Customers trying to delete their Uber account in light of former employee Susan Fowler's sexual harassment allegations have started receiving a notification referencing the incident. The taxi-hailing app company is launching an "urgent investigation" into the workplace issues raised by Ms Fowler, and has hired former US President Barack Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder to lead it. The claims have prompted the latest in a series of backlashes against Uber, with customers urging users to delete their accounts. "Everyone at Uber is deeply hurting after reading Susan Fowler's blog post," reads a message seen by Mashable, which is being sent to users in the process of cutting their ties with Uber. "What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in."

Poblete demanded the immediate and unconditional release of Zakka, a Lebanese computer expert whose organization previously did contract work for the U.S. government, and all other Westerners held by Iran.

Many people worry that robots will replace human jobs, but Bill Gates has a solution: a robot tax. As robots begin to infiltrate the workforce, why shouldn't they be taxed just as humans are? In a recent interview with Quartz, Gates argued that in order to offset job losses due to automation, governments should tax companies that use robots. "Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed, and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things," Gates said. "If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think that we'd tax the robot at a similar level."

With no federal regulations for self-driving cars in place, states are assuming responsibility for ensuring the benefits of the technology can be reaped without sacrificing safety. Federal regulators provided safety guidance to states and automakers last year, but stopped short of issuing binding rules. Key members of Congress say they also are exploring legislation. Eight states have self-driving car laws, and bills have been introduced in 20 states this year, according to tracking by Volvo.

MEMPHIS -- Amid the confusion and pandemonium that would follow a major earthquake, Memphis-area emergency-response officials plan to deploy drones to check for collapsed buildings and bridges, locate fires and guide rescue crews. Toward that end, the Central United States Earthquake Consortium, a Memphis-based agency charged with helping prepare an eight-state region for temblors on the New Madrid Seismic Zone, has begun developing a network of licensed drone pilots to aid in quake-response efforts. This week, CUSEC will convene an initial meeting of prospective participants. "We're going to use their insights into determining how to build this (network)," said Jim Wilkinson, executive director of CUSEC. The use of drones following disasters is not new.

The rapidity of recent Chinese advances in artificial intelligence indicates that the country is capable of keeping pace with, or perhaps even overtaking, the United States in this critical emerging technology. The successes of major Chinese technology companies, notably Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group and Tencent Holding Ltd.--and even a number of start-ups--have demonstrated the dynamism of these private-sector efforts in artificial intelligence. From speech recognition to self-driving cars, Chinese research is cutting edge. Although the military dimension of China's progress in artificial intelligence has remained relatively opaque, there is also relevant research occurring in the People's Liberation Army research institutes and the Chinese defense industry. Evidently, the PLA recognizes the disruptive potential of the varied military applications of artificial intelligence, from unmanned weapons systems to command and control.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) wrapped up its military drills Wednesday by launching precision-guided projectiles and heavy artillery fire in the northeastern part of the country, according to reports. The three-day exercises began Monday in central Iran and moved to the Islamic Republic's northeast Tuesday and Wednesday. The IRGC Ground Forces, including the artillery, air defense, drone, infantry and air force units, participated in the exercises. The military's T-72 tank units Boraq personnel carriers -- the modified Iranian version of Russian BMP-1 fighting vehicles -- and BMP-2 armored vehicles were used in the drills. Drones were used by the IRGC Ground Forces to practice scouting missions, according to state-run Press TV.

A week hasn't even passed since the inauguration, but television news is saturated with the flurry of activity from President Donald Trump's administration. Trump, via Twitter, promised to launch an investigation into illegal voting and threatened to "send in the Feds" if Chicago police can't fix the "carnage." And that was just between Tuesday and Wednesday. This heightened scrutiny compelled the Internet Archive, a repository of everything posted on the web, to launch its Trump Archive in early January. You, perhaps, digitally time-traveled with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, or checked out free books, movies and software. The Trump Archive, which draws content from The Internet Archive's TV News Archive, includes more than 520 hours of televised Trump speeches, interviews, debates and other broadcasts tracing back to 2009.

The federal government is looking to capitalize on the advances made in artificial intelligence as technology becomes more commonplace in the commercial sector, said the executive editor of NextGov, a government technology news website. It comes down to pretty much automating processes and using A.I. for things like chatbots," said Camille Tuutti. Artificial intelligence's contemporary use in government is as basic as it sounds: chatbots simply read questions from users and output relevant answers. "I think that's going to change rapidly over the next years," Tuutti told What's Working in Washington. "What we're going to see is a little bit more advancement within the [Department of Defense] or intelligence community when it comes to artificial intelligence." "It's not going to be Skynet," Tuutti said, referring to the fictional neural net-based conscious group mind and artificial general intelligence system featured in the Terminator movies. Artificial intelligence can execute monotonous jobs such as data entry. "I think any new, emerging technology is going to be considered a little bit scary," said Tuutti. Cloud computing, for example, was a tough sell when it first became viable for businesses. "People were very afraid to implement it at first, or even embrace it.

About 20 percent of youth in the United States live with a mental health condition, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. The good news is that mental health professionals have smarter tools than ever before, with artificial intelligence-related technology coming to the forefront to help diagnose patients, often with much greater accuracy than humans. A new study published in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, for example, showed that machine learning is up to 93 percent accurate in identifying a suicidal person. The research, led by John Pestian, a professor at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, involved 379 teenage patients from three area hospitals. Each patient completed standardized behavioral rating scales and participated in a semi-structured interview, answering five open-ended questions such as "Are you angry?" to stimulate conversation, according to a press release from the university.