DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Hard-liners in Iran have released a video showing a detained Iranian-American businessman for the first time since his arrest last October. The minute-long video, posted Monday by Iran's judiciary news agency, shows Siamak Namazi amid a montage of clips, including an Iranian drone flying over a U.S. aircraft carrier and American sailors on their knees being detained in January. The video has no audio other than what sounds like a dramatic film score. It shows Namazi's U.S. passport, a United Arab Emirates ID card and a clip of him in a conference room, his arms raised at his sides. Namazi is a son of Baquer Namazi, a former UNICEF representative who once served as governor of Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan province under the U.S.-backed shah.

The stakes are high and the largest public and private technology companies have set their sights on transportation as the next growth area. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that transportation represents 17% of consumer spending, topped only by housing expenses at 33%. Together, Google, Apple, Uber and Tesla pack the biggest threat to established automakers. They have spurred a flurry of deal making, engineering team building, and set a pace for innovation that the automobile industry has not seen for decades. Google: The data giant ready to fund any project to put them ahead Google has heavily promoted its work with autonomous vehicles and stands to benefit from one of the most aggressive mapping endeavors ever undertaken on our planet.

President Barack Obama's administration believes that artificial intelligence can be a positive force in the United States, vastly improving specialized areas within health care, transportation, education and policing over the coming decades. In two reports released today, one day ahead of the White House Frontiers Conference, the Obama administration calls for long-term investments in AI research and a broad range of investigation into the ethics, security and uses of AI. The report also emphasizes the current limits of AI, noting that narrow AI systems have rapidly advanced over the past few years, but general-intelligence systems -- machines that learn and respond as humans do -- are decades away.

On Thursday, before President Obama had arrived, the Frontiers conference began with several sessions explaining how artificial intelligence (AI) and data science affect various levels of policy. The local and national sessions, called tracks, took place on the second floor of the Cohon Center. The panels were a who's who of academic and corporate giants in the field of AI such as Engineering Director at Uber's Advanced Technologies Center Raffi Krikorian and Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research Jeanette Wing. The local policy track also featured municipal government officials who embody the spirit of making data "work for us" as the president often says. The National Frontiers track opened with Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf telling the story of innovation in Pennsylvania, beginning with William Penn's idea of freedom of conscience, winding through the founding ideas of American government born in Pennsylvania, touching on the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and finally landing on the transportation revolution which still roils on today as self driving cars become frequent sights on the streets of Pittsburgh.

In an effort to drive continued innovation in a handful of key areas of technology and science, President Obama hosted the White House Frontiers Conference, a one-day conference in Pittsburgh. This conference is a joint venture between the White House, the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. During the conference, President Obama announced a number of new initiatives. These include funding to help in the development of smart cities, brain research, health, criminal justice, space, and climate change. Also among the initiatives announces was the release of a report titled "Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence."

The United States has on its Aegis-class cruisers a defense system that can track and destroy anti-ship missiles and aircraft. Israel has developed a drone, the Harpy, that can detect and automatically destroy radar emitters. South Korea has security-guard robots on its border with North Korea that can kill humans. All of these can function autonomously without any human intention. Indeed, the early versions of the Terminator are already here.

Just days ago, Germany's Federal Motor Authority sent letters to Tesla owners warning them that their cars' "Autopilot" feature is strictly there for driver assistance, not driver replacement. As it turns out, those letters were just the opening salvo. According to a report from Reuters, the German government is asking Tesla to stop using the term "autopilot" in its advertising entirely out of concerns that people misinterpret its purpose. To be absolutely clear, your Tesla will not drive you around town on its own... yet. A Tesla spokesperson maintained that the word "autopilot" has been used in the aerospace industry for years in reference to systems that assist pilots in flight, and that the company has always been clear that people still have to pay attention to the road. Still, it's not hard to see what German authorities are concerned about.

Four people were killed, including two children. "We were looking into all these different stories, like the psychology of the drone pilot, all the crazy, messed-up stuff that surrounds it," says Killbox programmer Albert Elwin on the IndieCade show floor in Los Angeles. "It's all really dark and depressing -- it's absolutely in some ways a difficult project to work on because you get kind of consumed by the reality of it." Since 2004, the US has conducted more than 400 drone strikes across Pakistan alone that have killed up to 4,000 people, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Hard statistics don't exist in the world of UAV warfare, but the Bureau estimates between 423 and 965 civilians have been killed in unmanned strikes on Pakistan, including as many as 207 children.

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The Obama administration released a report on the future of artificial intelligence and addressed everything including job loss, ethics, bias, and positive outcomes for multiple industries. There are some things that machines are simply better at doing than humans, but humans still have plenty going for them. Here's a look at how the two are going to work in concert to deliver a more powerful future for IT, and the human race. There's a lot to digest in the full report, which has been noted in multiple places. I pulled out a few key talking points to ponder as AI advances.