Top Pentagon official Michael Griffin sat down a few weeks ago with Air Force scientists at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to discuss the future of quantum computing in the U.S. military. Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, has listed quantum computers and related applications among the Pentagon's must-do R&D investments. Quantum computing is one area where the Pentagon worries that it is playing catchup while China continues to leap ahead. The technology is being developed for many civilian applications and the military sees it as potentially game-changing for information and space warfare. The U.S. Air Force particularly is focused on on what is known as quantum information science.

The benefits of autonomous vehicles (AVs) are widely acknowledged, but there are concerns about the extent of these benefits and AV risks and unintended consequences. In this article, we first examine AVs and different categories of the technological risks associated with them. We then explore strategies that can be adopted to address these risks, and explore emerging responses by governments for addressing AV risks. Our analyses reveal that, thus far, governments have in most instances avoided stringent measures in order to promote AV developments and the majority of responses are non-binding and focus on creating councils or working groups to better explore AV implications. The US has been active in introducing legislations to address issues related to privacy and cybersecurity. The UK and Germany, in particular, have enacted laws to address liability issues; other countries mostly acknowledge these issues, but have yet to implement specific strategies. To address privacy and cybersecurity risks strategies ranging from introduction or amendment of non-AV specific legislation to creating working groups have been adopted. Much less attention has been paid to issues such as environmental and employment risks, although a few governments have begun programmes to retrain workers who might be negatively affected.

What's going on: China's prestigious Tsinghua University recently laid out a vision for how it will develop AI for military applications, flagging a close relationship between universities, private companies, and the armed forces. The details: In a speech last month, You Zheng, a Tsinghua VP, described the university's role in what China calls civil–military fusion. The speech was translated into English by Elsa Kania of the Center for a New American Security. For U.S. researchers working in China, You's explanation raises questions about whether their projects could end up aiding the Chinese effort to beat the U.S. in AI. Bob Work, the former deputy secretary of defense, remarked on the conflict at a Defense One event last month. "Google has a center in China, where they have a concept called civil–military fusion. Anything that's going on in that center is going to be used by the military."

What's going on: China's prestigious Tsinghua University recently laid out a vision for how it will develop AI for military applications, flagging a close relationship between universities, private companies, and the armed forces. The details: In a speech last month, You Zheng, a Tsinghua VP, described the university's role in what China calls civil–military fusion. The speech was translated into English by Elsa Kania of the Center for a New American Security. For U.S. researchers working in China, You's explanation raises questions about whether their projects could end up aiding the Chinese effort to beat the U.S. in AI. Bob Work, the former deputy secretary of defense, remarked on the conflict at a Defense One event last month. "Google has a center in China, where they have a concept called civil–military fusion. Anything that's going on in that center is going to be used by the military."

Facial recognition technology is useful to some, unnerving to others and is the latest Facebook privacy criticism. It's the first big tech company to raise serious alarms about an increasingly sought-after technology for recognizing a person's face from a photo or through a camera. Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post Friday that the government should form a bipartisan expert commission. Many uses of facial recognition technology are "positive and potentially even profound," Smith said. "But other potential applications are more sobering.

ASTANA – A humanoid robot named Sophia told a conference of mayors from Silk Road cities July 3 that she loves Astana architecture. "Walking around the city, I fell in love with the unique architecture of your capital, in which the most advanced technologies and innovative methods of city planning in the 21st century are concentrated. I saw a beautiful and dynamic young capital with magnificent buildings," Sophia told the Global Silk Road Cities Mayors Forum. Sofia is equipped with artificial intelligence, visual information processing and facial recognition technology. She can imitate human gestures and facial expressions and can answer certain questions and conduct conversations on predetermined topics.

PARIS – At the heart of the spread of fake news are the algorithms used by search engines, websites and social media, which are often accused of pushing false or manipulated information regardless of the consequences. They are the invisible but essential computer programs and formulas that increasingly run modern life, designed to repeatedly solve recurrent problems or to make decisions on their own. Their ability to filter and seek out links in gigantic databases means it would be impossible to run global markets without them, but they can also be refined down to produce personalized quotes on everything from mortgages to plane tickets. They also run our Google searches, our Facebook news feed, recommend articles or videos to us and sometimes censor questionable content because it may contain violence, pornography or racist language. Other algorithms charged with the most complex and sensitive tasks can be opaque "black boxes" that develop their own artificial intelligence based on our data.

After reading several articles describing the methods hackers are using machine learning to infiltrate companies' critical systems, I decided to reach out to a world-renown security expert to parse the facts from the hysteria. Giovanni Vigna, Co-Founder and CTO of Lastline Security, is also a tenured Professor within UC Santa Barbara's Computer Science Department. Giovanni has been working at the highest levels of computer security for over 25 years. Giovanni, along with his Shellphish team, organized the preeminent International Capture The Flag white-hat hacker competition more than a dozen times and participated in DARPA's Cyber Grand Challenge, which saw completely autonomous systems, driven by AI, competing against each other in a cybersecurity competition, without humans involved. In addition, Giovanni has been employed by, and received grant money from, some of the most security-conscious organizations on the planet, such as the National Science Foundation, DARPA, the Office for Naval Research, Google and Intel.

Steve Marshall is directing the city of Bellevue's efforts to bring a fleet of self-driving vanpools to the region. If it is successful, it could shuttle up to 3,000 commuters along the I-405 corridor from Auburn to Kirkland. Aaron Kunkler/Staff photo As the technology powering self-driving vehicles continues to advance, the cities of Bellevue and Kirkland have a plan to bring a fleet of vans to the Eastside. The CommutePool program was drafted by staff from the two cities, which submitted a grant application to the U.S. Department of Transportation last week asking for $3 million to help fund the $9 million project. Bellevue Transportation Technology Partnership Manager Steve Marshall has been working with large employers in the area to gather support for the electric, self-driving vanpools.

Beijing firm Megvii, which is being backed by the Chinese government, is expanding the places in which its powerful Face software is rolled out. The company secured a distributor in Thailand after Chinese police were able to use the software in China to locate and arrest more than 3,000 fugitives. The technology works by identifying 106 different features on people's faces, so even if the face is partially covered, by a balaclava for example, it should still work. Face is already worth an estimated £1.5billion, according to Business Insider, and Megvii are in talks with commercial banks and building managers to deploy it for security purposes.