When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico last September, it ravaged the island's electrical grid and communications systems. For weeks, many of the approximately 5 million Puerto Ricans living in the mainland U.S. were unable to reach their loved ones. While recovery groups worked to restore power and deliver aid, cell providers scrambled to repair their networks. To get its service back up and running, AT&T tried something new: the Flying COW, a tethered drone that beamed mobile data signals up to 40 miles in all directions. "As soon as we turned it on, people just started connecting to it instantly," says Art Pregler, AT&T's Unmanned Aircraft Systems program director.

With trade wars, immigration crackdowns and polarized media, we seem to be in an endless winter of political and societal discontent. Ironically, the primary driver of this discontent, the state of American jobs, has rarely been this good. Unemployment has fallen to 3.8 percent, an 18-year low. For the first time this century, since the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been keeping tabs, there is, today, a job available for every unemployed American worker. This does not mean that everyone can have a dream job or that every job opening has its dream candidate, but it is an important milestone.

It's never been clear whether robotics company Boston Dynamics is making killing machines, household helpers, or something else entirely. For nine years, the secretive firm – which got its start with US military funding – has unnerved people around the world with YouTube videos of experimental robots resembling animal predators. In another, a small wheeled rover nicknamed SandFlea abruptly flings itself onto rooftops – and back down again. Now, in a rare interview, Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert has shed new light on his work, claiming the machines could be used as servants rather than weapons. Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert (pictured with his creation SpotMini) doesn't rule out future military applications for his terrifying machines.

According to a new report, Google will not seek another contract for Project Maven, a controversial military program that uses artificial intelligence to improve drone targeting. WASHINGTON -- Giving in to pressure from its workforce, Google recently announced that it is pulling out of Project Maven, a groundbreaking Pentagon program to harness artificial intelligence to sift through and interpret video imagery from drones. The move came after an uprising by 4,000 Google employees who signed a letter urging the company to cancel Project Maven and promise to never "build warfare technology." In their letter, the employees said that working with the Pentagon would violate Google's longtime motto "Don't Be Evil" and "irreparably damage Google's brand." Are they saying that the U.S. military is evil?

BOSTON – It's never been clear whether robotics company Boston Dynamics is making killing machines, household helpers or something else entirely. For nine years, the secretive firm -- which got its start with U.S. military funding -- has unnerved people around the world with YouTube videos of experimental robots resembling animal predators. In another, a small wheeled rover nicknamed SandFlea abruptly flings itself onto rooftops -- and back down again. A more recent effort features a slender dog-like robot that climbs stairs, holds its own in a tug-of-war with a human and opens a door to let another robot pass. Boston Dynamics has demonstrated little interest in elaborating on these glimpses into a possible future of fast, strong and sometimes intimidating robots. For months, the company and its parent, SoftBank, rebuffed numerous requests seeking information about its work.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military is increasing spending on a secret research effort to use artificial intelligence to help anticipate the launch of a nuclear-capable missile, as well as track and target mobile launchers in North Korea and elsewhere. The effort has gone largely unreported, and the few publicly available details about it are buried under nearly impenetrable jargon in the latest Pentagon budget. But U.S. officials told Reuters there are multiple classified programs underway to explore AI-driven systems to better protect the United States against a nuclear strike. If the research is successful, such computer systems would be able to think for themselves, scouring huge amounts of data, including satellite imagery, with a speed and accuracy beyond the capability of humans, to look for signs of preparations for a missile launch, according to more than half a dozen sources, including U.S. officials. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the research is classified.

Google's decision not to renew a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) contract with the Pentagon has reignited a debate about what Silicon Valley's role should be with regard to the military and war. Google, facing internal pressure, told employees during a meeting on Friday that it would not renew its contract with the Defense Department's flagship AI program, known as Project Maven, after it expires in 2019, according to multiple reports. The contract sparked a public relations crisis after a handful of employees reportedly resigned in protest and thousands of employees signed a letter urging the company's CEO not to allow Google to be drafted into the "business of war." Project Maven had recruited Google to help advance technology like surveillance drones, which are used to track the whereabouts of terrorist organizations and uncover devised plots before they unfold. Bob Work, a former deputy Defense secretary who established Project Maven in April 2017, told The Hill on Monday that he is still holding out hope that Google will reconsider.

Donald Trump's chief technology advisor, Michael Kratsios, said today that the US government would release any data that might help fuel AI research in the United States, although he didn't specify immediately what kind of data would be released or who would be eligible to receive the information. Speaking at EmTech Next, a conference held at MIT, Kratsios, who is deputy assistant to the president and deputy US chief technology officer, said the government is looking for ways to open up federal data to AI researchers. "Anything that we can do to unlock government data, we're committed to," Kratsios told MIT Technology Review. "We'd love to hear from any academic that has any insights." Data has been a key factor behind recent advances in artificial intelligence.

When Elon Musk was a kid, he had so much trouble managing his time, that his younger brother Kimbal would lie to him about the bus schedule. Elon would show up a few minutes after the supposed arrival--and have just enough time to hop aboard. A few decades on, the whole world knows about Elon's habit of blowing deadlines. And he admits it can be a problem. "This is something I'm trying to get better at," he said from the stage of Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum on Tuesday afternoon, at Tesla's annual shareholders meeting. A few days after a Twitter rage fest aimed at the media, a month after refusing to answer questions about Tesla's financial state during an investors' call, and two months after getting in a public spat with the feds investigating a deadly crash in one of his cars, Musk's attitude when he appeared before his fellow shareholders was conciliatory.

A group of Google employees and shareholders are calling for the search giant to link executive compensation with its ability to meet diversity goals. They will present a proposal for that policy at Google parent company Alphabet's annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday. All this despite the fact that Alphabet has already voiced its opposition to the proposal, saying it's not in the best of the company or its shareholders. The move caps off several months of controversy at Google, largely surrounding the firm's decision to take part in a partnership with the Pentagon, where its TensorFlow software would be used in its AI drone program, called Project Maven. Ultimately, Google announced it wouldn't renew its contract with the Pentagon when it expires in 2019, after thousands of employees wrote an open letter urging it to do so, while others resigned over the firm's involvement.