The governor of Michigan signed a legislative package Friday that allows cars without steering wheels or drivers to be tested on the state's highways. The plan is to make the state "the epicenter for driverless vehicle technology," said Gov. Rick Snyder. Florida already allows testing of completely driverless cars. With the new law, Michigan and Florida now are the most liberal states on laws governing driverless car technology. The bills drew strong bipartisan support as Michigan, the home of the U.S. auto industry, attempts to establish itself as a leader in driverless technology.

Fast food executive Andrew Puzder, who President-elect Donald Trump is expected to tap as labor secretary, has advocated replacing some human workers with machines as a way for businesses to reduce costs associated with rising wages and health-care expenses. While machines require regular maintenance and can sometimes malfunction, Puzder said, they are also easier to manage than humans and don't pose the same legal risks. "They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case," Puzder told Business Insider in March. Puzder serves as the chief executive of CKE Restaurants, the corporate parent behind fast food chains Hardee's and Carl's Jr. The company counts 3,300 locations in 42 states and 28 countries, according to its website.

Machine learning, a field focused on training computers to recognize patterns in data and make new predictions, is helping doctors more accurately diagnose diseases and stock analysts forecast the rise and fall of financial markets. And now materials scientists have pioneered another important application for machine learning--helping to accelerate the discovery and development of new materials. Researchers at the Center for Nanoscale Materials and the Advanced Photon Source, both U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facilities at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, announced the use of machine learning tools to accurately predict the physical, chemical and mechanical properties of nanomaterials. In a study published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, a team of researchers led by Argonne computational scientist Subramanian Sankaranarayanan described their use of machine learning tools to create the first atomic-level model that accurately predicts the thermal properties of stanene, a two-dimensional (2-D) material made up of a one-atom-thick sheet of tin. The study reveals for the first time an approach to materials modeling that applies machine learning and is more accurate at predicting material properties compared to past models.

Since cybersecurity threats have become a topic of nightly newscasts, no longer is anyone shocked by their scope and veracity. What is shocking is the financial damage the attacks are predicted to cause as they reverberate throughout the economy (I know how terrible this type of crime can be. I myself have been the victim of a data theft by hackers who stole my deceased father's medical files, running up more than $300,000 in false charges. I am still disputing on-going bills that have been accruing for the last 15 years). Cybersecurity Ventures predicts global annual cyber-crime costs will grow from $3 trillion in 2015 to $6 trillion annually by 2021, which includes damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity and theft of intellectual property, personal and financial data, embezzlement and fraud.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released photographs of a Japanese mini-submarine that was sunk at the very beginning of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, and they're haunting. On Wednesday, the 75th anniversary of the "date which will live in infamy," the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer dispatched a robotic vehicle to explore two Japanese mini submarines, an event that they live-streamed. In what marks the first US shots fired in World War II, the USS Ward fired at one mini-sub on the morning of December 7, 1941, sinking it, after it was first spotted attempting to enter the harbor, partially submerged. Ninety minutes after the Ward sunk the sub, the aerial attack by the Japanese began. The first submarine NOAA explored-- the one sunk by the Ward-- had changed a great deal since the last visit to the wreck, with a peeling hull, two sections that separated from one another, and lots of biological growth, NOAA scientists report.

A: Michigan Transportation Director Kirk Steudle says the laws put Michigan ahead of most other states with the possible exception of Florida in specifically allowing tests without a human driver. Companies, he said, will make the decision as to when the cars are ready for that, based on more than a century of experience of testing cars on public roads. Automakers have a long history of testing cars on public roads in Michigan with few, if any, incidents, Steudle says. The cars also have to comply with federal safety standards and may have to be certified as roadworthy by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration if proposed federal guidelines are adopted. "I don't want to regulate the vehicles. There is nobody in state government that has any knowledge to be able to say that vehicle is ready to go on the road," Steudle said.

We hear it every day on the news: malicious hackers trying to wage on systems and business networks stealing data that they can then sell on the dark web. The increasingly sophisticated attack methods make it harder and harder for cybersecurity specialists to keep up the pace. Artificial intelligence such as IBM Watson for Cybersecurity can change how information security specialists defend against cyberattacks. Cognitive computing can blend human-generated security knowledge with more traditional security data, enabling computers to learn from data in a similar way to humans. Cyber security in the form of cognitive has the potential to significantly reduce incident response times, optimise the precision of alerts and keep up-to-date with the latest threat research.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. IBM launched its IBM Watson for Cyber Security program in beta on Tuesday, and announced that it already has 40 clients signed up, including global leaders in the banking and insurance industries. Companies like Sun Financial and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation will test the ability of Watson -- IBM's artificial intelligence (AI) -- to identify and fight cyberattacks. Watson will help them more easily identify specific malware programs and provide background on known cybercrime campaigns, as well as more accurately pinpoint suspicious behavior.

In a bid to promote the safe use of drones, the transport ministry will set up a pilot certification system involving private organizations, sources said Friday. The envisioned system will allow the ministry to evaluate the skills of pilots objectively when they seek government permission to fly small unmanned aerial vehicles over densely populated areas and other places where drone flights are restricted, the sources said. The ministry will establish certification criteria by the end of March, which will include the content of the training programs that private organizations provide to drone pilot candidates, as well as criteria for trainers and qualification examinations, the sources said. It will begin accepting applications for certification from private organizations in fiscal 2017, which begins in April. The names of certified organizations will be posted on the ministry's website.

Friday is here, and we learned that Magic Leap's wondrous demo video last year was all CGI magic, that scientists have discovered a dinosaur tail with feathers, and explain why Pebble fans might not be happy with the company's new owners. For the last couple of years, Magic Leap has been promising a groundbreaking augmented reality experience. Despite hiring hundreds of employees and snagging big-name financial backers (like Google) it hasn't actually shown off the technology publicly, leaving all of us to wonder what's going on. The Information reports that the company has had trouble implementing some of its patented fiber-optic technology, and may be preparing a wearable headset that's closer to what we've seen from Microsoft's HoloLens than the WETA-created demo video it posted last year. On Thursday John Glenn died at the age of 95 in Columbus, Ohio.