In this April 26, 2016 photo, a visitor takes a photo of a LeEco LeSEE self-driving electric concept car at the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition in Beijing. China's government announced Thursday, July 21, 2017, a goal of transforming the country into a global leader in artificial intelligence in just over a decade, putting additional political support behind growing investment by Chinese companies in developing self-driving cars and other advances.

A husband and wife team believe they have the solution to one of the biggest hurdles to drone package delivery. By law in the U.S., a dedicated pilot must maintain a line of sight to the vehicle in order to ensure safe operation. This setup is untenable for the large-scale rollout of drone fleets, such as those planned by Amazon to handle customer deliveries in urban areas, or for public service missions involving scanning for forest fires, search and rescue operations, or shark surveillance. Lou Glaab, an aerospace technologist and NASA researcher, and his wife, Trish Glaab, a software engineer, have developed a system that they believe solves the problem. Safe2Ditch is a package of software algorithms and logic that resides within the vehicle either as in a small separate flight computer or an integrated mode in an autopilot. In the event of a mechanical failure, or a drained battery, Safe2Ditch will enable the vehicle to land safely, mitigating the risk of injury to people in urban and suburban areas.

If Beijing has its way, the future of artificial intelligence will be made in China. The country laid out a development plan on Thursday to become the world leader in A.I. by 2030, aiming to surpass its rivals technologically and build a domestic industry worth almost $150 billion. Released by the State Council, the policy is a statement of intent from the top rungs of China's government: The world's second-largest economy will be investing heavily to ensure its companies, government and military leap to the front of the pack in a technology many think will one day form the basis of computing. The plan comes with China preparing a multibillion-dollar national investment initiative to support "moonshot" projects, start-ups and academic research in A.I., according to two professors who consulted with the government about the effort. The United States, meanwhile, has cut back on science funding.

India has traditionally been two steps behind other major powers when it comes to acknowledging the strategic importance of emerging technologies. China's attention to artificial intelligence (AI) based technologies and machine learning in the US, according to a recent Reuters report, has the US quite concerned. China has been heavily investing in American AI start-ups, alarming the US government enough for it to seriously consider strengthening its existing strategic foreign investment regulatory mechanism – the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The CFIUS was most recently by the Obama administration to block Chinese acquisitions of American chip manufacturing companies. China's focus on AI research and development is a calculated move clearly manifested in the intensity of its domestic investments.

WASHINGTON – Police have received reports that two of the Burundi teenagers listed as missing after an international robotics competition have been seen crossing the border into Canada. The whereabouts of their fellow team members remains unknown and the search for all the teens remains ongoing, but Metropolitan Police spokeswoman Aquita Brown stressed that police have no indication of foul play in their disappearance. The teens seen crossing into Canada were 16-year-old Don Ingabire and 17-year-old Audrey Mwamikazi, Brown said. Police tweeted missing person fliers Wednesday asking for help finding the teens, who had last been seen at the FIRST Global Challenge around the time of Tuesday's final matches. The missing team members include two 17-year-old girls and four males ranging in age from 16 to 18.

Seen from overhead, this large body of water with cascading waterfalls might appear to be a remote lake. But the recently captured drone footage actually shows a flooded industrial rock quarry just south of Burlington, Wisconsin. Heavy rains in the area have caused the area's Fox River to crest above normal levels. By July 13, the river had reached a historic high of 16.5 feet. Several hundred people have been evacuated from their homes, mudslides have sprung up in the area, and the National Guard has been deployed to assist in disaster aid.

Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan School professor, explains how rapid advances in machine learning are presenting new opportunities for businesses. He breaks down how the technology works and what it can and can't do (yet). He also discusses the potential impact of AI on the economy, how workforces will interact with it in the future, and suggests managers start experimenting now. Brynjolfsson is the co-author, with Andrew McAfee, of the HBR Big Idea article, "The Business of Artificial Intelligence." SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. It's a pretty sad photo when you look at it. A robot, just over a meter tall and shaped kind of like a pudgy rocket ship, laying on its side in a shallow pool in the courtyard of a Washington, D.C. office building. Workers – human ones – stand around, trying to figure out how to rescue it. The security robot had just been on the job for a few days when the mishap occurred. One entrepreneur who works in the office complex wrote: "We were promised flying cars. Instead we got suicidal robots."

A silent communications system in which nonaural carriers, in the very low or very high audio-frequency range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum are amplitude- or frequency-modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain, typically through the use of loudspeakers, earphones, or piezoelectric transducers. The modulated carriers may be transmitted directly in real time or may be conveniently recorded and stored on mechanical, magnetic, or optical media for delayed or repeated transmission to the listener.

Australian law explicitly allows computers to make important decisions previously made by the ministers or staff of at least 11 federal government departments. This has been going on since at least 2001, well before the age of algorithms, and yet there remains little clarity about exactly what decisions are being entrusted to the computers. As best we can tell, the first legislation allowing computers to automatically make important decisions with real impact on people's lives was the Social Security (Administration) Act -- which also happens to be the critical piece of legislation that allowed the most high-profile and controversial automated government program so far, Centrelink's'robodebt' endeavour. The legislation giving computers decision-making power over social security is very short and, as these things go, easy to understand. It was introduced in 2001 along with a slew of other provisions around debt recovery.

Economics correspondent Paul Solman and Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom discuss existential threats such as nuclear winter and how the biggest threat to humanity may be what we don't yet know. Editor's note: Economics correspondent Paul Solman recently traveled to Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute. And yes, there is an institute that studies only that -- the future of the human species. In PBS NewsHour's Thursday Making Sen$e report, Paul speaks with the institute's founding director Nick Bostrom, a Swedish philosopher known for his work on artificial intelligence and existential threats. You can watch Bostrom's TED talk on "superintelligence" -- what happens when computers become smarter than humans -- here.