Once again, thousands of people from various corners of the marketing industry and the world descended on the French Riviera for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Some things haven't changed: the celebrity appearances, the late nights on the Carlton terrace that invariably lead to a regrettable hangover, the gigantic Daily Mail Yacht and the endlessly flowing rose. But this year also brought some surprises, including the Brexit decision at the end of the week as well as some unexpected Lions winners. Here are some other takeaways from adland's biggest event. The Maison Samsung featured a VR surfing experience on the roof and a super-secret "second-floor experience."

A recently-developed AI program dubbed ALPHA is being described as the most aggressive and responsive flight simulator to-date, having outwitted a veteran fighter pilot with thousands of hours of flight experience. Since the 1980s, a fighter pilot's first experience of flying a plane has typically been in the confines of a computer combat simulator that would teach them the hazards of in-flight combat without fears of any causalities. In 2016, this method remains ever-present and more important than ever, with programmers and researchers regularly updating a simulator's AI to help it prove more of a challenge to skilled human pilots. Now it seems those pilots have finally met their match. A University of Cincinnati (UC) graduate, Nick Ernest, has developed his own AI – dubbed ALPHA – as part of his own start-up, Psibernetix, with aims of making it a research tool for crewed and uncrewed teaming in a simulation environment. Having wiped the floor with other AIs earlier last year, a newer version of ALPHA has been pitted against retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee, who has been besting combat simulator AIs since the 1980s.

As at least three major wildfires rage across the American southwest, the people tasked with controlling them are contending with an unusual problem beyond the flames themselves: Drones. Officials say that small personal drones are increasingly being spotted flying near or above wildfires, interfering with aircraft used for aerial firefighting and firefighter transport operations. Small drones operating near wildfires put those aircraft at risk of collision. It's unclear why people are flying drones near wildfires, but it's likely they're being used to record video footage of the blazes. Firefighters spotted two drones in their air crew's operating area on Wednesday in Arizona, the Arizona Republic reports.

The world, and financial markets in particular, were stunned by Britain's vote to exit the EU. The markets were quite confident that Britain would stay in the EU. The S&P 500 rose sharply towards the end of the trading day before the Brexit vote, which some analysts claimed as a vote by investors against the Brexit. In the meanwhile, a unique model that we developed using media sentiment data made the opposite prediction and expected a sharp decline in markets that we saw overnight. During my graduate work at Stanford University, I learned how modern machine learning algorithms can be used to identify complex and deep patterns in noisy datasets – patterns that may be very difficult to detect with less sophisticated algorithms or human intuition.

Artificial intelligence (AI) developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate was recently assessed by subject-matter expert and retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee - who holds extensive aerial combat experience as an instructor and Air Battle Manager with considerable fighter aircraft expertise - in a high-fidelity air combat simulator. The artificial intelligence, dubbed ALPHA, was the victor in that simulated scenario, and according to Lee, is "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I've seen to date." Details on ALPHA - a significant breakthrough in the application of what's called genetic-fuzzy systems are published in the most-recent issue of the Journal of Defense Management, as this application is specifically designed for use with Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) in simulated air-combat missions for research purposes. The tools used to create ALPHA as well as the ALPHA project have been developed by Psibernetix, Inc., recently founded by UC College of Engineering and Applied Science 2015 doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, now president and CEO of the firm; as well as David Carroll, programming lead, Psibernetix, Inc.; with supporting technologies and research from Gene Lee; Kelly Cohen, UC aerospace professor; Tim Arnett, UC aerospace doctoral student; and Air Force Research Laboratory sponsors. ALPHA is currently viewed as a research tool for manned and unmanned teaming in a simulation environment.

Finding water on Mars has been a dream of scientists for decades and could prove an essential resource for any human pioneers looking to colonise the red planet. Now Nasa is hoping its Curiosity Rover may finally be able to settle the question of whether the liquid still exists on the planet's surface. Scientists are dispatching the robot to explore a feature on a sandy hillside they believe could be their best chance yet of finding water on the red planet. Scientists are hoping to send the Curiosity Rover to investigate dark streaks that appear on the nearby Mount Sharp during the Martian summer. Last year Nasa confirmed'dark fingers' spotted by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter were likely to be made by liquid moving across the planet's surface.

Studies have illustrated the power of priming to affect the way we feel about certain stimuli. In 2008, researchers at the University of Chicago conducted a study that used the American flag to discover how small environmental factors influence political judgment. Two versions of an online survey were distributed to both Democratic and Republican voters, one including a small American flag and one without. The study found that voters who were exposed to the presence of the flag tended to favor the Republican Party, even up to eight months after taking the original survey.

The last few weeks I published a variety of thought leadership articles/blogs on some of my favorite topics. Please find below the links. Charles (Chuck) Brooks serves as the Vice President for Government Relations & Marketing for Sutherland Global Services. Chuck leads Federal and State & Local Government relations activities. He is also responsible for the Marketing portfolio (Media, PR, Digital Outreach, Thought Leadership, Strategic Partnering, Branding) for the Federal and State & Local markets.

Sidewalk Labs, a secretive subsidiary of Alphabet, wants to radically overhaul public parking and transportation in American cities, emails and documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. Its high-tech services, which it calls "new superpowers to extend access and mobility", could make it easier to drive and park in cities and create hybrid public/private transit options that rely heavily on ride-share services such as Uber. But they might also gut traditional bus services and require cities to invest heavily in Google's own technologies, experts fear. Sidewalk is initially offering its cloud software, called Flow, to Columbus, Ohio, the winner of a recent 50m Smart City Challenge organized by the US Department of Transportation. Using public records laws, the Guardian obtained dozens of emails and documents submitted to Challenge cities by Sidewalk Labs, detailing many technologies and proposals that have not previously been made public.

When you think of artificial intelligence, the first image that likely comes to mind is one of sentient robots that walk, talk and emote like humans. But a different kind of AI is becoming prevalent in nearly all of the sciences. It's known as machine learning, and it revolves around enlisting computers in the task of sorting through the massive amounts of data that modern technology has allowed us to generate (a.k.a. One place machine learning is turning out to be the most beneficial is in the environmental sciences, which have generated huge amounts of information from monitoring Earth's various systems -- underground aquifers, the warming climate or animal migration, for example. A slew of projects have been popping up in this relatively new field, computational sustainability, that combine data gathered about the environment with a computer's ability to discover trends and make predictions about the future of our planet.