Update, 16 May 2016: We have received more information from DeepMind and the Royal Free on this story, and are considering their response.

A company owned by Google has been given access to the healthcare data of up to 1.6 million patients from three hospitals run by a major London NHS Trust. DeepMind, the tech giant's London-based company most famous for its innovative use of artificial intelligence, is being provided with the patient information as part of an agreement with the Royal Free NHS trust, which runs the Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free hospitals. It includes information about people who are HIV-positive as well as details of drug overdoses, abortions and patient data from the last five years, according to a report by the New Scientist. DeepMind announced in February that it was developing a software in partnership with NHS hospitals to alert staff to patients at risk of deterioration and death through kidney failure. The technology, which is run through a smartphone app, has the support of Lord Darzi, a surgeon and former health minister who is director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.

Right on cue, this past week heralded in an announcement of OpenAI, a new non-profit started by a number of tech luminaries to spearhead AI research that is publicly accessible. The motivation is that apparently these scions of capitalism lose faith in Adam Smith's invisible hand when it comes to AI R&D. Musk continues to promote the idea that AI will be humanity's largest existential threat. Challenging this view, the HBR asks if "OpenAI [is] Solving the Wrong Problem", pointing to the implied lack of trust in capitalism. This is similar to my own parry: that the biggest existential threat to humanity is humanity.

Google does not have regulatory approval for its NHS healthcare deal. Two weeks ago, New Scientist revealed that Google's artificial intelligence company DeepMind has access to the personal medical information of millions of UK patients through a data-sharing agreement with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. A New Scientist investigation has found that the project is being carried out without the ethical and regulatory approval that experts say are required. Google and the Royal Free both claim to be acting in compliance with the rules as they interpret them. A collaboration between DeepMind and the NHS has the potential to do great things.

DeepMind, Google's AI lab in London, is well known for creating an algorithm that beat the best human in the world at Chinese board game Go. It's also been in the news this month for the controversial work it's doing with the NHS in healthcare. But DeepMind is understood to have a collection of other projects on the go that no one knows about. The research-intensive organisation, which employs around 250 people in a discreet building in King's Cross, writes on its website that it is building self-learning algorithms that can complete a wide variety of tasks straight out of the box. The company, which was backed by PayPal billionaire Elon Musk in its early days, also writes on its website that it wants to "solve intelligence" to "make the world a better place."

OpenAI Gym is a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms. This is the gym open-source library, which gives you access to an ever-growing variety of environments. You can use it from Python code, and soon from other languages. If you're not sure where to start, we recommend beginning with the docs on our site. There are two basic concepts in reinforcement learning: the environment (namely, the outside world) and the agent (namely, the algorithm you are writing).

Now WATSON HEALTH AI is being used in 16 cancer institutes across the country, helping to diagnose and treat patients. Meanwhile Google, not to be outdone, has launched DeepMind, which recently earned the title world champion of the complex game of Go. Now, DeepMind Health will create innovative new apps for healthcare professionals alerting them to patient emergencies, and the risk of complications when considering possible treatment options. Progenitors say that someday, it should even be able to predict a patient's needs down the pike. Other tech companies such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Hitachi are also putting together AI programs for the healthcare field. Within the next five years, AI's use in medicine is expected to increase tenfold.

As you can see in the first video, some of the clips look no better than some of the images that come out of Google's DeepMind. Others, however, like the scenes from Cloud Atlas and the Jungle Book, seem significantly better-looking after being processed. It's still early days, but there are plenty of areas in both filmmaking and art where systems like this could be applied. Right now, it's computationally intensive, but not so much that you can't expect the cost and availability of such power to drop. As MIT Tech Review explains, it takes three minutes for each frame to be processed on a system using NVIDIA's 1,000-plus Titan X graphics card.

If you're interested in working with machine learning and artificial-intelligence algorithms--but unsure of how to start--check out the OpenAI Gym, now in beta. The premise behind OpenAI Gym is simple: it's a toolkit for building reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, which govern bots' decision-making and motor-control capabilities. Reinforcement learning is a key element in A.I. development, as it allows software to deal with random, unpredictable environments; one "classic" problem involves balancing an untethered pole on a rolling cart: OpenAI is a non-profit "artificial intelligence research company" funded by some heavy hitters in the tech world, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Its altruistic goal is to develop open-source A.I. software that's "friendly" to humanity. According to a blog posting accompanying the launch of OpenAI Gym, RL research is slowed by two factors: a need for better benchmarks, and a lack of standardization of environments used in publications.

OpenAI and Shocking AI Salaries This week, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, head of the famed incubator Y Combinator, announced the launch of the OpenAI project, which is a company that's building AI products and services and giving away their tech for free. Just after the announcement, OpenAI's team of researchers were reportedly mobbed with huge employment offers from some of the tech world's biggest firms. Microsoft's Vice President of Research said that the cost of a top artificial intelligence researcher has eclipsed the cost of a top quarterback prospect in the National Football League. CLICK TO TWEET THIS: The cost of a top artificial intelligence researcher has eclipsed the cost of a top quarterback prospect in the National Football League. Bill Gates' 2b Clean Energy Fund Recently, the MIT Technology Review sat down for a Q&A session with Bill Gates and they discussed the Breakthrough Energy Coalition.