Close to 350 actors took their grievances to Electronic Arts in Playa Vista on Monday, marching and chanting for more pay and better working conditions for performers who do voice-over and motion-capture work on blockbuster video game titles. The picket line was the latest signal from SAG-AFTRA that it is preparing for a long fight with several prominent game companies, as both sides have failed to agree on the union's demand for residual-like payments that are commonplace in film and TV but not in the gaming industry. SAG-AFTRA also wants employers to reveal the titles of games when hiring actors, but companies including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts and Take Two Interactive are arguing that level of transparency is impossible and could put them at a competitive disadvantage. On Monday, the video game companies hit back, accusing SAG-AFTRA negotiators of failing to communicate the most recent proposal to its members before officially calling the strike Friday. "If I was a performer, I would want the opportunity to say yes or no," said Scott Witlin, a lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg and chief negotiator for the gaming companies, during a news conference Monday afternoon.

Analysts expect Tesla Motors (TSLA) to show that it has reigned in its losses when the automaker releases its third quarter earnings Wednesday after more than doubling analysts' loss expectations last quarter. Investors polled by FactSet expected the California-based company, led by South African investor and engineer Elon Musk, to post a loss of 53 cents per share--an improvement from last year's third quarter losses of 1.78 per share and second quarter losses of 1.06 per share. Analysts surveyed by Reuters, however, estimated the company's earnings per share (EPS) would turn positive, hitting 37 cents for the quarter ending in December. Such optimistic forecasts are likely fueled by Tesla's announcement that it saw a 70 percent rise in third-quarter deliveries early in October--welcome news after, two months earlier, it disclosed third quarter expenditure needs of 1.1 billion. The earnings report will come one week after the automaker announced all of its cars currently in production would be self-driving, with "a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."

When is it appropriate for police to conduct a face recognition search? To figure out who's who in a crowd of protesters? To monitor foot traffic in a high-crime neighborhood? To confirm the identity of a suspect -- or a witness -- caught on tape? According to a new report by Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology, these are questions very few police departments asked before widely deploying face recognition systems.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming very real--and at an exponentially faster rate. Moreover, those organizations that leverage AI in sync with those hard and soft trends that are shaping the future stand to make the most of its extraordinary potential. On one level, artificial intelligence is poised to help anticipate and address such critical issues as cybersecurity, civil unrest and even outright acts of terrorism. For example, using technology such as automated smart detection, officials at the recent Olympics in Rio were successful in maintaining security in a wide array of venues and locations. Closer to home, the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for digital innovation Andrew Hallman recently addressed the issue of anticipatory intelligence at an event hosted by the government and technology website NextGov.

Imagine receiving a phone call from your aging mother seeking your help because she has forgotten her banking password. The voice on the other end of the phone call just sounds deceptively like her. It is actually a computer-synthesized voice, a tour-de-force of artificial intelligence technology that has been crafted to make it possible for someone to masquerade via the telephone. Such a situation is still science fiction -- but just barely. It is also the future of crime.

Imagine receiving a phone call from your aging mother seeking your help because she has forgotten her banking password. The voice on the other end of the phone call just sounds deceptively like her. It is actually a computer-synthesized voice, a tour-de-force of artificial intelligence technology that has been crafted to make it possible for someone to masquerade via the telephone. Such a situation is still science fiction -- but just barely. It is also the future of crime.

We may have just seen a major player in the drive towards autonomous cars apply screeching brakes. Apple has reportedly abandoned its plans to build its own self-driving electric vehicle and is instead going to focus on the underlying autonomous software. A similar initiative to produce a fully autonomous car by Google also appeared to run out of steam. Building self-driving cars clearly poses a challenge that even the world's top technology giants can't yet meet. So what is it about building autonomous cars that is proving to be such a challenge? The high-value consumer electronics and software industry is used to very different margins than the cut-throat automotive sector, which has tough market entry conditions and tribal supply-chain relationships.

Computers that learn for themselves are with us now. As they become more common in'high-stakes' applications like robotic surgery, terrorism detection and driverless cars, researchers ask what can be done to make sure we can trust them. There would always be a first death in a driverless car and it happened in May 2016. Joshua Brown had engaged the autopilot system in his Tesla when a tractor-trailor drove across the road in front of him. It seems that neither he nor the sensors in the autopilot noticed the white-sided truck against a brightly lit sky, with tragic results.

Tesla is making several big announcements this month, and Elon Musk just delivered the first: From now on, all new Tesla cars will be self-driving. The electric automaker also teamed up with Panasonic to build solar panels for its Powerwall home battery, which it's set to update next week. Hyperloop One is forging ahead on its futuristic transportation system by raising 50 million and hiring Uber's former CFO as an advisor. It looks like Apple has scrapped plans to build a self-driving car, and BMW showcased plans for a next-gen smart motorcycle that will never crash or tip over. In energy news, scientists accidentally discovered a cheap, simple way to transform CO2 into ethanol fuel.

The Afghan Taliban has uploaded a drone footage showing a suicide bomber driving into a police base and blowing it up in the southern Helmand province. The fighters say the footage proves that they can now deploy drones as an "addition to their sophisticated possessions of advanced technologies". The 23-minute-long video, which begins with a self-proclaimed suicide bomber speaking in front of an explosives-rigged Humvee, was released on Saturday appears to be authentic, according to the Afghan defence ministry. "The remote-controlled drones to capture footage of their [Taliban] fighters conducting attacks is nothing but to instill fear among people and to indicate how far they can get in defeating us, but in fact, using a drone is not something they can call an achievement," Dawlat Waziri, spokesman for the defence ministry, told Al Jazeera by telephone. "You can get a drone anywhere, in any shop. They found or bought one, and used it."