The US Army is closer to unleashing robots on the battlefield after sending one dubbed'Lone Wolf' to the Middle East. The robot dog features an AR-15/M16-pattern rifle on its back that is attached to an AI-powered rotating mount capable of spotting aerial targets. The armed machine was sent overseas for rehearsal drills at the Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center in Saudi Arabia. The military shared a photo of Lone Wolf last week, showing a Korean-made Ghost Robotics Vision 60 Quadrupedal-Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) at an undisclosed location. The US Army recently carried out testing of a new war machine in the Middle East.

At a Labour party conference-adjacent event in September, The World Transformed, Jeremy Corbyn was pictured waving an arm in front of an arcade cabinet bearing the words Thatcher's Techbase. The game – a modified version of 1994's famous infernal shooter, Doom II – sees players hunting down a resurrected, cyborg version of the former prime minister in a labyrinthine fortress. The images kicked off a minor media storm. "Pictured: Jeremy Corbyn plays video game that lets players kill Margaret Thatcher," said The Telegraph; the photos were featured in the Daily Mail, the Express and the Times. They even appeared on Have I Got News for You. Jim Purvis, the game's creator – who took and later tweeted the photos – was somewhat surprised.

Having relied heavily on machine learning, the Israeli military is calling Operation Guardian of the Walls the first artificial-intelligence war."For the first time, artificial intelligence was a key component and power multiplier in fighting the enemy," an IDF Intelligence Corps senior officer said. "This is a first-of-its-kind campaign for the IDF. We implemented new methods of operation and used technological developments that were a force multiplier for the entire IDF."In 11 days of fighting in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military carried out intensive strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets. It targeted key infrastructure and personnel belonging to the two groups, the IDF said.While the military relied on what was already available on the civilian market and adapted it for military purposes – in the years prior to the fighting – the IDF established an advanced AI technological platform that centralized all data on terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip onto one system that enabled the analysis and extraction of the intelligence.Soldiers in Unit 8200, an Intelligence Corps elite unit, pioneered algorithms and code that led to several new programs called "Alchemist," "Gospel" and "Depth of Wisdom," which were developed and used during the fighting.Collecting data using signal intelligence (SIGINT), visual intelligence (VISINT), human intelligence (HUMINT), geographical intelligence (GEOINT) and more, the IDF has mountains of raw data that must be combed through to find the key pieces necessary to carry out a strike."Gospel" "none";}"For the first time, a multidisciplinary center was created that produces hundreds of targets relevant to developments in the fighting, allowing the military to continue to fight as long as it needs to with more and more new targets," the senior officer said.While the IDF had gathered thousands of targets in the densely populated coastal enclave over the past two years, hundreds were gathered in real time, including missile launchers that were aimed at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.The military believes using AI helped shorten the length of the fighting, having been effective and quick in gathering targets using super-cognition.The IDF carried out hundreds of strikes against Hamas and PIJ, including rocket launchers, rocket manufacturing, production and storage sites, military intelligence offices, drones, commanders' residences and Hamas's naval commando unit.

In almost all of the 30 courses in'Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled' you'll find chickens doing funny things. But don't keep your eyes off the track too long. The Easter holiday may have come and gone, but that doesn't mean the hunt for eggs is over. "Easter eggs" – as it pertains to video games – are hidden treats you can find by taking the time to explore your virtual surroundings. In other cases, you might need to press a combination of buttons on the game controller (or computer keyboard) to unlock the secret.

That split makes the target list symbolic as well as practical, a shot across the bow for China's ambitions to develop high-technology sectors outlined in the country's "Made in China 2025" industrial plan. "The list targets the China of the future, not of the past," said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia at Natixis . "It is really the way to go if the U.S. administration worries about China surpassing it as a technological power." In one example, the list generated by the United States Trade Representative takes aim at China's ambitions to become a world power in electric vehicles with tariffs on cars with electric motors as well as the lithium-ion batteries used to power them. Chinese auto makers don't yet sell electric cars in the U.S., but Beijing is investing heavily in the sector--including by funding its own manufacturers--to secure future global sales.

We can all agree that teaching artificially-intelligent robots how to arm themselves with rocket launchers and create a murder carnival is just a fantastic idea. But these robots aren't ready to be let loose outside our front door (yet). They need to train first. So we're ready if Hitler comes back as a robot, of course. Or perhaps because the influential 1993 game has simple 3D maps and multiple gameplay styles, which makes it a handy touchstone for AI research.

It's pretty much universally agreed that we shouldn't give AI-powered robots rocket launchers and set them loose to battle each other to the death. Luckily, we can recreate that in a video game. Facebook and Intel took home 1st place prizes today (Sept. The 1993 video game, in which a player fights the scourge of hell, has become a touchstone for AI research for its simple 3D maps and potential for different styles of play. Facebook, which competed under the team name F1, took home the (figurative) gold medal in the competition's first challenge, where AIs are armed with rocket launchers on a map they've seen before. The goal was simple: kill each other.

Artificial intelligence is getting smarter. In March, an A.I. platform named AlphaGo beat a human champion in the game of Go. Now the machines are prepping for their next big challenge: first-person shooter video games. Later this year, the 2016 Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG) Conference will host an event in which bots will pummel each other in classic "Doom," the 1993 blockbuster that established the template for a generation of action games. The CIG event will feature two "tracks": a limited match on a map known to the participants beforehand, in which bots can arm themselves with rocket launchers, and a full match on an unknown map, with every game weapon and item available.

The other round mixes it up a bit by allowing multiple weapons and items in full deathmatch on a trio of unknown maps. This is incredibly important for machine learning because rather than typical bots in a game, the controllers here don't have access to the underlying code or map layout -- everything is picked up by visual learning.

Researchers will pit their A.I. algorithms against the game Doom, to showcase how computers can adapt to visual environments. Video games are a good way to train artificial intelligence algorithms to learn about a visual world--researchers can simulate any situation they want, and it's endlessly repeatable. Google DeepMind is famous for this approach, teaching its A.I. to play Atari. Now researchers are competing to make their algorithms play Doom, the iconic shooting game originally for PC. DeepMind has already trained its algorithm to walk around in a maze based on Doom, but this competition would have the A.I. play death match rounds with rocket launchers.