A robotic recreation of the 17th century Mayflower ship has set sail for US shores once more after a failed first attempt last year. Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) – a 50-foot-long autonomous research vessel piloted by artificial intelligence (AI) – departed from Plymouth, England on Wednesday (April 27). If all goes to plan, the £1 million ($1.3 million) ship will reach Virginia in about three weeks, and in the process become the largest autonomous vessel to ever cross the Atlantic. With no humans on board the ship, it relies on AI to make decisions and look out for potential obstacles in the water. MAS was built to recreate the original Mayflower's historic journey from England to the New World more than 400 years ago.

The security architecture on the European continent is changing dramatically as Russia extends its war on Ukraine. While Finland and Sweden are increasingly likely to join NATO, closer cooperation with the alliance is also the subject of a lively discussion in Switzerland. But will the mountainous, landlocked Central European country abandon its principle of neutrality and make a bid to the Washington-led Western military alliance? Laurent Goetschel, director of swisspeace and professor of political science at the University of Basel, told Al Jazeera there could be some advantages. "The country might benefit from additional networks regarding intelligence and other security-related exchange formats," said Goetschel, adding NATO would have an additional member and there would be "no discussions anymore about being allowed to use Swiss airspace – or even land routes – for transports and communication".

The US is hoping to combat the growing criminal use of drones with new rules that will allow local law enforcement agencies and other organisations to have counter-drone systems. At present, legal restrictions in the US hamper efforts to tackle such activity. The Federal Aviation Administration bans anyone from interfering with an aircraft in flight, including drones, while the Federal Communications Commission forbids jamming radio signals, a common anti-drone technique. Only a few federal agencies are permitted to shoot down drones in extreme circumstances, such as threats to critical infrastructure. US police agencies have been clamouring for counter-drone systems in the face of increasing criminal and careless use of drones.

When Russian president Vladimir Putin launched his full invasion of Ukraine in February, the world expected Moscow's cyber and information operations to pummel the country alongside air strikes and shelling. Two months on, however, Kyiv has not only managed to keep the country online amidst a deluge of hacking attempts, but it has brought the fight back to Russia. Even Ukrainian officials are surprised by how ineffective Russia's digital war has been. "I think that the root cause of this is the difference between our systems," says Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's 31-year-old minister for digital transformation. "Because the Russian system is centralized. And it leads to the scale of corruption and graft that is becoming increasingly apparent as the war continues."

Disengagement is a situation when the vehicle returns to manual control or the driver feels the need to take back the wheel from the AV decision system. I came across this news article a while ago about a man dozing off at the wheel after switching his Tesla to autonomous mode, and being criminally charged soon after because the vehicle was speeding unbeknownst to him. A quick search revealed several such reports on drivers being charged for unlawful practices in semi-autonomous vehicles. This got me thinking: how will traffic laws change as we slowly enter the autonomous vehicle era, and in general, the AI-driven 21st century? Most importantly, this brings up the question of whom to blame when dealing with adverse human-robot interactions. These aren't new questions – only questions to which new perspectives can continually be added until a final course of action is decided. While I actively try to avoid the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of the matter, I will cover the current progress in autonomous vehicle technology, trends and limitations of today's autonomous vehicle policy, and possible directions to better facilitate the transition to autonomous vehicles around the globe. The last decade or so has been a very exciting time in the self-driving vehicle space.

Russia's war in Ukraine is becoming a testing ground for loitering ammunition. How is artificial intelligence changing the future of military deterrence? The Russian attack on Ukraine shows that wars of conquest are not an artifact of the past. This reversion to an outdated notion of territorial integrity of states, visible since 2014 at the latest, puts the concept of deterrence back on the political agenda of many democracies. The new German government now wants to make the contribution to NATO that the then U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, demanded with media attention a few years ago.

Paul Rosenzweig is the founder of Red Branch Consulting PLLC, a homeland security consulting company and a Senior Advisor to The Chertoff Group. Mr. Rosenzweig formerly served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Department of Homeland Security. He is a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University, a Senior Fellow in the Tech, Law & Security program at American University, and a Board Member of the Journal of National Security Law and Policy.

In every election, after the polls close and the votes are counted, there comes a time for reflection. Pundits appear on cable news to offer theories, columnists pen op-eds with warnings and advice for the winners and losers, and parties conduct postmortems. The 2020 U.S. presidential election in which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden was no exception. For Caltech undergrad Sreemanti Dey, the election offered a chance to do her own sort of reflection. Dey, an undergrad majoring in computer science, has a particular interest in using computers to better understand politics.

BRIAN KILMEADE: In his classic novel "1984," George Orwell warned the world of the dangers of government addicted to power. One where the narrative was controlled by the state and the people were forced to bend a knee. Truth-telling became the cardinal sin of Orwell's dystopian state, where a power hungry state reigned in on shutting down free speech and was all guided by what Orwell termed the Ministry of Truth. A propaganda branch of the state, in his book, whose priority was to control all forms of public information where industries like journalism, entertainment and art were all controlled by Big Brother, and the state told you what the truth was actually in their mind, which was the truth accepted. Now, the people had no say in any of it.

There are three primary reasons for organizing such an event. First, the government understands the power of AI and wants India to be a superpower in this space. In 2020, for instance, while speaking at the Responsible AI for Social Empowerment Sumit (RAISE), Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he wants India to become a global hub for AI. Second, we cannot have a meaningful conversation about digital transformation now without referring to cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, image processing, natural language processing (NLP), and a suite of other AI technologies. Market research and advisory firm International Data Corporation (IDC) has forecast India's AI market to touch $7.8 billion by 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 20.2%.