As our Supreme Court weighed the First Amendment implications of brutal video games back in 2011, Justice Samuel Alito cut in with a sarcastic jab: "Well, I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and professor of constitutional law at Harvard University. Tribe and Matz are the co-authors of Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution." This wasn't the first time that scientific advances had divided these super-conservative justices--and that speaks to a crucial point. While the confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch will involve familiar debates over how to read the Constitution, judicial orientations toward new technology can scramble the fields in surprising ways.

With so much discussion over foreign policy and immigration concerns from Muslim-majority nations after the inauguration of Donald Trump, there might be some confusion about how the U.S. is fighting terrorism in the Middle East. The U.S. may not be in a direct war with anyone other than the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, but there is still a military presence in multiple countries carried over from previous administrations. The number of combat troops has dipped due to drone warfare, but President Trump, who campaigned on being tougher on ISIS, has said he would be willing to send up to 30,000 troops to Iraq and Syria. However, he inherited a military presence in not just those two countries, but other hotspots, as well. Just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress and President George W. Bush authorized the use of military force to overthrow the Taliban.

The patter of automated machinery fills the air inside wire-basket manufacturer Marlin Steel's bustling factory in a rugged industrial section of this city. Maxi Cifarelli, 25, of Baltimore, peers through safety goggles at a flat screen, her left knee bent and heel resting on her chair. Two years after earning a fine arts degree from Towson University with a specialty in interdisciplinary object design, she now spends her work days working with a personality-free machine with a name to match: a computer numerical control, or CNC, router. With automation poised to sweep through the economy, some fear that it will kill more jobs than it creates. But Cifarelli's experience is the opposite. She befriended automation, instead of fighting it, and she has a job because of it.

Now, scientists have demonstrated an automated system that uses artificial intelligence and cutting-edge image processing to rapidly examine large numbers of individual Caenorhabditis elegans, a species of nematode widely used in biological research. Beyond replacing existing manual examination steps using microfluidics and automated hardware, the system's ability to detect subtle differences from worm-to-worm -- without human intervention -- can identify genetic mutations that might not have been detected otherwise. By allowing thousands of worms to be examined autonomously in a fraction of the time required for conventional manual screening, the technique could change the way that high throughput genetic screening is carried out using C. elegans. Details of the research were scheduled to be reported August 19th in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Methods. The research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Almost 250,000 public sector workers could lose their jobs to robots over the next 15 years, according to a new report which claims machines would be more efficient and save billions of pounds. Reform, a right-of-centre thinktank, says websites and artificial intelligence "chat bots" could replace up to 90% of Whitehall's administrators, as well as tens of thousands in the NHS and GPs' surgeries, by 2030 – saving as much as £4bn a year. Even nurses and doctors could fall victim to the march of the machines, which the report says can outperform humans at some diagnoses and routine surgical procedures, and are more efficient at collecting information. The report argues that public services should become more flexible by embracing a gig economy where workers support themselves through a variety of flexible jobs acquired through online platforms. In remarks that seem set to infuriate unions, a Reform press release says: "Public services can become the next Uber, using the gig economy to employ locum doctors and supply teachers."

Whitehall could save £2.6 billion with automation. The report, which addresses the creation of a public services workforce organised around the needs of its users, advocates the reduction of staff in favour of automation and digital technology. Citing analysis by Oxford academics Frey and Osbourne, in which the academics said that admin roles have a 96% chance of being automated by current technology, the report applied their calculations to current public sector numbers. The report found that, over the next 10 to 15 years, central government departments could further reduce headcount by 131,962, saving £2.6 billion from the 2016-17 wage bill. The report sells automation as the'new approach' which is needed, saying: "Public services should deliver outcomes that matter to users, and meet expectations of interacting via technology. This approach would see services designed around users and render at least 248,860 administrative roles redundant. The accuracy of decision-making can be further improved by using artificial intelligence to make complex decisions and by understanding why mistakes that, for example, cause 10 per cent of hospital patients to suffer from medical error, are made."

Last summer at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference, the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge pitted automated systems against one another, trying to find weaknesses in the others' code and exploit them. "This is a great example of how easily machines can find and exploit new vulnerabilities, something we'll likely see increase and become more sophisticated over time," said David Gibson, vice president of strategy and market development at Varonis Systems. His company hasn't seen any examples of hackers leveraging artificial intelligence technology or machine learning, but nobody adopts new technologies faster than the sin and hacking industries, he said. "So it's safe to assume that hackers are already using AI for their evil purposes," he said. "It has never been easier for white hats and black hats to obtain and learn the tools of the machine learning trade," said Don Maclean, chief cybersecurity technologist at DLT Solutions.

AI has become such a huge topic that late last year the White House released a report on the Future of Artificial Intelligence, which focused on the opportunities, considerations, and challenges of AI. As more and more industries, including healthcare and financial services, adopt AI technology, the technology's value will increase its impact on society as a whole. AI, machine learning and other technologies are already making a significant impact in several industries, including e-commerce, hospitality, and retail. While there has always been a slight tension among workers about robots taking over and claiming jobs, there is a lot to be said about how these types of technologies will, in fact, add more value, contribute to economic growth and augment the workplace so employees can work more effectively. It starts with the huge volumes of contracts that define business relationships, capture the rules of engagement and are the foundation of business transactions every day.

The leader of al-Qaida in the Arabain Peninsula (AQAP), Qassim al-Rimi, released an audio recording in which he reportedly called President Donald Trump the "White House's new fool" while speaking about a recent deadly U.S. raid against the group in Yemen which killed 25 civilians, including 11 women and children. In the recording, which was released late Saturday, al-Rimi addressed his followers, saying: "The White House's new fool has received a painful blow at your hands in his first outing on your land." The raid took place Jan. 29 and the recording claimed many U.S. soldiers were also killed and wounded during the operation. It was President Trump's first counter-terrorism offensive that killed more than a dozen terrorists and also U.S. Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens. The casualties included the 8-year old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American al-Qaida leader who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011.

Connected cars and the Internet of Things go together like peanut butter and jelly. But realizing the future of autonomous vehicles will demand close attention to be paid to cybersecurity, functional-safety standards, and other critical factors. IoT will advance the era of self-driving cars, which currently is dominated by Tesla Motors. At the same time, it will change some of the dynamics in this market. On one hand, it will turn automotive manufacturers into technology companies, which could provide new revenue streams for carmakers. On the other hand, it will open the door for new players that have never had a viable entry point in the automotive market. Consider the case of Velodyne LiDAR, a Morgan Hill, Calif.-based company, which last month opened a factory in nearby San Jose to manufacture its LIDAR product.