Two tech giants racing for a lead in autonomous driving clashed Monday in court as former Google car unit Waymo's lawyer argued that Uber's boss deliberately chose'to cheat' to get a leg up on competitors. The accusations flew in the opening day of a trial in which Google parent Alphabet's Waymo division is seeking at least $1 billion over the theft of trade secrets from its self-driving car program. In opening remarks before the jury in San Francisco federal court, Waymo lawyer Charles Verhoeven maintained that Uber's founder and former chief executive Travis Kalanick made the decision to use stolen trade secrets to enable the global ridesharing giant to move into autonomous driving. Google parent Alphabet's Waymo division is seeking at least $1 billion over the theft of trade secrets from its self-driving car program. 'He made a decision and the decision was to cheat,' Verhoeven said.

Amazon is designing box-shaped robot'postmen' that can open smartlocks on doors and deliver items while the you are out of the house. The move would see'autonomous ground vehicles (AGV) transport parcels from delivery trucks and place them either at your front door or inside your home. Amazon envisages the bots being owned by a group of neighbours or a building block, where it could charge itself in a communal areas such as a garage or lobby. Details of the automated delivery drones suggest they may have access to Amazon Key, or a similar service. This is a lock and camera system that users control remotely to allow couriers to slip goods into their houses. Amazon has published a US patent for'autonomous ground vehicles' [AGV] that can transport parcels from trucks and place them either at the front door of someone's home, or inside.

The centuries-old process of releasing defendants on bail, long the province of judicial discretion, is getting a major assist ... courtesy of artificial intelligence. In late August, Hercules Shepherd Jr. walked up to the stand in a Cleveland courtroom, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. Two nights earlier, an officer had arrested him at a traffic stop with a small bag of cocaine, and he was about to be arraigned. Judge Jimmy Jackson Jr. looked at Shepherd, then down at a computer-generated score on the front of the 18-year-old's case file. The scores marked Shepherd as a prime candidate for pretrial release with low bail.

In today's world, data is the new basis of competitive advantage – and businesses are paying close attention to how they use their data, especially highly-regulated customer information. While the goal is to extract insights and knowledge for better decision making, organizations must also ensure they are abiding by the legal and data privacy requirements. This process can be time-intensive for legal professionals, who must stay on top of ever-changing laws, often across multiple global jurisdictions. And there is a lot at stake, with noncompliance resulting in increasingly higher fines and substantial risk to a business' reputation. In the US alone, there are more than 70 government authorities with a legal point of view on data privacy, from states and state agencies, to congress and federal agencies, including the US Attorney General, Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. On a global scale, complying with these regulations is becoming more complex, especially with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into effect in the EU later this year.

It may be the stuff of science fiction, but even some of the most respected minds in science and technology are scared that artificial intelligence might wipe out humanity. However, while virtually every lab involved in designing AI has launched its own ethics group in a bid to play down fears, a more secure defence against social ills may come from the blockchain. A prime example of how the blockchain will work in this regard comes from Talla. Founded in Boston in 2015, Talla started its career by offering AI-based enterprise tools to businesses, yet at the end of last year it announced an ethereum-based blockchain for artificial intelligences. Dubbed the BotChain and currently undergoing beta testing, it works by issuing digital certificates for every action an AI takes and by linking these certificates into – unsurprisingly enough – a chain of encrypted documents. By doing this, it enables companies to monitor the activities of the autonomous bots they're using and ensure that legal and ethical standards are being upheld.

Waymo, the self-driving car company spun out of Google, is locked in a legal battle with Uber, alleging the cab company stole its key technology.

Waymo, the self-driving car company spun out of Google, is locked in a legal battle with Uber, alleging the cab company stole its key technology.

It was a striking story. "Machine Bias," the headline read, and the teaser proclaimed: "There's software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it's biased against blacks." ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize–winning nonprofit news organization, had analyzed risk assessment software known as COMPAS. It is being used to forecast which criminals are most likely to reoffend.

A Google-bred pioneer in self-driving cars and Uber's beleaguered ride-hailing service are colliding in a courtroom showdown revolving around allegations of deceit, betrayal, espionage and a high-tech heist that tore apart one-time allies. The trial opening Monday in San Francisco federal court comes nearly a year after Google spin-off Waymo sued Uber, accusing it of ripping off key pieces of its self-driving car technology in 2016. Uber paid $680 million for a startup run by Anthony Levandowski, one of the top engineers in a robotic vehicle project that Google began in 2009 and later spun out into Waymo. Google was also an early investor in Uber, a relationship that later soured. Its parent company Alphabet also owns Waymo.

If you scanned social media or the headlines in many online or print-based newspapers or magazines published in 2017, you were pretty much guaranteed to see posts and articles on artificial intelligence (AI). Most of these articles suggest that AI is in the process of fundamentally changing our lives at work, home and play. And if you believe the comments in these articles, the good news is that we will have more free time to enjoy virtual-reality worlds and have our self-driving cars take us around the countryside. The bad news is that many people, including lawyers, will supposedly lose our jobs to AI technology and robots. There is no doubt, along with other major disruptions (See "Perspectives on the future of law: How the profession should respond to major disruptions"), AI technologies have and will bring changes to the legal services arena. This article attempts to sort out the hype and reality of how AI will impact the legal profession. To really understand the impact AI will have on the legal profession, we should start with a clear understanding of what AI really is. This is difficult as even AI experts can't seem to agree on a definition for AI. To further complicate things, the definition of AI has changed over time as computers have become increasingly capable.