With the availability of large datasets and ever-increasing computing power, there has been a growing use of data-driven artificial intelligence systems, which have shown their potential for successful application in diverse areas. However, many of these systems are not able to provide information about the rationale behind their decisions to their users. Lack of understanding of such decisions can be a major drawback, especially in critical domains such as those related to cybersecurity. In light of this problem, in this paper we make three contributions: (i) proposal and discussion of desiderata for the explanation of outputs generated by AI-based cybersecurity systems; (ii) a comparative analysis of approaches in the literature on Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) under the lens of both our desiderata and further dimensions that are typically used for examining XAI approaches; and (iii) a general architecture that can serve as a roadmap for guiding research efforts towards the development of explainable AI-based cybersecurity systems -- at its core, this roadmap proposes combinations of several research lines in a novel way towards tackling the unique challenges that arise in this context.

Representations are crucial for a robot to learn effective navigation policies. Recent work has shown that mid-level perceptual abstractions, such as depth estimates or 2D semantic segmentation, lead to more effective policies when provided as observations in place of raw sensor data (e.g., RGB images). However, such policies must still learn latent three-dimensional scene properties from mid-level abstractions. In contrast, high-level, hierarchical representations such as 3D scene graphs explicitly provide a scene's geometry, topology, and semantics, making them compelling representations for navigation. In this work, we present a reinforcement learning framework that leverages high-level hierarchical representations to learn navigation policies. Towards this goal, we propose a graph neural network architecture and show how to embed a 3D scene graph into an agent-centric feature space, which enables the robot to learn policies for low-level action in an end-to-end manner. For each node in the scene graph, our method uses features that capture occupancy and semantic content, while explicitly retaining memory of the robot trajectory. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method against commonly used visuomotor policies in a challenging object search task. These experiments and supporting ablation studies show that our method leads to more effective object search behaviors, exhibits improved long-term memory, and successfully leverages hierarchical information to guide its navigation objectives.

Connected vehicles (CVs), because of the external connectivity with other CVs and connected infrastructure, are vulnerable to cyberattacks that can instantly compromise the safety of the vehicle itself and other connected vehicles and roadway infrastructure. One such cyberattack is the false information attack, where an external attacker injects inaccurate information into the connected vehicles and eventually can cause catastrophic consequences by compromising safety-critical applications like the forward collision warning. The occurrence and target of such attack events can be very dynamic, making real-time and near-real-time detection challenging. Change point models, can be used for real-time anomaly detection caused by the false information attack. In this paper, we have evaluated three change point-based statistical models; Expectation Maximization, Cumulative Summation, and Bayesian Online Change Point Algorithms for cyberattack detection in the CV data. Also, data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) models, which can be used to detect known and unknown underlying patterns in the dataset, have the potential of detecting a real-time anomaly in the CV data. We have used six AI models to detect false information attacks and compared the performance for detecting the attacks with our developed change point models. Our study shows that change points models performed better in real-time false information attack detection compared to the performance of the AI models. Change point models having the advantage of no training requirements can be a feasible and computationally efficient alternative to AI models for false information attack detection in connected vehicles.

This thesis explores the benefits machine learning algorithms can bring to online planning and scheduling for autonomous vehicles in off-road situations. Mainly, we focus on typical problems of interest which include computing itineraries that meet certain objectives, as well as computing scheduling strategies to execute synchronized maneuvers with other vehicles. We present a range of learning-based heuristics to assist different itinerary planners. We show that these heuristics allow a significant increase in performance for optimal planners. Furthermore, in the case of approximate planning, we show that not only does the running time decrease, the quality of the itinerary found also becomes almost always better. Finally, in order to synthesize strategies to execute synchronized maneuvers, we propose a novel type of scheduling controllability and a learning-assisted algorithm. The proposed framework achieves significant improvement on known benchmarks in this controllability type over the performance of state-of-the-art works in a related controllability type. Moreover, it is able to find strategies on complex scheduling problems for which previous works fail to do so.

Machine learning (ML) has made incredible impacts and transformations in a wide range of vehicular applications. As the use of ML in Internet of Vehicles (IoV) continues to advance, adversarial threats and their impact have become an important subject of research worth exploring. In this paper, we focus on Sybil-based adversarial threats against a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-assisted IoV framework and more specifically, DRL-based dynamic service placement in IoV. We carry out an experimental study with real vehicle trajectories to analyze the impact on service delay and resource congestion under different attack scenarios for the DRL-based dynamic service placement application. We further investigate the impact of the proportion of Sybil-attacked vehicles in the network. The results demonstrate that the performance is significantly affected by Sybil-based data poisoning attacks when compared to adversary-free healthy network scenario.

AI is hungry for data. Training and testing the machine-learning tools to perform desired tasks consumes huge lakes of data. More data often means better AI. Yet gathering this data, especially data concerning people's behavior and transactions, can be risky. For example, In January of this year, the US FTC reached a consent order with a company called Everalbum, a developer of photography apps.

Blend two or three metals together and you get an alloy that usually looks and acts like a metal, with its atoms arranged in rigid geometric patterns. But once in a while, under just the right conditions, you get something entirely new: a futuristic alloy called metallic glass that's amorphous, with its atoms arranged every which way, much like the atoms of the glass in a window. Its glassy nature makes it stronger and lighter than today's best steel, plus it stands up better to corrosion and wear. Even though metallic glass shows a lot of promise as a protective coating and alternative to steel, only a few thousand of the millions of possible combinations of ingredients have been evaluated over the past 50 years, and only a handful developed to the point that they may become useful. Now a group led by scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Northwestern University has reported a shortcut for discovering and improving metallic glass -- and, by extension, other elusive materials -- at a fraction of the time and cost.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is poised to put a damper on Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) IPOs and mergers: it deepened its investigation into potential conflicts of interest in SPAC underwriting processes, and brought charges against prominent SPACs. Find below an analytical digest of the AI SPAC's state of affairs. A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an IPO for the purpose of acquiring an existing company. IPO investors have no idea what company they ultimately will be investing in.) SPACs seek underwriters and institutional investors before offering shares to the public.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – The United States has joined the United Kingdom and Israel in accusing Iran of carrying out a deadly drone strike that killed two aboard a tanker off Oman. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the announcement in a statement Sunday. Blinken said: "Upon review of the available information, we are confident that Iran conducted this attack, which killed two innocent people, using one-way explosive (drones), a lethal capability it is increasingly employing throughout the region." He added that there was "no justification for this attack, which follows a pattern of attacks and other belligerent behavior."

A new way of using machine learning to examine satellite images could help people around the world. More than 700 imaging satellites orbit the earth, but only governments and companies with wealth and expertise can access the data they produce. Now, researchers said in a recent paper that they have invented a machine learning system using low-cost, easy-to-use technology that could bring satellite analytical power to researchers and governments worldwide. "To plan infrastructure like roads and bridges or to target food aid, we need to know where people live and what their needs are," Jonathan Proctor, a co-author of the paper, told Lifewire in an email interview. "Satellite imagery and machine learning can help measure socio-economic conditions in places where other measurements are insufficient."