Self-driving car technology will face its toughest test in the United States on Wednesday with the House of Representatives set to vote on the proposal for getting autonomous vehicles on the American roads. The proposed legislation is expected to not just help companies in developing the technology further but it will also ensure speedy deployment of autonomous vehicles on the American roads with minimum state oversight. The vote for the legislation involving several stakeholders -- including ride-hailing companies, auto companies, and tech companies -- comes at a critical time when Russia and China are developing the technology at an accelerated pace. While major developments pertaining to the technology have taken place primarily in the United States, in the absence of proper laws, companies get mired in legal battle such as the Uber-California DMV spat where the state regulators asked the ride-hailing company to apply for a permit to test self-driving cars. The proposed "Self Drive Act" bars the state from setting regulations on the design, construction, and performance of the self-driven vehicles. A host of car makers and tech companies including the Google spin-off Waymo, Apple and Tesla, have previously opposed strict guidelines proposed by the states such as California.

We might finally get to see how the Trump administration has tweaked the Obama-era self-driving vehicle guidelines next week. According to Reuters, the Department of Transportation is slated to unveil the revised guidelines on September 12th at an autonomous vehicle testing facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That's a bit over three months after DOT secretary Elaine Chao announced that she has begun reviewing the existing guidelines in response to automakers' requests for the right to put more autonomous vehicles on the road for testing. By being able to test more vehicles, the companies have a much better chance of adhering to their plans of releasing autonomous cars in the next few years. Apparently, the White House already approved the revisions the DOT made back on August 31st.

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has called on the UK government to make sure workers are not left out by technology-driven productivity gains. According to TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady, it is essential the UK makes the most of "the most of the economic opportunities that new technologies are offering", especially with the UK failing to make productivity gains in the past decade. You forgot to provide an Email Address. This email address doesn't appear to be valid. This email address is already registered.

Elon Musk did it again and this time he's not showing a new product in front of a roaring crowd. Instead, he's kicking it up a notch and officially shares his opinion on the next level of Artificial Intelligence. His latest tweets now show a pessimism that is both remarkable and quite unusual for a multifaceted character like him. In short, his latest disaster scenario is the most pessimistic ever. What happened these days that Musk so bluntly tells everyone that doomsday is nigh?

Do you hear the clunking sounds? Those are robots marching to take your job and put you on the brink of grim unemployment survival. Before you start frantically examining your job description, let's figure out what's going on. Even if you are the one who bothers to read the copy that follows the headlines, succumbing to alarmist stories is not hard to do, even for Huffington Post readers. Reporters often fail to explain exactly what stands behind the numbers. The most quoted study that estimates jobs susceptible to automation is the work by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne (so-called FO) The Future of Employment published in 2013 by Oxford University. This scientific research conducted four years ago still serves as the foundation of many predictions to render them more academically credible. And yes, it's them who estimated 47 percent.

A bill that would allow companies like Ford, Google and Uber to more easily test and deploy self-driving cars on U.S. roads inched ahead in Congress on Thursday, after House lawmakers voted to send it to the full chamber for consideration. It's still far from becoming law, but its Democratic and Republican authors on the supportive House Energy and Commerce Committee believe their rare bipartisan proposal has a shot at success -- despite tougher-than-ever partisan divisions on Capitol Hill. As it stands, the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research In Vehicle Evolution Act -- roughly abbreviated as the SELF DRIVE Act -- would allow companies over time to test as many as 100,000 highly autonomous vehicles in the United States. To do it, tech and auto giants would have to prove to the U.S. government that their self-driving technology is just as safe as old-fashioned cars currently on the country's roads. In exchange, the Department of Transportation can exempt those autonomous vehicles from some federal safety requirements -- including, potentially, rules that require them to have steering wheels.

Immigration can be a controversial topic. We all want safe, secure borders and a dynamic economy, and people of goodwill can have legitimate disagreements about how to fix our immigration system so that everybody plays by the rules. But that's not what the action that the White House took today is about. This is about young people who grew up in America – kids who study in our schools, young adults who are starting careers, patriots who pledge allegiance to our flag. These Dreamers are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper. They were brought to this country by their parents, sometimes even as infants.

In an OpEd piece in the NY Times, and in a TED Talk late last year, Oren Etzioni, PhD, author, and CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, suggested an update for Isaac Asimov's three laws of Artificial Intelligence. Given the widespread media attention emanating from Elon Musk's (and others) warnings, these updates might be worth reviewing. In an open letter to the U.N., a group of specialists from 26 nations and led by Elon Musk called for the United Nations to ban the development and use of autonomous weapons. The signatories included Musk and DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, as well as 100 other leaders in robotics and artificial-intelligence companies. They write that AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems in the form of autonomous weapons is feasible within years, not decades, and many in the defense industry are saying that autonomous weapons will be the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.

From virtual assistants to driverless cars, technology imitating human intelligence is on the rise. But at what ethical cost and how do boards future-proof their organisations in the face of rapid change? Earlier this year, a Japanese insurance company made headlines for doing something that company executives and directors around the world have been anticipating - and fearing - for years. Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance made 34 of its staff redundant and replaced them with artificial intelligence (AI) system IBM Watson. Japanese newspaper The Mainichi reported the company will be using Watson to determine payout amounts and check customer cases against their insurance contracts. Other Japanese insurance companies have announced they are looking at or are already using AI for similar purposes and The Japan Times reported in April that the country's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry was planning to trial AI to help government workers write draft answers for questions put to Cabinet ministers.

Elon Musk says global race for artificial intelligence will cause World War III. A race toward "superiority" between countries over artificial intelligence will be the most likely cause of World War III, warns entrepreneur Elon Musk. May be initiated not by the country leaders, but one of the AI's, if it decides that a prepemptive strike is most probable path to victory Musk has emerged as a critic of AI safety, seeking ways for governments to regulate the technology before it gets out of control. Last month, Musk warned fears over the security of AI are more risky than the threat of nuclear war from North Korea.