U.S. defense spending on AI shows no signs of slowing -- if anything, it's accelerating. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) expects to spend $2 billion over the next five years on military AI projects. The Pentagon's controversial Project Maven, which taps machine learning to detect and classify objects of interest in drone footage, recently received a 580 percent funding increase in this year's $717 billion National Defense Authorization Act. And this week, the U.S. Army announced it would invest $72 million in AI research to "increase [the] readiness" of soldiers off and on the battlefield. "Tackling difficult science and technology challenges is rarely done alone and there is no greater challenge or opportunity facing the Army than Artificial Intelligence," said Dr. Philip Perconti, director of the Army's corporate laboratory, in a statement today.