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.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday released an overview of the federal government's automated vehicles policy, which includes a checklist for makers on various aspects of the cars they are developing, as well as guidelines to states on evolving a common framework for regulating the new technologies. "Automated vehicles have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives each year," wrote Obama in an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Monday. That's what harnessing technology for good can look like. But we have to get it right," he added. Obama wrote that the quickest way to slam the brakes on innovation is if the public loses confidence in the safety of the new technology, and the responsibility of both government and industry is to make sure it doesn't happen.

The U.S. government has issued its first rules for automated vehicles. They include a 15-point set of "safety assessment" guidelines for self-driving systems. These cover issues such as cybersecurity, black box recordings to aid crash investigations, and how a car would deal with potential ethical conundrums on the road. The new policy will play a central role in shaping how autonomous vehicles proceed toward commercial use. Many automotive and technology companies are testing self-driving vehicles, and ride-hailing company Uber even lets customers in Pittsburgh order rides in prototypes (see "My Self Driving Uber Needed Human Help").

Even a year ago, the idea of autonomous cars roaming American streets seemed farfetched, and automakers were claiming to be focused on "stepping stone," incremental technology. Carmakers are deploying robots, and federal regulators in charge of how humans drive are finally catching up. Today, US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced guidelines that define a new approach to regulating--and encouraging--self-driving cars. In an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, President Obama wrote, "Government sometimes gets it wrong when it comes to rapidly changing technologies. That's why this new policy is flexible and designed to evolve with new advances."

The Obama administration is weighing in on self-driving cars with a new set of rules for car and tech companies that are expected to bring federal regulations up to date with technology. The U.S. Department of Transportation is set to release a new set of guidelines for driverless cars that will dictate how car companies and others build, test and deploy such vehicles. While the full guidelines won't be released until Tuesday, the policy will include a 15-point "safety assessment" that manufacturers and others making self-driving cars must address during their vehicle production. This encompasses testing methods, registration requirements, privacy protections, cybersecurity as well as the complicated ethical considerations of driverless cars. While the bulk of the policy is meant for fully autonomous cars, the department noted that some portions may apply to other assistive technology that is already used by car companies.

President Barack Obama hasn't had to drive himself around for years. And he may not have to after he leaves office either. Obama Monday threw his weight behind self-driving cars -- as long as they're safe. His op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which will appear in Tuesday's print editions, lauds American innovation and comes just a day after Lyft CEO John Zimmer predicted the end of individual vehicle ownership and a week after Uber began an autonomous vehicle experiment in Pittsburgh. "The progress we've seen in automated vehicles over the past several years shows what our country is capable of when our engineers and entrepreneurs, our scientists and our students – backed by federal and private investment – pour their best work and brightest ideas toward a big, bold goal," Obama said.

Any doubt that driverless cars, trucks and buses are on a fast track to join their human counterparts on the nation's highways may be knocked aside Tuesday, when the Department of Transportation releases long-awaited guidelines for the development of autonomous cars. The guidelines, which specify safety criteria and promise to eliminate red tape, will help "bring lifesaving technologies to the roads safely while providing innovators the space they need to develop new solutions," said the U.S. Department of Transportation in an early summary released Monday. Automakers and tech companies have been barreling ahead in their race to churn out driverless vehicles, prompting the government to play catch-up when it comes to how to regulate the technology. Under the guidelines, car manufacturers and researchers will be required to submit to a "15-point safety assessment" for driverless cars, including how the vehicles respond to system failure, whether they make data available for crash reconstruction and even whether their artificial intelligence software takes driving ethics into account. The Transportation Department will hasten approval or rejection of special exemptions to regulations for driverless cars, with an upper limit of six months.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Federal regulators, faced with a growing number of self-driving car tests on roads across the U.S., plan to issue a flurry of new guidelines Tuesday aimed at automakers and tech companies. The U.S. Department of Transportation will require any new tech to meet a 15-point safety assessment, consider new powers to allow administrators to limit the deployment of experimental vehicles, and will issue a model for state self-driving car policies aimed at developing a cohesive set of national regulations. Officials will solicit public comments on the topic of self-driving car regulations for the next 60 days on the Transportation Department website and plan to update self-driving car policies annually. "We're laying it out there, what we care about, and inviting the industry to show us how they meet those standards," Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters during a briefing late Monday. "Some companies haven't dealt with us, but they'll learn quickly we can go really deep on these topics. We want the public to be safe."