George Hotz is the founder of Comma.ai, an autonomous driving startup that's roughly six months old. On Monday, top VC firm Andreessen Horowitz announced a 3.1 million investment in the company. Comma.ai is working on a kit that will make it possible to turn regular vehicles into semi-autonomous ones. In October, Hotz purchased a 2016 Acura ILX, cameras and GoPro mounts and started developing the technology out of his San Francisco garage. The goal is to bring the kit -- both computer vision software and the cameras -- to market for less than 1,000 a pop before the end of 2016.

Salesforce.com Inc. is acquiring MetaMind, an artificial-intelligence startup that specializes in deep-learning services, boosting its capabilities for the new technology. The Palo Alto, California-based company helps business users employ deep learning technology, which trains networks of computers to mimic the human brain's ability to recognize and analyze pictures or text without explicit instructions. The acquisition will help Salesforce offer AI capabilities to automate and personalize customer support, marketing and many other business processes, MetaMind said on its website. "We thought about how to maximize our impact with deep learning and we feel like Salesforce is the best place to do that," Richard Socher, MetaMind's chief executive officer, said in an interview. Salesforce is boosting its focus on machine learning and automation as it looks for new ways to bolster its approach to helping customers tackle sales with their own clients.

Toyota (TM - Get Report) announced Monday a collaboration with Microsoft (MSFT - Get Report) in which the automaker would use Microsoft's Azure cloud-based technology to initiate a "data science hub" for Toyota's global operations in Plano, Texas. Toyota said the business unit, called Toyota Connected and headed by Zack Hicks, the Japanese automaker's chief information officer for North America, "will support a broad range of consumer-, business- and government- facing initiatives." Toyota Connected also will coordinate with the automaker's 1 billion artificial intelligence initiative, announced in early November and headed by Gil Pratt, to work on driverless car and related technologies. In the past year, Toyota's American depositary receipts have fallen about 28% compared to a Dow Jones Industrial Average that's about flat. The latest move in digital technology by a global auto giant is another attempt to adapt rapidly to a shifting strategic landscape and a potential upset of the industry's business model.

Elissa Strauss interviews Amy Tuteur, an OB who has taken a skeptical view of the natural childbirth movement. Tuteur discusses the origins of the movements for natural childbirth and attachment parenting ("It's so ironic that [they] are now considered feminist, because they were started by people who absolutely weren't feminist") and analyzes their psychological appeal ("Being a mother is really, really, really hard ... along came this system that told that you are automatically an awesome mother if you have an unmedicated birth and breast-feed and co-sleep. That's so seductive and can easily become a big part of one's identity.")

Here are the basics of what the Panama Papers leak is all about. Photo shows the building where the office of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca is located in Panama City, Panama, April 03, 2016. SAN FRANCISCO -- The 11.5 million leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca are providing a treasure trove of data on a hidden world of offshore accounts and murky dealings. "It's becoming much easier than it used to be to store and move very large amounts of data. I would expect this to continue," said John King, a professor of information at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Big drone makers aren't satisfied with existing efforts to get in the US government's good books, apparently. DJI, 3D Robotics, GoPro and Parrot have forged the Drone Manufacturers Alliance to lobby for a "carefully balanced regulatory framework" that makes sure drones are "safely integrated" into American skies. In plainer language, they want to make sure that regulation doesn't run counter to their interests -- they don't want their business to fizzle out because of a future law.

As robotics and 3-D printing technologies become more accessible to home tinkerers, men are (of course) building robots of beautiful women. Anyone who's turned on a TV in the past decade shouldn't be surprised to learn that one of the first--and creepiest--examples of this development involves movie star Scarlett Johansson. News broke on Friday about a Hong Kong designer who made a robot that looks just like the award-winning actress--although Ricky Ma, the robot's creator, wouldn't name the actress he modeled the bot on, choosing instead to it Mark 1. It took Ma eighteen months and over 50,000 to complete the project, which he constructed on his patio with a 3-D printer and software that he taught himself how to use. The question, however, is one of precedent.

For many people in Zambia with health queries, sending a text message is the best way to get it answered. U-report, a free SMS-based service set up by UNICEF and run by volunteers, receives many thousands of questions a month, many specifically about HIV and AIDS. Also popular in Uganda, U-report has seen usage triple in the last three years, and about a thousand new users register every day. The volume of messages is growing so fast that the volunteers can't keep up, so UNICEF is testing software that reads and responds to many of the messages automatically. In Zambia, there are roughly 27,000 new HIV infections a year, according to UNICEF, and 40 per cent of these are in those aged 15 to 24.

Our sky is zoned for people. The Federal Aviation Administration, tasked with regulating the airspace above America, has elaborate rules for who and what can fly where. Out of an abundance of caution for human safety, the FAA tries to keep that airspace tidy, reserved for human-carrying vehicles. In a new regulation last week, they opened up just a little bit more of that sky for commercial use of drones, adding a robotic floor to the heavens. "FAA Doubles "Blanket" Altitude for Many [Unmanned Aerial System] Flights" is how the FAA framed the announcement, and that's technically true.

A committee sponsored by the US government is recommending standards that could clear the way for commercial drone flights over populated areas and help speed the introduction of package delivery drones and other uses not yet possible, the Associated Press has reported. The Federal Aviation Administration currently prohibits most commercial drone flights over populated areas, especially crowds. That ban frustrates a host of industries that want to take advantage of the technology. "Every TV station in the country wants one, but they can't be limited to flying in the middle of nowhere because there's no news in the middle of nowhere," said Jim Williams, a former head of FAA's drone office who now advises the industry for Dentons, an international law firm. Cellular network providers also want to loosen restrictions so drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, can inspect cell towers, which often are in urban areas.