Mayhem ruled the day when seven AIs clashed here last week -- a bot named Mayhem that, along with its competitors, proved that machines can now quickly find many types of security vulnerabilities hiding in vast amounts of code. Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the first-of-its-kind contest sought to explore how artificial intelligence and automation might help find security and design flaws that bad actors use to penetrate computer networks and steal data. Mayhem, built by the For All Secure team out of Carnegie Mellon University, so outclassed its competition that it won even though it was inoperable for about half of the contest's 96 270-second rounds. Mayhem pivoted between two autonomous methods of finding bugs and developing ways to exploit them. Under one method, dubbed symbolic execution, Mayhem tries to figure out how a target program works by systematically replacing sample inputs with classes of inputs.

It's a lot to offer, but it may be necessary. The USAF is increasingly relying on drones as part of its operations, and its training has suffered in recent years due to stretched resources. While the Air Force is doubling the number of pilots it produces between its 2015 and 2017 fiscal years, it's not going to take any chances with losing those crews that are already here. That's especially true when airlines are aggressively luring pilots with the promises of greater pay. It's too soon to say if larger bonuses will work, but the odds are that there will be at least some drone operators who'll stay on when they would have otherwise bowed out.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is certainly in the vogue as continues to make inroads into various sectors ranging from medicine and cybersecurity to aerospace engineering and motoring. And, The Washington Post is now looking to use the technology to automatically produce hundreds of simple, quick news reports about the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio as well as the upcoming US elections. Announced on 5 August, The Post will join the growing number of media publications utilizing similar technology to expand their news coverage, produce more stories automatically and free up their reporters to do more in-depth pieces. The publication will use an in-house tool called Heliograf that was developed by its engineering team to quickly churn out automatic reports on scores, event schedules, medal counts and other data-centric news for the Rio Games. The automated reports will be then included in the company's main Olympics liveblog that will also feature stories written by The Post's sports reporters.

ISLAMABAD – The U.S. drone strike that killed the Islamic State group's commander for Afghanistan and Pakistan was the latest blow to the Middle East-led movement's ambitions to expand into a region where the long-established Taliban remain the dominant Islamist force. The Islamic State group has enticed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of jihadi fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan to switch loyalty and has held a small swath of territory in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, where leader Hafiz Saeed Khan was killed on July 26 by a U.S. drone, Washington confirmed late Friday. But outside that pocket of territory, security officials and analysts say that the group remains -- for now -- more of a "brand name" than a cohesive militant force in much of the region. "Groups around the world want to jump on that bandwagon and cash in on their popularity and the fear they command," said a Pakistani police official based in Islamabad, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media. Anxiety over the Islamic State group -- also known as ISIS or "Daesh" -- in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been building since the al-Qaida breakaway movement seized portions of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014 and began promoting itself worldwide.

SpaceX launched JCSAT-16 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and landed the first stage on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Thursday, July 28, 2016 with a secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral and landed it about eight minutes later. United Launch Alliance launched an Atlas V rocket at 10:30 a.m. SpaceX launched a pair of communications satellites from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, but it was unknown if the first stage landed successfully.

Google's DeepMind division has announced a partnership with the NHS's Moorfields Eye Hospital to apply machine learning to spot common eye diseases earlier. The five-year research project will draw on one million anonymous eye scans which are held on Moorfields' patient database, with the aim to speed up the complex and time-consuming process of analysing eye scans. The hope is that this will allow diagnoses of common causes of sight loss, like diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration, to be spotted more rapidly and hence be treated more effectively. For example, Google says that up to 98 percent of sight loss resulting from diabetes can be prevented by early detection and treatment. Two million people are already living with sight loss in the UK, of whom around 360,000 are registered as blind or partially-sighted.

Listen to Science Friday live on Fridays from 2-4 p.m. ET The most famous patient in neuroscience is the subject of a new book by the grandson of the man who changed his brain forever. Plus, a tour of the particles that could lie outside the Standard Model, and a look at automation in the workforce. City officials plan to repurpose Olympic structures as schools, dormitories, and community parks. What could sterile neutrinos, gravitons, and axions tell us about the Standard Model? A group proposes 20 science-based policy questions for the presidential candidates to address in the months ahead.

Apple's Tim Cook tells The Washington Post about the "lonely" job of CEO. For those of you who hold onto every word Tim Cook says, The Washington Post has about 10,000 to offer. Apple's CEO sat down with the Post for what it termed two "sprawling and highly self-reflective interviews" published Saturday that hit on topics ranging from losing and succeeding the late Steve Jobs, the company's recent fight with the FBI and who he turns to for advice. The Post prefaces the interview with a nice summary of what it covers. But we've also put together a few highlights: Mistakes: After admitting to making mistakes with Apple Maps and initially hiring the wrong person to head up its retail division, Cook said his job is lonely.

"The information all becomes shareable and then the decision will be made by these kind of guardian angels for each of the firefighters," said Edward Chow, manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Civil Program Office and AUDREY program manager. The AI automatically warns a police officer inside to evacuate, while also telling incoming firefighters or hazardous-material teams to address the threat quickly. Those firefighters, police officers and EMTs of the future will carry body-worn sensors, cameras and augmented glasses with heads-up displays. "The proliferation of miniaturized sensors and internet of things devices can make a tremendous impact on first responder safety, connectivity and situational awareness," said John Merrill, Next Generation First Responder program manager for the DHS' Science and Technology Directorate.

Machines can do some surprising things. But what you really want to know is this: Will your job be around in the future? What job is hardest for a robot to do? Mental health and substance abuse social workers (found under community and social services). This job has a 0.3 percent chance of being automated. That's because it's ranked high in cleverness, negotiation, and helping others.