Autopilot controls are not yet fully capable of functioning without human intervention – but they're good enough to lull us into a false sense of security Wed 24 Jan 2018 03.01 EST Last modified on Wed 24 Jan 2018 03.03 EST When California police officers approached a Tesla stopped in the centre of a five-lane highway outside San Francisco last week, they found a man passed out at the wheel. The driver, who was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving, told them his car was in "autopilot", Tesla's semi-autonomous driver assist system. In a separate incident this week, firefighters in Culver City reported that a Tesla rear-ended their parked fire truck as it attended an accident on the freeway. Again, the driver stated that the vehicle was in autopilot. When u pass out behind the wheel on the Bay Bridge with more than 2x legal alcohol BAC limit and are found by a CHP Motor.

Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like "The Left Hand of Darkness" and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. Her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause but said she had been in poor health for several months. Ms. Le Guin embraced the standard themes of her chosen genres: sorcery and dragons, spaceships and planetary conflict. But even when her protagonists are male, they avoid the macho posturing of so many science fiction and fantasy heroes.

Drone-maker DJI announced a new hobby aircraft today, one that weighs just a shade under a pound, fits in a jacket pocket, and is capable of flying itself. At that price, it hovers in DJI's lineup between the $499 DJI Spark, the gesture-controlled flyer released last year, and the more capable $999 Mavic Pro. The Mavic Air is tiny, half the size of a Mavic Pro, and about half the weight at just 15 ounces. When folded up, it's about the size of a paperback novel. At a press event in New York on Tuesday, DJI exec Michael Perry announced the Mavic Air by pulling it out of the pocket of his puffy Patagonia vest.

Google just made it a lot easier to build your very own custom AI system. A new service, called Cloud AutoML, uses several machine-learning tricks to automatically build and train a deep-learning algorithm that can recognize things in images. The technology is limited for now, but it could be the start of something big. Building and optimizing a deep neural network algorithm normally requires a detailed understanding of the underlying math and code, as well as extensive practice tweaking the parameters of algorithms to get things just right. The difficulty of developing AI systems has created a race to recruit talent, and it means that only big companies with deep pockets can usually afford to build their own bespoke AI algorithms.

Henrik Fisker spent this year's CES at Booth 3315, standing next to a deep red, curvaceous, quirky electric sedan with doors that pivot like wings. The EMotion is the work of Fisker Inc, the car designer's latest venture. But the stage Fisker and the car stood on didn't say Fisker Inc. It said Quanergy--a Silicon Valley-based startup that makes lidar sensors for self-driving cars; it has plans to embed several of its units is discreetly into the new car. Fisker wasn't the only one shacking up at CES. Ford's display highlighted not cars, but its deal with Dominos to work on autonomous pizza deliveries. Pizza Hut announced a partnership with Toyota.

Fri 19 Jan 2018 09.09 EST Last modified on Sat 20 Jan 2018 01.44 EST Russia responded on 5 January to an attack by a swarm of drones targeting a Russian airbase in north-western Syria and a naval station on the Mediterranean Sea. The multi-drone attack, which is suspected to have been launched by militants, is the first of its kind, representing a new threat from terrorist groups. The use of a swarm attack demonstrates a militant capability, which was previously limited to states, to simultaneously control and coordinate several commercial drones at one time using a GPS unit. This development may send viewers of the science-fiction series Black Mirror into hiding, but it should prompt professional militaries to double down on countermeasures, specifically the creation of electronic jamming tech. Swashbuckling drones operated by rebels and militants have been shoring up the frontlines of conflict internationally, in some cases braving the choppy waters off the coast of Yemen, and in others crowding the skies over Syria and Iraq.

Google has been using artificial intelligence to build other artificially intelligent systems for the last several months. Now the company plans to sell this kind of "automated machine learning" technology to other businesses across the globe. On Wednesday, Google introduced a cloud-computing service that it bills as a way to build a so-called computer vision system that suits your particular needs -- even if you have little or no experience with the concepts that drive it. If you are a radiologist, for example, you can use CT scans to automatically train a computer algorithm that identifies signs of lung cancer. If you run a real estate website, you can build an algorithm that distinguishes between living rooms and kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms.

Prosecutors say Nardella stole two North Face jackets from a TJ Maxx in Salem and two Samsung robotic robots from a Salem Target in the span of a week. Prosecutors say Nardella returned to the same Target, took two more robotic vacuums and swung one at a security guard by its security cord when he was apprehended.

The simplest way to eliminate the spread of fake news would be to limit ourselves to a small group of mainstream publishers who do all their own reporting and fact-checking. The counterargument, of course, is that an open and democratic society allows for a wide range of voices, not just the ones a small cabal of editors deem acceptable. Fake news promises to destroy this system and undermine trust and democracy, which is why addressing fake news has become one of the tech industry's most significant and important challenges. His initial focus, post-9/11, was on national security, which is how he first become intrigued by the advantages AI offers in analyzing complex data sets. As 2017's fake news scandals grew, DeAngelis was approached by leading media industry veteran Greg D'Alba, CEO of VIDL News, to apply the same type of analysis Enterra was using to control the complex value chains of Fortune 500 companies to the media industry, where D'Alba saw a growing need to verify and validate news stories.

A pilot has flown a drone into a crane, according to an air-accident report. The pilot had planned the drone flight in Kent with four reference points, all at 400ft above ground level - higher than three existing cranes on the site. But another crane was erected after his site safety visit, and on take-off the drone crashed into the jib of the new structure, damaging the unmanned craft. The crash, in June last year, is listed in the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) update this month. The incident report was picked up by The Register.