You are how you drive, we learned this week, when researchers showed how your car's computer can identify you based on patterns in your driving techniques. And it doesn't take much data to do so. Information collected from a car's brake pedal alone let the researchers distinguish the correct driver nine times out of 10. Patterns, of a different sort, also played a role in a map researchers have created to track where government hackers around the world are spying on journalists, activists, lawyers, and NGOs. And speaking of surveillance--whistleblower Edward Snowden also popped up in a Vice episode this week to show you how to make your phone "go black" so it's harder to surveil.

"I am six feet tall and my hazel eyes reflect my olive skin... I seek to connect with women who are romantics at heart… that are open to the possibility of true love". These are lines from the online dating profile of Robert Torres - a man who is serving four concurrent life sentences for aggravated sexual assault, including the rape of Texas nurse Lori Williams at knifepoint 20 years ago, while her two daughters slept in a room nearby. His other victims included a 63-year-old woman and her 16-year-old granddaughter. The advert contains no mention of any of these crimes.

I recently mentioned to my 12-year-old daughter that artificial intelligence will be able to outsmart us by 2045. She got very upset, feeling that this would be the end of the human race and saying, "Then we can kill ourselves, otherwise we will be killed by them." My daughter's reaction was childish (which one would expect from a 12-year-old). But when world-leading technology and science visionaries also express concerns about the dangers of artificial intelligence, maybe we should pay attention. Physicist Stephen Hawking, technology entrepreneur Elon Musk and Microsoft founder Bill Gates have all expressed concerns that computers and smart technologies may eventually outsmart humans and, through calculations based in cold logic without regard to the value of human life, could lead to our own demise.

The cradle of American automotive innovation has in the past decade migrated 2,000 miles from Detroit to Silicon Valley, where autonomous vehicles and other advanced technology is coming to life. In a bid to reclaim the mantle for Motown, Michigan lawmakers have introduced legislation that could make their state the best place in the country, if not the world, to develop self-driving vehicles and put them on the road. But this being Michigan, it's no surprise the proposals favor industry players and could inadvertently (or intentionally) criminalize some research. "Michigan's dominance in auto research and development is under attack from several states and countries who desire to supplant our leadership in transportation. We can't let that happen," says senator Mike Kowall, the lead sponsor of four bills introduced Wednesday.

Jerry Kaplan: will discuss his his book, Humans Need Not Apply, at the Bay Area Book Festival on Sat. This article is brought to you by the Bay Area Book Festival. Fifty years ago, we could not have imagined phones that communicated without wires. Ten years ago, driverless cars were something out of a science-fiction novel -- not on assembly lines. Artificial intelligence has already arrived -- hello, Siri and GPS -- but has only just begun the trajectory that promises to change our personal and work lives radically.

Between recent controversies over Facebook's Trending Topics feature and the U.S. legal system's "risk assessment" scores in dealing with criminal defendants, there's probably never been broader interest in the mysterious algorithms that are making decisions about our lives. That mystery may not last much longer. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University announced this week that they've developed a method to help uncover the biases that can be encoded in those decision-making tools. Machine-learning algorithms don't just drive the personal recommendations we see on Netflix or Amazon. Increasingly, they play a key role in decisions about credit, healthcare and job opportunities, among other things.

Between recent controversies over Facebook's Trending Topics feature and the U.S. legal system's "risk assessment" scores in dealing with criminal defendants, there's probably never been broader interest in the mysterious algorithms that are making decisions about our lives. That mystery may not last much longer. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University announced this week that they've developed a method to help uncover the biases that can be encoded in those decision-making tools. Machine learning algorithms don't just drive the personal recommendations we see on Netflix or Amazon. Increasingly, they play a key role in decisions about credit, healthcare, and job opportunities, among other things.

Online abuse remains the big hairy monster in the room for platforms powered by user-generated content. Twitter especially has had some very sizable and public problems with problem users, taking flak in recent years for being the go-to social media conduit for orchestrated misogynistic campaigns, such as the #Gamergate example. Or more recently for being the training platform where trolls were able to teach Microsoft's ingenue AI chatbot Tay how to be racist and sexist double quick. Twitter knows it has a problem with users appropriating its platform to spread hate speech and/or harass others. Former CEO Dick Costolo conceded back in February 2015 that'we suck at dealing with abuse'.

Robots are moving out of the factory and into the office. The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has changed all this. Automated systems can now be used to carry out tasks that previously required human intelligence, such as providing advice and analysing documents. IBM's Watson computer is already being used for complex data analysis outside the legal sector, such as the medical profession. For example, US-based health insurer WellPoint uses Watson to support decisions on some patient procedures.

In a promotional video for Amazon's Echo virtual assistant device, a young girl no older than 12 asks excitedly: "Is it for me?". The voice-controlled speaker can search the web for information, answer questions and even tell kids' jokes. An investigation by the Guardian has found that despite Amazon marketing the Echo to families with young children, the device is likely to contravene the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), set up to regulate the collection and use of personal information from anyone younger than 13. Along with Google, Apple and others promoting voice-activated artificial intelligence systems to young children, the company could now face multimillion-dollar fines. "This is part of the initial wave of marketing to children using the internet of things," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy advocacy group that helped write the law.