Self-driving cars could be on our roads in just 5 years. USA TODAY's Chris Woodyard takes a look at what it's going to take to get the roads ready. Self-driving vehicles are synonymous with sophisticated sensors producing terabytes of data being analyzed by powerful computers. But it seems the success of this transportation revolution hinges on a decidedly low-tech material: Paint. That's because when it comes to getting the nation's infrastructure ready for autonomous traffic, the most critical upgrade amounts to making sure the lines on our 4 million miles of roads are solid, bright and preferably white so they can be picked up by computer vision gear. "The (self-driving car companies) actually said make sure you have really good paint lines," says Kirk Steudle, director of Michigan's Department of Transportation.

Adding artificial intelligence to the machines we send out to explore space makes a lot of sense, as it means they can make decisions without waiting for instructions from Earth, and now NASA scientists are trying to figure out how it could be done. As we send out more and more probes into space, some of them may have to operate completely autonomously, reacting to unknown and unexplained scenarios when they get to their destination – and that's where AI comes in. Steve Chien and Kiri Wagstaff from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory think that these machines will also have to learn as they go, adapting to what they find beyond the reaches of our most powerful telescopes. "By making their own exploration decisions, robotic spacecraft can conduct traditional science investigations more efficiently and even achieve otherwise impossible observations, such as responding to a short-lived plume at a comet millions of miles from Earth," write the researchers. One example they give is AI that can tell the difference between a storm and normal weather conditions on a distant planet, making the readings that are being taken much more useful to scientists back home.

The National Tax Agency has unveiled plans to use artificial intelligence to automate responses to taxpayer inquiries and consultations, and select targets for investigation. The plans were included in the agency's 10-year national tax administration program. While both income tax returns and the number of companies have climbed 30 percent from 1989, staffing at the national tax administration has been dropping. The planned use of AI is aimed at streamlining tax administration and allowing employees to focus on priority issues. Under the AI plan, the agency will handle tax inquiries and consultations via email and social media and use AI to provide the best answers.

One measure of the status of civilization is the complexity of tools used by the society. As societies have progressed, tools and machines used by them have become increasingly complex. Despite their rising complexity the current set of tools and machines still need humans to create and use them and they can only do things what humans have pre-programmed them to do or control them to do. In particular, current set of machines cannot learn and enhance their knowledge. However, a new set of machines are emerging that can learn and they need minimal human intervention to operate.

PwC is on the cusp of launching a robo-economist that could make the company the "most accurate" economic forecaster on the market. The professional services firm has developed a form of artificial intelligence (AI) with a 92% strike rate when it comes to predicting the result of UK gross domestic product (GDP). It discovered the AI's "incredible accuracy" after testing to see if the machine could pinpoint historic GDP results without knowing the outcome. But while Jonathan Gillham, PwC's director of economics, joked that the AI had already started to supersede his job, the firm said there were no plans to replace staff with automation and the program would work alongside human economists. He said: " We have been using an AI technique to forecast the UK economy and we will be launching that (...) in July. "Each quarter, the Office for National Statistics publishes its estimate for GDP and we have been able to use an AI technology base to get that right 92% of the time for the last five years.

This creates the false impression that the algorithms already exist for malware detection too. That is not the case. We at Kaspersky Lab have spent more than 10 years developing and patenting a number of technologies. And we continue to carry out research and come up with new ideas because … well, that's where the next myth comes in. There is a conceptual difference between malware detection and facial recognition.

At least since Isaac Asimov posited the Three Law of Robotics, many have wondered whether robots would ultimately help or harm humanity. Or maybe do a little of both. Humanity still has time to shape the answer to that question, and we're pleased to announce three speakers who have distinctive, grounded perspectives on how to secure a world made better (not worse) by robots. These speakers join our agenda for TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics, our first one-day event dedicated to discussing the core topics facing the robotics industry. General admission tickets are currently available for purchase though seating is very limited.

Russia has retaliated by threatening to treat American planes as targets; in a dramatic "Top Gun"-style maneuver on Monday, one of Moscow's jets buzzed within five feet of an American spy plane. None of these encounters involved the Islamic State. The contradiction opens a larger question, national security experts say, of what kind of broader strategy the Trump administration plans once the Islamic State -- now on the defensive -- is defeated in Syria. With each episode, "we own more of the conflict in Syria without articulating a strategy," said Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "We are sleepwalking into a much broader military mandate, without saying what we plan to do afterward."

The future of the United States Air Force is a human-piloted, $100 million stealth jet guiding flocks of $3 million drones that glide effortlessly into position powered by turbo fans. Thanks to the Air Force Research Lab and drone-maker Kratos, that future of combined human/robot formation is already being tested. There are many good reasons to want a human in the cockpit of a plane, including their judgement, fast-thinking skills, and the capability to respond to unexpected threats. But there are hard physical obstacles that suggest maybe not every plane needs to have a pilot. Humans need systems to stay alive, and those systems sometimes break.

I've done a lot of writing and research recently about the bright future of AI: that it'll be able to analyze human emotions, understand social nuances, conduct medical treatments and diagnoses that overshadow the best human physicians, and in general make many human workers redundant and unnecessary. I still stand behind all of these forecasts, but they are meant for the long term – twenty or thirty years into the future. And so, the question that many people want answered is about the situation at the present. Luckily, DARPA has decided to provide an answer to that question. DARPA is one of the most interesting US agencies.