Retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee recently went up against ALPHA, an artificial intelligence developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate. In fact, all the other AI's that the Air Force Research Lab had in their possession also lost to ALPHA…and so did all of the other human experts who tried their skills against ALPHA's superior algorithms. And did we mention ALPHA achieves superiority while running on a 35 Raspberry Pi? Saying that Lee is experienced when it comes to aerial combat is a remarkable understatement. He is an instructor who has trained with thousands of U.S. Air Force pilots. he is also an Air Battle Manager who has been fighting against AI opponents in air combat simulations since the 1980s. Yet, he was not successful in winning against ALPHA.

Last month Salesforce released details on some recent acquisitions in machine learning, reporting spending of almost 33 million on the AI startup MetaMind, and an additional 41.6 million for two other companies, including the intelligence systems startup PredictionIO. This all furthers the Salesforce commitment to bolster their AI capabilities. Current predictions suggest that the global AI market in general will grow to over 5 billion by 2020, driven in part by the rising adoption of predictive marketing intelligence and natural language processing technologies across all business sectors. SugarCRM recently announced that they are developing a new intelligence service with a Siri-like agent called Candace. According to their literature, Candace will be able to listen in on business meetings and use natural language processing to analyze the conversations.

In news that shouldn't surprise anybody who never figured out how to do a barrel roll in Star Fox, a sophisticated artificial intelligence program was able to take down one of the most respected Air Force fighter pilots to ever Top the Gun and take the highway to the danger zone (he didn't actually Top Gun though because that's a Navy program and this is an Air Force guy). Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene "Geno" Lee, who has participated in thousands of missions in his decades-long career is calling the A.I. the best he's ever seen. I am calling it Skynet. "I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. 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."

Is AI ready for primetime? In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, he stated that machine learning showed great promise for cybersecurity, but that the necessary technology was probably five years out. If machine learning is currently so successful in other areas of society, why isn't it ready for cybersecurity? Machine learning is a subset of Artificial Intelligence, a field of computer science that started in 1958 when Marvin Minsky founded the Artificial Intelligence lab. Everyone, including DARPA, was pouring money into it.

A factory in China replaced 60,000 of its human workers with robots. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes that artificial intelligence must "respect human autonomy," but Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana told Bloomberg BNA that this robot workforce is "coming faster than anybody realizes." With robots primed to swoop in and take about 5 million jobs by 2020, it's about damn time we braced ourselves for our new workforce. A draft report from the European Parliament suggested a few tips on how us mere humans can get ready for the ever-increasing automated workforce, CNN reported. In the event that "advanced robots" begin to displace us in "large numbers," CNN reported, the European Parliament report suggests that the European Commission make the owners of the aforementioned roboworkers pay taxes or give to Social Security.

Combat vehicles may soon be equipped with laser weapon systems to fend off enemy drones and aircraft. Laser weapons and Stinger missiles could be integrated into detection systems and mounted on vehicles, including Humvees and Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, to better protect ground units. A Ground-Based Air Defense (GBAD) Directed Energy On-The-Move will soon head into the next phase of development, enabling the vehicles to fire lasers while in motion. Combat vehicles may soon be equipped with laser weapon systems to fend off enemy drones and aircraft. The program led by the Office of Naval Research is about to move on to Phase 3, the US Naval Institute News reports.

An A.I. named "ALPHA," made by a company called Psibernetix, has apparently impressed the U.S. Air Force by repeatedly splashing a (human) fighter pilot in dogfight simulations. I swear I'm not tricking you into reading my movie script pitch here. Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene "Geno" Lee is a U.S. Fighter Weapons School graduate, an experienced combat pilot, and an instructor who's apparently trained thousands of other pilots in the American armed services. He's shot down his share of targets, simulated and presumably otherwise, but in a series of simulated air combat missions against ALPHA he could not prevail, Lee told the University of Cincinnati Magazine: I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment.

Finance expert Roger Ferguson has joined the board of Google parent Alphabet. He is the first African American to serve on the board of Google or Alphabet. SAN FRANCISCO -- Google parent company Alphabet is adding finance chops and diversity to its board with the appointment of economist Roger Ferguson. Ferguson is the first African American to serve on the board of Alphabet and Google, marking a major milestone in Google's effort to bring more diversity to the technology industry. Ferguson will serve on Alphabet's audit committee.

While Google was building an artificial intelligence that could beat a grandmaster at the ancient game of Go, researchers at the University of Cincinnati took a different tack. They designed an AI that could take on a fighter pilot. Dubbed ALPHA, this system recently beat retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee in multiple flight simulator trials, as the researchers explain in a paper recently published in the Journal of Defense Management. The idea isn't to replace human fighter pilots. According to Nicholas Ernest, a University of Cincinnati alum and the founder of Psibernetix, a company that aims to commercialize the technology behind ALPHA, this AI may ultimately act as a kind of digital assistant that provides real-time advice to pilots.

Whether it's Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at chess, Watson defeating Ken Jennings at Jeopardy!, or Google DeepMind's AlphaGO besting Lee Sedo at Go, artificial intelligence can't be underestimated when it comes to taking on the champions and winning. That's because a new AI system called ALPHA -- developed by recent University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, now CEO of Psibernetix -- recently defeated retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee in an air combat simulator. Not only did Colonel Lee, who has extensive aerial combat experience as an instructor, fail to kill ALPHA's aircraft during combat, he was also repeatedly shot out of the air by the bot. According to Lee, ALPHA is "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I've seen to date." "ALPHA is an incredibly difficult opponent to face," Psibernetix CEO Nick Ernest tells Digital Trends. "Even flying against other pilots when ALPHA has severe handicaps to a number of its systems -- including speed, turning, missile capability and sensors -- it is able to win.