Because it was, 62 years ago, the first fully reusable space vehicle, two stages, both reusable. The same concept of Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo.
X15 made 200 flights at suborbital altitude, 100 km.
Continue reading “On This Day in Space! June 8, 1959: X-15 makes first glide flight” »
The world is entering a new era of warfare, with artificial intelligence taking center stage. AI is making militaries faster, smarter and more efficient. But if left unchecked, it threatens to destabilize the world.
If hearing the words “military,” “soldier,” and “implant” all in the same sentence conjures images of Jason Bourne, you’re not alone — and with good reason.
The military is currently working with scientists to develop new technology to implant in soldiers. But this time it has less to do with creating superhuman assassins and more to do with quelling jet lag and diarrhea.
In May, researchers from Northwestern University signed a $33 million dollar contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a wireless implantable device that will function as a “living pharmacy” for military personnel. It’s called a living pharmacy because everything the “patient” needs can be produced by their own body.
Army researchers have developed a pioneering framework that provides a baseline for the development of collaborative multi-agent systems.
The framework is detailed in the survey paper “Survey of recent multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithms utilizing centralized training,” which is featured in the SPIE Digital Library. Researchers said the work will support research in reinforcement learning approaches for developing collaborative multi-agent systems such as teams of robots that could work side-by-side with future soldiers.
“We propose that the underlying information sharing mechanism plays a critical role in centralized learning for multi-agent systems, but there is limited study of this phenomena within the research community,” said Army researcher and computer scientist Dr. Piyush K. Sharma of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. “We conducted this survey of the state-of-the-art in reinforcement learning algorithms and their information sharing paradigms as a basis for asking fundamental questions on centralized learning for multi-agent systems that would improve their ability to work together.”
Microsoft president: Orwell’s 1984 could happen in 2024.
Tech executives warned that democracy has to win the AI arms race, in a new BBC Panorama.
‘Quasicrystals’ like these are usually only found in meteorites and formed in the universe’s mightiest explosions.
Welcome to the rapidly advancing world of autonomous weapons — the cheap, highly effective systems that are revolutionizing militaries around the world. These new unmanned platforms can make U.S. forces much safer, at far lower cost than aircraft carriers and fighter jets. But beware: They’re being deployed by our potential adversaries faster than the Pentagon can keep up, and they increase the risk of conflict by making it easier and less bloody for the attacker.
Artificial intelligence and drones are transforming the battlefield into something that looks more like a video game than hand-to-hand combat. It could save lives — but also increase the risk of combat.
“The Russian military is more technologically advanced than the U.S. realized and is quickly developing artificial intelligence capabilities to gain battlefield information advantage, an expansive new report commissioned by the Pentagon warned.”
Need more money for AI research.
A new report written for the Pentagon warns of more technologically advanced Russian force that’s focused on winning information advantage over the United States.
Continue reading “A warning to DoD: Russia advances quicker than expected on AI, battlefield tech” »
The Israeli military is calling Operation Guardian of the Walls the first artificial-intelligence war. 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.
The IDF used artificial intelligence and supercomputing during the last conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Oh, joy. You can take the drone out of 2020, but you can’t take the 2020 out of the drone.
A “lethal” weaponized drone “hunted down a human target” without being told to for the first time, according to a UN report seen by the New Scientist.
The March 2020 incident saw a KARGU-2 quadcopter autonomously attack a human during a conflict between Libyan government forces and a breakaway military faction, led by the Libyan National Army’s Khalifa Haftar, the Daily Star reported.
