A new brain-computer interface developed by scientists can read a person's thoughts in real time to identify when a robot makes a mistake, an advance that may lead to safer self-driving cars. Most existing brain-computer interface (BCI) require people to train with it and even learn to modulate their thoughts to help the machine understand, researchers said. By relying on brain signals called "error-related potentials" (ErrPs) that occur automatically when humans make a mistake or spot someone else making one, the new approach allows even complete novices to control a robot with their minds. This technology developed by researchers at the Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may offer intuitive and instantaneous ways of communicating with machines, for applications as diverse as supervising factory robots to controlling robotic prostheses. "When humans and robots work together, you basically have to learn the language of the robot, learn a new way to communicate with it, adapt to its interface," said Joseph DelPreto, a PhD candidate at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

For Silicon Valley, the headline was sweet nectar: Google DeepMind, the world's hottest artificial intelligence lab, embraces the blockchain, the endlessly fascinating idea at the heart of the bitcoin digital currency. The lab's re-imagining of the blockchain has very little to do with AI--or the blockchain, for that matter. If you want AI crossed with the blockchain, try wrapping your head around Numerai, the world's strangest hedge fund. To DeepMind's credit, its new project depends less on trendy ideas than an apparent desire to solve a real problem in the real world--one that involves the most private and personal information. DeepMind is building an auditing system for healthcare data. That may not sound sexy, but it matters.

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.

This has been a dark week in the world of technology, with WikiLeaks' mammoth'Vault 7' document release making for some deeply unpleasant reading. The 8,761 files published by the whistle-blowing organisation allegedly came straight from the CIA, which is believed to have been using a variety of hacking methods to secretly spy on people through their electronic devices. The agency is also said to be capable of pinning the blame for cyber attacks on other countries. WikiLeaks is set to follow this up by publishing the redacted details of all of the CIA's cyber weapons, but will give technology companies initial exclusive access to them, to prepare themselves against hackers. Fortunately, there are also a number of simple steps that ordinary people can take to protect themselves, without going off-grid.

Machine learning is a field that threatens to both augment and undermine exactly what it means to be human, and it's becoming increasingly important that you--yes, you--actually understand it. I don't think you should need to have a technical background to know what machine learning is or how it's done. Too much of the discussion about this field is either too technical or too uninformed, and, through this blog, I hope to level the playing field. This is for smart, ambitious people who want to know more about machine learning but who don't care about the esoteric statistical and computational details underlying the field. You don't need to know any math, statistics, or computer science to read and understand it.

CHICAGO--The overarching theme of RSNA 2016 has been deep learning and machine intelligence. Both are designed to help you with your workflow and ability to provide optimal patient care. But, questions still exist about what these tools are and how you can implement them. To answer this question, Vlado Menkovski, a former research scientist with vendor Philips, discussed the differences between these two tools, highlighting how they can be used. "This technology has provided breakthroughs," he said.

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Keen Footwear sells its iconic boots, shoes and sandals through thousands of retailers worldwide. But the Oregon manufacturer, which is working hard to honor its commitment to become "American Built," does not have the manpower to support a dedicated information security staff. With a team of six information technology professionals -- all but two focused on handling the day-to-day client issues of its 450 employees -- the IT staff would fall behind in triaging incidents the company's security software flagged. "We fit squarely in the realm that we have the problems of all the big players, but we don't have the resources of a large enterprise," said Clark Flannery, Keen's director of IT in Portland. To solve the problem, Flannery augmented his IT staff with machines.

China's government is preparing for a war of sorts with the United States to claim the vantage point to define the technological trend for the next generation. At the annual meeting of China's parliament this week, the usual Communist Party agenda of economic growth, social welfare, jobs, health care and pension made way for an unusual addition: a clarion call by some of China's most influential business and technology leaders for the government to set policies to define what they consider the Next Big Thing. They include the founder of the largest Chinese internet search engine Baidu, the owner of smartphone maker Xiaomi, and the founder of Geely Automobile, which bought Volvo. They are tabling motions and proposals for the government to take the lead in getting Chinese enterprises to collaborate on artificial intelligence (AI) research, and facilitate the industrialising of the technology. AI made its way into Premier Li Keqiang's March 5 work report, a signal that it has caught the attention of China's top decision makers.

Data for the enterprise is now a currency of its own, yet many companies and institutions are still trying to navigate the moving of large volumes of data from on-premise to the cloud in an effort to capitalize on the value of data stored in many locations. "I think longer-term the economic advantage of using cloud environments are undeniable. The cost advantages of hosting information in the cloud, the benefits that come from the scalability of those environments is far surpassing capabilities that organizations can invest in themselves or their own data centers," said Paul Scott-Murphy, vice president of product management, big data/cloud, at WANdisco Inc. During the Google Cloud Next event, Scott-Murphy spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's mobile live streaming studio, at SiliconANGLE's Palo Alto, CA, studio to discuss the trends WANdisco is seeing with its customers, as well as news from Google Cloud Next. WANdisco's enterprise and institutional customers are all facing similar problem: The availability of data and the combination of where it is stored makes it difficult to access and derive any benefits for them.