Patricia Besson is Head of Thales's Reasoning and Analysis in Complex Systems Lab. "How can AI help us make better decisions at critical moments? How do we build AI systems we can rely on? Questions like these guide much of our AI work at Thales, and most of our products and systems already incorporate AI in one form or another. And because we operate in strategic industries such as aerospace, space, ground transportation and defence, we naturally set a high bar for ourselves. Our approach to AI is based on the principles of validity, explainability, security and responsibility, which we consider the defining properties of trusted artificial intelligence. Our R&D teams are using innovate approaches to overcome the obstacles inherent in these four criteria so we can develop trusted AI applications for critical systems. More broadly, we're working to make human-machine dialogue more intuitive, and to make our systems more energy-efficient. AI is an exciting and challenging field that is not only driving growth and job creation at Thales, but unleashing a whole new wave of creative thinking."

Over the past decades, artificial intelligence (AI) has gone from being something out of science fiction to being very much part of science fact. It is now an integral part of our present, and we are beginning to see the impact it has on the workplace, the economy and the technology we use every day. How can we leverage AI to build a greener and more sustainable future? AI has long been a favourite subject in fiction, be it books, graphic novels or films – think 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix or even The Terminator. In the interests of drama and suspense, the AI portrayed is more often than not malevolent, with machines having half an eye on taking over the world (or in the case of The Matrix, the machine actually being the world).

French artificial intelligence start-up NukkAI has signed a contract with Thales to develop an AI-based data fusion solution for military applications. Thales believes military analysts in operations centers face significant challenges in extracting relevant information from the huge volumes of data generated by multiple sources such as video and audio streams, websites, Twitter feeds, satellite imagery, social media, and telephone conversations. According to Thales, real-time data analytics will enable them to develop advanced military strategies with greater efficiency. As a result, Thales is planning to implement NukkAI's solution in a number of its military data processing programs. When operators are swamped by information, the solution will use real-time data exploitation and fusion methods to automatically review the knowledge available so that analysts can focus on elements of interest.

This previous Thursday noticed Vantis, North Dakota's statewide unmanned plane methods (UAS) system, formally rejoice the grand opening of its Mission and Community Operations Middle (MNOC) at GrandSky Enterprise and Aviation Park. The MNOC acts as Vantis' command middle and is crucial to the coordination of beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) flight operations. "That is the center of Vantis," mentioned Trevor Woods, govt director of the Northern Plains UAS Check Website (NPUASTS), which administers Vantis. "From this location, we have now the know-how to observe and management the distant infrastructure, enabling all the operation. The MNOC will likely be integral to coordinating protected, repeatable BVLOS flights throughout North Dakota, and scalable to bigger areas."

Biometrics adoption is being encouraged in the public sector for digital ID and online government applications, as it continues to rise in the private sector from smartphones, where Fingerprint Cards has announced new wins to airport processes, where NEC technology is being deployed and Vision-Box is positioning for more growth. National digital ID programs are under the microscope, while Thales has signed a major deal in Vietnam, and a debate has broken out on facial recognition ethics between Oosto and Clearview AI. The potential for digital identity to boost national economies is examined by the World Economic Forum in a new white paper. The WEF sees digital ID as benefitting people by easing access to a range of services, helping small and medium-sized businesses with easier access to financing, and help establish robust growth in digital service industries, with China's digital wealth-management market offered as an example. Research ICT Africa has released a series of extensive reports delving into the digital identity systems in 10 African countries.

Thales has launched Season 3 of AI@Centech, a business accelerator designed to help artificial-intelligence focused startups tackle real-world problems. Thales selected five international startups in early August out of a pool of more than 200 potential competitors from around the world. The search for qualified startups began in February when the program published challenges ranging from how to more efficiently use AI to manage satellites to applying augmented cognition to improve human decision-making. The selected startups will work closely with Thales business coaches and AI experts who will advise them on critical skills such as fundraising, product enhancement, design, visibility, proof-of-concept, and market access. Season 3 of AI@Centech follows last year's successful second season of the program, which resulted in many achievements such as Thales and MyDataModels winning a bid with the municipality of Nice Côte d'Azur, France for underwater threat detection.

Paris, May 27, 2021 – Atos and Thales announce the creation of Athea, a joint venture that will develop a sovereign big data and artificial intelligence platform for public and private sector players in the defence, intelligence and internal state security communities. Athea will draw on the experience gained by both companies from the demonstration phase of the ARTEMIS programme, the big data platform of the French Ministry of Armed Forces. The contract to optimise and prepare the full-scale roll-out of the ARTEMIS platform was also awarded jointly to the two leaders by the French Defense Procurement Agency on April 30, 2021. The new joint venture will initially serve the French market before addressing European requirements at a later date. With the exponential rise in the number of sources of information, and increased pressure to respond more quickly to potential issues, State agencies need to manage ever-greater volumes of heterogeneous data and accelerate the development of new AI applications where security and sovereignty are key.

Electrical systems company Thales, state-owned electric utility EDF and oil major Total were among the eight French signatories of a manifesto for an artificial intelligence (AI) industry launched on July 3 at the Ministry of the Economy and Finance. The manifesto was intended to promote research and development resources to make AI a source of growth and jobs across industrial sectors within an ethical framework. With that commitment in mind, the fossil fuel companies and Thales have announced the opening of an AI industrial research laboratory. The work to be carried out at the EDF Lab Paris-Saclay research and training center will focus on "AI technologies adapted to the needs of critical industrial systems", namely, vulnerable systems where malfunctions could have serious consequences. Among such systems, EDF cited aeronautical applications and energy production facilities.

The way humans function is changing fundamentally with the advent of new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Cybersecurity, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). A breakthrough technology amongst these, artificial intelligence, is playing a transformational role in a variety of industries and its adoption is promising efficacy at unprecedented levels. Today, artificial intelligence finds applications across industries ranging from finance, healthcare, retail and defence, among others. The progress of AI in India is at pace with global developments. While other countries such as China and the US have focused their energies on capturing as large a market share of AI as possible, India has focused on becoming an experimental space to explore the potential applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning.[1]

This year, SFTE's Annual Symposium featured two other papers on very closely related topics. At press time, these authors were not available to share these papers herein.