In 2014, Google acquired the artificial intelligence startup DeepMind, but it wasn't cheap. With a price tag of 500M, there must have been something special that Google saw in DeepMind that was worth acquiring. While the company hasn't produced any actual products for commercial use, they have focused on machine learning. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that aims to provide computers with the ability to learn new information without being directed to do so. Machine learning involves the development of computer programs that have the ability to teach themselves to grow and alter themselves when presented with new data.

A fascinating new simulation finds that self-driving cars will terraform cities: 90% of cars will be eliminated, acres of land will open up, and commute times will drop 10%. A team of transportation scientists at the Organization for Cooperation and Development took data on actual trips in Lisbon, Portugal and looked at how a fleet of self-driving, shared "taxibots" would change city landscape [PDF]. These "taxibots", the researchers imagine, are a marriage of mass carpooling and UPS delivery intelligence: they constantly roam throughout cities and match carpool routes with mathematical elegance. Ultimately, they estimate, 9 out of 10 cars would be completely unnecessary -- as would public transit. "Nearly the same mobility can be delivered with 10% of the cars TaxiBots combined with high-capacity public transport could remove 9 out of every 10 cars in a mid-sized European city," the paper concludes.

It feels like the barbarians are continually at the gate. We can't seem to go more than a week before a new data breach is in the news, impacting potentially millions of individuals. The targets range from companies like Omni Hotels, who had been breached affecting up to 50,000 customers whose personal and credit card information was exposed, to North Carolina State University, where over 38,000 students personal information, including their SSN's, were at risk. As I mentioned in a recent blog'Internet of Things and Big Data – who owns your data?', we have been storing our personal and credit card information in a variety of systems, credit card companies, banks, online retailers, hotels- and that's just naming a few. The information in those systems is more valuable than gold to the hackers.

If former Marine and entrepreneur Sean Bielat has his way, the law enforcement officer tentatively approaching a vehicle in the future after making a traffic stop won't be an officer at all. Rather, those are the kind of interactions -- fraught with uncertainty, potentially dangerous -- that seem to him to make perfect sense for one of his robots to deal with instead. DON'T MISS: I built a Wi-Fi paradise and all I needed was one device Bielat is the CEO of Endeavor Robotics, a privately held ground robotics company that in April spun out of Mass.-based iRobot and is focused on the defense, public safety and energy and industrial markets. It's a young company, but already Endeavor has delivered some 6,000 robots to customers, everything from a roughly five-pound throwable robot perfect for surveillance and reconnaissance up to its 500-pound beast called the Kobra. The Kobra has a 12-foot arm and can lift loads of up to a couple hundred pounds.

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When Joshua Neally left his office in Springfield, MO, climbed into his Tesla Model X, and merged onto the highway to head home, he did what many Tesla drivers do--he switched on Autopilot mode. Neally, who reportedly pays close attention while driving Autopilot, following Tesla's guidelines for use, may have expected the advanced driving feature to kick in, braking if a vehicle crossed its path or alerting him if a nearby car slid too close into his lane. But, when Neally began experiencing tightness in his chest and, after calling his wife, realized he needed to get to the hospital, he used Autopilot in a way he probably never expected: To rush him straight to the hospital. SEE: Tesla's Autopilot: The smart person's guide (TechRepublic) The tightness in his chest turned out to be caused by a pulmonary embolism, and Neally was able to make a full recovery. "I don't really think I could have [made the drive without Autopilot]," Neally told CBS.

Not the most discussed cable drama, perhaps, but one I watch out of interest and not out of duty, "Halt and Catch Fire" is back for a third season this week. It's a welcome reminder that you don't need to pour on the sex, violence or sexual violence to make a story compelling. A 1980s tale of the wildcatting days of personal computing and network connectivity, the series set its first two seasons in Texas, surprisingly but not ahistorically. The new year finds the five industrious principals -- computer-savvy couple Gordon and Donna Clark (Scoot McNairy and Kerry Bishé), hotshot coder Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis), hucksterish visionary Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) and Toby Huss (Artie the World's Strongest Man on "The Adventures of Pete and Pete," I will always mention) as John Broadman, the business end -- relocated to California to muck in alongside the Silicon Valley colonists and venture capitalists. They have had a hand in hardware and in software, video games and chat rooms, and this year, someone might be about to invent online shopping. After two seasons of near-constant professional and personal crises, the characters have moved on beyond the original suggestion of Gordon and Joe as vague stand-ins for Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.

It is surprising how much ink is spilled on theories that banking is about to be wiped out by a tsunami called fintech, resulting in the alleged mass closure of banks and unemployment of financial services professionals. Last time I was in New York, Wall Street was intact and thriving and specialized financial crime lawyers like myself were busier than ever. First, the law stands in the way of fintech displacing even one dollar of financial services. A fintech company is not a Brooklyn pizza stand – it cannot survive without being connected to the financial system, which requires a banking partner and a banking relationship. In other words, fintech cannot disrupt anything unless the banks and lawyers (as regulators) let them.

Editor's note: We're proud to bring NextDraft--the most righteous, most essential newsletter on the web--to WIRED.com. Every Friday you'll get a roundup of the week's most popular must-read stories from around the internet, courtesy of mastermind Dave Pell. I don't want to be an alarmist, but there's a chance we're running out of swear words. Over the years, our language has become more coarse, and dropping F bombs and other profanities has been fully integrated into our daily exchanges. As use of the words becomes more acceptable, they lose their power.

From picking our favorite restaurants to predicting weather and correcting global food shortages, artificial intelligence is already augmenting everyday life. Firmly rooted in the realm of science fiction, artificial intelligence (AI) has often felt external – something happening out there. In reality, AI is a huge part of our everyday lives. We just don't recognize it. Bank alerts of suspected fraudulent charges, smartphone notifications to exercise, Siri or Cortana's ability to recognize voices – are all examples of AI. "Artificial intelligence is basically where machines make sense, learn, interface with the external world, without human beings having to specifically program it," said Nidhi Chappell, director of machine learning at Intel. AI improves lives in many other areas too.