Gov. Jerry Brown signs a bill that will regulate self-driving cars in California Google co-founder Sergey Brin hopes to have self-driving cars on public roads within five years Brin says self-driving cars address safety, traffic and lifestyle issues Gov. Jerry Brown signs a bill that will regulate self-driving cars in California California is the latest state to allow testing of Google's self-driving cars on the roads, though only with a human passenger along as a safety measure. Gov. Edmund "Jerry" Brown signed the autonomous-vehicles bill into law Tuesday afternoon alongside Google co-founder Sergey Brin and State Sen. Alex Padilla, who authored the bill, at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. The bill, SB 1298, will set up procedures and requirements for determining when the cars are road-ready. Brin hopes that self-driving cars will be able to drive on public streets in five years or less. "Anybody who first gets in the car and finds the car is driving will be a little skittish. But they'll get over it," said Brown when asked if the California Highway Patrol was on board with the plan.

UK robotics professor leading calls for a worldwide ban on autonomous weapons We can't rely on robots to conform to international law, says Noel Sharkey Sharkey is chairman of and NGO leading a campaign to "Stop Killer Robots" Autonomous robots could destabilize world security and trigger unintentional wars We can't rely on robots to conform to international law, says Noel Sharkey Sharkey is chairman of and NGO leading a campaign to "Stop Killer Robots" As wars become increasingly automated, we must ask ourselves how far we want to delegate responsibility to machines. Where do we want to draw the line? Weapons systems have been evolving for millennia and there have always been attempts to resist them. But does that mean that we should just sit back and accept our fate and hand over the ultimate responsibility for killing to machines? Over the last few months there has been an increasing debate about the use of fully autonomous robot weapons: armed robots that once launched can select their own targets and kill them without further human intervention.

Douglas Rushkoff: U.S. Postal Service new example of human work replaced by technology He says technology affecting jobs market; not enough workers needed to run the technology He says we have to alter our ideas: It's not about jobs, it's about productivity Rushkoff: Technology lets us bypass corporations, make our own work -- a new model Douglas Rushkoff: U.S. Postal Service new example of human work replaced by technology He says we have to alter our ideas: It's not about jobs, it's about productivity Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. That's 600,000 people who would be out of work, and another 480,000 pensioners facing an adjustment in terms. We can blame a right wing attempting to undermine labor, or a left wing trying to preserve unions in the face of government and corporate cutbacks. But the real culprit -- at least in this case -- is e-mail. People are sending 22% fewer pieces of mail than they did four years ago, opting for electronic bill payment and other net-enabled means of communication over envelopes and stamps.

Who should explore space, man or machine? The loss of seven space shuttle astronauts this month again brought home the serious risk that humans face into the hostile environs beyond our sheltered planet, reviving the question of whether exploring the heavens should be left to unmanned missions. Although less glamorous, such missions pose no risks to humans. And already robots have an impressive list of accomplishments compared to the their flesh and blood counterparts. "Unmanned missions are all about specifically targeted scientific explorations of the universe around us. Without exceptions, these efforts rise out of intense competition where the most compelling, and answerable, questions are posed," said Marc Buie, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Top 10 predictions In the 21st century, I bet the following 10 things happening: 1) Man/Women walking on Mars. As is currently happening in India and southeast Asia and with the advent of cheap labor and nearly free energy (Africa's desert is a prime location for solar power). It will surely attract hefty amounts of foreign investment 4) Genetic and Stem Cell research collide and make discovery's that lead to cures for almost all genetic disorders. It'll be like INTERPOL on steriods and very little red tape. Their capabilities powers will broaden with every terrorist attack.

It can get lonely in space, even for a robot. Kirobo, the Japanese humanoid robot who is modeled after Astro Boy, was developed to entertain astronauts in space. But now that the robot's trip home has been delayed, it seems Kirobo is finding his stay at the International Space Station rather desolate. Created by robot designer Tomotaka Takahashi, the Kirobo robot has a special mission "to help solve the problems brought about by a society that has become more individualized and less communicative," according to the Kibo Robot Project website. "Nowadays, more and more people are living alone. With a new style of robot-human interface, perhaps a way to solve this problem could be found. This is the goal we have in mind for this project."

To mark the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, AT&T teamed up with New York University's Ability Lab to challenge app developers to use their network and technology to make life easier for people with disabilities. Together they launched the Connect Ability Challenge, designed to spur innovation for people with physical, social, emotional and cognitive disabilities. Winners of the contest, which saw a total of 63 submissions, were announced Monday. In total, AT&T awarded $100,000 in cash. That included a $25,000 grand prize for Kinesic Mouse, software that uses Intel's Real Sense Web camera to detect facial expressions and head rotations, enabling people to operate their personal computers hands-free.

As mentioned already on The Conversation and other websites, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of famed British mathematician Alan Turing. According to some, computer intelligence is on course to match human intelligence by 2045. The outline of his remarkable life and sad ending has by now become fairly well known. Turing laid numerous foundation stones of modern computing, ranging from the deepest mathematical nature of computing (using what are now called Turing machines, he provided the modern approach to incompleteness (PDF) and undecidability) to specific issues of practical design; he also contributed to mathematical biology (morphology) and much else. At the same time, he played a key role in the British government's breaking of the German Enigma code at the now-fabled, but then ultra-secret, Bletchley Park, thus arguably accelerating the end of the second world war.

Immediately after 9/11, politicians and pundits slammed the Bush administration for failing to "connect the dots" foreshadowing the attack. For two years now, left- and right-wing advocates have shot down nearly every proposal to use intelligence more effectively--to connect the dots--as an assault on "privacy." Though their facts are often wrong and their arguments specious, they have come to dominate the national security debate virtually without challenge. The consequence has been devastating: just when the country should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction. "No one in the research and development community is putting together tools to make us safer," says Lee Zeichner of Zeichner Risk Analytics, a risk consultancy firm, "because they're afraid" of getting caught up in a privacy scandal. The chilling effect has been even stronger in government. "Many perfectly legal things that could be done ...

As the truck growled up another rise and started back down again, Zych reached up and flicked a wiper switch to brush away the slurry, then put his hands back in his lap. "We haven't automated those yet," he explained, referring to the windshield wipers, as the robotic truck reached the bottom of the hill and executed a perfect hairpin turn. Ten years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq have put a spotlight on the growing use of unmanned systems in the skies over the battlefield, from the high-flying Global Hawk to the lethal Predator aircraft and the hand-launched Raven. But on the ground, thousands of small, remotely operated robots also have proven their value in dealing with roadside bombs, a lethal threat to U.S. troops in both wars. Of more than 6,000 robots deployed, about 750 have been destroyed in action, saving at least that many human lives, the Pentagon's Robotics Systems Joint Program Office estimates.