SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON – Tesla Motors Co. Chief Executive Elon Musk said Sunday the automaker is updating its semi-autonomous driving system Autopilot with new limits on hands-off driving that likely would have prevented a fatality in May. Musk said the update, which will be available within a week or two through an "over-the-air" software update, will rely foremost on radar to give Tesla's electric luxury cars a better sense of what is around them and when to brake. New restrictions of Autopilot 8.0 are a nod to widespread concerns that autopilot lulled users into a false sense of security through its "hands-off" driving. The updated system now will temporarily prevent drivers from using the system if they fail to respond to audible warnings to take back control of the car. "We're making much more effective use of radar," Musk told journalists on a call.

It's been a busy summer in the artificial intelligence (A.I.) space, but the most interesting A.I. opportunities might not be coming from the biggest names. You may have heard about Tesla's self-driving cars that made headlines twice, for vastly different reasons -- a fatal crash in Florida in which the driver was using the Autopilot software, and claims by a Missouri man that the feature drove him 20 miles to a hospital after he suffered a heart attack, saving his life. Or you might have heard of Apple spending 200 million to acquire machine learning and A.I. startup Turi. A smart drone defeated an experienced Air Force pilot in flight simulation tests. IBM's Watson diagnosed a 60-year-old woman's rare form of leukemia within 10 minutes, after doctors had been stumped for months.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has finally revealed the four-one-one on the version 8.0 of his car's Autopilot feature, and it appears that the software update will be one that could really prevent fatal collisions. On Sunday, the business magnate officially published his highly anticipated blog post, which per previous reports should detail how the Autopilot 8.0 update works. In his post, Musk confirmed that with the software update, Autopilot will primarily make use of the onboard radar that was added to Tesla cars as part of the hardware suite launched in October 2014. Instead of acting as a supplementary sensor to the cars' camera and image processing system, the radar has been enhanced to be used as the primary control sensor that recognizes objects without the need to confirm their existence using the built-in camera. Musk says in his post that what the radar does is take snapshots of the environment every tenth of a second and these snapshots are assembled to produce a 3D picture of the world, since relying on just a single frame would make it difficult for the sensor to identify moving objects from stationary objects.

WASHINGTON – CIA Director John Brennan warned on Sunday that Russia has "exceptionally capable and sophisticated" computer capabilities and that the U.S. must be on guard. When asked in a television interview whether Russia is trying to manipulate the American presidential election, Brennan didn't say. But he noted that the FBI is investigating the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails, and he cited Moscow's aggressive intelligence collection and its focus on high-tech snooping. "I think that we have to be very, very wary of what the Russians might be trying to do in terms of collecting information in a cyber realm, as well as what they might want to do with it," he told CBS' "Face the Nation" on the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. On the terrorism threat, Brennan said the U.S. government is much better now at sharing information.

We have seen how the internet of things and the growing phenomenon of'big data' will throw up major problems for consumers and citizens, problems that have as yet barely been grasped by most policy-makers. In this world of growing complexity, the potential for an unintended consequence becomes greater and greater from machines performing an action that was not anticipated. There are key issues, too, about our reliance on data at a time of massive data generation, data storing and data preservation which have the potential to both obscure results and generate injustices. Perhaps the greatest issue that we now face is caused by our blind faith in machines. We have invested them with certainty and – as we have pointed out – we trust them. Part of the reason for this is an odd confusion that has conflated the machines of the industrial age with the machines of the information age.

When you're a firefighter, your life is always on the brink of danger. Now, NASA has developed an artificial intelligence system called AUDREY that could help save the lives of firefighters by nagivating them in smoke-filled burning establishments. Meet AUDREY (Assistant for Understanding Data through Reasoning, Extraction, and sYnthesis), an artificial intelligence system being developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. According to a report from Smithsonian, AUDREY is a technology that tracks the firefighters movements and guides them to safety during rescue. The technology originated from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's work on space rovers kused on Mars.

Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA -1.46 % is changing the way its Autopilot system works following the fatal crash in May of a car that was driving under semi-autonomous control. The revision, which Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk outlined Sunday, will depend more on radar signals to help guide Tesla vehicles along roadways, and adds safeguards to keep drivers engaged at high speed. The software updates will be rolled out within the next two weeks and delivered to vehicles over the air, he said. They will affect Tesla vehicles built since October 2014, before which the hardware used by Autopilot wasn't included. Autopilot, which uses cameras, radar and sensors to steer vehicles and adjust their speed, has come under scrutiny since the Florida crash that killed Tesla driver Joshua Brown in May, the first known death of a driver using the system.

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON - Tesla Motors Co Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Sunday the automaker was updating its semi-autonomous driving system Autopilot with new limits on hands-off driving and other improvements that likely would have prevented a fatality in May. Musk said the update, which will be available within a week or two through an "over-the-air" software update, would rely foremost on radar to give Tesla's electric luxury cars a better sense of what is around them and when to brake. New restrictions of Autopilot 8.0 are a nod to widespread concerns that the system lulled users into a false sense of security through its "hands-off" driving capability. The updated system now will temporarily prevent drivers from using the system if they do not respond to audible warnings to take back control of the car. "We're making much more effective use of radar," Musk told journalists on a phone call.

Tesla Motors Co. Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Sunday the automaker was updating its semi-autonomous driving system Autopilot with new limits on hands-off driving that likely would have prevented a fatality in May. Musk said the update, which will be available within a week or two through an "over-the-air" software update, would rely foremost on radar to give Tesla's electric luxury cars a better sense of what is around them and when to brake. New restrictions of Autopilot 8.0 are a nod to widespread concerns that autopilot lulled users into a false sense of security through its "hands-off" driving. The updated system now will temporarily prevent drivers from using the system if they fail to respond to audible warnings to take back control of the car. "We're making much more effective use of radar," Musk told journalists on a call.

Elon Musk unveiled a series of much-anticipated upgrades to Tesla's Autopilot system on Sunday. The electric carmaker is facing widespread scrutiny following several Autopilot-related collisions, including a fatal crash that occurred in Florida in May. Musk, Tesla's billionaire CEO, said the upgrades "will be a really dramatic improvement in the safety of the vehicle," he told reporters on a Sunday press call. SEE ALSO: Tesla's Autopilot just got a lot more expensive without getting any better The tech mogul said that Tesla had reviewed most of the changes with the U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHSTA). The federal agency is investigating two recent crashes involving Tesla cars and is expected to unveil broader regulatory guidance on autonomous vehicles in coming weeks.