Google CEO Sundar Pichai, head of one of the world's leading artificial intelligence companies, said in an interview this week that concerns about harmful applications of the technology are "very legitimate" - but the tech industry should be trusted to responsibly regulate its use. Speaking with The Washington Post on Tuesday afternoon, Pichai said that new AI tools - the backbone of innovations such as driverless cars and disease-detecting algorithms - require companies to set ethical guardrails and think through how the technology can be abused. "I think tech has to realise it just can't build it, and then fix it," Pichai said. "I think that doesn't work." Tech giants have to ensure that artificial intelligence with "agency of its own" doesn't harm humankind, Pichai said.

You're probably used to the presence of facial recognition cameras at airports and other transport hubs, but what about at concerts? That's the step Taylor Swift's team took at her May 18th show at the Rose Bowl, in a bid to identify her stalkers. According to Rolling Stone, the camera was hidden inside a display kiosk at the event, and sent images of anyone who stopped to look at the display to a "command post" in Nashville, where they were cross-referenced with other photos of the star's known stalkers. As the target of numerous death and rape threats, Swift arguably has a valid motivation for leveraging such technology. However, it's unclear who has ownership of the photos of her concertgoers, or how long they will remain on file. Her representatives have also not yet responded to queries as to whether fans knew about the cameras.

Hanging on the wall of Postmates' stealth R&D laboratory, there's a framed photo of an iconic scene from Star Wars, Luke Skywalker bent down beside R2D2. Except someone has used Photoshop to replace Luke's face with Ali Kashani, Postmates' VP of Robotics. Nevermind that Kashani has never seen Star Wars (he considers this a point of pride). Kashani recognizes the symbolism of his face in a world where robots roll around next to people, where bots act almost like friends. Kashani joined Postmates a year and a half ago, with a special mission to bring robots to the company. In the seven years since its founding, Postmates has been on the forefront of the on-demand revolution, averaging 4 million deliveries each month in over 550 cities.

Last week, Amazon updated Fire TV Cube with the Alexa Announcements feature (which lets you dictate a message that the other Echo devices in your home will broadcast) and notifications from your smart doorbell and camera. With Follow-Up Mode, you can ask Alexa for additional information or to carry out further actions after your initial request. So, when you say something like "Alexa, show me comedy movies" and it displays a selection of such films on your TV, you can ask it to play a certain flick without having to say "Alexa" again. You might also use Follow-Up Mode to ask for extra info about the weather or items on a list. You'll need to switch on the feature from the settings in the Alexa app if you'd like to use it.

MADE IN CHINA 2025: The Chinese initiative aims to create leading companies in fields like artificial intelligence, electric cars and robotics. The Trump administration says the government is unfairly subsidizing Chinese companies and discriminating against foreign rivals. Along with disputes over China's handling of intellectual property, it's a significant contributor to trade tensions. The Wall Street Journal reported a revised plan would allow greater access for foreign companies to Chinese markets and investment.

Fourier methods have a long and proven track record in as an excellent tool in data processing. We propose to integrate Fourier methods into complex recurrent neural network architectures and show accuracy improvements on analysis and prediction tasks as well as computational load reductions. We predict synthetic data drawn from the synthetic-Lorenz equations as well as real world human motion prediction. We demonstrate the setup's analysis capabilities on the task of music recognition.

Last week, the world's leading experts in artificial intelligence converged on the Canadian city of Montreal for one of the biggest gatherings in their field. On Saturday, the 2018 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) hosted a workshop titled "AI for Social Good". The assembled crowd were not treated to the usual conference staples of robot demonstrations or video presentations showcasing new algorithms that promise to revolutionise healthcare systems. Instead, they were greeted with a solo performance by the superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma, followed by a session on artificial intelligence, ethics and the arts. The history of artificial intelligence is littered with algorithms that were supposed to mimic the most complex feats of human creativity, from problem-solving to writing poems, composing music and painting portraits.

Self-driving cars are an inevitability and will unlock the potential for cars to transform beyond a simple means of transport. In the not too distant future, drivers will find themselves with a great deal of free time in-car. Rather than having to focus on driving, time can be spent on working, being entertained, or simply relaxing. In the near future, driving yourself will be about as popular as riding horses for transportation, according to Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk.metamorworks / Getty Images Audi calls this newly recoverable time "The 25th Hour" and recently revealed that it was working on a new type of media to fill the time. Exclusively speaking to Roadshow, Audi confirmed that it's partnering with The Walt Disney Company and will be revealing the technology they've created, alongside their plans to bring it to market, at the CES trade show in January 2019.

Google has revealed what people in the UK have been searching for in 2018, with the publication of its annual'Year in Search' results. Meghan Markle, who topped the list last year, was knocked off her perch by the World Cup but still managed to be the second-most searched term in 2018. Her marriage to Prince Harry, together with the wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank, helped'Royal Wedding' reach third on the overall list. Several other celebrities like Stormy Daniels and Ant McPartlin also appeared on the lists, which covered a wide range of categories including top trending'How to...?' and'What is...?' queries. Privacy scandals helped'How to delete Facebook?' become one of the most-asked questions using Google, while the dramatic rise and fall in cryptocurrency prices helped drive searches for'What is bitcoin?'.