U.S. fighter jets dropped bombs on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. The strike was in response to Iranian-backed militias firing armed drones against U.S. troops in Iraq, which was a response to a U.S. attack in February, which was a response to a militia attack days earlier. A Pentagon spokesman justified the most recent U.S. airstrikes as "necessary, appropriate, and deliberate action designed to limit the risk of escalation--but also to send a clear and unambiguous deterrent message." This may be true, but similar statements have followed similar strikes for years, even decades; yet counter-attacks nonetheless follow (the "deterrent message" doesn't get through), and so it's possible that we are heightening the "risk of escalation," not limiting it. President Joe Biden finds himself in a jam.

Allison Fine and I have been looking at artificial intelligence, nonprofits, and philanthropy. While this particular research was focused on giving and fundraising, we have looking at topic with a broader lens. As we continue to explore this topic, I'll be posting more regular updates about new developments. I was really excited to discover research on artificial intelligence that intersects with my work on nonprofit workplace wellbeing (The Happy Healthy Nonprofit). The Partnership on AI's "Framework for Promoting Workforce Wellbeing in the AI-Integrated Workplace" provides a framework and practices to guide employers, workers, and other stakeholders towards promoting workforce wellbeing as AI becomes integrated into the workplace.

This week, TechCrunch is turning its spotlight on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with interviews, profiles, and an event featuring the outgoing mayor, CMU's President, and local startups. The Rust Belt city has spent much of the past decade working to shed the image that arrived in the wake of the deindustrialization of the 1970s and 80s. Courtesy of world class universities like Carnegie Melon and the University of Pittsburgh, the Steel City has transformed itself into a vibrant startup ecosystem and a world class environment for robotics, AI, autonomous driving and other high-tech companies. Ahead of tomorrow's event, TechCrunch spoke to Bill Peduto, who has served as Pittsburgh's Mayor since 2014, a role that has involved overseeing much of that transformation. The Mayor spoke on his efforts over the past half-dozen years, which will culminate in January when he leaves office.

The U.S. military, under the direction of President Joe Biden, carried out airstrikes against what it said were "facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups" near the border between Iraq and Syria, drawing condemnation from Iraq's military and calls for revenge by the militias. Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the militias were using the facilities to launch unmanned aerial vehicle attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. It was the second time the Biden administration has taken military action in the region since he took over earlier this year. Kirby said the U.S. military targeted three operational and weapons storage facilities on Sunday night -- two in Syria and one in Iraq. He described the airstrikes as "defensive," saying they were launched in response to the attacks by militias.

Stunning footage of the Zhurong rover beginning its exploration of the surface of Mars has been released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The clips of the six-wheeled rover trundling across the Red Planet were captured by a wireless camera that the rover had placed on the ground. They were then relayed back to Earth via the Tianwen-1 satellite which brought the rover to Mars and is presently orbiting the Red Planet. Also released yesterday was previously unseen footage from the Zhurong rover's landing back on May 15 -- and its deployment from the Lander platform on May 22. Footage and photos were relayed back to Earth via the Tianwen-1 satellite which brought the rover to Mars and is presently orbiting the Red Planet. Pictured: part of a panorama of the Martian surface taken by Zhurong.

The Navy, through its Office of Naval Research, is pursuing artificial intelligence applications across a broad spectrum of the service's responsibilities to man, train and equip, as well as warfighting, sustainment and readiness. Such a wide range of applications and algorithms come with specific data requirements and data management. Curtis Pelzer, chief information officer at the Office of Naval Research, said ONR's data resides in in several places on their network, and it's the job of the data and analytics team to make sure information is provided and kept in the right sets. AI can help reduce toil across the Navy, give autonomy with unmanned systems, and software codes can increase the speed and quality of human decision-making, according to Brett Vaughan, the Navy's chief artificial intelligence officer and Office of Naval Research portfolio manager. Vaughan said any data could potentially fuel AI, but it depends on what problem one aims to solve.

Armies want autonomous vehicles to reduce the risk and workload for soldiers, and a new model is a prime example of how that will work, as Popular Science has reported. The excellently named Rheinmetall Mission Master XT can carry 2,204 pounds of supplies into battle, while operating over a range of over 460 miles. That would allow it to follow soldiers over rough terrain, transport a soldier or act as a scout. The Mission Master XT, designed and built by Rheinmetall Canada, can handle sandy, rocky and mountainous terrain, even in "ice, snow and zub-zero weather conditions," the company said. It's also fully amphibious so it can float and swim across water with its full ton-plus payload or mount hills as steep as 35 degrees. At the same time, the massive, low-inflation tires can function even with holes as deep as three-quarters of an inch in depth.

Phishing is the activity of a site appearing as another, and trying to deceive the user of the site into mistaking the attacker's site as the one the user wants to use. This has caused an infinite number of fraudulent transactions and other criminal activities. Now think what happens if the person that you think you are looking at in an online video, is not the same person at all. It is a digitally rendered copy of the person, however, this time it's not just a still, it's a moving, talking video of the person with features almost indistinguishable from the person that it is supposed to be. Read along to find more on what I'm talking about.

In 2020, the largest U.S. health care payer, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), established payment for artificial intelligence (AI) through two different systems in the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) and the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS). Within the MPFS, a new Current Procedural Terminology code was valued for an AI tool for diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy, IDx-RX. In the IPPS, Medicare established a New Technology Add-on Payment for Viz.ai software, an AI algorithm that facilitates diagnosis and treatment of large-vessel occlusion strokes. This article describes reimbursement in these two payment systems and proposes future payment pathways for AI.

Recently, I learned that the failure rate for machine learning projects is still astonishingly high. Studies suggest that between 85-96% of projects never make it to production. These numbers are even more remarkable given the growth of machine learning (ML) and data science in the past five years. For businesses to be successful with ML initiatives, they need a comprehensive understanding of the risks and how to address them. In this post, we attempt to shed light on how to achieve this by moving away from a model-centric view of ML systems towards a data-centric view. Of course, everyone knows that data is the most important component of ML. Nearly every data scientist has heard: "garbage in, garbage out" and "80% of a data scientist's time is spent cleaning data".