The idea of responsible artificial intelligence (AI) is spreading far and wide across the U.S. Department of Defense and its surrounding ecosystem. There's been the new data strategy, the responsible AI memo and the newly approved JADC2 strategy that has a massive data component. "The DoD is very much accelerating its path," said Thomas Kenney, chief data officer and director of SOF AI for U.S. Special Operations Command, during day two of the virtual AFCEA/GMU Critical Issues in C4I Symposium. "Our chief data officer at the DoD, David Spirk, is doing herculean work to help the entire DoD move forward," he added. "That new data strategy, as we think about data sharing, is absolutely essential because it creates the conditions for success where we can open doors to data we maybe didn't have access to before or maybe data we didn't even know existed," Kenney said.

As Chambersburg Area School District in Pennsylvannia kept delaying the return of students this spring, the inevitability began to set in. This was something Chambersburg Magnet School rising junior Everyn Kenney noticed, and despite not personally missing out on a commencement at Trojan Stadium, he decided to find a way to help out those who were. So after some joking about the idea at first, Kenney turned to a game he's played for years: Minecraft. Using the block-by-block multiplayer cooperative game, as well as some home-brewed coding, Kenney and his crew of nine friends set out to build a virtual, to-scale Trojan Stadium on Minecraft, and set up a virtual commencement for June 25 that graduates can attend either as a game character or watch on Twitch, all the way down to virtual caps and gowns. "I decided to just try putting it into my own hands because the school wasn't really doing anything yet," said Kenney, who is doing the project in conjunction with the school's Video Game Club.

If you believe there's no such thing as bad press, invest in Uber. The ridesharing giant has spent its young life honing a bad-boy reputation without going so far that it drives away investors, drivers, or riders. Despite scandal after scandal, the company's valuation sits north of $60 billion. But recent weeks seem to have cranked up the dial, snapped it off, and thrown it away to melt in a furnace--and Uber feels the heat from all directions. All while well-paid lawyers representing an arch-rival assemble a case that could cripple Uber's future. "When you're on thin ice, you don't know how quite far you can walk," says Ben Edelman, an economist at Harvard Business School.