After little more than a week, Google backtracked on creating its Advanced Technology External Advisory Council, or ATEAC--a committee meant to give the company guidance on how to ethically develop new technologies such as AI. The inclusion of the Heritage Foundation's president, Kay Coles James, on the council caused an outcry over her anti-environmentalist, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-immigrant views, and led nearly 2,500 Google employees to sign a petition for her removal. Instead, the internet giant simply decided to shut down the whole thing. How did things go so wrong? And can Google put them right?

Google's attempt to wrest more cloud computing dollars from market leaders Amazon and Microsoft got a new boss late last year. Next week, Thomas Kurian is expected to lay out his vision for the business at the company's cloud computing conference, building on his predecessor's strategy of emphasizing Google's strength in artificial intelligence. That strategy is complicated by controversies over how Google and its clients use the powerful technology. After employee protests over a Pentagon contract in which Google trained algorithms to interpret drone imagery, the cloud unit now subjects its--and its customers'--AI projects to ethical reviews. They have caused Google to turn away some business.

Hyundai, the world's 5th largest automaker together with affiliate Kia Motors, has been fostering partnerships with self-driving tech and social media firms as it aims to introduce highly automated vehicles by 2020 and fully autonomous vehicles by 2030.

If you haven't seen the latest Boston Dynamics video, released last week, it shows an upgraded version of the company's Handle robot moving boxes in a warehouse. Handle is a mobile manipulator that integrates both legs and wheels, and the new version features a swinging "tail" that serves as a counterweight and allows the robot to balance and move in a dynamic fashion--just as you'd expect from the company that created such nimble machines as Atlas, Spot, and BigDog. Boston Dynamics, which SoftBank bought from Google in 2017, is showing off Handle toiling in a warehouse for a reason: The company is officially entering the logistics market, with plans to offer robots for material-handling applications. As part of that strategy, it is announcing today the acquisition of Kinema Systems, a startup based in Menlo Park, Calif., that develops vision sensors and deep-learning software to enable industrial robot arms to locate and move boxes. Boston Dynamics founder and CEO Marc Raibert says the two Handle robots seen in the video aren't moving as fast as they could, and one of the factors limiting their performance is their vision systems.

Since 2017, AI researchers have been using AI neural networks to help design better and faster AI neural networks. Applying AI in pursuit of better AI has, to date, been a largely academic pursuit--mainly because this approach requires tens of thousands of GPU hours. If that's what it takes, it's likely quicker and simpler to design real-world AI applications with the fallible guidance of educated guesswork. Next month, however, a team of MIT researchers will be presenting a so-called "neural architecture search" algorithm that can speed up the AI-optimized AI design process by 240 times or more. That would put faster and more accurate AI within practical reach for a broad class of image recognition algorithms and other related applications.

All you need to fool Tesla's autopilot into changing lane is a handful of stickers. Tesla's autopilot uses cameras to detect lane markings, so that it can position itself in the middle of the road and automatically change lanes when required. A team at Keen Security Labs, run by Chinese technology giant Tencent, managed to confuse the system onboard a Tesla Model S with just three stickers placed on the road. The car's autopilot system incorrectly classified the stickers, which were placed over road markings to make a jagged, rather than straight-edged. This caused the Tesla to move onto the wrong side of the road.

If you're inclined to puns, you might say medical samples are the lifeblood of hospital systems. But if you actually work with them, you know they're more of a headache. Because the same road traffic that keeps you from getting home keeps the couriers charged with moving these tissue and blood samples, collected by the millions daily and often in urgent need of analysis, from completing their missions. So it makes a lot of sense that when the FAA decided to sanction the first revenue-generating drone delivery scheme in the US, it went with one that promises to speed up that process, run by UPS and autonomous drone technology firm Matternet. It makes sense from the tech perspective, too: The cargo is extremely lightweight and compact, allowing the companies involved to focus on the delivery processes and mechanisms rather than trying to manage unwieldy payloads.

The maker of the Camry sedan, Prius hybrid and Lexus luxury models has shown off various robots, including one that played a violin. Another, resembling R2-D2 of Star Wars, slides around and picks up things. At Monday's demonstration, it handed the basketball to Cue 3.

This year, 47 million Americans will spend an estimated $8.5 billion betting on the outcome of the NCAA basketball championships, a cultural ritual appropriately known as March Madness. Before the tournament starts, anyone who wants to place a bet must fill out a bracket, which holds their predictions for each of the 63 championship games. The winner of a betting pool is the one whose bracket most closely mirrors the results of the championship. For most people, making a bracket is a way to flex their knowledge of collegiate basketball and maybe make a few bucks by outguessing their colleagues in the office betting pool. But for the mathematically inclined, accurately predicting March Madness brackets is a technical problem in search of a solution.

The UK government is among a group of countries that are attempting to thwart plans to formulate and impose a pre-emptive ban on killer robots. Delegates have been meeting at the UN in Geneva all week to discuss potential restrictions under international law to so-called lethal autonomous weapons systems, which use artificial intelligence to help decide when and who to kill. Most states taking part – and particularly those from the global south – support either a total ban or strict legal regulation governing their development and deployment, a position backed by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, who has described machines empowered to kill as "morally repugnant". But the UK is among a group of states – including Australia, Israel, Russia and the US – speaking forcefully against legal regulation. As discussions operate on a consensus basis, their objections are preventing any progress on regulation.