WASHINGTON – After years of struggling to write rules that will both protect public safety and free the benefits of a new technology, the Obama administration is on the verge of approving routine commercial use of small drones. The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to announce as early as Tuesday the creation of a new category of rules for drones weighing less than 55 pounds (25 kg). The long-anticipated rules will mean drone operators would be able to fly without special permission. Currently, they have to apply for a waiver from rules that govern manned aircraft, a process that can be time-consuming and expensive. Since 2014 the FAA has granted more than 6,100 waivers and another 7,600 are waiting for approval. Many more small companies have been using drones without FAA permission, say industry officials.

CANNES - Many a CMO is excited about the prospect of having machine-learning algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) do the heavy lifting when it comes to harvesting actionable insights from the data onslaught. But Kevin Akeroyd, GM and SVP of Oracle Marketing Cloud, does his best to let them down easy, pointing out that there's still plenty to be done today. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves," he told Campaign Asia-Pacific on the sidelines of the Cannes Lions Festival in France. You know what, let's get you really, really good at listening and responding to data before you get yourself all hot and bothered about machine learning. In his view, many brands are not even listening to all the available data, tying it together and making an activation decision up into a consistent channel experience.

It's been just about six months since IBM closed its acquisition of The Weather Company, but it's not resting on its laurels. This week Big Blue moved to leverage The Weather Company's go-to-market strength to launch Deep Thunder, a machine learning-driven weather model developed by IBM Research to help industries ranging from aviation and agriculture to retail better predict the business impact of weather. "One of the greatest things about being part of IBM is having a relationship with IBM's Research arm," says Mary Glackin, head of Science & Forecast Operations for The Weather Company. The Weather Company is actually merging its existing Rapid Precision Mesoscale (RPM) model -- a numerical weather prediction system based on the Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecast System (WRF-ARW) -- with Deep Thunder. RPM generates forecasts up to 24 hours ahead, with updates every three hours in the U.S. and every six hours outside the U.S. Precipitation forecasts are calculated from half-hourly instantaneous precipitation forecasts provided by RPM.

Amazon Web Services is increasingly gaining industry attention, and the company's recent hire of Alex Smola to lead the artificial intelligence initiative for AWS is expanding even more its infrastructure as a service cloud offerings. While Amazon Web Services has been around since 2006 its customer base varies widely from that of large cloud leaders Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and IBM (NYSE:IBM). Additionally, a large part of the Amazon Web Services business includes its own web business Amazon.com In the first quarter, Amazon reported sales of 29.13 billion with sales from Amazon Web Services accounting for 2.57 billion. The majority of AWS customers are startups seeking low-cost solutions without the burden of a full suite of enterprise infrastructure.

RedEye is an image processing architecture that doesn't record pictures, it records descriptions of what it sees. There is too much in the world to see. Digital cameras capture all that is within their field of vision, storing richly detailed images in large files. But for many purposes, they don't have to. When we're driving, we don't need to know the license plates of all the cars around us, just their general shapes and positions.

From TechCrunch: "NEW YORK, NY - MAY 09: CEO and co-founder of Viv Dag Kittlaus speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on May 9, 2016 in New York City." Dag Kittlaus co-created Apple's Siri, and now he's looking to disrupt the personal assistant market again--this time with Viv. While Siri may only respond to certain commands and doesn't remember the last thing you ask, you can make extremely specific requests of Viv, like "Will it be hotter than 70 degrees after 5PM tomorrow in San Francisco" or "pay David 20 dollars," and Viv can answer follow up questions. We caught up with Kittlaus to ask a few questions about how he's disrupting the virtual personal assistant market. Popular Science: You helped start Siri and you've got a deep understanding of how most assistants work.

Westworld's intriguing new teaser trailer, released before Game of Thrones last night, is certainly a tease. While the original film was set in a futuristic attraction full of robotic brothels and malfunctioning gunfighters, Westworld the series is populated by sentient artificial intelligence (and possibly set in virtual reality). It has been called "a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin" by The Hollywood Reporter. Anthony Hopkins plays the genius at the helm of this digital Dodge City, and it looks like he will not be as adorable as Richard Attenborough's grandfatherly architect of Jurassic Park. This is familiar territory for EP Jonathan Nolan, who has co-written and contributed to reality challenging films like Memento, Interstellar, and Terminator Salvation.

Helpshift, a company which enables in-app customer support, recently closed a 23 million funding round with backing from Microsoft Ventures and Salesforce Ventures among others. Since it began in 2012, Helpshift claims to have pushed the market forward, being the first to offer a fully native mobile support experience. Some of the customers benefiting from Helpshift's technology include Zynga, Virgin Media, Microsoft and WordPress. CEO and co-founder Abinash Tripathy (pictured) told Mobile World Live that developers of enterprise apps must focus on in-app care, estimating that close to 95 per cent of apps do not do so, thereby losing users. What are the most common challenges developers face when sorting out customer support for their apps?

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Companies taking advantage of amazing new digital technologies dominate our list of 50 Smartest Companies. But despite impressive advances in artificial intelligence and automation, the economy remains in a troubling slowdown.