Breakthroughs in genetic fuzzy systems, most notably the development of the Genetic Fuzzy Tree methodology, have allowed fuzzy logic based Artificial Intelligences to be developed that can be applied to incredibly complex problems. The ability to have extreme performance and computational efficiency as well as to be robust to uncertainties and randomness, adaptable to changing scenarios, verified and validated to follow safety specifications and operating doctrines via formal methods, and easily designed and implemented are just some of the strengths that this type of control brings. Within this white paper, the authors introduce ALPHA, an Artificial Intelligence that controls flights of Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles in aerial combat missions within an extreme-fidelity simulation environment. To this day, this represents the most complex application of a fuzzy-logic based Artificial Intelligence to an Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle control problem. While development is on-going, the version of ALPHA presented withinwas assessed by Colonel (retired)Gene Lee who described ALPHA as "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI (he's) seen-to-date."

A robot carrying an explosive device was used to kill one of the shooters in Thursday night's horrific violence in Dallas, Texas, in what many law enforcement and other experts are calling the first such use of robotics technology by U.S. police. Five police officers were killed and seven others were wounded, along with two civilians, during a demonstration protesting the recent deaths of two African-American men at the hands of police in other cities. Micah Johnson, the man suspected of shooting the officers, was killed by remotely detonated explosives on the robot after a standoff and failed negotiations with police. Toby Walsh, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, cautions against seeing this use of a robot as a nightmarish science-fiction scenario--because the robot was being operated by a human via remote control. "In [that] sense, it was no more taking us down the road to killer robots than the remote-controlled Predator drones flying above the skies of Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere," Walsh told Scientific American in an email.

Microsoft has officially made Project Malmo, its Minecraft-based artificial intelligence research platform, available to all through Github. The open-source system was previously only available to a small group of researchers. The system, which had until now only been open to a small group of computer scientists in private preview, is primarily designed to help researchers develop sophisticated, more general artificial intelligence, or AI, that can do things like learn, hold conversations, make decisions and complete complex tasks. Minecraft may seem an odd choice for studying artificial intelligence, but Microsoft notes that researchers involved in the private preview were keen on its "endless possibilities for collaboration and exploration" as an ideal testing ground for AI research. In addition, Microsoft notes that the public launch heralds the arrival of new tools to the platform, like the ability to run experiments at a much faster pace (called overclocking), that should be a boon to researchers.

Google DeepMind is training its artificial intelligence software to detect early signs of eye diseases. It's aimed at detecting two diseases -- age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. The latter can lead to blindness if not detected early. DeepMind is analyzing about 1 million eye scans to develop an algorithm that can catch early warning signs of the conditions. "If you have an OCT scan done, a machine learning algorithm will be able to tell you if it's urgent versus something that's not so urgent. The company has caught flak from privacy critics in the past.

There's nothing quite like a cold pint of beer to remind you that everything will be alright with the world - but what about a hoppy, alcoholic beverage that's been finely brewed by a booze-obsessed artificial intelligence? That's what the IntelligentX Brewing Company is offering with its new AI Beer. Yes, a brewery has designed a series of algorithms that actively improve its beer recipes over time - in fact, the company's Pale, Amber, Black and Golden varieties have been tweaked 11 times since the AI went live. So does an AI make a bottle of beer better? IntelligentX says it's all about using an online feedback system that uses questions ranked from one to 10 to determine customer responses to its products.

Most of the new functionality will likely benefit third-party brands who will use the chatbots to offer services. The update lets developers add cards for in-conversation functionality, letting folks do things like reserve hotel rooms without having to leave chat. They can also drop in authentication for users to carry over account and payment information. The last big addition is adding natural language processing to bots automatically, improving their ability to interpret the gobbledygook humans try to pass off as conversation. Microsoft opened the API-style Skype Bot Platform for developers to build their own back in March.

Todor Primov, life sciences product manager at Ontotext, discusses some of the ways artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the face of healthcare. A common joke among certain circles is that AI can be defined as "whatever we haven't done yet". While the current popularity of AI among investors, startups and the wider media is unparalleled, we need to retain focus on what exactly AI means, and its specific sector-based applications. In healthcare and pharmaceutical research, 'AI-like' technologies hold huge promise, but what are the problems these solutions are purporting to solve, and where are the business opportunities? Data volume is a problem in the healthcare sector too.

The industry and users have a love/hate relationship with UVM. It has quickly risen to become the most used verification methodology and yet at the same time it is seen as being overly complex, unwieldy and difficult to learn. The third day of DAC gets started with breakfast with Accellera to discuss UVM and what we can expect to see in the next 5 years. The discussion was led by Tom Alsop, principle engineer at Intel. Alsop's first question to the panelists was, where do you see UVM in the next 5 years?

A new release out of the company reports, "Romonet today announced it is filing for a number of new patents for the next phase of its data center intelligence platform, utilizing the applications of Machine Learning. The company is known as the leader in data center analytics and this development enhances the value of Romonet's already patented solution. 'We have been working on advanced data handling and Machine Learning algorithms for over a year, focusing predominantly on enhancing our solution to learn and become as proficient as our human data scientists are today at identifying anomalies, and tracking down the cause behind the symptom. This capability provides powerful operational and business insight into data center systems and component level performance,' said Liam Newcombe, Romonet's co-founder and CTO."

What do you get when you take the former head of platform at Facebook, a former Mozilla engineer, veterans of other companies like Microsoft and Amazon, and an interest in building an assistive chatbot that stands apart from competitors in the space? The answer is Ozlo, a chatbot in the form of a cute, blue critter that answers questions from users with cards that contain deep links to relevant apps and websites. The company built around the service – headed up by CEO Charles Jolley, the former Facebook platform head – has offices in Palo Alto and Seattle and a workforce of 28. MUST READ: iPhone 7: Seriously, this phone sounds boring to you? And it landed a 14 million investment in May from Greylock and AME Cloud Ventures partly because Ozlo represents something a little different in a world that's starting to move from apps to more voice interaction with our devices.