This paper provides a first milestone in measuring the floorspace of buildings (that is, building footprint and height) for 40 major Chinese cities. The intent is to maximize city coverage and, eventually provide longitudinal data. Doing so requires building on imagery that is of a medium-fine-grained granularity, as larger cross sections of cities and longer time series for them are only available in such format. We use a multi-task object segmenter approach to learn the building footprint and height in the same framework in parallel: (1) we determine the surface area is covered by any buildings (the square footage of occupied land); (2) we determine floorspace from multi-image representations of buildings from various angles to determine the height of buildings. We use Sentinel-1 and -2 satellite images as our main data source. The benefits of these data are their large cross-sectional and longitudinal scope plus their unrestricted accessibility. We provide a detailed description of our data, algorithms, and evaluations. In addition, we analyze the quality of reference data and their role for measuring the building floorspace with minimal error. We conduct extensive quantitative and qualitative analyses with Shenzhen as a case study using our multi-task learner. Finally, we conduct correlation studies between our results (on both pixel and aggregated urban area levels) and nightlight data to gauge the merits of our approach in studying urban development. Our data and codebase are publicly accessible under https://gitlab.ethz.ch/raox/urban-satellite-public-v2.

Large-scale commercial operation of highly autonomous vehicles (AVs) could become a reality "sooner than expected" in China, Baidu's CEO Robin Li said on Thursday at the 2022 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. "I think it would take a longer time to commercialize Level 3 autonomous vehicles, because there remain questions about who is liable in the case of accidents involving these vehicles," Li said (our translation). Level 4 vehicles, however, make it clear that the manufacturer or the owner, rather than the driver, is responsible in a crash, Li added. Level 4 refers to a fully autonomous system where vehicles travel from point A to point B without requiring any human intervention. In Level 3, also called the semi-autonomous level, the driver is still required to take over the vehicle in emergencies, according to definitions set by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).

Gizmodo and state-owned China Daily report the tech firm has introduced Apollo Go to Shenzhen's Nanshan District, making self-driving taxis available in every'first-tier' Chinese city following rollouts in six cities that include Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai. The launch covers one of the most densely populated regions in southern China (Shenzhen's total population tops 13 million), and offers autonomous rides on the home soil of local tech industry heavyweights like Huawei and Tencent. The initial focus is on "high-frequency" transport arteries, including Shenzhen Talent Park and the surrounding area. Baidu plans to expand coverage to more than 300 stations by the end of 2022. Apollo Go is far from ubiquitous at this stage.

Facial recognition tech linked to personal health codes has been rolled out in a Chinese city bordering Myanmar as authorities seek to squash a coronavirus outbreak. China is one of the world's most surveilled countries, with the government rushing to install more than 200 million CCTV cameras to "cover all public spaces" in the past five years. Surveillance has been widely used to combat Covid-19 in China, which was the first country to adopt a QR code system to log test results and track contacts. But this is the first publicly reported instance of facial recognition being used to track a person's movements and health status as they enter and exit residential areas, supermarkets, transport hubs and other public places. "Everyone who comes in and out needs to have their (health) code and face scanned to pass," officials in Ruili, in Yunnan province, told reporters on Saturday. Ruili discovered 155 cases over the past week in one of the worst virus flareups in recent months to hit China, according to data published Tuesday.

Qiu Rui, a policeman in Chongqing, was on duty this summer when he received an alert from a facial recognition system at a local square. There was a high probability a man caught on camera was a suspect in a 2002 murder case, the system told him. The depth, breadth and intrusiveness of China's mass surveillance may be unprecedented in modern history The city's surveillance system scans facial features of people on the streets from frames of video footage in real time, creating a virtual map of the face. It can then match this information against scanned faces of suspects in a police database. If there is a match that passes a preset threshold, typically 60% or higher, the system immediately notifies officers.

Qiu Rui, a policeman in Chongqing, was on duty this summer when he received an alert from a facial recognition system at a local square. There was a high probability a man caught on camera was a suspect in a 2002 murder case, the system told him. The depth, breadth and intrusiveness of China's mass surveillance may be unprecedented in modern history The city's surveillance system scans facial features of people on the streets from frames of video footage in real time, creating a virtual map of the face. It can then match this information against scanned faces of suspects in a police database. If there is a match that passes a preset threshold, typically 60% or higher, the system immediately notifies officers.

BEIJING (REUTERS) - China's northern port city of Tianjin announced plans on Thursday (May 17) to set up funds worth 100 billion yuan (S$21 billion) to support the artificial intelligence industry, official news agency Xinhua said. China aims to become a world leader in artificial intelligence by 2025, taking on US dominance in the sector amid heightened international tension over military applications of the technology. Tianjin will pour the funds into developing sectors such as intelligent robots and hardware and software. It will also set aside 30 billion yuan in a sub-fund for intelligent devices and intelligent upgrades for traditional industries. Sun Wenkui, vice mayor of Tianjin, pledged financial support of up to 30 million yuan for each scientific research institution, whether a provincial- or national-level body, that sets up in Tianjin.

Apple will let you unlock the iPhone X with your face - a move likely to bring facial recognition to the masses. But along with the roll out of the technology, are concerns over how it could be used. Despite Apple's safeguards, privacy activists fear the widespread use of facial recognition would'normalise' the technology. This could open the door to broader use by law enforcement, marketers or others of a largely unregulated tool, creating a'surveillance technology that is abused'. Facial recognition could open the door to broader use by law enforcement, marketers or others of a largely unregulated tool, creating a'surveillance technology that is abused', experts have warned.