Reliable Robotics, a startup developing autonomous flight technologies, this week emerged from stealth with $33.5 million in venture capital funding. Cofounder and CEO Robert Rose says the funds will be used to scale production of the company's products and bring on new engineering talent. Aviation companies pursuing autonomous transportation include Uber, Boeing, and Honeywell. According to management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, replacing single-pilot operations with autonomous planes could save airlines as much as $60 billion annually. Pandemic headwinds have only reinvigorated the search for cost-cutting opportunities as Statista estimates that airlines will lose at least $314 billion in revenue in 2020. Looking to expedite their path to market, companies like Xwing, Airbus, and Elroy Air have explored retrofitting existing aircraft rather than developing hardware from scratch.

A research team at Argonne National Laboratory developed a novel approach to helping system operators understand how to better control power systems with the help of artificial intelligence. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) have created a new artificial intelligence (AI) technique to help operators understand how to better handle power systems. Their single decision-making neural network model manages both static and dynamic processes with a relatively high level of accuracy, and could augment the resilience of the U.S. power grid. ANL's Yichen Zhang said, "A neural network can create a map between a specific input and a specific output. If I know the conditions we start with and those we end with, I can use neural networks to figure out how those conditions map to each other."

With Covid-19 incapacitating startling numbers of U.S. service members and modern weapons proving increasingly lethal, the American military is relying ever more frequently on intelligent robots to conduct hazardous combat operations. Such devices, known in the military as "autonomous weapons systems," include robotic sentries, battlefield-surveillance drones, and autonomous submarines. So far, in other words, robotic devices are merely replacing standard weaponry on conventional battlefields. Now, however, in a giant leap of faith, the Pentagon is seeking to take this process to an entirely new level -- by replacing not just ordinary soldiers and their weapons, but potentially admirals and generals with robotic systems. Admittedly, those systems are still in the development stage, but the Pentagon is now rushing their future deployment as a matter of national urgency.

The precise figure is unknowable because only 3 to 10% of this fraud is ever detected. With more data in health care than ever before, what is the opportunity to use artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced analytics techniques to improve fraud detection? That was the topic of a recent webinar featuring Prime Therapeutics, the pharmacy benefit manager that Fast Company named among the world's most innovative companies for 2020 for their use of SAS Detection and Investigation for Health Care to fight fraud, waste and abuse. SAS Medical Director Steve Kearney, PharmD, hosted the webinar. Prime Therapeutics integrates pharmacy and medical claims into an advanced analytic engine to identify cases for their investigators.

However intelligent artificial intelligence might be, it still relies on qualified humans, of which there is a notable lack in the European Union. In 2019, German firms spent an average of six months hunting to fill each tech position. Without the right training to close the skills gap, fewer businesses in Europe are able to integrate AI into their business operations, foregoing possibly significant productivity gains. A scarcity of talent in Europe also shows that salaries and broader job attractiveness in the European Union cannot compete in the global labour market. Promising European start-ups are unable to attract the talent they need.

An artificial intelligence algorithm destroyed a seasoned US fighter pilot in a simulated dogfight last week, a result some expert observers say was to be expected. "I was not surprised by that outcome," Guy'Bus' Snodgrass, a former US Navy pilot and TOPGUN instructor, told Insider, arguing that the set-up of the engagement gave the AI an advantage. John "JV" Venable, a former US Air Force F-16 pilot, said the same. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held the last round of its third and final AlphaDogfight competition Thursday, putting an AI system designed by Heron Systems against a human pilot in a "simulated within-visual-range air combat" situation. The AI algorithm, which had previously defeated other AI "pilots," achieved a flawless victory, winning five straight matches without the human pilot -- an experienced Air Force pilot and Weapons Instructor Course graduate with the call sign "Banger" -- ever scoring a hit.

Because in military situations, as well as for self-driving cars, information must be processed faster than humans can achieve, determination of context computationally, also known as situational assessment, is increasingly important. In this article, we introduce the topic of context, and we discuss what is known about the heretofore intractable research problem on the effects of interdependence, present in the best of human teams; we close by proposing that interdependence must be mastered mathematically to operate human-machine teams efficiently, to advance theory, and to make the machine actions directed by AI explainable to team members and society. The special topic articles in this issue and a subsequent issue of AI Magazine review ongoing mature research and operational programs that address context for human-machine teams. In 1983, William Lawless blew the whistle on Department of Energy (DOE) mismanagement of military radioactive wastes. After his PhD, he joined DOE's citizen advisory board at its Savannah River Site where he coauthored over 100 recommendations on its cleanup.

A small Maryland company took first place in last week's AlphaDogfight Trials Final event, a three-day competition designed to demonstrate advanced algorithms capable of performing simulated, within-visual-range air combat maneuvering – commonly known as a dogfight. Heron Systems' F-16 AI agent defeated seven other companies' F-16 AI agents and then went on to dominate the main event – a series of simulated dogfights against an experienced Air Force F-16 pilot – winning 5-0 through aggressive and precise maneuvers the human pilot couldn't outmatch. "The AlphaDogfight Trials were a phenomenal success, accomplishing exactly what we'd set out to do," said Col. Dan "Animal" Javorsek, program manager in DARPA's Strategic Technology Office. "The goal was to earn the respect of a fighter pilot – and ultimately the broader fighter pilot community – by demonstrating that an AI agent can quickly and effectively learn basic fighter maneuvers and successfully employ them in a simulated dogfight." The trials were designed to energize and expand a base of AI developers for DARPA's Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program.

Yesterday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Agriculture's National Institute for Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) announced investment to establish seven new artificial intelligence (AI) research institutes. Each centre will receive roughly $20 million over a five year period. The aim is that these new institutes will serve as hubs in a broader nationwide network. NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography, led by a team at the University of Oklahoma. The institute plans to develop user-driven trustworthy AI that addresses pressing concerns in weather, climate, and coastal hazards prediction.

The White House on Wednesday announced $1 billion funding for a new initiative to advance U.S. artificial intelligence and quantum mechanics research. The initiative will fund 12 new, multi-disciplinary research institutes focused on AI and quantum information science (QIS) over five years in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy, as well as the private sector and academia. "We are proud to announce that over $1 billion in funding will be geared towards that research, a defining achievement as we continue to shape and prepare this great [n]ation for excellence in the industries of the future," advisor to the president Ivanka Trump said in a statement. Ivanka Trump listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a conference call with banks on efforts to help small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump administration in February committed to doubling funding to a total of $2.2 billion for non-defense AI and quantum research by fiscal year 2022.