Warnings about artificial intelligence launching World War III--including a few flares sent up by Elon Musk--are an unfair scourge on an AI sector that sees itself making life easier and helping traditional companies survive. That's the view of Chris Boos, chief executive officer of Germany-based software firm Arago, who told MarketWatch in an interview that anything produced by a process can, should and will be run by AI, allowing human beings to be the creative thinkers and doers they were designed to be. Arago advises mostly non-tech, established-economy Fortune 500 businesses on their AI adoption. "Within the next 2-3 years AI will be able to run any business process, which makes AI one -- potentially the only one -- defensive measure the established economy has against intrusion from the high-tech world," said Boos. For now, the sci-fi hyperbole can wait.

As collection of space data increases, NASA is exploring the infusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into space communications networks to meet demand and increase efficiency. Software-defined radios like cognitive radio use AI to employ underutilised portions of the electromagnetic spectrum without human intervention. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) permits a cognitive radio to use the frequency while unused by its primary user until the user becomes active again. "Modern space communications systems use complex software to support science and exploration missions. By applying AI and machine learning, satellites control these systems seamlessly, making real-time decisions without awaiting instruction," Janette C. Briones, Principal Investigator at NASA's Glenn Research Centre in Cleveland, Ohio, said in a statement on Saturday.

California voters decided last year that the sale of recreational marijuana should be made legal, beginning on Jan. 1, 2018. But Proposition 64 left many of the details to local governments and state regulators. So the last several months have been a race against the calendar, as officials have sought to develop rules governing where, when and how businesses may grow, transport and sell marijuana to adults. Last month, the state unveiled 276 pages of regulations for the new recreational pot marketplace. Among other things, the rules set hefty licensing fees, regulate how much THC will be allowed in edibles and other cannabis products, and require marijuana businesses to track their product from seed to sale.

Three critical trends are driving forward the rapid development of a new generation of financial robo-advice models. In fact, gains in these three areas create the potential for a Moore's Law pattern of acceleration in the field of artificial intelligence-powered financial advice models. We generate more than 2.5 billion GB of data every day. For example, states and government organizations now open up their data, including robust offerings from the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Census Bureau. There is a similar trend among educational, associations, and nonprofit organizations.

A new video shows a robot performing amazing acrobatic feats, from backflips to half-turn jumps. The eerily humanoid robot, called Atlas, is 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) tall and weighs 165 pounds (75 kilograms), and uses Lidar and stereovision to navigate in its surroundings, according to Boston Dynamics, which makes the robot. Atlas is designed to be able to take on emergency situations where human life would normally be put at risk, such as going into buildings that have crumbled after an earthquake, or dealing with patients who have deadly, highly infectious diseases, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In the video, the newest version of the humanoid does a kind of jump training called plyometrics, leaping between raised platforms, doing a 180-degree turn in the air on raised platforms and performing a backflip off a platform. Though he may not give American gymnast Simone Biles a run for her money right now, the robot does manage to stick the landing.

The pictures paint Los Angeles as a hellscape, a land of glowing red fire-fronts racing across hills, whipped along by screaming winds. Plumes of dense gray smoke fill the skies. As of Friday afternoon, Southern California was battling blazes in Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Diego counties, which had destroyed more than 500 structures, and forced over 200,000 people to flee. The most harrowing images are of the firefighters marching into this madness, clad in their heavy yellow protective gear, lugging hoses, doing their best to protect people and property from the unpredictable flames. When fires grow this large, resources are stretched thin.

Territorial control is a key aspect shaping the dynamics of civil war. Despite its importance, we lack data on territorial control that are fine-grained enough to account for subnational spatio-temporal variation and that cover a large set of conflicts. To resolve this issue, we propose a theoretical model of the relationship between territorial control and tactical choice in civil war and outline how Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are suitable to capture theoretical intuitions and estimate levels of territorial control. We discuss challenges of using HMMs in this application and mitigation strategies for future work.

Equipment at the Custom Group in Woburn, Mass., includes automated robotic cutting tools. Equipment at the Custom Group in Woburn, Mass., includes automated robotic cutting tools. But critics say maybe it should have been named the Tax Cut and Robots Act. That's because it doesn't create new tax incentives that specifically encourage companies to hire workers and create jobs, some employers and economists say. But it does expand incentives for companies to buy robots and machines that replace workers. Republicans say that lowering taxes will boost the economy and spur job creation.

What we're watching: Look for Walmart to increase pressure on lawmakers to stand up to the increasingly influential protectionist faction in the White House. Here's what else Penner had to say: Walmart is made better by "being paranoid" about the competition. On how the company is managing its expansion into China by partnering with JD.com: Editors note: Penner is an investor in Axios.

This morning, the Food and Drug Administration released highly anticipated guidance on clinical and patient decision support that has been in the works at the agency for several years, advising the digital health community about how it plans to regulate software that offers recommendations or feedback to its users--both healthcare professionals, and patients and caregivers. It also provides guidance on FDA's interpretation of new software provisions in Section 3060 of the 21st Century Cures Act. Given the explosion of these innovative digital health tools and their strong potential to transform healthcare, this guidance is a significant development for tech companies and investors focusing on this space. Comments will be accepted for 60 days. Industry has been innovating and evolving rapidly.