A bright mind in AI and biometrics, Megvii innovator Sun Jian has died aged 45 after a sudden illness. No more information has been released about Jian's final days. Sun had researched computer vision and computational photography for 13 years at Microsoft, leaving in 2016 for Megvii, then an AI and facial recognition startup. He became that firm's chief scientist and managing director of research, according to the South China Morning Post. At Megvii, Sun managed the development of Brain, which became the company's core AI productivity platform.

One of China's biggest AI solution providers SenseTime is a step closer to its initial public offering. SenseTime has received regulatory approval to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, according to media reports. Founded in 2014, SenseTime was christened as one of China's four "AI Dragons" alongside Megvii, CloudWalk, and Yitu. In the second half of the 2010s, their algorithms found much demand from businesses and governments hoping to turn real-life data into actionable insights. Cameras embedded with their AI models watch city streets 24 hours.

China's startup ecosystem, which produced several world-leading companies, has been in the news in the recent past about the impact of the government regulations on the big technology firms. However, despite the regulatory shakeups and the COVID-19 pandemic notwithstanding, China has emerged as a powerhouse for artificial intelligence (AI) unicorns, according to Thematic Research at GlobalData, a leading data, and analytics company. GlobalData's research shows that of the total of 45 AI unicorns globally, China has the biggest share with 19 unicorns headquartered in the country. These 19 unicorns are collectively valued at $43.5bn. Priya Toppo, Analyst of Thematic Research at GlobalData, comments: "China is a leading player in AI, with a number of established companies such as Baidu, Hikvision, iFlytek, Tencent, and Alibaba. The country also has a strong AI startup ecosystem, which is evident from the large number of AI unicorns (privately held startup valued at $1bn or more)."

The advancements of Artificial Intelligence have startled the commoners with its high-tech abilities and the abilities to do things which human usually cannot do. From e-commerce to healthcare its capabilities are reshaping various business operations for the greater good. Owing to its increasing fame, many companies and startups are adopting AI capabilities to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity. Moreover, many investors are also keening looking to invest their sums in Artificial Intelligence realizing the worth of it. Many AI companies have risen from nowhere to everywhere across the market and the most obvious reason behind their growth is the hefty investments and finances they gain from VC firms and investors.

When we consider earlier technology waves, there is often one company (or possibly two) that emerges as a leader and becomes synonymous with the technology. Mainframes became synonymous with IBM, virtualization spawned VMware, open source gave us Red Hat, web search was reinvigorated by Google, and social networks gave us Facebook and Twitter. We would argue that this has yet to happen with AI and machine learning (ML). AI – and its variants, notably machine learning – is an enabling technology. It enables computers to do things that weren't possible in earlier programming paradigms. With modern cloud computing, networking and storage, those things can be done at a scale unimaginable when the term'artificial intelligence' was first coined in the mid-1950s.

Let's say you live in a country where there's been reports of massive outbreaks of a highly contagious viral infection. Hypothetically, let's call this infection "coronavirus." To avoid spreading this "coronavirus," many people have taken to wearing medical face masks when going about their everyday life. These masks don't do much, medically speaking, but it's considered the polite thing to do. Now, let's also say that the government there is notorious for widespread and unregulated use of facial-recognition technology as a way to both fight crime and to identify and silence political dissidents.

BEIJING: A man who had travelled to Wuhan -- the central city at the heart of China's coronavirus crisis -- was surprised when police showed up at his door after he returned home, asking to check his temperature. The man, who had quarantined himself at home in Nanjing, eastern Jiangsu province, said he had not told anyone about his recent trip to the city. But by trawling through travel data from Wuhan, local authorities were able to identify him and dispatch officers to his home last week, according to a newspaper article posted by the Nanjing government. As Chinese authorities race to contain the spread of a new virus, which has infected more than 34,000 people and killed more than 700 in China, Beijing is turning to a familiar set of tools to find and prevent potential infections: data tracking and artificial intelligence. Several Chinese tech firms have developed apps to help people check if they have taken the same flight or train as confirmed virus patients, scraping data from lists published by state media.

Beijing – A man who had traveled to Wuhan -- the city at the heart of China's coronavirus crisis -- was surprised when police showed up at his door after he returned home, asking to check his temperature. The man, who had quarantined himself at home in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, said he had not told anyone about his recent trip to the city. But by trawling through travel data from Wuhan, local authorities were able to identify him and dispatch officers to his home a week ago, according to a newspaper article posted by the Nanjing government. As Chinese authorities race to contain the spread of a new virus, which has infected more than 34,000 people and killed more than 700 in China, Beijing is turning to a familiar set of tools to find and prevent potential infections: data tracking and artificial intelligence. Several Chinese tech firms have developed apps to help people check if they have taken the same flight or train as confirmed virus patients, scraping data from lists published by state media.

A warehouse in an industrial park about an hour's drive north of downtown Beijing offers a paradoxical picture of China's much-hyped, and increasingly controversial, artificial intelligence boom. Inside the building, a handful of squat cylindrical robots scuttle about, following an intricate and invisible pattern. Occasionally, one zips beneath a stack of shelves, raises it gently off the ground, then brings it to a station where a human worker can grab items for packing. A handful of engineers stare intently at code running on a bank of computers. The robots and the AI behind them were developed by Megvii, one of China's vaunted AI unicorns.

If the U.S. blacklisting of China's budding artificial intelligence companies is aimed at thwarting their progress, we already are starting to see the limits to that strategy. A strong signal came this week when Megvii Technology, a Beijing-based AI firm on the U.S. blacklist, made moves to test the IPO waters in Hong Kong. Numerous media reports said the company, known for its facial-recognition platform Face, is seeking to raise $500 million to $1 billion in a listing that is imminent. The move follows the early success of Alibaba's (NYSE: BABA) secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that may raise as much as $13 billion next week. The HKSE was the world's top bourse for IPOs last year, supplanting Nasdaq, and looks primed to win that race again this year despite the civil unrest there. Last month the U.S. Commerce Department added to the list of Chinese AI companies banned from buying U.S. products or importing American technology.