Tech titans Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk recently slugged it out online over the possible threat artificial intelligence might one day pose to the human race, although you could be forgiven if you don't see why this seems like a pressing question. Thanks to AI, computers are learning to do a variety of tasks that have long eluded them -- everything from driving cars to detecting cancerous skin lesions to writing news stories . But Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, worries that AI systems could soon surpass humans, potentially leading to our deliberate (or inadvertent) extinction. Two weeks ago, Musk warned U.S. governors to get educated and start considering ways to regulate AI in order to ward off the threat. "Once there is awareness, people will be extremely afraid," he said at the time.

The U.S. Naval Research Lab has been working on its CICADA (Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft) drones since at least 2011. The tiny drones are designed to be carried aloft by other aircraft and dropped, whereupon they'll use GPS and little fins to glide to within 15 feet of their destination. They can carry a small sensor payload, and they're designed to be cheap enough that you can use a whole bunch of them all at once. At the Sea Air Space Expo back in April, we checked out the latest MK5 CICADA prototypes, along with a new delivery system that'll launch 32 of them out of a standardized sonobuoy tube all at once. The CICADA drones themselves consist mostly of a printed circuit board, which makes up the wings and also contains a custom autopilot system that can recover from the crazy tumbling that you can see when the CICADAs are initially deployed. A 3D-printed fuselage minimizes the amount of hands-on assembly time required, and the general idea is that eventually, these things will be created and assembled entirely by robots.

Much has been made of the "food boom" in Pittsburgh, and the city has long had a thriving arts scene. But perhaps the secret, underlying driver for both the economy and the cool factor -- the reason Pittsburgh now gets mentioned alongside Brooklyn and Portland, Ore., as an urban hot spot for millennials -- isn't chefs or artists but geeks. In a 2014 article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mayor Bill Peduto compared Carnegie Mellon, along with the University of Pittsburgh, to the iron ore factories that made this city an industrial power in the 19th century. The schools are the local resource "churning out that talent" from which the city is fueled. Because of the top students and research professors at Carnegie Mellon, tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Uber have opened offices here.

Don Ingabire (L), 16 and Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, members of a teenage robotics team from the African nation of Burundi, who were reported missing after taking part in an international competition and later spotted crossing the United States border into Canada, are seen in pictures released by the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., U.S. July 20, 2017.

From ship-hunting Tomahawk missiles and sub-spying drone ships to semi-autonomous UAV swarms and situationally-aware reconnaissance robots, the Pentagon has long sought to protect its human forces with the use of robotic weapons. But as these systems gain ever-greater degrees of intelligence and independence, their increasing autonomy has some critics worried that humans are ceding too much power to devices whose decision-making processes we don't fully understand (and which we may not be entirely able to control). What constitutes an Autonomous Weapon System (AWS) depends on who you ask, as these systems exhibit varying degrees of independence. Sense and React to Military Objects (SARMO) weapons like the Phalanx and C-RAM are able to react to incoming artillery and missile threats, targeting and engaging them without human oversight. However these aren't fully-autonomous, per se -- they simply perform a set automated task.

In 2016, Stanford students started hacking for defense--that is, they took on real projects from National Security Agency, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Army Cyber Command, the Veterans Administration, and other agencies with defense-related problems. The students actually came up with prototype solutions. The innovative Hacking For Defense (H4D) class, which requires each student team to conduct at least 100 interviews with defense industry "clients," caught on quickly. Today, according to Steve Blank, an instructor at Stanford and one of the creators of the curriculum, eight universities in addition to Stanford have offered or will offer a Hacking for Defense class this year: Boise State, Columbia, Georgetown, James Madison, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Southern California, and the University of Southern Mississippi. At Stanford, the class has spun out Hacking for Diplomacy, Hacking for Energy, and other targeted classes that use the same methodology.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) today announced a major new project, the Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative. The Initiative will research the effects of the artificial intelligence revolution on the character of conflict, shifting power dynamics, and even fundamental elements of power. "We are at the beginning of a new industrial revolution powered by artificial intelligence," said Paul Scharre, Director of the CNAS Technology and National Security Program, who will lead the Initiative. "AI is already beginning to have applications across a range of industries, and economists predict major disruptions in the labor market and the economy as a whole. AI will similarly have a significant impact on international security. The Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative will explore how AI will change conflict and power, and provide recommendations for policymakers to cope with the changes ahead."

NOTE: These instructions are about submitting your articles to our blog only. We are also launching an academic journal and these instructions DO NOT apply to that. For instructions about submitting articles to our academic journal please visit our journal. Applied artificial intelligence is maturing fast. With maturity comes adoption, commercialization, and diffusion.

If President Roosevelt is remembered for starting the Manhattan Project, President John F. Kennedy for setting the goal to put a human on the moon, Clinton/Gore team for launching the Internet revolution, should President Obama be known as the founder of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Revolution? We believe the answer to that question is a resounding "yes". A less known fact about the Obama Administration is the level of guidance, support, encouragement, and focus it has provided in the growth of technology in general and artificial intelligence in particular. In fact, in some ways, the only failure that can be pointed out is that the administration has been too modest in promoting its role in driving and creating the recent artificial technology revolution. When President Obama took office, America was engulfed in an unprecedented economic crisis.

Campaign rhetoric will calm down. People will return to their daily lives and America will go back to focusing on its future. Trump's victory, largely led by the voices that got ignored by the previous administrations, provides a clear mandate for the Trump administration. The minor problem: when it comes to technology, the Trump mandate is mostly silent. The major problem:technology strategy by the Trump administration can be at odds with the low-to-medium skilled job creation promise on one hand or lead to decline in American competitiveness on the other hand.