We uncovered the following insights and trends: • Semi-autonomous vehicles are the stepping stone to fully autonomous vehicles. Most car manufacturers and technology companies have taken Tesla's lead and are offering features like self- parking, adaptive cruise control, emergency braking and semi-hands off driving in highway/interstate conditions. Semi-autonomous features help consumers become comfortable with the idea of robots taking the wheel.

A whole new developing infrastructure from chips to code to customers is being restacked. Artificial intelligence, or learning machines, whether you call them machine learning, deep learning, or neural nets, are the next wave of disruption. It's going to be as big as the innovation and disruption ushered in by cloud/mobile in the last fifteen years. Fortunes will be made, and lost, from early investors in artificial intelligence. With such a massive financial, social and economic impact imminent, the White House issued a formal position paper with 23 recommendations.

Ford CEO Mark Fields described bits and pieces of the new arrangements – aimed primarily at developing electric cars and self-driving vehicles – during a media event Tuesday at a Ford facility in Flat Rock, Michigan. He told CNN the investment was a "vote of confidence" in President-elect Donald Trump and the business-friendly environment he and a GOP-controlled Congress are likely to develop, one that's expected to include corporate and personal tax cuts.

Ford Motor Co. said Tuesday it was scrapping plans to build a $1.6-billion factory in Mexico and would invest $700 million to expand a Michigan plant to build electric and autonomous vehicles that will add 700 jobs there in a move Ford's chief executive said was a "vote of confidence" in the economic policies of President-elect Donald Trump. Ford isn't abandoning expanded production in Mexico. The company said that to "improve company profitability" it would build its next-generation Ford Focus at an existing plant in Hermosillo, Mexico. But in the wake of criticism by President-elect Donald Trump of the U.S. automaker and other companies moving manufacturing jobs across the border, Ford said it would cancel its plans for a major new plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. A company news release didn't mention Trump, but Chief Executive Mark Fields told CNN on Tuesday that the new plans were "a vote of confidence" in the direction of the U.S. economy under the president-elect.

Autonomous drones are important for ocean research, but today s drones don t make decisions on the fly, said Steve Chien, one of the research team s members. Chien leads the Artificial Intelligence Group at NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. In order to study unpredictable ocean phenomena, we need to develop submersibles that can navigate and make decisions on their own, and in real-time. Doing so would help us understand our own oceans -- and maybe those on other planets...

The concept of artificial intelligence (AI) has been tossed around in books, movies, and media for decades -- from HAL 9000 wreaking havoc (2001: A Space Odyssey) to Marvin the Paranoid Android sadly going about its existence (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). We've been trained to expect AI-powered devices to have fully developed personalities who also can either fly or at least fly spaceships. So some people may be disappointed to hear from tech companies and the media about how we're entering the age of AI -- despite not seeing a single adorable robot zooming around. Truth is, we are at the very beginning of the AI revolution, but this technology has the potential to change the way we live and work. Even the Obama administration drafted a report that outlines the future impact of AI developments.

As we kick off a new year, I wanted to take a quick look back to offer some thoughts on the top ten technology books from 2016. Kelly was a founding editor of Wired magazine, and in this book, he offers an optimistic view into what the future of technology holds. His ability to see and interpret the future, as well as connect the dots to the past makes for an especially enlightening read. Alec Ross is a former Senior Adviser for Innovation to the Secretary of State, a post that took him to 41 countries. He draws on that experience to predict which industries will emerge and grow more than others, offering genomics, cybersecurity, robotics, and blockchain (among others) as examples. Ross includes anecdotes and stories from government officials and entrepreneurs alike.

"War never changes," intones Ron Perlman at the outset of one of Bethesda's war-torn futuristic Fallout roleplaying games. To wit, CNN seems to think the hacking mini-game in Fallout 4, the one with the retro terminals and Matrix-y code green-on-black code curtains, is the best way to illustrate Russian cyber-nefariousness. The shot, laid diagonally behind a banner reading "Obama orders unprecedented punishment for Russia hacking," is one the green-screens you can ply in the game, twiddling a cursor around columns of ASCII characters to highlight rare recognizable words in hopes of picking the right one to gain access. Like so much of the political rhetoric about hacking lately, it's the gamified version of Hollywood's idea of what real hackers do. So it's an amusing "not much to see here" error, an uncredited stock image fail that could just as well have been a still of Matthew Broderick clacking away on an IMSAI 8080.

Businesses are often data-rich but information-poor. Machine learning is changing that. The use of artificial intelligence to let computers learn independently through algorithms without being explicitly programmed can help companies process vast quantities of complex data to improve analytics, predictive accuracy and decision-making. Machine learning is already being used in everything from fraud detection to self-driving cars, and in sectors from marketing to government. "We are currently working on machine learning to pick up early signals of ill health. My current role is to ensure that this is implemented in line with national recording guidance which does not cover machine learning. This is currently in pilot phase in the A&E in Salford."

WASHINGTON – A nationwide collapse of the U.S. customs service computer system left thousands of passengers lined up at airports awaiting clearance to enter the country, authorities said Monday. "Customs and Border Protection has nationwide outage. Expect delays in passenger processing until the system is restored," said Fort Lauderdale's airport, a major hub for the United States and Caribbean, on Twitter. A Customs and Border Protection department spokesman told NBC News that there had been a disruption at several airports and was "taking immediate action to address the technology disruption." After a few hours of trouble, the glitch was fixed. "All airports are back on line after a temporary outage of CPB's processing systems.