This story was originally published by CityLab and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. What's 1.6 million square kilometers, weighs 80,000 metric tons, and is three times the size of continental France? That would be the Great Pacific Garbage Patch--the enormous collection of detritus that floats in the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Hawaii and California. Also known as the "GPGP," the patch's sprawl has made it notoriously difficult to measure. But a new study in the journal Scientific Reports has gathered the most comprehensive measurement yet.

Google has quietly secured a contract to work on the Defense Department's new algorithmic warfare initiative, providing assistance with a pilot project to apply its artificial intelligence solutions to drone targeting. The military contract with Google is routed through a Northern Virginia technology staffing company called ECS Federal, obscuring the relationship from the public. The contract, first reported Tuesday by Gizmodo, is part of a rapid push by the Pentagon to deploy state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology to improve combat performance. Google, which has made strides in applying its proprietary deep learning tools to improve language translation, and vision recognition, has a cross-team collaboration within the company to work on the AI drone project. The team, The Intercept has learned, is working to develop deep learning technology to help drone analysts interpret the vast image data vacuumed up from the military's fleet of 1,100 drones to better target bombing strikes against the Islamic State.

A U.S. Air Force MQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), carrying a Hellfire missile flies over an air base after flying a mission in the Persian Gulf region on January 7, 2016. A U.S. Air Force MQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), carrying a Hellfire missile flies over an air base after flying a mission in the Persian Gulf region on January 7, 2016. A Google spokeswoman said the company provides its TensorFlow application programming interfaces, or APIs, to a pilot project with the Department of Defense to help automatically identify objects in unclassified data. APIs are software-based rules that let computer programs communicate. TensorFlow is a popular set of APIs and other tools for AI capabilities such as machine learning and computer vision.

The UAE has adopted the formation of the UAE Council for Artificial Intelligence to ensure the implementation of the latest technologies across various sectors, reported Arabian Business. The move aims to improve the quality of life of citizens and residents as part of plans to make the UAE one of the best countries in the world by 2071, state news agency WAM reported on Monday. The council is a reaffirmation of the UAE Government's keenness to move forward in the use of artificial intelligence and its applications in various fields to improve government performance and create innovative work environments, it added. The formation of the council follows the appointment of a Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence in the recent formation of the UAE Cabinet, the launch of the UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence and the UAE Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The council will study and identify the government sectors where artificial intelligence technology can be incorporated and make recommendations for the development of related infrastructure.

The renewed search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 entered its next phase as the initial search of 3,160 sq. Texas-based Ocean Infinity -- which has signed a "no cure, no fee" deal with the Malaysian government to find the jetliner -- is scouring a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean, where the ill-fated plane is believed to have gone down. The second leg of the search includes scouring through an area of the 9,652 sq. According to a report, citing an update posted Tuesday by Malaysia's MH370 Response Team, Ocean Infinity's search ship, the Seabed Constructor, was able to launch all eight of its autonomous underwater vehicles following favorable weather conditions. Earlier, the search operation was hampered due to bad weather.

Lux has finally released a follow-up to its Lux Geo smart thermostat. The Kono is largely in line with the Geo's basic sensibilities of delivering smart features and style in a lower-priced high-tech thermostat. Priced at $150, the Kono is an affordable way to get smart connectivity in your heating and cooling controls, but you won't get much in the way of bells and whistles. One potential sticking point is pure aesthetics: The Kono's industrial design could appear stylish and techno-hip, or tacky and plastic looking depending upon your taste. Lux has cleverly made it so you can purchase an array of colored faceplates for the unit and swap them out in a second to suit your room's color scheme or general mood.

The Pentagon is building drones mounted with lasers that can destroy enemy missiles before they have left the launch pad. The US Missile Defence Agency has requested $66 million (£48 million) in funding to continue the top-secret programme, with a plan to begin tests by 2020. Officials hope that innovative missile-intercepting technologies will help the US military to defend sites like Guam, Japan, and Hawaii from North Korean attacks. The Pentagon is building drones equipped with lasers that can destroy enemy missiles. With drones and other unmanned vehicles set to dominate battlefields of the future (artist's impression), the Pentagon has invested billions in the technology over the past decade Named Low Power Laser Demonstrator (LPLD), the project aims to build lasers that can be mounted on to a drone and used to take out missiles before they are a threat.

My guest Robert Draper says one of the greatest threats to our democracy is gerrymandering, in which the party in power in a state redraws the map of election districts to give the advantage to that party's candidates. Since districts are redrawn only every 10 years following the census, gerrymandering can almost guarantee that the majority party will stay in power. There are a couple of gerrymandering cases currently before the Supreme Court. Draper has reported on gerrymandering, and we'll talk about that a little later. First, we're going to talk about his new article "They Are Watching You - And Everything Else On The Planet" published in this month's National Geographic. It's about state-of-the-art surveillance from closed-circuit TV to drones and satellites and the questions these surveillance technologies raise about privacy. As part of his research, he spent time in surveillance control rooms in London. And he went to a tech company in San Francisco whose mission is to image the entire Earth every day. Draper is a contributing writer for National Geographic and a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. So let's start with surveillance. Why did you choose England as the place to report on surveillance? ROBERT DRAPER: Well, England has become kind of an obvious focal point to talk about surveillance. It's become, in a way, a petri dish for the subject, I suppose, for a couple reasons. First of all, the U.K. is where George Orwell wrote his dystopian classic "1984" back in 1949 when the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the USSR were his prime reference points.

A prototype autonomous ship known as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV) has officially been transferred to the U.S. Navy from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) after a two-year testing and evaluation program. Named "Sea Hunter," the Office of Naval Research will continue to develop the vessel from this point forward. Although there's no specific timetable for when the Sea Hunter would join active naval operations, the statement from DARPA indicated that it could happen as early as this year. The anti-submarine warfare vessel could be the first of an entirely new class of warship. "[Sea Hunter] represents a new vision of naval surface warfare that trades small numbers of very capable, high-value assets for large numbers of commoditized, simpler platforms that are more capable in the aggregate," said Fred Kennedy of DARPA.

Stuart Russell, Anthony Aguirre, Ariel Conn, and Max Tegmark recently wrote a response to my critique of their "Slaughterbots" video on autonomous weapons. I am grateful for their thoughtful article. I think this kind of dialogue can be incredibly helpful in illuminating points of disagreement on various issues, and I welcome the exchange. I think it is particularly important to have a cross-disciplinary dialogue on autonomous weapons that includes roboticists, AI scientists, engineers, ethicists, lawyers, human rights advocates, military professionals, political scientists, and other perspectives because this issue touches so many disciplines. I appreciate their thorough, point-by-point reply.