. In fact, the company is already working to create AI-powered doctors, nurses, and teacher, as well as its highly publicized virtual celebrities.

Lauren Maffeo is a research analyst who joined the global technology sector in 2012. She started her career as a freelance journalist covering tech news for The Next Web and The Guardian. She has also worked with CEOs of pre-seed to profitable SaaS startups on media strategy. Lauren joined GetApp, a Gartner company, as a content editor in 2016. She covers the impact of emerging tech like AI on small and midsize business owners.