AI has achieved a win experts once thought wasn't possible. Harvard University was recently awarded a 28 million grant to discover why human brains are so much better at learning and pattern recognition than artificial intelligence (AI). Dispensed by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the funding will fuel a quest to make AI systems faster, smarter, and match or outperform human neural networks. The steep challenge in this quest is the enormous complexity of the human brain and its billions of neurons and trillions of synaptic interconnections with electrochemical signaling. The other challenge: There is no accepted theory of mind that describes what thought--the gist of intelligence--actually is.

The drone turned slowly with a loud buzzing sound, red and blue lights flashing, and hit me right in the eyes with a spotlight. "Security has been notified," boomed a smooth voice from the aircraft's twin loudspeakers. Startup Aptonomy thinks this experience can keep intruders out of factories, warehouses, and other facilities more cheaply than human guards can and more effectively than cameras and alarms. I received the drone security guard treatment in a demonstration at the company's testing area on Treasure Island, an old naval base in San Francisco Bay. Cofounder Mihail Pivtoraiko says his drones will be ready to go on patrol next year.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday released an overview of the federal government's automated vehicles policy, which includes a checklist for makers on various aspects of the cars they are developing, as well as guidelines to states on evolving a common framework for regulating the new technologies. "Automated vehicles have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives each year," wrote Obama in an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Monday. That's what harnessing technology for good can look like. But we have to get it right," he added. Obama wrote that the quickest way to slam the brakes on innovation is if the public loses confidence in the safety of the new technology, and the responsibility of both government and industry is to make sure it doesn't happen.

The acquisition joins Google's fleet of similar investments in the area could prove to greatly improve upon API.AI's capabilities. Just last year, Google opened up its open beta access to Google Cloud Natural Language API. API.AI's CEO is positive that the acquisition will give the company the capacity to continue pioneering the space, "With Google's knowledge, infrastructure and support, we can make sure you get access to the best available technologies and developments in AI and machine learning."

Oracle dived into the rapidly heating market for artificially intelligent business solutions Monday with the release of extensions infusing several traditional enterprise applications with machine-learning capabilities. The new Adaptive Intelligent Applications, enhancements of several Oracle Software-as-a-Service products, expose the data they generate, in concert with external data sets, to machine-learning algorithms that derive insight for optimizing those business processes. Oracle simultaneously enhanced its Analytics Cloud, a platform for advanced data processing that buttresses the self-learning apps with back-end cloud infrastructure, libraries of machine-learning algorithms, big data frameworks and a massive trove of data sets. "We're putting machine learning into core business processes," Rich Clayton, Oracle's vice president of business analytics, told CRN. "This is an evolution of what we currently do. We have business intelligence embedded in those processes, but we're putting more intelligence into it through machine learning."

The Musk-founded Tesla Motors is investing heavily in artificial intelligence, which is already at work in its vehicles. Teslas can now drive themselves on the highway, park themselves, and understand certain voice commands. Tesla is currently hiring for the role of computer vision scientist, someone who will help the company develop "full scene understanding, general object detection and classification," and "human intention direction." While there was a fatal May accident involving a driver using Tesla's Autopilot self-driving mode, Tesla's autonomous technology is still pretty good – it was the first Autopilot fatality in 130 million miles.

Just about the only real innovation happening in phones right now surrounds smart digital assistants - the likes of Google Now, Siri and Cortana - who gather up as much information about us as they can and then try and predict what it is we need next. And amidst all the talk of new cameras and extra storage, it's likely that the artificial intelligence powering our mobile phones is going to make the biggest impact on our lives in the years ahead. Here's what we can imagine coming in the not-too-distant future... We're already seeing basic versions of this on some phones, where your most-used apps appear at the top of the screen, but imagine that idea made much more intelligent: a phone that knows you so well, it launches Instagram before you're able to tap the icon. In the future there's no reason why Google Now couldn't use what it knows about you, how you use your phone, and past behaviour to work out when you're going to call home, or launch a maps app, or even take a photo (if you're near a famous landmark, say). There would be no need for an app drawer and no need to meticulously arrange your home screens, because every time you unlocked your phone, the app you were thinking about (plus some useful context-aware information) would be displayed on the display.

Technology is a strange beast. Everyone is trying to build smaller, faster and quicker, but technology also has the power to transform huge swathes of the human experience. Many companies develop for a niche market, but the world is a big place with big problems. Tiny applets and world-changing technology revolutions come from the same tech community. Who is asking the big questions?

The U.S. government has issued its first rules for automated vehicles. They include a 15-point set of "safety assessment" guidelines for self-driving systems. These cover issues such as cybersecurity, black box recordings to aid crash investigations, and how a car would deal with potential ethical conundrums on the road. The new policy will play a central role in shaping how autonomous vehicles proceed toward commercial use. Many automotive and technology companies are testing self-driving vehicles, and ride-hailing company Uber even lets customers in Pittsburgh order rides in prototypes (see "My Self Driving Uber Needed Human Help").

Even a year ago, the idea of autonomous cars roaming American streets seemed farfetched, and automakers were claiming to be focused on "stepping stone," incremental technology. Carmakers are deploying robots, and federal regulators in charge of how humans drive are finally catching up. Today, US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced guidelines that define a new approach to regulating--and encouraging--self-driving cars. In an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, President Obama wrote, "Government sometimes gets it wrong when it comes to rapidly changing technologies. That's why this new policy is flexible and designed to evolve with new advances."