Google has some of the most powerful computers and smartest algorithms in the world, has hired some of the best brains in computing, and through its purchase of British firm Deepmind has acquired AI expertise that recently saw an AI beat a human grandmaster at the game of go. Why then would we not want to apply this to potentially solving medical problems – something Google's grandiose, even hyperbolic statements suggest the company wishes to? The New Scientist recently revealed a data sharing agreement between the Royal Free London NHS trust and Google Deepmind. The trust released incorrect statements (since corrected) claiming Deepmind would not receive any patient-identifiable data (it will), leading to irrelevant confusion about what data encryption and anonymisation can and cannot achieve. As people have very strong feelings about third-party access to medical records, all of this has caused a bit of a scandal.

Sometimes I think Elon Musk may single-handedly be increasing the coolness quotient of the entire human race. I mean seriously, the man is running three companies poised to change the course of entire industries and he has time to take step back and think "alright, guess I'll save humanity while I'm at it too, I guess" Last week, OpenAI released OpenAI Gym, a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms. Today, with the power or control to develop the next generation of AI technology clearly in the hands of an elite group of companies whose motives may be driven by corporate interests and financial gains, I see the motive behind Elon Musk and Sam Altman's OpenAI venture. It is an attempt to put checks and bounds in place to "save us from ourselves", so to speak. Let's step back from the world of artificial intelligence for a second and think about a biological process we all are familiar with -- evolution.

THERE is an apocryphal story in technology circles: Google and Facebook could do things with our data that would make our heads spin, but they don't because it would freak everyone out. Apocryphal it may be, but data companies do not have to do much to freak us out. Some people will be extremely unnerved by our revelation that Google's subsidiary DeepMind has access to healthcare data from three UK National Health Service hospitals (see "Revealed: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data"). People who use the hospitals now know that DeepMind has intimate – albeit anonymised – details of their medical history, including HIV status, past drug overdoses and abortions. It doesn't help that DeepMind is very unwilling to talk about what it wants to do with this data.

Joab Rosenberg is the former deputy head analyst for the Israeli government and CEO of Epistema. Nature magazine announced in late January that a computer designed by Google's DeepMind defeated a human master in the ancient Chinese board game, "Go." This impressive achievement once again raised the expectations for a predicted future in which computers will have artificial intelligence, with major media outlets worldwide touting this anticipated future. One of the major questions raised in response to DeepMind's achievement is what are the outer limits, if any, of intelligent machines? In November of last year, Dr. Kira Radinsky, a computer scientist and "machine learning" expert, argued in the Israeli newspaper "Ha'aretz" that computers will be able to accurately predict the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Google has been given access to an estimated 1.6 million NHS patient records, it has been revealed. The data-sharing agreement, revealed by New Scientist, includes full names as well as patient histories. Google says it will use the data to develop an early warning system for patients at risk of developing acute kidney injuries. But critics have questioned why it needs the data of all patients to create such a specific app. Under the data-sharing agreement, Google's artificial intelligence division DeepMind will have access to all of the data of patients from the Royal Free, Barnet and Chase Farm hospitals in London going back over the past five years and continuing until 2017.

Elon Musk's OpenAI has created a'gym' to let developers train their AI systems on Atari games. The open source code, which is still in development, includes'environments' to create situations in which AI can learn. The environments include playing classic board games, controlling a robot in simulation and playing 59 Atari games like Asteroids, Air Raid, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Pitfall. The hope is that the tasks will give OpenAI and others a way to rank and improve various AI approaches, and unveil new ways to teach machines to learn. OpenAI will also feature a leaderboard of the most successful systems.

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 past 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.

Details of Google's DeepMind data-sharing agreement with the UK NHS revealed that the AI system would have access to millions of patient records. The agreement, according to the NHS, is for direct clinical use only. Google's deal with the National Health Service (NHS) will allow artificial intelligence units to access as many as 1.6 million private patient records, a new report has revealed. The data-sharing agreement, according to New Scientist, which first unmasked its true nature, would give Google's DeepMind unrestricted access to sensitive data that the Royal Free NHS Trust has. As early as 2014, Google has partnered with several scientists to understand human health.

Elon Musk's AI research group has opened a "gym" for robots, to ensure that they can be properly tested. The new project is an attempt to bring together training for artificially intelligent machines, allowing them to be fairly compared with each other – and avoid any problem results. The gym has been launched as the first project from OpenAI, a research group that is funded by backers including Mr Musk as well as a range of other tech leaders. The project launched in December and aims to "advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return". Boston Dynamics describes itself as'building dynamic robots and software for human simulation'.