WASHINGTON – Elaine Chao, a former top U.S. labor official, was sworn in on Tuesday to lead the U.S. Transportation Department, which overseas aviation, vehicle, train and pipeline safety. Chao, a former U.S. labor secretary and deputy transportation secretary, took office hours after the U.S. Senate voted 93 to 6 to confirm her. Chao, 63, will face key decisions on how to regulate the growing use of drones and automakers' plans to offer self-driving cars. She will also be a key player in President Donald Trump's Cabinet if his administration pushes ahead with a major infrastructure spending program, as the businessman-turned-politician promised during last year's presidential campaign. "Your leadership and your experience will serve well as the secretary of transportation, overseeing what we anticipate will be historic investments in our nation's roads, bridges, airports and above all in our future," said Vice President Mike Pence, who administered the oath of office to Chao.

The future of work: ABB robotic arms work on the bodyparts of Mini cars, on January 17, 2017. While trade and foreign agents received most of the blame during the presidential campaign, technological developments can have an even larger impact on income inequality. Entrepreneurs in the digital economy have generated numerous new jobs and higher incomes for many. At the same time, the Internet has put enormous pressure on local and national labor markets. If the Trump administration wants to succeed in creating sustainable jobs and income for the workers and regions bypassed by the digital transformation, it needs to implement a tech policy that boosts the positive impacts of technology while controlling its corrosive effects.

You might think it would be easy for political appointees to rally against something as unpopular as the monthly fees that cable and satellite TV services charge for their converter boxes -- particularly when federal law requires them to do something about it. Sadly, the opposite has been true for the Federal Communications Commission, which was instructed by Congress in 1996 to develop rules that would end the effective monopoly that pay-TV providers hold over set-top boxes. Years of work produced a klugey and poorly supported "CableCard" system to allow devices to perform the functions of a cable set-top, but it certainly hasn't produced the explosion of choices that lawmakers had hoped to create. Good luck finding a TV set with a CableCard slot. In the latest turn of the screw, new Chairman Ajit Pai put the commission's most recent (and highly controversial) set-top box proposal in limbo, which in this case appears to be a way station on the road to eternal damnation. That proposal would have required pay-TV providers to make their services available through a standardized app that could run on a variety of major consumer-electronics devices.

President Donald Trump will join all the past presidents of the United States at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in June this year. "Donald Trump ran a Presidential campaign on hateful speech, misogyny, racism and xenophobia. In doing so, he has tainted the legacy of the American Presidency forever," the petition by Brooklyn, New York-based Matthew Rogers reads. "The Magic Kingdom at Disney World is a place specifically designed for the enjoyment of children and families. Therefore, it is not an appropriate place for a Donald Trump speech."

President Donald Trump's executive order barring citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries has prompted nationwide protests and led tech companies, including Amazon, to consider legal action because of potential business impacts. But for some tech companies around the world, the ban has already thrown operations into chaos. "Until the executive order, we didn't really care about who's from where or what religion they were, we didn't ask, but all these things have been a distraction and worrying," said Husayn Kassai, the CEO and co-founder of London-based startup Onfido. The company, which uses artificial intelligence to help clients carry out complex background checks, boasts a 145-person staff representing 41 different nationalities. Kassai was born in Manchester, U.K., but holds dual citizenship in Iran and the U.K.

Millions around the globe may have taken to the streets in recent years to protest against the impact of globalisation on their jobs and communities - but this backlash is only likely to grow as globalisation itself becomes more disruptive. The stark warning comes from Richard Baldwin, president of the Centre for Economic Policy Research think-tank, who has been studying global trade for the past 30 years. Technological advances could now mean white-collar, office-based workers and professionals are at risk of losing their jobs, Prof Baldwin argues. In the US, voter anger with globalisation may have led to Donald Trump's election victory, but those who voted for him could be disappointed as his aim of bringing back jobs is unlikely to work, says Prof Baldwin, who also worked as an economist under President George HW Bush. Protectionist trade barriers won't work in the 21st Century, he says.

A top US general responsible for shaping the military of the future has revealed that robots could make up a quarter of the army within the next few decades. General Robert Cone said last year that the hi-tech machines will fight alongside soldiers on the battlefield by 2030 or 2040, in a bid to make the army'a smaller, more lethal, deployable and agile force'. He said modern health and safety concerns designed to keeping soldiers safe - adding armour and protection to vehicles and personnel - has caused the army to lose some of its lethal edge, but hinted that robots could revitalize its killing force. The US Army has a long-running mission to create autonomous robots - machines capable of making decisions, in real time, on the front line to changing circumstances. More than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq has allowed the public to see the huge resources already dedicated to unmanned systems; from the high-flying Global Hawk to the lethal Predator drones to hand-launched Raven.

WASHINGTON – The White House said Tuesday that no American citizen "will ever be targeted" in raids against terror suspects, a blanket statement that appeared to signal a break from the Obama administration's strategy for pursuing and targeting suspects in counterterrorism operations overseas. Under former President Barack Obama, the Justice Department had issued a legal opinion giving the U.S. the authority to target Americans who are working with terrorists abroad. White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters the Trump administration will lean on the guidance of Central Intelligence Agency director Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, but he added that "no American citizen will ever be targeted." It was not immediately clear whether Spicer's intended to recalibrate U.S. policy. The U.S. specifically targeted and killed American Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric, in Yemen in 2011.

The 7th Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI'17, co-chaired by Sven Koenig and Eric Eaton) launched the EAAI New and Future AI Educator Program to support the training of early-career university faculty, secondary school faculty, and future educators (PhD candidates or postdocs who intend a career in academia). As part of the program, awardees were asked to address one of the following "blue sky" questions: * How could/should Artificial Intelligence (AI) courses incorporate ethics into the curriculum? * How could we teach AI topics at an early undergraduate or a secondary school level? * AI has the potential for broad impact to numerous disciplines. How could we make AI education more interdisciplinary, specifically to benefit non-engineering fields? This paper is a collection of their responses, intended to help motivate discussion around these issues in AI education.

Robots may be used to care for elderly people lacking family aid, according to a team of academics who estimated the highly advanced artificial intelligence could be available within three years, BBC News reported Monday. The international team, sponsored by the European Union and Japanese government, have begun a $2.5 million project in an attempt to develop robots capable of looking after older people. More than 1 million elderly people were lacking the daily living assistance they need, according to charity Age UK. Researchers said robots would not only help out with physical tasks, but also provide companionship with uniquely programmed, culturally sensitive personalities. "Assistive, intelligent robots for older people could relieve pressures in hospitals and care homes as well as improving care delivery at home and promoting independent living for the elderly," Professor Irena Papadopoulos, an expert in transcultural nursing, told BBC. "It is not a question of replacing human support but enhancing and complementing existing care."