An app that is quickly gaining popularity has also managed to become a source of frustration with the Trump White House.

The debate over the app, ICEBlock, which allows people to report sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and in turn, potentially avoid them, is part of a bigger and potentially legal battle that will become more prevalent in the years ahead.

Should only law enforcement have the right to certain technology? Should apps be able to track those tasked with enforcing the law?

Certainly there is room for nuance in this debate, but for now tensions are heightened, and it is not clear how it will get resolved.

The Big Story

Pearls of wisdom

In brief | During a discussion looking at the effect of AI at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, managing director and chief executive of Mubadala Investment Company reflected on why he felt the UAE was so quick to identify AI as an unprecedented and transformational technology.

He pointed out that the UAE's economic history, going all the way back to the rise and fall of the pearl industry, provided a teachable moment that would reside in the minds of many amid a pivot to invest so heavily in AI.

In short, he said, it is best to always embrace new developments, and not depend on any one industry for too long.

Why it matters | When speaking about AI, it is easy and incredibly appropriate to always think of it in terms of the future.

Mr Al Mubarak's decision to recently talk about the past during a round-table discussion on AI, however, struck a chord.

We can look to history to better inform how we handle technological transformation, while also calming our nerves by looking at the doom and gloom scenarios that never really came to fruition.

There might not be a historical parallel for every new tech development, but that misses the point. We have to learn from the past.

Quoted | “Our main industry was pearl diving. We used to dive for pearls. Our ancestors … that's what they did and then we had a technological revolution by the Japanese which was the artificial pearl. You had our country [UAE] that depended on one product, on one industry, that suddenly got disrupted by technology. And that was a huge, huge lesson for us as a people. We then discovered oil and gas, and then the rest is history. However over the last 50 years one of the things we focused on as a nation was not to make that same mistake again, not to suffer from a technological revolution that would take us years back.

– Khaldoon Al Mubarak, managing director and chief executive of Mubadala Investment Company

Future in focus

New designs | Sheikh Hamdan announces new icons aimed at increasing AI transparency

Partnership prosperity | Why Microsoft’s president is so optimistic about what AI will do for the Middle East

Superintelligence efforts | What is ASI and how does it trump today's AI?

Virtual academies | Is the traditional bricks-and-mortar school set to be replaced by online academies?

Predicting the future: Signal or noise?

The race is on to create a smartphone without any ports. The catch, however, is charging. Apple's decision to quietly never release a wireless charging product first announced in 2017 spoke volumes about how wireless charging was not quite ready for prime time. New comments from Samsung executive, show that while progress has been made, there is still room for improvement.

This is a signal: Although quite prevalent, wireless charging still lacks the consistency and speed to be relied on in clutch situations. Samsung's transparency and acknowledgement that progress still needs to be made in the wireless charging sphere shows that we will still need to carry charging cords with us for the time being. Once the technology is more reliable, however, there will be no looking back and the possibilities will be endless. For now, however, most phones will still have ports.

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