"The industry will continue to focus on refining systems, applications, software, security and network infrastructure to meet their needs. Machine learning is the megatrend: its application and influence, particularly on our mobiles, will be improving all parts of our lives in 2017," he said. So begins Deloitte's annual global TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecommunications) report, that since its inception in 2001 has reached an 87% prediction accuracy rate. The report is long but makes for interesting reading. Deloitte Australia forecasts a year that will see further significant breakthroughs in machine learning, indoor GPS navigation, safer travel in motor cars, more cyber mischief and a growing use of biometric security.

White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, left, and Klaus Kleinfeld of Arconic speak with Elon Musk before a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, on Jan. 23. Auto industry engineers, scientists and regulators are racing to work out all the details of how autonomous cars will function so that they can be ready to come to market by the early 2020s. Elon Musk, Tesla's brash CEO, says his electric vehicles will gain that capability within just six months. Musk made his pronouncement in Twitter comments late Monday, following previous remarks about the pace of upgrades to Tesla's semi-automated Autopilot driving system. In response to a question about the value of adding "Full Self Driving Capability" to the Palo Alto, California-based company's products ahead of "regulatory approval," Musk wrote: "…safety should improve significantly due to autonomy features, even if regs disallow no driver present."

Some argue that robots do not have free will and therefore cannot be held morally accountable for their actions. But UW psychologists are finding that people don't have such a clear-cut view of humanoid robots. The researchers' latest results show that humans apply a moderate amount of morality and other human characteristics to robots that are equipped with social capabilities and are capable of harming humans. In this case, the harm was financial, not life-threatening. But it still demonstrated how humans react to robot errors.

Amazon has been awarded a patent for a technology that would enable driverless cars and trucks to navigate reversible lanes. The patent, which was originally filed in November 2015 and granted yesterday, reveals that the company is working on not only driverless cars but the infrastructure that would support them. It deals with the problem of how autonomous vehicles would navigate reversible lanes, which are typically used in US cities to ease congestion through changing the direction of traffic flow. When navigating a reversible lane, drivers are alerted to the change of direction through overhead signals and lights notifying which lanes are open or closed to driving or turning. "Autonomous vehicles may not have information about reversible lanes when approaching a portion of roadway that has reversible lanes," states the document.

Insider Trading is often associated with the illegal activity of trading in shares of ones company based on material non public information. But, insider trading is not always illegal. It is not illegal to own, or buy and sell shares of the company you work for, as long as the transactions are being disclosed publicly in a timely manner and as long as the information that is being used to trade is publicly available. This project focuses legal element of insider trading and its potential impact on short term stock prices. Technical trading schools often tout the relationship between Insider transactions and stock prices.

Tiny drones could scout high-rise buildings and underground tunnels for possible threats to US troops in cities of the future. But instead of spending years cooking up the necessary drone technologies in military research labs, the Pentagon might be better off shopping for the latest civilian drones coming soon to stores. US military leaders have discussed the need for a new generation of scout drones for some time. After all, kicking down doors is a dirty and dangerous business for US troops trying to clear enemy-held buildings. It would be far safer to deploy diminutive drone buddies to provide an initial peek inside, and identify any potential threats.

Welcome to the second in a new series of brief reports. Every Monday, we might look back at last week; look ahead to this week; share a few thoughts (our own or others); or discuss anything that catches our eye. Anything goes, so here goes. Last week I was in Hong Kong, but that region has probably been discussed enough for the moment. As part of that trip there was the 2017 StartmeupHK Festival, which produced a few interesting points from a presentation and a panel discussion.

This one is simple, it's when you completely drive yourself. Cars that we mostly drive today belong here, those are the ones that have anti-lock brakes and cruise-control, so they can take over some non-vital processes involved in driving. When the system can take over control in some specific use cases but driver still has to monitor system all the time is here, it's applicable to situations when the car is self-driving the highway and you just sit there and expect it to behave well. This level means that driver doesn't have to monitor the system all the time but has to be in a position where the control can quickly be resumed by a human operator. That means no need to have hands on a steering wheel but you have to jump in at the sounds of the emergency situation, which system can recognize efficiently. When your car drives you to the parking lot you get to the level four, when there is no need for a human operator for a specific use case or a part of a journey.

SANAA/ADEN – Suspected U.S. drone strikes have killed three alleged al-Qaida operatives in Yemen's southwestern Bayda province, security and tribal officials said, the first such killings reported in the country since Donald Trump assumed the U.S. presidency Friday. The two Saturday strikes killed Abu Anis al-Abi, an area field commander, and two others, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release the information to journalists. U.S. drone strikes against suspected al-Qaida targets have been commonplace in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, as a retaliatory measure against the group. The use of unmanned aircraft as well as airstrikes in the Arab world's poorest country rose dramatically under President Barack Obama, with data from the Britain-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism showing spikes in attacks, especially in 2012 and 2016. On Thursday, U.S. intelligence officials said as many as 117 civilians had been killed in drone and other counterterror attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere during Obama's presidency.

There is a certain allure to the deep learning space in that the very inspiration is based on biomimicry. Deep learning is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) with an architecture that roughly mirrors the human brain: information is processed through multiple layers to compute an outcome. Unlike other machine learning algorithms, which only have one or two layers, deep learning is "deep" because it has multiple layers – typically between 10 and 100 layers. Computations at each level build upon previous levels, allowing the network to learn more nuanced and abstract characteristics. Each layer is responsible for the detection of one characteristic, basing assumptions on earlier layers.