U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced Wednesday that the Pentagon intends to conduct live trials pitting tactical aircraft controlled by artificial intelligence against human pilots in 2024. The announcement comes three weeks after an AI algorithm defeated a human pilot in a simulated dogfight between F-16s, something Esper described as an example of the "tectonic impact of machine learning" for the Defense Department's future. "The AI agent's resounding victory demonstrated the ability of advanced algorithms to outperform humans in virtual dogfights. These simulations will culminate in a real-world competition involving full-scale tactical aircraft in 2024," Esper said in prepared remarks delivered to the department's Artificial Intelligence Symposium. The Aug. 20 test was the finale of the Pentagon research agency's AI air combat competition.

Defence generates and holds a lot of data. We want to be able to get the best out of it, unlocking new insights that aren't currently visible, through the use of innovative data science and analytics techniques tailored to defence's specific needs. But this can be difficult because our data is often sensitive for a variety of reasons. For example, this might include information about the performance of particular vehicles, or personnel's operational deployment details. It is therefore often challenging to share data with experts who sit outside the Ministry of Defence, particularly amongst the wider data science community in government, small companies and academia. The use of synthetic data gives us a way to address this challenge and to benefit from the expertise of a wider range of people by creating datasets which aren't sensitive.

Today, states and their actors are waging a digital cold war with artificial intelligence systems at the heart of the fight. In T-Minus AI, the US Air Force’s first Chairperson for Artificial Intelligence, Michael Kanaan examines the emergence of AI as a tool for maintaining and expanding State power. Russia, for example, is pushing for AI in every aspect of its military complex, while China, as you can see in the excerpt below, has taken a more holistic approach, with the technology infiltrating virtually all strata of Chinese society.

Last week, the University of Oklahoma announced a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Overall, the NSF provided more than $100 million in investments to establish and support five artificial intelligence (AI) Institutes and education centers. The announcement detailed various ways the grant will help promote diversity throughout STEM, enable more students to research AI, and even protect sea turtles in southern Texas during potentially deadly meteorological events. "It doesn't get cold very often in Corpus Christi, but at times, strong cold fronts can decrease the temperature of the water in bays and lagunas very quickly," said Philippe Tissot, associate research professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, one of the institute's partnering organizations, in a press release. "Up to thousands of sea turtles can rise to the surface during these events, where ships can run over them."

Apple will stage its traditional post-Labor Day product reveal on Tuesday, where it is expected to tout new editions of the Apple Watch and iPad. Along the way, there will be new things for Siri to do as well on the iPad, as part of the iOS mobile operating system upgrade. Siri is the oft-maligned but heavily used personal assistant. This year, Siri will tout a "completely new look," with "over 20x more facts than just three years ago." Yes, Apple actually says this, on the promo page for the iOS 14 upgrade, which has traditionally been made available in September.

Lacking a powerful technology sector of its own, the European Union has instead tried to carve out a space in the digital economy as the world's regulatory superpower, leading the charge on privacy rights and data protection by leveraging its enormous single market against Goliaths like Google and Facebook. But a number of recent examples have made it clear that for Europe, increasingly, that is not enough. The rapid pace of technological change -- including artificial intelligence and facial recognition -- is mingling ever more with national security concerns that European leaders have been slow to grasp and respond to, analysts say. As global technology shapes up into a battleground between China and the United States, Europe is finding it harder to set the rules of the road while others in Beijing and Washington are in the diver's seat. "Europe needs to get its act together," said Marietje Schaake, international policy director at the Cyber Policy Center of Stanford University and a former member of the European Parliament. "I worry the tempo is too slow for the pace at which changes are forthcoming."

Data security is currently more essential than any other time in recent memory. The present cybersecurity threats are unimaginably smart and advanced. Security experts face an every day fight to identify and assess new dangers, identify possible mitigation measures, and find some solution for the residual risk. This upcoming age of cybersecurity threats requires agile and smart projects that can quickly adjust to new and unexpected attacks. AI and machine learning's ability to address this difficulty is perceived by cybersecurity experts, most of whom trust it is a key to the eventual future of cybersecurity The utilization of AI systems, in the realm of cybersecurity, can have three kinds of impact, it is constantly expressed in the work: «AI can: grow cyber threats (amount); change the run of the mill character of these dangers (quality); and present new and obscure dangers (quantity and quality).

The moon landing is an iconic moment in human history but it's easy to forget 51 years later how risky it was. In 1969, there was a very real chance the Apollo 11 mission could have gone horribly wrong and over 600 million people could have witnessed it unfold on their television sets. If that did happen, the broadcasts would have switched to a solemn US President Richard Nixon, who would have addressed the nation with a speech titled "In Event of Moon Disaster". As far as political speeches go, it's a moving oration. "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace," it begins.

It looked like a scene from science fiction. But the exercise conducted last week, one of the US military's largest ever high-tech experiments, wasn't a movie set. Flying into a possibly hostile airstrip aboard an Air Force C-130, the robot dogs were sent outside the aircraft to scout for threats before the humans inside would be exposed to them, according to an Air Force news release dated September 3. The electronic canines are just one link in what the US military calls the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). It uses artificial intelligence and rapid data analytics to detect and counter threats to US military assets in space and possible attacks on the US homeland with missiles or other means.

A lot happened this week deserving of attention in the AI space. The Guardian wrote an article with GPT-3 and again demonstrated that no matter what OpenAI paid to train and create the language model, the free marketing might be worth more. After losing the JEDI cloud contract appeal with the Pentagon, Amazon appointed Keith Alexander to its board -- the man who oversaw the National Security Agency mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden leaks in 2013. And Portland passed the strictest facial recognition bans in U.S. history, outlawing government and business use of the technology. However, AI Weekly attempts to reach into the zeitgeist and highlight important events on people's minds. This week without question it's the smoke that's hung over the western United States and the underlying issue of climate change.