With great technology comes great risk; hospital administrators and staff have been coming to terms with this parallel for the last couple of years, as EHR, healthcare tech, and IT infrastructure improvements have flourished, while simultaneously cyberattacks and breaches have risen in the field. The rate of breaches is so high that, according to Julie Spitzer writing for Becker's Hospital Review, it's nearly exceeding the rate of one breach per day. "In fact, the Identity Theft Resource Center found the U.S. medical and healthcare sector experienced roughly 336 data breaches as of Nov. 29th, which represents 28% of the total 1,202 breaches," writes Spitzer. "That equates to 4.93 million records exposed, or 2.9% of the total 172 billion records that have been exposed so far in 2017." It's a predicament, to say the least, but it's not all bad.

All across the world, small projects demonstrating driverless buses and shuttles are cropping up: Las Vegas, Minnesota, Austin, Bavaria, Henan Province in China, Victoria in Australia. City governments are studying their implementation, too, from Toronto to Orlando to Ohio. And last week, the Federal Transit Administration of the Department of Transportation issued a "request for comments" on the topic of "Removing Barriers to Transit-Bus Automation." The document is fully in line with the approach that federal and state regulators have taken, which has promoted the adoption of autonomous vehicle technology as quickly as possible. Because most crashes are caused by human mistakes--and those crashes kill more than 30,000 Americans per year--self-driving-car proponents believe that the machines will eventually create much, much safer roads.

Atlanta's traffic congestion infamy -- the city regularly makes every annual top list due to its bottlenecks -- is partially caused by car accidents at large, busy intersections. After a few accidents occur, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) may swoop in to assess the situation to make the intersection safer. But what if they could do that before the accidents happen? "Most crashes are preventable, which is the concept behind the'Vision Zero' Initiative," says Dr. Jidong Yang, assistant professor of civil engineering and director of Kennesaw State's Georgia Pavement and Traffic Research Center. Vision Zero was originally created in Sweden in the 1990s in order to streamline mobility within cities while eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries.

Artificial intelligence could help people live longer by detecting your internal age and designed a tailor-made medical regime, according to new research. Scientists developed a'simple and cheap' computer algorithm that can calculate people's biological age, and reveal whether certain lifestyle changes and medical products could increase the chance of living a long and healthy life. The formula, called Aging.AI, has provided accurate results for 130,000 individuals based on their blood samples. New research, led by the AI company Insilico Medicine, says artificial intelligence could determine a person's risk of developing age-related diseases like cancer and heart disease. Scientists created a formula that can calculate a person's risk of developing age-related diseases, and give medical advice based on those risks'The artificial intelligence is just as good at predicting your age as if you looked at a picture of the person and had to guess the person's age,' said Dr Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, a professor at University of Copenhagen's Center for Healthy Aging.

Two people will warn against artificial intelligence in a presentation at 7 p.m. Thursday. Meg and Peter Lumsdaine, who are working to establish the Tree of Life education and retreat center, will present "AI: Replacing Humanity and Nature? What We Can Do to Defend Life from Technological Dangers in the early 21st Century" at the Port Townsend Friends Meeting building, 1841 Sheridan St. A sliding scale donation of $10 to $20 to support Tree of Life center's educational work is requested, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. The talk is sponsored by Port Townsend Friends Meeting.

US President Donald Trump has shown no abnormal signs following a cognitive exam and is in excellent health, his White House doctor says. "I have no concerns about his cognitive ability or neurological functions," Ronny Jackson said on Tuesday. Last week, Mr Trump underwent a three-hour examination in his first medical check-up since becoming US president. It comes after the release of a controversial book fuelled speculation about the president's mental health. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Dr Jackson said that the president's overall health was "excellent".

Remember back when you could fly drones without having to pay the government money first, and when the only thing you had to worry about was a midair takedown by an anti-drone hit squad made up of highly-trained Dutch eagles? We're sad to have to report that we probably won't be seeing compelling videos of eagles handling rogue drones anymore, and also that the United States government has flexed its muscles and mandatory drone registration is now back on. You probably remember how the FAA finalized its mandatory drone registration rules just in time for the holiday season in 2015. Any drone that weighed more than 0.55 pounds was required to be registered before being flown outdoors, a process that involved providing your complete name, physical address, mailing address, email address, and a credit card that was charged a one-time fee of US $5. In exchange, you got a unique registration number that had to be visible on all of your drones.

The world's top 32 drone pilots will compete Saturday in Las Vegas for the world champion title in the International Drone Racing Assn.'s top challenge. Semi-professionals wearing virtual reality headgear compete for a $50,000 cash prize in the Challengers Cup Final on Friday and Saturday at the South Point hotel-casino at 9777 S. Las Vegas Blvd. Competitors qualified during 2017 races that began in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and concluded in Manila, the Philippines. Visitors can buy tickets to watch for $20. You'll be admitted to Friday's practice runs and the competition on Saturday afternoon. The elimination round will get underway at 12:30 p.m. with the finals set for 3:20 p.m. Saturday.

Algorithms are everywhere in our world, and so is bias. From social media news feeds to streaming service recommendations to online shopping, computer algorithms--specifically, machine learning algorithms--have permeated our day-to-day world. As for bias, we need only examine the 2016 American election to understand how deeply--both implicitly and explicitly--it permeates our society as well. What's often overlooked, however, is the intersection between these two: bias in computer algorithms themselves. Contrary to what many of us might think, technology is not objective. AI algorithms and their decision-making processes are directly shaped by those who build them--what code they write, what data they use to "train" the machine learning models, and how they stress-test the models after they're finished.

Inundated with more data than humans can analyze, the U.S. military and intelligence community are banking on machine learning and advanced computing technologies to separate the wheat from the chaff. The Defense Department operates more than 11,000 drones that collect hundreds of thousands of hours of video footage every year. "When it comes to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, we have more platforms and sensors than at any time in Department of Defense history," said Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. "Jack" Shanahan, director for defense intelligence (warfighter support) in the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. "It's an avalanche of data that we are not capable of fully exploiting," he said at a technology conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by Nvidia, a Santa Clara, California-based artificial intelligence computing company. For example, the Pentagon has deployed a wide-area motion imagery sensor that can look at an entire city.