WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is adopting new ethical principles as it prepares to accelerate its use of artificial intelligence technology on the battlefield. The new principles call for people to "exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care" when deploying and using AI systems, such as those that scan aerial imagery to look for targets. They also say decisions made by automated systems should be "traceable" and "governable," which means "there has to be a way to disengage or deactivate" them if they are demonstrating unintended behavior, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The Pentagon's push to speed up its AI capabilities has fueled a fight between tech companies over a $10 billion cloud computing contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI. Microsoft won the contract in October but hasn't been able to get started on the 10-year project because Amazon sued the Pentagon, arguing that President Donald Trump's antipathy toward Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos hurt the company's chances at winning the bid.

The Defense Department will soon adopt a detailed set of rules to govern how it develops and uses artificial intelligence, officials familiar with the matter told Defense One. A draft of the rules was released by the Defense Innovation Board, or DIB, in October as "Recommendations on the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence." Sources indicated that the Department's policy will follow the draft closely. "The Department of Defense is in the final stages of adopting AI principles that will be implemented across the U.S. military. An announcement will be made soon with further details," said Lt. Cmdr.

Plenty of people are following the final days of the midterm election campaigns. Yale law researcher Rebecca Crootof has a special interest--a small wager. If she wins, victory will be bitter sweet, like the Manhattan cocktail that will be her prize. In June, Crootof bet that before 2018 is out an electoral campaign somewhere in the world will be roiled by a deepfake--a video generated by machine learning software that shows someone doing or saying something that in fact they did not do or say. Under the terms of the bet, the video must receive more than 2 million views before being debunked.

A quiet wager has taken hold among researchers who study artificial intelligence techniques and the societal impacts of such technologies. They're betting whether or not someone will create a so-called Deepfake video about a political candidate that receives more than 2 million views before getting debunked by the end of 2018. The actual stakes in the bet are fairly small: Manhattan cocktails as a reward for the "yes" camp and tropical tiki drinks for the "no" camp. But the implications of the technology behind the bet's premise could potentially reshape governments and undermine societal trust in the idea of having shared facts. It all comes down to when the technology may mature enough to digitally create fake but believable videos of politicians and celebrities saying or doing things that never actually happened in real life.

M erely twenty years ago, artificial intelligence (AI) was the plot line in movies, books, and short stories. While it loomed on the horizon, it is only now getting the attention of world, and business leaders. A few days into 2016, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook announced that he plans to spend 2016 developing an AI system to help run his life. He stated in his Facebook post: "My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work. You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man."