Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

If you live in California, chances are you've spotted a self-driving car--some 21 companies are testing tech in the Golden State, and they've running around all over the place. But those sightings are never quite as futuristic as they could be. State law requires a trained human sit behind the wheel, and restricts the technology to testing only. Now, Silicon Valley's home state is ready to toss the bag of flesh and bones and replace it with a big sack of cash. The California Department of Motor Vehicles today proposed new regulations that will finally prepare for the move from testing to commercialization.

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Another Alien film, another terrifying android that could spell humanity's downfall. In Prometheus, we were introduced to Michael Fassbender's David, a robot who was a bit too curious about the nature of extraterrestrial life. Now Fassbender is back in Alien: Covenant as "Walter," a slightly tweaked android with one important difference: He has no human emotions. That should make conversation a bit tougher, but hopefully it will prevent him from using his crew as human guinea pigs.

The race to build the first fleet of robot cars is heating up, but today it's brainiac lawyers--not brainiac engineers--toiling in the pit. On Friday in a San Francisco district court, attorneys for Google self-driving car spinoff Waymo filed for a preliminary injunction against Uber. The Googlers' message: You stole our tech, and now we will eat your face. Waymo initially filed its bombshell complaint against Uber last month, alleging that former Googler Anthony Levandowski made off with 14,000 confidential documents and trade secrets before founding his own company, Otto--a startup that Uber acquired for a reported $680 million just six months later. And now the design for Uber's lidar, a crucial sensor that helps self-driving cars "see" around them, looks a lot like Waymo's, the suit alleges.

Waymo, the self-driving car division of Google-parent Alphabet, is seeking a court order to stop Uber from using trade secrets, including thousands of confidential files it alleges were stolen by a former Waymo employee. Waymo is seeking a preliminary injunction against Uber. Waymo says a preliminary injunction will "prevent defendants from misappropriating Waymo's own technology to cheat and distort competition in this nascent market." That technology, which Waymo says was developed over thousands of hours by researchers, engineers and designers, includes light detection and ranging technology known as LiDAR that helps self-driving cars sense their surroundings. Uber said it was reviewing the matter and referred USA TODAY to its previous statement on the lawsuit.

Genevera I. Allen (left) is a professor in the Departments of Statistics, and the Electrical and Computer Engineering, at Rice University. Corinne Cath (right) is a doctoral student at the Alan Turing Institute, the national institute for data science in UK. Below are extracts of recent interviews that are most relevant to our audience. Links to full interviews are provided. Genevera, what do you think of the shift from "Statistics" to "Statistical Learning and Data Science" in the statistics community (The "Data vs Math" Question?)

We are seeing today novel expressions of artificial intelligence (AI) which were just a while ago the stuff of sci-fi: autonomous vehicles, self-learning machines, fiction-writing programs which may win literary prizes. Yet, what if the AI goes awry? What if an autonomous vehicle malfunctions and damages your property? What if an AI robot hacks into a smart city's network and steals every citizen's personal data? Will our current legal liability rules give us satisfactory outcomes when applied to such scenarios?

Cars with no steering wheel, no pedals and nobody at all inside could be driving themselves on California roads by the end of the year, under proposed new state rules that would give a powerful boost to the fast-developing technology. For the past several years, tech companies and automakers have been testing self-driving cars on the open road in California. But regulators insisted that those vehicles have steering wheels, foot controls and human backup drivers who could take over in an emergency. On Friday, the state department of motor vehicles proposed regulations that would open the way for truly driverless cars. Under the rules, road-testing of such vehicles could begin by the end of 2017, and a limited number could become available to customers as early as 2018 – provided the federal government gives the necessary permission.

Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving spinoff from Google, has asked a judge to block Uber from operating its self driving vehicles in the latest round of a row over sensor technology. Earlier this year Waymo sued Uber and its autonomous trucking subsidiary Otto, claiming over 14,000 documents relating to its self driving car sensors were stolen by a former executive. Today, Waymo said it would seek a preliminary injunction against Uber in the high-profile intellectual property lawsuit during a hearing in San Francisco on April 27th, according to a court filing. Anthony Levandowski, head of Uber's self-driving program, speaks about their driverless car in San Francisco. Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving spinoff from Google, today asked a judge to block Uber from operating its self driving vehicles in the latest round of a row over sensor technology.