DUBAI: The idea of artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for a long time, but in recent decades it has gone from being the stuff of science fiction to something tangible and beneficial. Sir Michael Brady is the interim president of the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), an Abu Dhabi-based AI-focused university -- the first of its kind in the world. "Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and many more have contributed to AI's position in today's spotlight," he said. He added: "We have moved from the use of AI in large-scale industry or ground-breaking circumstances, such as NASA space exploration or factory robotics, to commonplace applications such as advertising algorithms or Netflix suggesting what show to watch next." As society transforms under the impact of technology, AI is also rapidly evolving.

… needed to provide the computational horsepower for accelerating the movement of big data used in emerging machine learning applications.

Face masks are one of the best defenses against the spread of COVID-19, but their growing adoption is having a second, unintended effect: breaking facial recognition algorithms. Wearing face masks that adequately cover the mouth and nose causes the error rate of some of the most widely used facial recognition algorithms to spike to between 5 percent and 50 percent, a study by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found. Black masks were more likely to cause errors than blue masks, and the more of the nose covered by the mask, the harder the algorithms found it to identify the face. "With the arrival of the pandemic, we need to understand how face recognition technology deals with masked faces," said Mei Ngan, an author of the report and NIST computer scientist. "We have begun by focusing on how an algorithm developed before the pandemic might be affected by subjects wearing face masks. Later this summer, we plan to test the accuracy of algorithms that were intentionally developed with masked faces in mind."

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in diverse domains of military activity, from intelligence to training and logistics, is being explored by various defence forces and manufacturers as the battlefield becomes increasingly technology-driven. Now, it seems, even the old school dogfights -- aerial battle between fighter aircraft -- are set to be revolutionised by AI algorithms. On 20 August, in an event organised by the US' Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to understand how AI and machine learning can be employed in air-to-air combat, an AI algorithm defeated a human fighter pilot operating a simulated F-16 Viper fighter jet in a virtual dogfight five to zero. This event was the final dogfight of the US military's AlphaDogfight challenge, which was organised to "demonstrate the feasibility of developing intelligent autonomous agents capable of defeating adversary aircraft in a dogfight". A fighter wins a dogfight when it manages to place itself behind the enemy and remain in that position long enough to get a kill shot.

On 20 August, in an event organised by the US' Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to understand how AI and machine learning can …

NSWC is committed to its Sailors and the deliberate development of their tactical excellence, ethics, and leadership as the nation's premiere maritime special operations force supporting the National Defense Strategy. It is the maritime component of U.S. Special Operations Command, and its mission is to provide maritime special operations forces to conduct full-spectrum operations, unilaterally or with partners, to support national objectives. NAVAL AMPHIBIOUS BASE CORONADO (NNS) – Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) Acting Director Nand Mulchandani met with leadership at Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC) to discuss its strategy on applying AI for asymmetric advantage both on the Corporate side as well as AI for Warfare. Mulchandani and a small team from the JAIC visited the command as part of its mission to transform the DoD by applying AI to achieve mission impact at scale. The group was briefed on the basics of Naval Special Warfare's mission, Mulchandani met with command leadership and members of NSWC's Future Concepts and Innovation Directorate (N9) to discuss how AI is shaping the battlefield of today and how it can provide an asymmetric advantage to future operations.

Equivariant neural networks (ENNs) are graph neural networks embedded in $\mathbb{R}^3$ and are well suited for predicting molecular properties. The ENN library e3nn has customizable convolutions, which can be designed to depend only on distances between points, or also on angular features, making them rotationally invariant, or equivariant, respectively. This paper studies the practical value of including angular dependencies for molecular property prediction using the QM9 data set. We find that for fixed network depth, adding angular features improves the accuracy on most targets. For most, but not all, molecular properties, distance-only e3nns (L0Nets) can compensate by increasing convolutional layer depth. Our angular-feature e3nn (L1Net) architecture beats previous state-of-the-art results on the global electronic properties dipole moment, isotropic polarizability, and electronic spatial extent.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Artificial Intelligence and Technology Office announced this week the formation of the First Five Consortium, which will develop and use artificial intelligence (AI) tools for disaster management. The First Five is a partnership with DOE, and Microsoft to improve disaster response, including wildfire prediction, search and rescue, flood control, damage assessments and natural disaster response. "The First Five was formed to bring the best resources from industry, nonprofit and the public sector to use technology to address the need to mitigate the impact of natural disasters while protecting property and lives," said Jermon Bafaty, a White House fellow with DOE, in a conference call. "When you look at 2019, there were 14 disasters that were individually more than a billion [dollars] in damages each," Bafaty said. "As a public-private partnership, we need to be able to pull together the best ideas and understandings to put together the right solutions that we think we'll be able to scale to save lives."

An MIT report estimates truly autonomous vehicles might not hit the streets for a decade. And when they do, it's difficult to say whether they will fully accommodate all riders, including those with disabilities. Driverless car technology promises to remove barriers to personal transportation, but few self-driving operators have made headway on solutions for customers with mobility, vision, and hearing impairments, including seniors and those with chronic health conditions. Some companies are further along than others. Alphabet's Waymo is engaged with collaborators -- including the Foundation for Senior Living in Phoenix and the Foundation for Blind Children -- in an effort to ensure its vehicles remain accessible.

It was the organizers' belief that "significant advances can be made" in at least one, if not several of these specific areas of concern through a joint effort of a "carefully selected group of scientists". And what's more, this advancement could be quicker than many though possible. While there already had been significant developments in automata – machines that can carry preprogrammed and predetermined functions – it was the conference organizers' belief, especially McCarthy, that there was a mountain of potential for the development of truly "intelligent" machines that could essentially, think for themselves. It was his further belief that through the joint effort of likeminded people willing to "devote time to it…could make real progress". It would turn out, he was correct. In the years that followed the crucial conference in the summer of 1956, advancements in artificial intelligence began to become ever-more rapid.