Federal regulators are investigating Tesla's autopilot feature after a fatal crash involving a tractor trailer and one of its Model S cars. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened the investigation after a man was killed while driving a Model S with the self-driving mode engaged. "This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated," Tesla said in a statement Thursday. It called the incident a "tragic loss." The car was on a divided highway when a tractor trailer apparently turned in front of it.

These are my notes and observations after attending the Safety in Artificial Intelligence (SafArtInt) conference, which was co-hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Carnegie Mellon University on June 27 and 28. This isn't an organized summary of the content of the conference; rather, it's a selection of points which are relevant to the control problem. As a result, it suffers from selection bias: it looks like superintelligence and control-problem-relevant issues were discussed frequently, when in reality those issues were discussed less and I didn't write much about the more mundane parts. SafArtInt has been the third out of a planned series of four conferences. The purpose of the conference series was twofold: the OSTP wanted to get other parts of the government moving on AI issues, and they also wanted to inform public opinion. The other three conferences are about near term legal, social, and economic issues of AI. SafArtInt was about near term safety and reliability in AI systems.

In addition, the built-in artificial intelligence will be able to predict situations, producing ready-made proposals for the border protection. "The system is fully based on domestic policy decisions that ensure protection of information resources against data loss, hackers and other unauthorized interventions," the press service quoted the deputy director of OPK Sergei Skokov as saying. The developers also noted that the new system is intended not only to collect different types of information, but also contains elements of artificial intelligence which will allow for analysis and forecasting of the situation and work out proposals for the protection of borders, by calculating steps and routes that offenders may take, as well as the necessary measures to prevent malicious acts, including the assessment of possible risks. The state borders need protection due to ever rising threats. Since the beginning of this year in the Rostov region, more than 60 "wanted" persons were found and arrested.

The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

Hay Newman continues, "ALPHA was developed by aerospace engineer Nick Ernest, a recent doctoral graduate of University of Cincinnati whose company Psibernetix works with the Air Force Research Laboratory. ALPHA has been victorious in numerous simulated battles against top fighter pilots, including a series in October against retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee. Lee told University of Cincinnati Magazine that: 'It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, may never simulate human intelligence, but it's still better at some tasks than humans are. Disconcertingly, one of those tasks is "blowing other humans out of the sky." And not only can this AI outfly a human, it can do it on a computer anybody can pick up at Best Buy. The University of Cincinnati has been building an AI named Alpha to improve military drones. The idea is not to teach the drone how to operate completely on its own, but rather to research how AI could improve them.

Ask Apple's Siri digital assistant if she's evil, and she'll respond curtly, "Not really." Repeat a famous line from the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," in which a computer on a spaceship kills nearly all the human crew, and Siri groans. And who can blame her? We humans have a morbid fascination with machines rising up to wipe us out or to enslave us as cocooned, flesh-and-blood battery packs. You can see that vision of the future streaming over Netflix whenever you want.

Popular Science: A pilot A.I. developed by a doctoral graduate from the University of Cincinnati has shown that it can not only beat other A.I.s, but also a professional fighter pilot with decades of experience. In a series of flight combat simulations, the A.I. successfully evaded retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene "Geno" Lee, and shot him down every time. In a statement, Lee called it "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible A.I. I've seen to date." The fact that an AI downed a professional fighter pilot? Or the fact that the AI was developed by a graduate student?

Now computers are beating humans at something that might be a tad more practical: flight combat.

Ask Apple's Siri digital assistant if she's evil, and she'll respond curtly, "Not really." Repeat a famous line from the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," in which a computer on a spaceship kills nearly all the human crew, and Siri groans. And who can blame her? We humans have a morbid fascination with machines rising up to wipe us out or to enslave us as cocooned, flesh-and-blood battery packs. You can see that vision of the future streaming over Netflix whenever you want.