Google is dropping out of the bidding for a huge Pentagon cloud computing contract that could be worth up to $10 billion, saying the deal would be'inconsistent with its principles'. The decision by Google leaves a handful of other tech giants including Amazon and Microsoft in the running for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract aimed at modernizing the military's computing systems. Google said in a statement'we couldn't be assured that [the JEDI deal] would align with our AI Principles and second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.' The principles bar use of Google's artificial intelligence (AI) software in weapons as well as services that violate international norms for surveillance and human rights. Google was provisionally certified in March to handle U.S. government data with'moderate' security, but Amazon.com and Microsoft Corp have higher clearances.

One of the most important issues we face today is global accessibility to healthcare. The WHO recently revealed that at least half of the world's population isn't able to access essential healthcare services. With large numbers of others being drawn into poverty by healthcare bills. According to the report, as covered by Reuters, there are 800 million people across the world that spend at least 10% of their household income on healthcare. A staggering 100million of those left with less than $1.90 a day to survive on.

According to mainstream video games, modern warfare is all about cyborg arms, laser shields and jarheads blowing up baddies under the guidance of recognisable character actors. However, the frenetic antics of the Call of Duty series and its ilk are behind the times. The drone pilot protagonist of 2012's free indie game Unmanned is a more accurate representation of a modern soldier: a man who plays video games with his son every weekend, and who has also killed countless foreigners from a grey-walled cubicle in Nevada. You play an American warrior, square of jaw and beefy of build, who works from an office out in the desert. A click of his mouse sends tons of missile plummeting from anonymous drone planes with an eerie blank space where you'd expect to see a cockpit.

Unmanned drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras could save dolphins, according to a new scientific study out of NZ and the UK. According to the study, the endangered Maui and Hector's dolphins in New Zealand and other marine mammal species around the world could be saved from caught up accidentally when fishing for other species. The successful study proved aerial thermal detection and identification of Maui and Hector's dolphins, and other marine mammals would be possible from both manned and unmanned aircraft and could be used on drones. Martin Stanley from Ocean Life Survey, who led the study, has designed and developed an unmanned remotely operated thermal imaging drone system that can be used for marine mammal study and protection. The thermal drone system can be operated from vessels such as fishing boats to provide real-time detection of and protection to marine mammals.

Teams of autonomous unmanned aircraft can be used to monitor wildfires, enabling firefighters to make informed decisions. However, controlling multiple autonomous fixed-wing aircraft to maximize forest fire coverage is a complex problem. The state space is high dimensional, the fire propagates stochastically, the sensor information is imperfect, and the aircraft must coordinate with each other to accomplish their mission. This work presents two deep reinforcement learning approaches for training decentralized controllers that accommodate the high dimensionality and uncertainty inherent in the problem. The first approach controls the aircraft using immediate observations of the individual aircraft. The second approach allows aircraft to collaborate on a map of the wildfire's state and maintain a time history of locations visited, which are used as inputs to the controller. Simulation results show that both approaches allow the aircraft to accurately track wildfire expansions and outperform an online receding horizon controller. Additional simulations demonstrate that the approach scales with different numbers of aircraft and generalizes to different wildfire shapes.

Google's India-born chief executive Sundar Pichai quietly paid a visit to the Pentagon to ease tensions that erupted after employee outrage prompted the tech giant to sever a controversial defence contract to analyse drone video, according to a media report. Pichai met with a group of civilian and military leaders mostly from the office of the Under Secretary of Defence for Intelligence, the Defense Department directorate that oversees the artificial-intelligence drone system known as Project Maven, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the meeting, The Washington Post reported. Google had worked with the Defense Department to develop Project Maven, which uses AI to automatically tag cars, buildings and other objects in videos recorded by drones flying over conflict zones. But in June, the tech giant said it would not renew its contract following an uprising from employees, who criticized the work as helping the military track and kill with greater efficiency, the report said. A Defense Department spokesperson said, "We do not comment on the details of private meetings. Department leaders routinely meet with industry partners to discuss innovative technologies. These meetings support continuing dialogue aimed at solving future technology challenges."

Stephanie Chaltiel used drones to coat a shelter in clay, demonstrating a fast construction method that could be used in refugee camps and disaster zones. As part of designjunction during the 2018 London Design Festival the French architect and her team constructed Mud Shell, a sturdy domed shelter from bags of hay attached to a wooden lattice that was then sprayed with a mixture of clay and fibre using a drone. The resulting structure can be constructed rapidly, in this case just four days, from cheap, lightweight and readily available materials. It combines the ancient building techniques of wattle and daub with cutting edge drone application technology. Little sacking bags filled with hay were mounted on a formwork of wooden struts arranged in a dome shape.

Over the past few years, technology has disrupted industries that had been relatively consistent for decades prior. That is nowhere more clear than in the construction industry, where drones have given commercial and residential construction managers the ability to increase their efficiency, save money, and improve their projects. In fact, a 2016 Goldman Sachs report found the construction industry to be one of the fastest-growing commercial sector taking advantage of this technology. By 2021, estimates show a global investment of more than $11 billion in drones used during the construction process alone. This is despite continued regulatory uncertainty in major economies like the United States.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai quietly paid the Pentagon a visit during his trip to Washington last week, seeking to smooth over tensions roughly four months after employee outrage prompted the tech giant to sever a defense contract to analyze drone video, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Pichai met with a group of civilian and military leaders mostly from the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, the Defense Department directorate that oversees the artificial-intelligence drone system known as Project Maven, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the meeting. Google had worked with the Defense Department to develop Project Maven, which uses AI to automatically tag cars, buildings and other objects in videos recorded by drones flying over conflict zones. But in June, the tech giant said it would not renew its contract following an uprising from employees, who criticized the work as helping the military track and kill with greater efficiency. A Defense Department spokesperson said, "We do not comment on the details of private meetings. Department leaders routinely meet with industry partners to discuss innovative technologies. These meetings support continuing dialogue aimed at solving future technology challenges."

A staff member displays a DJI Phantom 3 4K drone during CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, Nevada. It may come as a surprising fact that there are now 14 Chinese AI companies valued at $1 billion or more. These unicorns are worth a combined $40.5 billion, according to a report China Money Network recently released during the World Economic Forum's Summer Davos gathering in Beijing. Just to put these numbers in perspective. Google bought DeepMind for over $500 million in 2014. Chinese voice recognition giant iFlytek Co. has a market capitalization of 63 billion yuan ($9.2 billion). Chinese AI startups raised $27.7 billion via 369 VC deals in 2017, according to a recent report from Tsinghua University. So naturally, it raises questions on if there is a bubble waiting to pop in the Chinese AI space. How could these companies, with an average age of less than five years, be worth so much money?