Automation has long been considered the harbinger of future unemployment, and experts have predicted that the widespread adoption of artificially intelligent (AI) software and smart machines could lead to thousands or even millions of people losing their jobs. However, that may not be the case in the construction industry. According to a report released by McKinsey & Company earlier this year, the world of construction suffers from productivity levels that haven't really gone up much since 1945. The report also showed that 98 percent of huge construction projects end up going over budget and that the industry has proven resistant to technological upgrades. Furthermore, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that almost 200,000 construction jobs were unfilled in the United States alone as of February 2017.

The rise of robots has long been a topic for sci-fi best sellers and video games and, as of this week, a threat officially taken seriously by central bankers. The bankers are not yet ready to buy into dystopian visions in which robots render humans superfluous. But, at an exclusive gathering at a golf resort near Lisbon, the big minds of monetary policy were seriously discussing the risk that artificial intelligence could eliminate jobs on a scale that would dwarf previous waves of technological change. "There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalypse upon us?'" David Autor, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told an audience on Tuesday that included Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and dozens of other top central bankers and economists. The discussion occurred as economists were more optimistic than they had been for a decade about growth.

Last Thursday, Texas senior senator John Cornyn stood before an audience of wonks at the Council for Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, and warned that America's openness to investors looking for new ideas in technologies like artificial intelligence was putting it in danger. "Most of what China wants to invest in these days is leading-edge US technology that's a key to our future military capabilities," he said. "Unless the trend line changes, we may one day see some of these technologies incorporated in China-made equipment that can be used against our country in the event, heaven forbid, of a military conflict." Cornyn highlighted China's interest in robotics and artificial intelligence as particularly concerning. His warning--and pledge to introduce legislation that could restrict Chinese investment in technology companies--came the week after Reuters reported, citing unidentified Trump administration officials, that the administration is considering a similar policy, also motivated in part by fears of China gaining access to valuable AI knowledge. However, Cornyn's diagnosis and proposed cure could lead to a result opposite to the intended one.

Robotics manufacturing in the US will be getting federal support to match business or startup investments via the new Advanced Robotics Manufacturing (ARM) Institute. Perhaps more importantly, the ARM Institute can act as a conduit to connect and amplify robotics innovations between regions of the USA. As the global robotics ecosystem becomes flooded with interest, and investors, any technological lead the USA currently has is rapidly disappearing. The ARM Institute is now one of 14 Manufacturing USA institutes and the 8th funded by the DOD. Each Manufacturing USA Institute focuses on a technology area critical to future competitiveness – such as additive manufacturing, integrated photonics, or smart sensors.

From linear classifiers to neural networks, image classification has been a widely explored topic in mathematics, and many algorithms have proven to be effective classifiers. However, the most accurate classifiers typically have significantly high storage costs, or require complicated procedures that may be computationally expensive. We present a novel (nonlinear) classification approach using truncation of local tensor singular value decompositions (tSVD) that robustly offers accurate results, while maintaining manageable storage costs. Our approach takes advantage of the optimality of the representation under the tensor algebra described to determine to which class an image belongs. We extend our approach to a method that can determine specific pairwise match scores, which could be useful in, for example, object recognition problems where pose/position are different. We demonstrate the promise of our new techniques on the MNIST data set.

Is it possible to kill an entire category of sports before the world really knows about? A new bill, set to regulate drones in the state of California, contains a single vague line that could shut down an entire world of drone sports. In its current form, California Senate Bill 347 says "A person shall not weaponize a remote piloted aircraft or operate a weaponized remote piloted aircraft." Without exceptions for sporting use or clarifying what, exactly, a weaponized drone is, California's "State Remote Piloted Aircraft Act" could end drone duels, and limit what exactly a future sport could be. Drone combat, originally done under the moniker "Game of Drones," is like a flying version of BattleBots, with human pilots steering unmanned machines into combat against each other, with the last machine still flying declared the winner.

In space, grabbing onto things is hard. A new robot that uses grippers inspired by gecko feet could solve that problem, helping clear up the mess of debris that orbits Earth. The toaster-sized device can grip, hold onto and move around even large, smooth surfaces in microgravity, on both flat and curved objects. To do this, it uses a "dry adhesive" material created by Hao Jiang at Stanford University in California and his colleagues. "This ability to grab onto an object nearly anywhere, instead of needing a specific grapple point that may not even be there, is really advantageous," says Matthew Spenko at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

Earlier this month, a resident in a rural province of South Korea found a small, sky-blue unmanned plane perched nose-up against a tree in a remote forest. The drone belonged to the North Korean military and apparently had flown south for five hours, capturing images of a sensitive new U.S. anti-missile system before crashing. It lacked missiles or other weapons like the larger, more advanced models used by U.S. forces in the Middle East. But South Korean officials and security experts consider such flights unlawful incursions. As world powers focus on North Korea's emerging nuclear capabilities, its drone program is raising concerns about espionage and aggravating already tense relations with its southern neighbor.

Next month will mark the 47th anniversary of Apollo 13. The film that recounts the story is a favorite of mine, probably because it so masterfully captures the incredible suspense, fear, and hope felt by people everywhere, that I personally recall very well. I also know how an organization's digital transformation can generate similar reactions! Apollo 13 was likely a casualty of the space program's incredibly aggressive schedule. NASA, with U.S. political and military leaders, was motivated by competition from the U.S.S.R. and fear of the potential consequences of not being first.

NASA's Curiosity rover has sent back a pair of very curious photos since March that have resurfaced in conspiracy circles as evidence of a "genuine spaceship" and "thigh bones" visible on Mars. Alien hunters and UFO enthusiasts are celebrating after two photos appear to show distinct signs of life on Mars. The first photo causing jaws to drop in the reddit conspiracy theorist group Martian Archaeology shows what appears to be fossilized bones or petrified wood protruding from the red planet's surface. The photo dates back to 2014 and NASA responded to the online uproar then by acknowledging -- but dismissing -- that the "alien thigh bone" could be linked to extraterrestrial life. The debris pile from the Curiosity's photograph already has convinced some wishful-thinking alien enthusiasts of extraterrestrial activity on Mars.