The White House is planning to hold four public workshops this summer to develop plans and spur dialog about the federal government's use of artificial intelligence technologies. In a White House blog post announcing the workshops earlier this week, Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer Ed Felten described some of the potential use cases for AI in government, as well as some of the challenges. "In education, AI has the potential to help teachers customize instruction for each student's needs. And, of course, AI plays a key role in self-driving vehicles, which have the potential to save thousands of lives, as well as in unmanned aircraft systems, which may transform global transportation, logistics systems and countless industries over the coming decades," Felten wrote. The four planned workshops have partnerships with academic and non-profit organizations, and the discussions will feed into the development of a public report later this year, according to the blog.

While many video games are pushing their stories toward the future, the classic franchise Battlefield is stepping back to revisit the past. Publisher Electronic Arts announced Battlefield 1, the latest chapter in the military action series that will take players to the battlefields of World War I. It launches October 21 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game will take place across multiple locations around the world, including France, the Italian Alps and the deserts of Arabia. Battlefield 1's story kicks off right around the start of World War I, as players "witness the birth of modern warfare."

SpaceX has successfully landed a rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, for the second month in a row, following a Japanese satellite mission. The unmanned SpaceX rocket blasted off from Florida early this morning to put the communications satellite into orbit, with the launch vehicle's main-stage booster completing a quick return landing on the floating platform. Due to the high altitude of the mission, SpaceX did not expect a successful landing, but the Falcon 9 rocket touched down on the drone platform - nicknamed Of Course I Still Love You - just over eight minutes after launching. SpaceX has successfully landed a rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean after a delivering a Japanese satellite into orbit early this morning, and is the second rocket to successfully land in the space of a month. A company webcast showed the 23-story-tall rocketsoaring off a seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air ForceStation at 1:21 am EDT (06:21 BST).

Online translators are getting better, but there's still room for improvement. Researchers are now contributing new artificial intelligence techniques that could help accurately build full sentences. Algorithms developed by researchers at the University of Liverpool give computers a human-like touch while translating words and languages. They believe their methods are key to improving accuracy. Using the algorithms, a computer will be able to translate a word from an unknown language, and then provide context to it.

As the field of artificial intelligence advances, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is launching a series of public workshops about artificial intelligence and machine learning. All are open to the public. OSTP is also creating an interagency working group to explore how that "transformative technology" can benefit education, transportation, industry and other fields. "There are tremendous opportunities and an array of considerations across the federal government in privacy, security, regulation, law, and research and development to be taken into account when effectively integrating this technology into both government and private-sector activities," Deputy U.S. CTO Ed Felten wrote in a May 3 blog post. The National Science and Technology Council's new Subcommittee on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence will meet for the first time the week of May 9.

If the BA incident had involved a drone, I might have had mixed feelings. Last summer, I was testing a drone. To evaluate the device and its camera, I wanted to find a safe, yet picturesque place to fly. I chose a quiet stretch of beach, a short bus ride south of where I live in Spain. I say quiet: That was until two police officers rolled over the sand dunes on quad bikes and told me to stop.

Google's DeepMind has hit back at criticism of its partnership with London's Royal Free hospital to develop an app that helps doctors and nurses rapidly identify and treat acute kidney injuries. DeepMind's co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, said the company was better placed than any other to handle sensitive medical data, given its long history of securing highly personal information from other fields. He said: "As Googlers, we have the very best privacy and secure infrastructure for managing the most sensitive data in the world. That's something we're able to draw upon as we're such a core part of Google." He added: "When we developed our information governance toolkit and we submitted that for assessment to the health and social care information centre (HSCIC), which approves these data-sharing agreements, we got 100% for our toolkit. There's pretty much nobody else who's been able to get a score as high as that."

The fear of robots and artificial intelligence is widespread. If it's not popular culture creating images of psychotic or scheming machines think Ultron in The Avengers or Ava in Ex Machina it's the actual news. According to a steady stream of reports, humans will lose jobs to machines on a vast scale. The latest, coming from the White House in February, said up to 80 per cent of people who are currently making 20 (U.S.) or less an hour are likely to be replaced by robots and AI over the next few decades. Those making over 40 are a little safer, but close to a third will still be made redundant.

Robot Wars will soon back on TV in the UK, and a very similar battle is heading for the country's seas. The British Royal Navy will be holding a demonstration of unmanned technology off the coast of Scotland this autumn. And during the event, one company will be trialling the world's first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capable of landing autonomously on a moving ship. The British Royal Navy will be holding a demonstration of unmanned technology off the coast of Scotland this autumn. One company, Roke, will be trialling the world's first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capable of landing autonomously on a moving ship (test phases pictured) The machines will compete in their very own version of'robot wars' to demonstrate they could be part of the Navy's future.

Emma was indeed quick: she filed in 12 minutes to my 35. Her copy was also better than I expected. Her facts were right and she even included relevant context such as the possibility of Brexit (although she was of the dubious opinion that it would be a "tailwind" for the UK economy). But to my relief, she lacked the most important journalistic skill of all: the ability to distinguish the newsworthy from the dull. While she correctly pointed out the jobless rate was unchanged, she overlooked that the number of jobseekers had risen for the first time in almost a year.