Artificial intelligence has reached yet another milestone, of sorts, in its development: Elon Musk's OpenAI group has decided to hire "techie cops." These cops aren't futuristic vigilantes out to destroy a rogue AI program lest it kick-start the Terminator saga. Instead, they're looking for those who would abuse AI for illegal or unethical purposes. But even these kinds of policing efforts don't help assuage all the fears of people who are still wary of the very concept of artificial intelligence. It will take transparency and trust to change minds about what is, essentially, our inevitable future.

The last time state lawmakers tried to place limits on drones in the skies above California, they were met with the veto of Gov. Jerry Brown, who said he did not want to create new crimes to enforce bans on the use of such devices. This year, the pushback to new rules is coming not from the governor but through the lobbying efforts of a budding industry that hopes to influence policy at the state Capitol and nationwide. As drones multiply in number and category, cities and states want to set boundaries. But drone manufacturers and associations this legislative session boosted their politicking, successfully beating back several bills they said would create a patchwork of laws that vary by state and hinder innovation. "We want to solve problems and address concerns, but to do it in a way that is constantly clear across the country," said Brendan Schulman, vice president of policy and legal affairs for DJI Technology Co., the world's largest drone maker. "Otherwise, it will be too confusing for commercial users and consumers to understand what the rules are when they travel from place to place."

Emerging from stealth mode, self-driving car start-up Drive.ai Drive.ai announced today its first commercial foray, a retrofit kit to make fleet vehicles, from delivery trucks to car services, self-driving. The kit includes a sensor array, computer and an LED sign to communicate with pedestrians and other drivers. Self-driving car technology is being developed by most major automakers, automotive equipment suppliers and start-up companies such as Drive.ai. The intent is to eliminate the 95 percent of fatal car accidents every year that are attributable to human error.

Will Artificial Intelligence help Big Data deliver on its promise? One of the major trends I have been researching recently, has been the shift in interest towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its multiple forms and guises, and the potential it has to analyse vast quantities of data and quickly derive actionable insights. As we all know, AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning are not new. However, there has been huge investment in the space in recent years and the ability to automatically apply complex mathematical calculations to Big Data – over and over, faster and faster – is a recent development. With steady advances in digitisation and cheap computing power, no wonder people are excited about the possibilities.

The debate over GMOs has divided activists and Nobel laureates alike, and that is no different when it comes to Monsanto and Vietnam. To Monsanto, genetically modified seeds are a more relevant topic today than the history of Agent Orange associated with a previous version of their company. This agrarian development, it says, serves to benefit farmers and produce greater yields due to the seeds' resistance to insects, herbicides and drought. The company believes that agricultural biotechnology is critical to the sustainability of agriculture in Vietnam and the region, according to Upadyayula. The organization says it believes genetically modified corn is crucial for a country that imported around 6 million metric tons of corn in 2015.

The manufacturing hub for the electronics industry, Kunshan, in Jiangsu province, is seeking a drastic reduction in labour costs as it undergoes a makeover after an industrial explosion killed 146 people in 2014. The county, one-seventh the size of neighbouring Shanghai and the mainland's first county to achieve US 4,000 per capita income, was adjudged the best county for its economic performance by Forbes for seven years in a row. However, the blaze, blamed on poor safety standards and haphazard industrialisation, dented Kunshan's pride. More than a year on, the county, which attracts much of its investment from Taiwan, is trying to reinvent its growth strategy. It is accelerating growth by replacing humans with robots and encouraging start-ups.

Earlier this year, Nervana Systems CEO Naveen Rao was asked what would happen if Intel began attacking the fast-growing market for chips designed specifically for running "deep learning" software. Now, Rao will be a key player in Intel's attempt to catch up in one of the most promising new silicon markets to emerge since the smartphone. Intel revealed Tuesday that it is buying Nervana and its deep-learning hardware and software for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition marks a departure for Intel and comes at a crucial moment. The company became the world's largest chip maker with a single-minded strategy to make its x86 microprocessors the standard for running a huge swath of applications, from solitaire to massive payroll systems.

As more cyber- threats arise every day, extensive research into prevention and detection schemes is being conducted globally. One of the issues faced is keeping up with the sheer mass of new emerging threats online. Traditional detection schemes are rule or signature based. The creation of a rule or signature relies on prior knowledge of the threats structure, source and operation, making it impossible to stop new threats without prior knowledge. Manually identifying all new and disguised threats is too time-consuming to be humanly possible.

Recent years have seen Artificial Intelligence (AI) become the next big thing, or one of the next big things on a technological level and it is starting to have serious social consequences. The advent of Machine to Machine (M2M) communications and the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) are changing industrial processes, from production to distribution, and bringing robotics and automation into every industry. We are entering the "age of complexity"., where computers can optimize processes based by crunching massive data sets. Uber is preparing to add self-driving cars to its current fleet in Pittsburgh, while the Rio Olympics were partly covered by Artificial Intelligence (as openly admitted by the Washington Post for example). You can relax, we're not quite there yet. The legal framework around automated transportation is still widely debated and Facebook bots are widely known to be, at best, irrelevant.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, with one in eight women receiving the terrifying diagnosis in their lifetime. But researchers have now developed artificial intelligence software that can accurately predict breast cancer risk, which would enable doctors to closely monitor those most at risk of developing the potentially life-threatening disease. The AI program reliably interprets mammograms and translates patient data into diagnostic information 30 times faster than a human doctor, with 99 per cent accuracy. It was developed by researchers at Houston Methodist Research Institute in Texas. "This software intelligently reviews millions of records in a short amount of time, enabling us to determine breast cancer risk more efficiently using a patient's mammogram," said Stephen T Wong, chair of the Department of Systems Medicine and Bioengineering at the institute.