In 2013 protests broke out in Oakland, California, directed against the private buses that shuttle tech workers from pricey homes in the city's gentrifying areas to jobs in Silicon Valley. "You live your comfortable lives," read a flyer that protesters handed out to passengers, "surrounded by poverty, homelessness, and death, seemingly oblivious to everything around you, lost in the big bucks and success." That moment of backlash was an outgrowth of what I call the New Urban Crisis: the decline of middle-class neighborhoods, the gentrification of the downtowns of certain cities, and the reshaping of America's metropolitan regions into islands of advantage surrounded by larger swaths of disadvantage. Technology is one of the country's biggest growth industries, but it comes at a price--just ask any teacher looking for housing in San Francisco. Meanwhile, other areas aspire to build similar tech-based economies, hoping to become a Silicon Alley, Prairie, or Gulch, though potentially triggering crises of their own.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft is currently plunging into the gap between Saturn and its rings, a pioneering journey that could offer an unprecedented view of the planet. The first of the spaceship's 22 deep dives between Saturn and its innermost ring begun today at 10am BST (5am ET). Communications with the spacecraft have gone dark during the dive and will remain so for about a day afterwards while it makes scientific observations of the planet. Today Cassini has begun the first of 22 'Grand Finale Orbits' through an unexplored gap before taking its final plunge into the planet. This graphic shows these orbits alongside the Ring-Grazing orbits the craft has undergone over the past 13 years.

Recently we talked before how big data is the new frontier with just .05% of all data available today having been analyzed. This means that all kinds of gold prospectors are lining up with their freshly crafted artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms looking to extract all the value they can from this wild west of data before someone else does. Perhaps nowhere is there more excitement at the moment than the applications to be had in the healthcare industry. Here's a look at just some of the startups that are applying artificial intelligence and big data to healthcare (courtesy of the bright minds over at CB Insights): The application that we've circled above is "drug discovery" using AI or what's also known as "computational drug discovery". The reason that this is now a thing is not just because of all the big data that's available now, but also because of how cheap cloud computing has become, not to mention the emergence of deep learning algorithms.

Let's take a breath: robots and artificial intelligence systems are nowhere near displacing the human workforce. Nevertheless, no less a voice than Bill Gates has asserted just the opposite and called for a counterintuitive, preemptive strike on these innovations. His proposed weapon of choice? Taxes on technology to compensate for losses that haven't happened. Taxing this promising field of innovation is not only reactionary and antithetical to progress, it would discourage the development of technologies and systems that can improve everyday life. Imagine where we would be today if policy makers, fearing the unknown, had feverishly taxed personal computer software to protect the typewriter industry, or slapped imposts on digital cameras to preserve jobs for darkroom technicians.

A chat with AI instructor Chris Mohritz Christopher Mohritz is a lifelong entrepreneur and technologist with a number of successful businesses under his belt; bringing a unique blend of technology know-how coupled with creative thinking and business acumen to each of his projects. Since 2009, Chris has been building and leveraging artificial intelligence systems to cognify a wide range of business functions -- marketing, sales, customer support and decision automation to name a few. And over the past five years, he has been building and operating a business accelerator for web/mobile startups, helping other entrepreneurs launch exceptional "AI-first" businesses. Chris draws heavily from a deep background in technology -- from operating nuclear reactors in the U.S. Navy to designing datacenters at Lockheed Martin. Complemented by a broad range of business experience -- from technical sales for the Fortune 500 to project management in the public sector.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, will convene a hearing on Wednesday, November 30, 2016, at 2:30 p.m. on "The Dawn of Artificial Intelligence." The hearing will conduct a broad overview of the state of artificial intelligence, including policy implications and effects on commerce. On October 12, 2016, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a report entitled, Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence. The report outlined opportunities for artificial intelligence, including recommendations on how the technology can be used to advance social good and improve government operations. The report also proposed 23 policy recommendations and a companion strategic plan that identified priorities for federally-funded research and development in artificial intelligence.

A Canadian start-up has developed a voice imitation programme capable of mimicking a person's voice after just a minute of listening to them speak. Developed by AI firm Lyrebird, the algorithm uses machine learning to synthesise speech based on audio samples and is even able to replicate emotion. Lyrebird's algorithm is capable of generating new voices from scratch as well as replicating those of others. After hearing an audio clip, the programme determines the defining feature or "key" to the person's voice and then uses this to generate words from scratch. It even varies the intonations it applies so that a repeated sentence doesn't sound the same way twice.

Experts at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the Naval Postgraduate School have deployed drone swarms in a first-of-its-kind aerial dogfight test. In a statement released Friday, Georgia Tech said that that the test involving opposing swarms of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) took place Feb. 9, 2017 at Camp Roberts in Monterey County, California, a National Guard facility. The small propeller-driven foam-winged Zephyr aircraft used in the exercise sported identical computers and used algorithms to collaborate their approaches. In addition, they used communications software developed by the institutions. GPS tracking also allowed the aircraft to be aware of one another.

A major gaffe has crippled Windows computers running antivirus program Webroot. The security provider issued a seriously flawed signature update on Monday, which mistakenly identified hundreds of crucial Windows files and legitimate apps as malware. It proceeded to shut them down, completely crippling users' computers in the process. Webroot customers were also unable to access Facebook, which the update had marked as a phishing site. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

Uber is to launch flying cars to replace its taxis. The company hopes to have people flying around on special platforms that can take off vertically and carry people to their destination, the company has said in a major press conference. The flying vehicles will be made available at a similar cost to the existing UberX service and eventually be much cheaper than owning a traditional or flying vehicle, Uber head of product Jeff Holden said. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.