In a time of "America First," the benefits of space travel are clouded by the smoke of hyperbole. In reality, there has been over 2,000 inventions courtesy of NASA that are making our lives better here on Earth. Every day, we benefit as much from the journey as from the destination. These innovations include new medicines developed in zero gravity; faster autonomous transportation technologies; and groundbreaking advances in computing (launched above the clouds). The map below illustrates the number of commercial endeavors that have spun out of the nation's space program since 1976: NASA has been an incubator of technology since its inception in 1959. This year, NASA unveiled a new web page illustrating its reach into the design of new smart cities and IoT connected homes, called NASA City.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. The Trump administration's efforts to impose new immigration rules drew attention -- and legal fire -- for its restrictions on the ability of people born in certain majority Muslim countries to enter the U.S. In the frenzy of concern, an obscure piece of the executive orders did not get scrutinized, or even noticed, very much: its expansion of facial recognition systems in major U.S. airports to monitor people leaving the U.S., in hopes of catching people who have overstayed their visas or are wanted in criminal investigations. It's a much more powerful version of the method your phone or computer might use to identify friends in your photos. Using computers to recognize people's faces and validate their identities can streamline access control for secure corporate and government buildings or devices. Some systems can identify known or suspected criminals.

Jobs that design automation to manipulate human behavior. That's five classes of jobs that will exist in the future that appears to be safe. Paying someone for a job other than these will likely be illegal. On the other hand, with the exception of the "human safety valve", all these other jobs require high level skills. Jobs of the future need to have an deep understanding of humans as well as machines, and it is in this interaction of man with machine where jobs will exist. I think what few seem to appreciate is that Deep Learning AI is technology that is like human intuition. It is an opposite technology from more classical AI technologies that focused on reasoning. At this time there remains a Semantic Gap. However, humans capabilities are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The emerging wave of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is expected to bring about a significant shift in the factors of production in the global economy. There is now a high degree of agreement that a significantly large number of workers in several sectors will become redundant. It is, therefore, important to swiftly implement the palliative measures which can neutralise the impact of the new age technologies. Before thinking upon the required measures for addressing the expected rise in unemployment, let us imagine the likely characteristics of this emerging landscape. The positive development is that increased usage of new technology will lead to an increase in productivity in most sectors. To illustrate, a doctor or a banker will be able to examine much higher number of patients or clients by delegating the standard aspects to tech-enabled systems.

Steve Cousins is founder and CEO of Savioke, which develops and deploys autonomous robots that work in human environments to improve people's lives. Steve was previously president and CEO of robotics incubator Willow Garage. When Bill Gates recently suggested robots should pay income tax like any other employee, I didn't immediately disagree. I applaud Gates' bold thinking to help solve one of society's biggest upcoming challenges: embracing automation in a way that "lifts all boats" instead of leaving large swaths of society behind. A robot tax would help offset the reduced revenues flowing into public coffers as machines take some jobs previously held by humans.

I'm often asked what I like best about my job. One of my top answers is public speaking, learning and networking at security and technology events around the world. Besides giving press interviews or speeches on cyberthreats, I really enjoy moderating panels and leading executive roundtables with public- and private-sector leaders at security and technology events. I often get asked to be a moderator for a few sessions at SecureWorld Expo events, InfraGard Conferences and regional technology forums, such as the upcoming MidWest Technology Leaders event. During these panel sessions, the participants typically talk about a range of (hopefully intriguing) topics that include top cybercrime trends, cyberthreat intelligence, attracting and retaining cybertalent, big industry security breaches, internal security incidents or the always interesting (but overused question) "what's keeping you up at night?" Inevitably, security and technology topics include well known themes that I have written about such as ransomware, IoT botnets, cloud computing, smart cities, smartphone security, government CISO plans, securing the smart grid, end-user training, etc. Hopefully, we get beyond the problems and spend a few minutes on solutions.

The chances of a government shutdown just went up. After all of the news over the past week -- North Korea, the special congressional election in Georgia, the White House trying to resuscitate health care (again) -- this could be the story that drives the weekend and next week: The chances of a government shutdown just increased. "White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that he hopes to use negotiations to keep the government open past April 28 in an effort to force Democrats to back some funding for creating a new wall along the U.S.-Mexico border," the Washington Post writes. "Mulvaney said the White House would be open to funding some of the Democrats' priorities -- such as paying insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act -- if Democrats agree to fund some of the more controversial parts of President Trump's agenda, notably the border wall." If this is the White House's position, it could be precarious: Democrats (and even some Republicans) are opposed to spending money for Trump's border wall.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis (R) greets an airman as he boards a U.S. Air Force C-17 for a day trip to a U.S. military base in Djibouti from Doha, Qatar April 23, 2017. DJIBOUTI -- U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Sunday visited Djibouti to bolster ties with the tiny and impoverished African country that is home to an important base for U.S. counterterrorism forces, including drones. Mattis, the first Trump administration official to visit Djibouti, planned to meet with President Ismail Omar Guelleh and greet U.S. and French troops. He was accompanied by Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, head of U.S. Africa Command. The U.S. operates drone aircraft from Djibouti for surveillance and combat missions against al-Qaida-affiliated extremists in Somalia and elsewhere in the region.

By Aakar Patel There is a cliff approaching fast that India is unprepared for. It's in the near future and will be upon us in 25 or 30 years, according to the people who have understood it best. In brief it is the creation of an artificial intelligence that is smarter than man. Once this is created, it will replicate itself and improve itself faster than we can imagine, leave alone compete with. Science writers call this moment the technological singularity.

The digital identity management and biometric verification space is a busy one, with many technology providers touting some sort of machine learning or computer vision solution. So what constitutes a unique selling point in this crowd of contenders? Jumio, which offers a "hybrid" approach and counts Airbnb among its clients, says it has become familiar with 3,000 different types of onboarding identity documents from all over the planet, and currently does some 110,000 verifications a day. It's a three-pillared approach: firstly, the entry point to the system, which involves knowing some variant of government-issued ID and its particular security features, as well as the weaknesses fraudsters might attempt to exploit. Then, determining it is valid using facial recognition biometrics.