Connecticut lawmakers are considering whether the state should become the first in the country to allow police to use drones outfitted with deadly weapons, a proposal immediately met with concern by civil rights and liberties advocates. The bill would ban the use of weaponized drones, but exempt police. Details on how law enforcement could use drones with weapons would be spelled out in new rules to be developed by the state Police Officer Standards and Training Council. Officers also would have to receive training before being allowed to use drones with weapons. "Obviously this is for very limited circumstances," said Republican state Sen. John Kissel, of Enfield, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee that approved the measure Wednesday and sent it to the House of Representatives.

The next billion dollar industry will not be a service or product – it will be upgrading humans, an expert has revealed. It has been suggested that humans will have access to technology that will allow them to'upgrade themselves into gods'. Bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari has also warned that because not everyone will be able to experience the upgrade, due to costs, there will be a divide that could spark'old racist ideologies' - but this time, differences will be'engineered and manufactured'. The next billion dollar industry will not be a service or product – it will be upgrading humans, an expert has revealed. It has been suggested that technology will let humans'upgrade themselves into gods', but since the process will be costly, not everyone will have the ability to do so'The greatest industry of the 21st century will probably be to upgrade human beings,' Harari, who explores bleak future of humanity and'the rise of the useless class' in his novel Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, told Jeremy Olshan with MarketWatch.

A former Google employee secretly collaborated with competing self-driving car companies for years before allegedly stealing trade secrets and bringing the proprietary technology to Uber, according to a new court filing. Anthony Levandowski – now head of Uber's self-driving program and a key player in Google's high-profile intellectual property lawsuit against Uber – collected $120m in "incentive payments" from Google, according to the claim, "all while he was breaching his obligations to Google and building a company that would compete with Google". The filing also alleges that while at Google, he helped the company investigate one of two competing firms with which he was involved. The filing provides new details about Google's case against Levandowski, suggesting that his alleged plot to steal trade secrets involved his clandestine association with the side companies dating back to 2012. The claims have come to light a week after Levandowski invoked his fifth amendment right, with his lawyers stating in court that there is "potential for criminal action".

Innovation in artificial intelligence and robotics could force governments to legislate for quotas of human workers, upend traditional working practices and pose novel dilemmas for insuring driverless cars, according to a report by the International Bar Association. The survey, which suggests that a third of graduate level jobs around the world may eventually be replaced by machines or software, warns that legal frameworks regulating employment and safety are becoming rapidly outdated. The competitive advantage of poorer, emerging economies – based on cheaper workforces – will soon be eroded as robot production lines and intelligent computer systems undercut the cost of human endeavour, the study suggests. "A production robot is thus cheaper than a worker in China," the report notes. Nor does a robot "become ill, have children or go on strike and [it] is not entitled to annual leave".

AI will change the legal profession, just not how you are expecting. Fernando Garcia is looking forward to the day when he can get his hands on Beagle, an automated contract analysis system powered by artificial intelligence that reads contracts in seconds, highlights key information visually with easy-to-read graphs and charts and gets "smarter" with each reviewed contract. Also on his bucket list is an offering by yet another Canadian legal tech startup, Blue J Legal, that also uses AI to scan legal documents, case files and decisions to predict how courts will rule in tax decisions. At a time when the majority of in-house counsel are under intense pressure to shave costs and run a lean team, such powerful tools are a godsend. "There's always that pressure to do more with less, so when a tool comes along that can provide more efficiency, more risk mitigation and can let you do your job better and focus on providing value added, it is a strategic advantage," notes Garcia, general counsel, government affairs and corporate secretary with Nissan Canada Inc. "It's going to fundamentally change our job." This fundamental change has been a long time coming. Nearly two decades ago, the former justice of the High Court of Australia, Michael Kirby, remarked with uncanny prescience in a speech before the Bombay High Court in Mumbai that "it would be a bold observer" who would deny the possibility of artificial intelligence to "enhance" lawyering and judicial-making.

A quick, hassle-free way to stay on top of robotics news, our robotics digest is released on the first Monday of every month. Sign up to get it in your inbox. March is a month for change and new beginnings. The new UK Budget promised hundreds of millions of pounds to scientists and researchers to develop solutions to hi-tech challenges, including artificial intelligence and robotics, next generation batteries and new techniques for manufacturing medicines. The government is expected to allocate more than £500 million from the National Productivity Investment Fund so that UK companies might lead the way in the new technologies set to transform the world.

In our fourth installment of the Bytes Chat, we convened a panel of economists to discuss the newly released NBER study on the impact of robots on jobs and wages. Bytes contributors Rob Seamans, associate professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, Bret Swanson, president of Entropy Economics, and Hal Singer, senior fellow at George Washington University's Institute of Public Policy were joined by special guest Marshall Steinbaum, senior economist and fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. The conversation has been edited slightly for readability. First question is at the behest of our president. Are the robots coming over the border? Is this a border problem? Marshall Steinbaum: If you get all the enemies in one place, it's easier to kill them. Singer: Ok, let's get serious.

Tech-savvy paedophiles are using a series of digital techniques known as "masking" and "breadcrumbing" to hide illegal materials from regular web users online, while allowing others to track down criminal images and film by following a series of covert clues. The trend was exposed by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in its latest annual report, which covers new information on how child sex abuse images and videos are being hosted, distributed and identified online. Normally used by cyber-criminals, the tricks are used to hide illegal material in plain sight. "If you access the site directly, you just get legitimate content," Sarah Smith, a technical researcher at the IWF, told The Independent. "If you follow the pathway through links from other sites, then it unlocks the child sexual abuse imagery. "It's stored in the browser, and it drops a cookie into the browser so it can see the trail that you've come along to actually access the site.

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but with a paper clip. In this scenario, the designers of the world's first artificial superintelligence need a way to test their creation. So they program it to do something simple and non-threatening: make paper clips. They set it in motion and wait for the results -- not knowing they've already doomed us all. Before we get into the details of this galaxy-destroying blunder, it's worth looking at what superintelligent A.I. actually is, and when we might expect it.

Gloomy predictions abound that the applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning will put huge numbers of people out of work in the coming years. But the corollary is that these technologies create opportunities to develop new goods and services that will bring new jobs. What's certain is that advanced implementations of computer science are beginning to disrupt our lives. We must start thinking about how these technologies are applied and regulated if we are to reap the benefits and minimise potential harms. The introduction of the steam engine in the 18th century disrupted the life of the agricultural labourer and fuelled the rise of cities, creating new industries and new jobs. Traditional professions such as medicine and law were largely unchanged. But the latest industrial revolution has the potential to change almost every form of work.