The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed new safety regulations that got very little coverage; perhaps because the proposed rule came out on December 13th just before the yearend holidays. These regulations would use a new technology – vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) radio communications – that would allow vehicles to automatically send vehicle sensor data – the vehicle's speed, heading, brake status and other information – to other vehicles to alert drivers to potential crash situations. This is interesting technology that could impact the speed with which autonomous vehicles become viable. That is because the chief impediment to the viability of autonomous vehicles are fears that they are not safe enough. There are already advanced crash avoidance technologies available that employ on-board sensor technologies - such as vehicle camera systems, RADAR, and LIDAR - to monitor a vehicles' surroundings.

Finally a new year is here after the most politically divisive 12 months in a very long time. In the UK, Brexit shattered dreams and friendships. In the US, the polarisation was already huge, but a bitter election campaign made the divisions even deeper. A researcher from King's College London explains how we start with fairly small opinions about an issue to being fully entrenched, as many may not have been for one side during Brexit but were completely sure their opinions were in fact right How is it possible that people come to hold such widely different views of reality? And what can we do (if anything) to break out of the cycle of increasingly hostile feelings towards people who seem to be on'the other side' from us?

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to launch a test soon to determine whether artificial intelligence can help bureaucrats write draft answers for questions made to Cabinet ministers and others during deliberations in the Diet. The ministry is considering using AI to draw up challenges and debate points for policy issues -- using Diet proceedings in the past five years as a guide -- in the hopes of improving work efficiency. The ministry, which has promoted what it calls the "fourth industrial revolution" that utilizes AI and the internet of things, is looking to set an example that would spread the use of AI in other government agencies and ministries. Bureaucrats often spend long hours drafting answers to Diet questions, with the work often continuing until dawn on the day they are used. In the Kasumigaseki government district in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, close attention is being paid to whether the industry ministry's AI-related initiative will help reduce these long work hours.

Mark Zuckerberg has given more weight to the idea that he could move into politics with the announcement of a statesmanly personal challenge for 2017. In previous years the Facebook CEO has learned Mandarin, pledged to run at least a mile each day and built a virtual assistant called Jarvis to control his home. This year he wants to have visited and met people in every state in the US. He's already visited about 20 states, which means he has to travel to about 30 states by the end of the year. "After a tumultuous last year, my hope for this challenge is to get out and talk to more people about how they're living, working and thinking about the future," he said in a Facebook post announcing the challenge.

President-elect Trump and green jobs advocates rarely find themselves on the same side. All it seems to have taken was a little trolling. Ford Motor Company said this morning that it's spending $700 million to expand its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to develop a new generation of electric and autonomous vehicles. The expansion will add 700 production jobs, according to the company's official announcement. Ford is also scrapping plans to open a new $1.6 billion factory in Mexico, where it was set to manufacture its line of Ford Focuses.

Amid all the sound and fury over Brexit, progressives disorientated by 2016 should remember a vital fact - it is only the firing gun on a decade of much wider disruption. As the UK negotiates its new place in the world, a wave of economic, social and technological change will reshape the country, in often radical ways. It is vital progressives better understand the forces driving these changes and the challenges and opportunities they will create. After all, progressives historically have won when they have a strong set of demands allied to a sense they own the future, and have change in their bones. The IPPR's new report, Future Proof: Britain in the 2020s, sets out the five key trends that will drive change in the 2020s and the major challenges they will create.

Way back in 1969, as a kid, I watched a very interesting movie - "2001: A Space Odyssey." It was a science fiction where a super intelligent computer program HAL is in charge of a mission to Jupiter which also carries several astronauts. The program becomes rogue and tries to kill all the astronauts. The hero survives and manages to disable the program. There is a lot more to the plot, but the fight between human and computer is still vivid in my memory. In 1969, such a scenario looked possible. After all 32 years is a lot of time given the rate of our progress.

After 15 years of development and more than 200 flights, an Israel firm is confident its autonomous flying ambulance will be ready to hit the market by 2020 – and will come with a $14 million price tag. The Cormorant, formally known as the'AirMule', can transport about a half a ton (500kg) of weight at 115 miles (185 km) per hour. Designed by Urban Aeronautics, its developers say the military drone will be able to reach areas unfit for helicopters to deliver supplies and carry wounded soldiers to safety. After 15 years of development and more than 200 flights, an Israel firm is confident its autonomous flying ambulance will be ready to hit the market by 2020 – and will cost about $14 million. The Cormorant, formally known as the'AirMule', can transport about a half a ton (500kg) of weight at 115 miles (185 km) per hour'Just imagine a dirty bomb in a city and chemical substance of something else and this vehicle can come in robotically, remotely piloted, come into a street and decontaminate an area,' Urban Aeronautics founder and CEO Rafi Yoeli told Reuters.

Last year Google recognized Coeur d'Alene as Idaho's eCity (beating out Boise and Moscow), and in a recent article in Chatbots Magazine, journalist Kelly Kissack speculated that the little resort town in the Idaho wilderness might just be the "cradle of civilization for artificial intelligence and robotics" in America. Kissack's piece follows the accomplishments of CDA native, Nick Smoot, and his "Innovation Collective". You can find her article here. It seems, however, that historically there is even more evidence to support Kissack's premise. In fact, a decade and a half earlier, a small Coeur d'Alene startup launched an A.I. that could very well have beaten the Turing test more than ten years before "Eugene" in 2014 -- had it competed. The development and origin of this A.I. technology is an intriguing story, and one that personally first drew me to the area and its talent.

For thousands of years humans believed that authority came from the gods. Then, during the modern era, humanism gradually shifted authority from deities to people. Jean-Jacques Rousseau summed up this revolution in Emile, his 1762 treatise on education. When looking for the rules of conduct in life, Rousseau found them "in the depths of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be good is good, what I feel to be bad is bad." Humanist thinkers such as Rousseau convinced us that our own feelings and desires were the ultimate source of meaning, and that our free will was, therefore, the highest authority of all.