The new Initiative is global, open and inclusive, welcoming all individuals or representatives of organizations dedicated to ethical considerations in the design of autonomous systems.

A combined project by Microsoft, the Rembrandt House Museum, advertising firm J Walter Thompson Amsterdam, and strangely, ING Bank has yielded a 148 million pixel portrait generated by a computer. Developers of The Next Rembrandt say a series of complex algorithms were used to extract the key features of Rembrandt's work. Given the companies involved, the project smacks of an advertising stunt, but the resulting printed image does raise interesting questions about the quality of future forgeries. Under the project, all 346 Rembrandt paintings were analyzed using 3D scans to pinpoint common techniques and themes used by the 17th century artist. READ MORE: Lawnmower explodes during crazy backyard'art' experiment (VIDEO) "The first step was to study the works of Rembrandt in order to create an extensive database," explains Emmanuel Flores, director of technology at J Walter Thompson Amsterdam.

About a dozen trucks from major manufacturers like Volvo and Daimler just completed a week of largely autonomous driving across Europe, the first such major exercise on the continent. The trucks set off from their bases in three European countries and completed their journeys in Rotterdam in the Netherlands today (Apr. One set of trucks, made by the Volkswagen subsidiary Scania, traveled more than 2,000 km and crossed four borders to get there. The trucks were taking part in the European Truck Platooning Challenge, organized by the Dutch government as one of the big events for its 2016 presidency of the European Union. While self-driving cars from Google or Ford get most of the credit for capturing the public imagination, commercial uses for autonomous or nearly autonomous vehicles, like tractors from John Deere, have been quietly putting the concept to work in a business setting. When trucks autonomously follow one another, it's called "platooning."

One of the most important things that ever happened to Dan Faggella was a collapsed roof. The then 25-year-old had been building his own business in his hometown of Wakefield, Rhode Island: a martial arts gym focusing on his specialty, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. "I was 17 or so when I first learned Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and I really fell in love with the'chess game' aspect of the martial art," Faggella says. When his teacher's studio closed, he used the money he'd earned from teaching private lessons and working at a local beach to open his own studio, which grew from a rented space in someone else's gym to a 500-square-foot training area to 2,500 square feet of his own. At the same time, he was using his earnings from the studio to pursue what might seem like a very different path: a one-year Masters of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) at the University of Pennsylvania, studying under well-known author and positive psychology expert Martin Seligman.

If you're the kind of person who really likes chatting with the mail carrier, Dispatch won't be your favorite startup. That's because the four-person South San Francisco company is working on technology that could replace postal workers; UPS and FedEx drivers; Instacart couriers; and anyone else who gets paid to bring you stuff. Instead, you might be dealing with a 3-foot-tall, 150-pound, battery-powered roving robot that looks like a little dumpster on wheels. Called Carry, the device uses artificial intelligence, five cameras and a laser to navigate on sidewalks around pedestrians, flaming hoverboards and any other obstacles to get packages to your door. The only places you'll find Carry today are on two California college campuses, where it's still being tested.

Life and intelligence are the natural consequence of a particular pattern of ordered complexity. The medium does not matter; carbon atoms, electrons, light, even symbols. Once any pattern reaches this ordered complexity, it becomes a living being – then a thinking entity. While this ordered complexity remains as yet un-defined by higher mathematics, it can be detected via a set of unique elements. These elements define certain obvious properties of the Agent, and thus can be identified and measured in a controlled way and using a scientific method.

Artificial intelligence is becoming a buzz word among technology companies, and rather than growing services internally, enterprises are acquiring startups and other companies with expertise in the field. Several of the tech industry's biggest players have been investing in AI in recent months, extolling the potential of AI to help scientists process large data sets and understand cause and effect relationships. In October, for example, Apple purchased VocalIQ, a United Kingdom-based startup that worked to improve the way computers understand natural language. Salesforce has made a number of AI-related purchases recently. In March, it acquired PredictionIO and before that, it bought RelateIQ and smart calendar app Tempo AI.

On-demand delivery is something consumers have come to expect. With that in mind, startup Dispatch is building a fleet of autonomous delivery vehicles designed for sidewalks and bike paths. Today, the company announced a 2 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz's Chris Dixon with participation from Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures and others. "The need for convenient low cost delivery is widespread," Dispatch co-founder Uriah Baalke told me. "Our goal is to fulfill that demand and build a system at scale that can scale and that can operate in all these locales efficiently."

It aspires to be so fascinating that people set aside any doubts they have about self-driving cars. But autonomous cars need to build technological credibility, too, so on Tuesday morning we learned about the silicon driving this car's autonomous logic: Nvidia's Drive PX 2 is a compact and powerful computer that's ready to process the torrent of data a vehicle needs to move safely in the world. Even at this early stage--the body is still a work-in-progress--there's a lot to say about this so-called Robocar. So let's step through what we know and consider what the future may hold for Roborace's vehicle. Nvidia's Drive PX 2 platform offers scalable power for autonomous driving.

Federal officials say they will work quickly to draft new regulations that would permit small, commercial drones to fly over people, including crowds. That comes in response to recommendations from an industry advisory committee. The Federal Aviation Administration currently prohibits most commercial use of drones over people. The recommendations, first reported by The Associated Press, would create four categories of commercial drones. Drones weighing about a half pound or less would be allowed to fly over people virtually without restriction.