Machine learning can be used to improve forecasts. The basic idea is that a demand forecast is made, a machine learning engine ingests data on how accurate that forecast was, and then the machine autonomously applies better math to improve the next forecast. This is explained in more depth in a previous article.

Artificial intelligence software can beat the world's most widely used test of a machine's ability to act human, Google's reCAPTCHA, by copying how human vision works, a new study finds. These new findings suggest the need for more robust automated human-checking techniques, and could help improve computer perception for robotics tasks, scientists add. The founder of modern computing, Alan Turing, conceived of the Turing test, the most famous version of which asks if one could devise a machine capable of mimicking a human well enough in a conversation over text to be indistinguishable from human. In doing so, Turing helped give rise to the field of artificial intelligence. The most commonly used Turing test is the CAPTCHA, an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."

Whatever Americans think about drones filling the big blue skies of these United States, the president is jazzed about the idea of increasing air traffic--and he's working to make it happen. On Wednesday, Donald Trump signed a memo directing the Department of Transportation to create a plan to make it easier to fly a drone for commercial purposes in US airspace. Other countries have pushed ahead with national drone networks, and professional operators in the US have longed yearned to follow them up, up, and away. To that end, the feds are indulging them with a new effort: the Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Pilot Program. This new initiative will likely excite companies like Amazon and 7-Eleven, but this is bigger than getting quick delivery of Soylent or Slurpees.

Criminals can use shortcomings in popular dating apps, including Tinder, Bumble and Happn, to see users' messages and find out which profiles they've been viewing. As well as having the potential to cause major embarrassment, the exploits could lead to dating app users being identified, located, stalked and even blackmailed. The researchers, from Kaspersky Lab, studied the Android and iOS versions of Tinder, Bumble, Happn, OKCupid, Badoo, Mamba, Zoosk, WeChat and Paktor. They said it was "fairly easy" to find out a user's real name from their bio, as a number of dating apps allow you to add information about your job and education to your profile. Using these details, the researchers managed to find users' pages on various social media platforms, including Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as their full names and surnames, in 60 per cent of cases.

The use of the agent paradigm to understand and design complex systems occupies an important and growing role in different areas of social and natural sciences and technology. Application areas where the agent paradigm delivers appropriate solutions include online trading,16 disaster management,10 and policy making.11 However, the two main agent approaches, Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) differ considerably in methodology, applications, and aims. MAS focus on solving specific complex problems using autonomous heterogeneous agents, while ABM is used to capture the dynamics of a (social or technical) system for analytical purposes. ABM is a form of computational modeling whereby a population of individual agents is given simple rules to govern their behavior such that global properties of the whole can be analyzed.9

Laurel D. Riek (lriek@ucsd.edu) is an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego. She directs the Healthcare Robotics lab and builds autonomous robots that can sense, understand, and learn from real people in the real world.

The scene around the flooded Whitehill Yeo pit in Devon, UK, resembles a lunar landscape. Until it was abandoned just a few years ago, an endless stream of diesel trucks carried china clay out of the mine seven days a week. But don't be fooled by the silence: this is very much an active site. It's just that all the excavation is happening deep beneath the placid waters. This is a test bed, the first, for a new type of mining by underwater robots.

Starting next year, New Yorkers could join Silicon Valley workers and residents of cities like Phoenix, Pittsburgh, and Boston as players in a grand, growing, autonomous car experiment. General Motors, through its self-driving startup Cruise Automation, plans to put a fleet of autonomous Chevrolet Bolts onto the streets of lower Manhattan in early 2018. The company is already testing in San Francisco, and once it finalizes its application to run in New York (the governor loves the idea), expects to learn valuable lessons from the city's colorful chaos. Those will be important lessons, to be sure. But the move across the country raises a novel question.

The U.S. has stepped up its military involvement in the Horn of Africa nation since President Donald Trump approved expanded military operations against the group early this year. The U.S. has carried out at least 19 drone strikes in Somalia since January, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which tracks U.S. drone strikes in a number of countries.

The Sonos One wireless speaker, priced at $199, will be available Oct. 24. It will support multiple voice services, launching with Amazon Alexa, but will add Siri using AirPlay 2, and Google Assistant, in 2018. Sonos is upping the volume in the smart speaker race. Already well-known for its great sounding wireless home speakers, Sonos is bringing to market the first whole home speaker system with built-in voice control using Amazon's digital voice-commanded assistant Alexa. The new speaker, the $199 Sonos One, due out Tuesday, raises the bar for good-sounding smart speakers.