The moon's polar regions are home to craters and other depressions that never receive sunlight. Today, a group of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany present the highest-resolution images to date covering 17 such craters. Craters of this type could contain frozen water, making them attractive targets for future lunar missions, and the researchers focused further on relatively small and accessible craters surrounded by gentle slopes. In fact, three of the craters have turned out to lie within the just-announced mission area of NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), which is scheduled to touch down on the moon in 2023. Imaging the interior of permanently shadowed craters is difficult, and efforts so far have relied on long exposure times resulting in smearing and lower resolution. By taking advantage of reflected sunlight from nearby hills and a novel image processing method, the researchers have now produced images at 1–2 meters per pixel, which is at or very close to the best capability of the cameras.

The Transform Technology Summits start October 13th with Low-Code/No Code: Enabling Enterprise Agility. Artificial intelligence is already making its mark on the global economy, and private businesses are not the only ones putting it to good use. Government agencies of all types are adopting AI as well, and in some ways, exceeding the private sector's ability to leverage AI for massive data analysis and cutting-edge applications. Whether this sounds like innocent adoption of new technology or a nefarious plot to control the citizenry depends on your political perspective, of course. However, there is no denying that the same technology that is currently powering the likes of giants like Facebook and Amazon to leverage user information in pursuit of profits, is also available to all aspects of government, including taxation, defense, intelligence agencies, and other key entities like agriculture and labor.

In my previous Nextgov column, I got to interview the general manager of a company that is using artificial intelligence to help the military plan out its maintenance schedules. That program uses AI in a really good way that plays to its strengths, namely its ability to consider thousands of data points, much more than a human ever could, to come up with an action plan for maintenance that maximizes both efficiency and safety. However, when it comes time to actually perform the maintenance, those tasks must be delegated back to a human. But what happens if those physical tasks are also extremely complicated? The CV-22 Osprey is a perfect example of a military aircraft that is both revolutionary and complicated to maintain.

The AI Council recognized that its roadmap of sixteen recommendations which is regarding the skills, data, infrastructure, adoption, R&D, infrastructure, diversity, public, investment and trust, would need to be revealed out over time and thus, it encouraged the UK government to produce a National AI strategy. In its media, the National AI Strategy, has a plan for ten-year to make the UK a global AI superpower building on R&D success in the field as well as a previous AI Sector Deal investment and establishment of AI bodies and structures. The Strategy revealed some of the specific goals for the UK to experience major growth in AI discoveries made, commercialized and exploited in the UK, productivity growth and associated economic and to established a trusted and pro-innovation AI governance system. Moreover, the strategy mirrors other recent publications, highlighting the UK government's desire to offer a pro-innovation environment with a business-friendly regulatory framework, whilst protecting the public and basic primary values. The Strategy differentiates AI from some other innovative technology or digital policy, which calls out features that the UK government considers requiring a unique policy response.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) recently announced the names of 83 scientists who have been selected for their 2021 Early Career Research Program. The list includes four faculty members from MIT: Riccardo Comin of the Department of Physics; Netta Engelhardt of the Department of Physics and Center for Theoretical Physics; Philip Harris of the Department of Physics and Laboratory for Nuclear Science; and Mingda Li of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. Each year, the DoE selects researchers for significant funding the "nation's scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work." The quantum technologies of tomorrow –– more powerful computing, better navigation systems, and more precise imaging and magnetic sensing devices –– rely on understanding the properties of quantum materials. Quantum materials contain unique physical characteristics, and can lead to phenomena like superconductivity.

Right now, the focus is on Spot, the versatile quadruped first made commercially available in June 2020. 'The next big industry for Spot is really in this market that we're calling industrial sensing or dynamics sensing,' Zack Jackowski, chief engineer of the Spot product, told told CNBC over the weekend. '[That's] where we have robots walking around places like manufacturing plants, chemical plants, utilities [and] installations, and using the robots to collect data on what's happening in these facilities in an automated way,' he said. Being able to get repeatable, high quality data from Spot, Jackowski added, could enable companies to boost safety and efficiency in ways they never considered before. While Boston Dynamics likes to play up Spot's softer side -- releasing videos of it playing fetch and dancing to bops by K-pop sensation BTS and other acts -- it's already employed by Hyundai to patrol assembly lines at a Kia factory in Gwangmyeong, Korea. Hyundai has equipped the robot with a thermal camera and three-dimensional LiDAR sensing technology that allows it to see humans, determine whether doors are open or closed, monitor high-temperature systems, and detect fire hazards.

A senior cybersecurity official at the Pentagon said he resigned in protest because the slow pace of technological development has made it impossible for the United States to compete with China. Nicolas Chaillan, who spent three years as the first chief software officer for the Air Force, said Beijing has a clear advantage in the technological space because of its fast advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and general capabilities in cybersecurity. "We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it's already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion," Chaillan told the Financial Times in his first interview since he left his Pentagon job earlier this month. "Whether it takes a war or not is kind of anecdotal."

LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - China has won the artificial intelligence battle with the United States and is heading towards global dominance because of its technological advances, the Pentagon's former software chief told the Financial Times. China, the world's second largest economy, is likely to dominate many of the key emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics within a decade or so, according to Western intelligence assessments. Nicolas Chaillan, the Pentagon's first chief software officer who resigned in protest against the slow pace of technological transformation in the U.S. military, said the failure to respond was putting the United States at risk. "We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it's already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion," he told the newspaper.

Hoaxes spread quickly online, be they about celebrities, politicians or anyone else. But falsehoods labeled as satire can slip through the defenses of social media companies, allowing people to peddle fiction as fact, all while making a financial profit. The claims tend to be spectacular: Bill Gates arrested for child trafficking, Tom Hanks executed by the U.S. military, or Pope Francis declaring that a COVID-19 vaccine would be required to enter heaven. These bogus allegations originated from articles on websites that contain disclaimers that they are satirical. The problem is that many people believe them.

You may never have heard the term "synthetic media"-- more commonly known as "deepfakes"-- but our military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies certainly have. They are hyper-realistic video and audio recordings that use artificial intelligence and "deep" learning to create "fake" content or "deepfakes." The U.S. government has grown increasingly concerned about their potential to be used to spread disinformation and commit crimes. That's because the creators of deepfakes have the power to make people say or do anything, at least on our screens. Most Americans have no idea how far the technology has come in just the last four years or the danger, disruption and opportunities that come with it.