A group of self driving Uber vehicles position themselves to take journalists on rides during a media preview at Uber's Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, (Photo: Gene J. Puskar, AP) SAN FRANCISCO - Self-driving car advocates and observers are reacting with cautious approval Tuesday to the government's 112-page directive on the transformational technology. "The devil is in the details, so we will want to take a good hard look before we comment," says David Strickland, general counsel for the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, which advocates for Ford, Google, Uber, Lyft and Volvo. Strickland is also a former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "We see this document as evolutionary," he told reporters on a conference call. "But we appreciate their effort, and the iterative process."

Companies from the Motor City to Silicon Valley welcomed the Obama administration's new self-driving car policy this week, but there is still a long road ahead full of obstacles before robots entirely replace humans as motorists. For auto makers and technology firms, the guidelines detailed Tuesday represent an early victory that steer clear of regulations with legal force and pressure states to avoid developing conflicting rules that could frustrate rollout efforts. But the government's unwillingness for now to aggressively draft firm, prescriptive rules shows how unprepared some regulators, urban planners and insurers are for an autonomous overhaul. Questions remain about whether the federal government will ultimately need to unwind decades of safety regulations to accommodate for vehicles that don't have steering wheels, brake pedals and other features designed for human interaction. Assuming manufacturers can overcome all the technical challenges of building an autonomous car, the burgeoning field would change the fabric of everyday life in a way that hasn't occurred since automobiles replaced horse carriages.

A group of self-driving Uber vehicles are lined up to take journalists on rides during a media preview at the company's Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh earlier this month. A group of self-driving Uber vehicles are lined up to take journalists on rides during a media preview at the company's Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh earlier this month. The U.S. government wants to help you take your hands off the wheel. The Department of Transportation on Tuesday issued its Federal Automated Vehicle Policy, which outlines how manufacturers and developers can assure safe design of driverless vehicles, tells states what responsibilities they will have and points out potential new tools for ensuring safety. Regulators say they want to prepare for the transition to self-driving vehicles, which they say will save money, time and lives.

At a recent Further With Ford event their futurist, Sheryl Connelly, talked about the growth of our world's mega-cities. She used Beijing China as an example. Beijing has 20 million people living in its metropolitan area. A typical driving commute is 5 hours! They have one highway with 50 lanes.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man suspected of planting a series of bombs in New York and New Jersey over the weekend, praised Anwar Awlaki in handwritten notes found on his person after he was wounded in a shootout Monday. FBI agents recovered a notebook from Rahami after he was wounded by police in Linden, N.J., a U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times. In the notebook, Rahami describes his affinity for Awlaki, the American-born Islamic cleric who became a leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Awlaki was killed in a CIA drone strike in 2011, but his legacy has spread among jihadists thanks to online audio and video sermons. The notebook also contained ramblings about the Boston Marathon bombers, the official said.

Machine learning, autonomy, and artificial intelligence are being explored as key new areas for cybersecurity. What is their history and likely future? As we rely more on autonomous machines for our security, what are the benefits? How can policymakers keep pace? A panel of leading experts will explore the issues from the perspectives of computer science, political science, ethics and law.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.outlines his department's intial guidelines for regulating autonomous vehicles. Federal safety regulators will issue a broad framework today for developing, testing and deploying autonomous vehicles, which are coming to market before undergoing many tests human-driven cars must meet before they are offered to consumers. The framework contained four sections -- vehicle performance guidance, a model state policy, current regulatory tools and modern regulatory tools. The Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will listen to public and industry comment for the next 60 days. In addition to the four sections, DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx discussed what he called a 15-point safety assessment that will govern how NHTSA proceeds in the uncharted territory, where software, not humans, operates vehicles.

Lamp lighters once performed a vital service for Londoners. Every evening as dusk fell they lit the gas lamps that illuminated the city's shadowy streets, returning just before dawn to extinguish the flames. It was a respectable job, often passed from father to son. But, apart from the small band of British Gas engineers who maintain the 1,500 gas lamps still clustered around the royal parks, Westminster and Covent Garden, lamp lighters are now a thing of the past, their jobs snuffed out by automated timers and electricity. The lamp lighters are part of a wider narrative that shapes every city: technological change. Scientific advances and new technologies often enable dramatic improvements in public services and urban life, eradicating some jobs while creating new types of employment.

The Yomiuri Shimbun Next fiscal year the government plans to start developing a system for medical information and communication using artificial intelligence (AI, see below) to minimize the damage to humans in the event of disasters, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned. If a large-scale disaster occurs, the AI technology will analyze the equipment and transportation routes that are best suited for the treatment of injured people and notify concerned authorities of the information. The government expects that high-level information-processing capabilities through AI will help reduce the damage of future disasters, and it aims to put the system into practical use within three to five years. To prepare for earthquakes and other natural disasters whose scales of damage have been increasingly large, the government intends to regard the disaster management field as a priority issue in AI development. The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology -- a state-run research and development institute -- will begin studies for the development in April next year jointly with private companies.

The drone turned slowly with a loud buzzing sound, red and blue lights flashing, and hit me right in the eyes with a spotlight. "Security has been notified," boomed a smooth voice from the aircraft's twin loudspeakers. Startup Aptonomy thinks this experience can keep intruders out of factories, warehouses, and other facilities more cheaply than human guards can and more effectively than cameras and alarms. I received the drone security guard treatment in a demonstration at the company's testing area on Treasure Island, an old naval base in San Francisco Bay. Cofounder Mihail Pivtoraiko says his drones will be ready to go on patrol next year.