It's been another interesting year in the world of artificial intelligence. We've seen large language models grow even larger, conferences returning to physical events, a raft of new policy developments, and machine learning techniques applied across the arts. Buckle up and join us for the ride as we review the year just gone. Research into both fundamental and applied aspects of artificial intelligence and machine learning continues apace. Yue Ma and colleagues used machine-learning techniques to identify antimicrobial peptides encoded by the genome sequences of microbes in the human gut.

As 2021 draws to a close, we look back on some of the AI research, news, policy developments and awards that have piqued our interest. We start our round-up with awards, with many prestigious prizes being presented this year. Launched last year, the AAAI Squirrel AI Award recognises positive impacts of artificial intelligence to protect, enhance, and improve human life in meaningful ways with long-lived effects. The winner of the 2021 award was Cynthia Rudin for work in interpretable and transparent AI systems in real-world deployments. The 2021/2022 ACM Athena Lecturer Award went to Ayanna Howard, who was recognised for fundamental contributions to the development of accessible human-robotic systems and AI, and for her efforts to broaden participation in computing through entrepreneurial and mentoring.

As 2020 draws to a close we look back on some of the notable research developments, awards, conferences and policy in the world of artificial intelligence. In February it was reported that MIT researchers had used a machine-learning algorithm to identify a powerful new antibiotic compound. In laboratory tests, the drug, called halicin, killed many disease-causing bacteria, including some strains that had been resistant to all existing antibiotics. Progress in the field of AI in healthcare has continued apace during 2020. A lot of this work is about providing clinicians with extra tools in their armoury.