It's no surprise that a future with self-driving cars and passengers as co-drivers is fast approaching. Yet while automakers race to be the first to bring a fully autonomous vehicle to the market, there is also a growing focus on the driver. Cars that are 100 percent autonomous (and affordable) are still decades away from hitting the road. In the meantime, semi-autonomous cars must learn to better understand the driver. This can be facilitated using machine learning and computer vision inside the car.

In order to counter the growing nuclear threat from North Korea in the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. is expected to deploy an unmanned aircraft system to South Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported Monday, citing a Seoul military official. The attack drone will be deployed to strengthen strike capabilities against ground targets in the North, the official told the South Korean news agency. The Gray Eagle aircraft will be deployed to a U.S. military base in the southwestern town of Gunsan -- about 111 miles south of Seoul, the report said. However, it is still unclear when the system will be installed. The Gray Eagle is capable of striking military facilities in the north of the Military Demarcation Line separating the two Koreas, the official told Yonhap.

The ex-bomber plant and home of Rosie the Riveter will transform this year into an autonomous vehicle technology test site. It once housed one of the largest factories in the world, pumping out B24 bombers to help America and her allies win World War II, and later transmissions when it was owned by General Motors. It once housed one of the largest factories in the world, pumping out B24 bombers to help America and her allies win World War II, and later transmissions when it was owned by General Motors. The former Willow Run bomber plant in Ypsilanti Township is mostly a memory now, demolished following GM's 2009 bankruptcy, except for a piece that houses the Yankee Air Museum. Land at the former 335-acre Willow Run site in Ypsilanti Township where the American Center for Mobility is located on in January 2017 that will be used for testing autonomous vehicles.

Many of these people are being exploited in ways that have existed throughout history: About 22% are victims of "forced sexual exploitation," with others made to work in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, or domestic labor, according to the report from the U.N.'s International Labor Organization. Researchers and activists say part of the solution to this ancient problem may be surprisingly modern: Machine learning and similar statistical tools can identify suppliers of goods and services that are more likely to involve forced labor, whether they're electronics manufacturers in developing countries or escort services in the United States. In the U.S., where sex work is frequently advertised online, leaving a digital trail, these techniques can also help guide law enforcement to sex trafficking gangs and their victims. In international trade, that kind of information can help buyers work with their vendors to ensure ethical practices throughout the supply chain or, failing that, switch to new vendors to stay in compliance with regulatory requirements and their own customers' ethics. "A lot of companies are becoming a lot more purpose-driven, and I think there's a lot more importance even to end consumers today about the type of companies they're buying [from]," says Alex Atzberger, president of SAP Ariba, a massive business-to-business procurement network.

A small insurance startup, Root, has launched a car insurance specifically designed for Tesla vehicle owners that reduces the price of the policy the longer the vehicle runs in autonomous mode, on the basis that this mode is much safer than driving manually. Thus, drivers who spend a lot of time on the highway or in conditions where they can activate the autonomous mode will pay less insurance. The idea is based on the fact that a vehicle is increasingly a connected platform, a smartphone on wheels from which we can obtain a constant flow of information. To sign up for a Root policy, which typically offers much lower prices than its competitors, you must download an app that allows the company to access GPS, accelerometers and gyroscopes data on your smartphone, making it possible for the company to evaluate your driving. After about two to three weeks driving with the app, enough for the average driver to forget about the app and go back to his or her typical driving habits, the algorithm has created a user profile that includes how much time the vehicle is in use, frequent destinations, whether drivers change lane excessively, their driving speeds, to what extent they respect traffic rules, or if they use their smartphone while driving, among many other things.

At this year's SXSW the theme for our conference tech coverage is "AI for good." Technologists will be discussing how they are using new developments in artificial intelligence to solve complex, long-standing social problems, including crimes against children. Federico Gomez Suarez (pictured), senior technical program manager at Microsoft, spoke to John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's mobile live streaming studio, during SXSW about his involvement in Thorn, a special outfit that works with law enforcement to rescue traffic or exploited children. "The fact that we're making a difference in those lives is extremely encouraging," Suarez said. He credits Microsoft's Hack for Good program for paving his avenue to Thorn.

Sign up for our newsletter to not miss out on tomorrow's game-changers for your industry. At Mobile World Congress this year, I got to moderate the most interesting panel of the whole show. Okay, I may be a bit biased as I created the idea of the panel The unreal reality: what is real when AI, VR and AR are mainstream? We kept circling back to human kind's seemingly inherent distrust of Artificial Intelligence (AI). But I think my colleague Manoj P M had a great point: "People think AI will be a replacement for humans, but actually it won't," he said.

According to one of Maurice Conti's TED presentations, we arrived to a new, augmented age, in which Artificial Intelligence gains a new role. The future holds a generated era in which artificial intelligence comes up with its own designs, its own ideas, its own products instead of all our tools being passive, us telling them what to do and them doing it. From now on, tasks will be executed by robots, AI and humans cooperating, robots providing perfect execution, AI the design and humans making the necessary decisions. But in order to get to this point it is crucial to build a "nervous system" for robots through sensors. Industry 4.0 has introduced the concept of data exchange withing manufacturing, opening countless business opportunities, some that were previously unimaginable. By implementing sensors experts will be able to make use of data of all type which were not at hand before, making products become even services as well.

On this day in 1818, the novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus", by 21-year-old author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, was published. Frankenstein is often considered the world's first science fiction novel, as it mixes elements of Victorian ghost stories with elements of modern technology, chemistry and biology. She describes the weather at the time as a "wet, unpleasant summer, continuous rainfall kept us inside the house." Bored, the friends worked on creepy stories, reflecting the gloomy atmosphere surrounding them, but only Shelley completed hers. The year 1816 is today famous as the year without a summer.

If you'll recall, Google had to fit its prototype cars with temporary steering wheels and controls just so it could launch its trial in the Golden State. The proposed rules will give Mountain View a way to find out how its vehicles will perform when they're used the way they're intended. Eric Noble, president of automotive consulting firm The CarLab, told Bloomberg that the changes are "necessary and timely" if California wants to "keep that level of development activity." They could prevent Michigan, which made autonomous vehicle trials without human drivers and physical controls legal in December, from becoming the new go-to state. "[California] kind of had to do it because at some point manufacturers can't move autonomous vehicles forward without getting controls out of cars," Noble added.