Three military veterans once involved in the U.S. drone program have thrown their support behind a Yemeni man's legal fight to obtain details about why his family members were killed in a 2012 strike. The former soldiers' unusual decision to publicly endorse the lawsuit against President Obama and other U.S. officials adds another twist to Faisal bin Ali Jaber's four-year quest for accountability in the deaths of his brother-in-law and nephew, who he believes needlessly fell victim to one of the most lethal covert programs in U.S. history. The former enlisted service members told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a recent filing that they believe the 2012 drone strike serves as a case study of how mistakes frequently occur in the nation's targeted-killing program, where life-or-death decisions are based upon top-secret evidence. The veterans say they "witnessed a secret, global system without regard for borders, conducting widespread surveillance with the ability to conduct deadly targeted killing operations." Though the veterans did not disclose any personal knowledge of the strike that is alleged to have killed Jaber's relatives, they claim the military frequently labels the deaths of unknown victims as "enemy kills."

For some of the drunk drivers, speeders and red-light runners of Orange County, the most powerful person to know wasn't a judge, a prosecutor or a defense attorney. It was a low-level paper pusher who rarely saw the inside of a courtroom, authorities say. In 2010, word began spreading quietly through the seamier corners of the O.C's vibrant car enthusiast scene that there was someone working inside the county courts who, for a price, could make a criminal charge or ticket disappear. Over the five years or so that followed, Juan Lopez Jr. forged electronic records to close out more than 1,000 cases in ways that were favorable to the accused, according to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday. Lopez, prosecutors allege, took advantage of his unchecked access to the court computer system to fabricate electronic trails of justice that was never delivered.

Many words in the English language that seem remarkably common have a surprising secondary definition known mostly to scientists in different disciplines. Here are 18 words drawn from the American Heritage Science Dictionary that have an alternative meaning in various science disciplines. Some may be familiar, and others less so. This refers not only the drooling nightmare that terrified Sigourney Weaver but also to non-native creatures and plant species introduced to an area from which they don't originate. When you've graduated from an institution of learning, you become an alumni or "alum," but the word is also the name of any various crystalline double salts of a trivalent metal (such as aluminum, chromium, or iron) or a monovalent metal (such as potassium or sodium).

Computers are only as good, or as bad, as the people who program them. And it turns out that many individuals who create machine learning algorithms are presumably and unintentionally building in race and gender bias. In part one of a two-part interview, Richard Sharp, CTO of predictive marketing company Yieldify, explains how it happens. The Enterprisers Project (TEP): Machines are genderless, have no race, and are in and of themselves free of bias. How does bias creep in?

Artificial Lawyer caught up with Cian O'Sullivan, founder of Beagle, the automated contract analysis system that is just celebrating a year and a half of operations and landing VW as a client. We discussed how Beagle came about, why maybe sometimes it's better not to talk to lawyers about AI and how come the company has one of the world's largest auto companies as a client, and then some. Cian O'Sullivan's web camera is not working when Artificial Lawyer calls for a video conference and so is treated to a picture of a soccer pitch in Colombia that the legal tech company founder took on his travels. The international reference makes sense once you start to talk to O'Sullivan. The Canadian travels a lot.

Our once-subservient machines are encroaching on tasks that have been firmly in the human domain. Even seasoned carnival barkers might struggle to exaggerate the current feats of cognitive technologies. We now marvel at artificial intelligence-fueled creations that allow a teenager to win 160,000 parking ticket cases or an app to quickly diagnose health symptoms at a fraction of the cost of a doctor alone. Unless, of course, you manage a law firm or medical practice now in the position of competing against these machines. Cognitive technologies are artificial intelligence-based systems that increasingly do tasks that once required humans.

Technology has fundamentally altered our lives and will continue to do so. Ethical considerations must remain guiding posts at all times. Undoubtedly, how we approach the regulation of emerging technologies will have wide implications for our definition of human dignity and the equality of individuals. The Green Working Group Robotics - Jan Philipp Albrecht, Max Andersson, Julia Reda, Michel Reimon and Terry Reintke - would like to invite you to a public hearing on "Merging of man and machine: questions of ethics in dealing with emerging technology". With this and further discussions we would like to develop a position on how society should respond to questions like How will our lives and our society change with the increasing fusion with modern technology?

Michio Kaku, a noted theoretical physicist and futurist, predicts, "The job market of the future will consist of those jobs that robots cannot perform." Robots have recently entered the legal workplace, performing several tasks once assigned to newly minted law grads. What does this mean for current and future lawyers? Simple answer: robots will not replace lawyers but they will work with them. Technology has already produced a new class of support professionals that work with lawyers -- just as techs work with doctors in healthcare delivery. Lawyers, like physicians and other professionals supported by technology, will be freed to leverage their time and expertise to interpret data, render professional judgment, and perform functions that require their professional training.

An unstoppable wave of automation is transforming the workplace. While many low-skill jobs are being eliminated, positions demanding higher skills are being created. Most jobs in existence today will add and lose specific functions in the future as robots and other forms of technology take on routine tasks and free humans to focus more on creative and analytic efforts, according to experts. It will be a messy transition. It will be particularly painful for workers who lose their jobs and for employers that fail to recognize where automation fits into their operations.

Samsung has filed for a patent covering a mobile device that could run a second operating system via virtualization. The Samsung patent application, reported on SamMobile and MSPowerUser, covers all sorts of digital devices, according to Samsung: smartphones, tablet PCs, notebook computers, and more. "In this specification, the case where as an example, the first operating system is the android, the second operating system is the window (Windows) is shown," the patent's translation reads. But the patent also makes clear than any OS could be used, including Tizen, Linux, or MacOS. In the world conceived by the patent, the host OS would run the device, and the secondary OS would be run essentially as an app.