It was supposed to be an easy $1,000 job. All 25-year-old Jorge Edwin Rivera had to do was pilot a drone, carrying a lunchbox filled with 13 pounds of methamphetamine, from one side of the US-Mexico border to the other where an accomplice could retrieve the smuggled cargo. What he didn't count on was Border Patrol agents spotting the UAV in flight and tracking it back to his hiding spot, 2,000 yards from the national divide. This isn't the first time that smugglers have used commercially-available drones to carry contraband. In 2015, the Border Patrol caught a two people dropping off 28 pounds of heroin in Calexico, California, and, in the same year, caught another drug ring delivering 30 pounds of cannabis to San Luis, Arizona.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is investing US$15 billion to establish overseas research hubs to work on artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and fintech, according to a report by BNN. The Alibaba'Damo' academy will comprise of eight research bases in China, Israel, the United States, Russia and Singapore, for which the company will hire 100 researchers. "The Alibaba DAMO Academy will be at the forefront of developing next-generation technology that will spur the growth of Alibaba and our partners," Jeff Zhang, chief technology officer of Alibaba, said. The company and its affiliates have experienced a rapid expansion in the past year, putting it in direct competition with heavyweight e-tailer Amazon.com, as well as global payments, cloud and logistics companies. Since 2016, Alibaba has invested approximately US$2 billion to acquire a majority stake in Singapore-based retailer Lazada.com,

Every year, artificial intelligence (AI) software bots compete and battle it out in the video game Universe of StarCraft. But a new player representing (of all things) Facebook entered into this arena -- CherryPi, an AI player designed by a team of eight people from or involved with Facebook's AI research lab. This foray into multiplayer gaming established Facebook as direct competition for others, like Google and even individual hobbyists (three of whom finished in the top three places). Gabriel Synnaeve, a researcher at Facebook, described CherryPi as a "baseline" prototype to learn and build from, he said, "We wanted to see how it compares to existing bots, and in particular test if it has flaws that need correcting." Some expect Facebook and Google to lag behind independently-designed bots for awhile, despite the tech giants' inexhaustible resources; "For a couple of years I predict the hobbyist, mostly rule-based bots, will still do well," said David Churchill, a professor of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, which organized AIIDE, an academic conference that includes contests like the StarCraft competition.

Professional racer Jann Mardenborough recently got the chance to live every Gran Turismo fan's dream: he drove a real car using a DualShock 4 controller from aboard a helicopter. That car was a modified Nissan GT-R aptly called the GT-R /C, made to celebrate the automaker's 20th year of involvement with Gran Turismo and GT Sport's upcoming launch. The vehicle is fitted with four robots -- one each to control the steering wheel, transmissions, brakes and throttle -- and a micro-computer to receive commands from the unmodified DualShock. That micro-computer is responsible for interpreting the joystick and button signals and transmitting those signals to the car's onboard systems. Aboard the helicopter, Mardenborough got help from a sensor and a display on the cockpit that showed the GT-R /C's speed.

AI has been a hot topic among loyalty marketers in recent years, and even more this year. Can AI transform and elevate a loyalty marketer's approach to customer experience? A new study from Emarsys, conducted by Forrester Consulting, examines Artificial Intelligence (AI) marketing readiness in the retail and e-commerce industries. The study, "Building Trust and Confidence: AI Marketing Readiness in Retail and e-Commerce," sought to understand if there is still a gap between the readiness of AI marketing solutions to execute on real-time B2C marketing campaigns, and the readiness of marketing tech users and business decision makers to adopt AI marketing technology. The study surveyed companies in the U.S., U.K, Germany, France, and Australia that each had revenue of at least $50 million upward to $5 billion.

It seems you can't open a newspaper without Elon Musk predicting that artificial intelligence (AI) needs regulating – before it starts World War III. And if it's not Elon, its Vladimir telling us AI will rule the world. I'm starting to feel like I'm a very dangerous guy. There was a time, 20 years back, when people just smiled at me when I told them I was working on building intelligent machines. And I knew that smile was one of sympathy.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is nearing completion of new "buy American" rules to make it easier to sell U.S.-made military drones overseas and compete against fast-growing Chinese and Israeli rivals, senior U.S. officials said. While President Donald Trump's aides work on relaxing domestic regulations on drone sales to select allies, Washington will also seek to renegotiate a 1987 missile-control pact with the aim of loosening international restrictions on U.S. exports of unmanned aircraft, according to government and industry sources. At home, the U.S. administration is pressing ahead with its revamp of drone export policy under heavy pressure from American manufacturers and in defiance of human rights advocates who warn of the risk of fueling instability in hot spots including the Middle East and South Asia. The changes, part of a broader effort to overhaul U.S. arms export protocols, could be rolled out by the end of the year under a presidential policy decree, the administration officials said on condition of anonymity. The aim is to help U.S. drone makers -- pioneers in remote-controlled aircraft that have become a centerpiece of counterterrorism strategy -- reassert themselves in the overseas market, where China, Israel and others often sell under less cumbersome restrictions.

A lot of passengers come and go through Dubai airports and by 2020, they're expected to play host to some 124 million people. So in an effort to increase the efficiency of security checkpoints, Dubai International Airport is installing a tunnel outfitted with 80 facial recognition and iris scanning cameras, The National reports. The tunnel's walls can display things like virtual aquariums or deserts as well as advertisements and passengers would just have to walk through as they normally would. At the end of the tunnel, a display will either tell the passenger to have a nice trip or will alert officials to take another look. "The tunnel has not come out of nowhere, without any foundation," Obaid Al Hameeri, the deputy director general of Dubai residency and foreign affairs, told The National.

On Sunday night, a lone gunman armed with 23 powerful weapons opened fire from a window on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas, targeting thousands concertgoers gathered for a country music festival below. Within minutes, the gunman had killed at least 58 people and injured nearly 500. There may be no more contentious issue in America than gun control, and no more emotional time to discuss it than in the days following a national tragedy like the one that unfolded in Las Vegas. But, a subject being difficult to discuss should not preclude us from trying to understand it, and fortunately nature has evolved methods for helping relatively simple organisms work through incredibly complicated problems with life or death consequences. Swarm Intelligence allows groups of bees to converge on the perfect place for their hive nearly 90% of the time, and extending this power to humans through Unanimous AI's Swarm AI technology empowers groups to create similarly optimized insight.

How far will AI take us in areas such as healthcare? Will we see medical pods like this one featured in science fiction film Prometheus to treat future patients? CIO veteran and industry consultant, Geoff Wenborn, sees enormous opportunity for artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare - identifying 35 use cases alone for robotics and AI at places like UnitingCare Queensland. Wenborn, who provides IT transformation consulting to several organisations including UnitingCare Queensland and Starlight Children's Foundation Australia (and built some proof of concepts), said the sky's the limit in terms of use case possibilities. At UnitingCare, he was the interim CIO charged with doing transformation, and is currently the chair of the Starlight IT Advisory Board.