The Afghan Girls Robotics Team works on their robot at a 2017 competition in Washington. The Afghan Girls Robotics Team works on their robot at a 2017 competition in Washington. The Afghan Girls Robotics Team made headlines in 2017 when they came to Washington for an international competition just a few blocks from the White House. Most members of the team were born after the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001, symbolizing a new Afghanistan where girls were free to go to school and women were getting at least some opportunities that had been long denied. But with the Taliban back, the future of these girls -- some of them now young women -- has turned precarious.

But that said, the stated capabilities of Audi's system aren't all that different from systems already being offered by Mercedes-Benz and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), and soon to be offered by General Motors (NYSE:GM) on its Cadillac CT6 sedan. Like Mercedes' Traffic Jam Assist, Audi's system is limited to stop-and-go highway driving at low speeds, while Tesla and (soon) Cadillac allow hands-off driving at full highway speeds. That concern has led some automakers, including Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) to declare that they would skip Level 3, and work toward a full Level 4 system that can drive the car under most circumstances instead. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Ford and Tesla.

It's a big accomplishment for Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG). To match the intuitive skills of human players, programmers taught AlphaGo pattern recognition. The latest version of AlphaGo that beat number-one-ranked Ke Jie is even more impressive than the one that defeated legendary player Lee Sedol last year. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), and Nvidia.