In Today’s Email:

• ACE Pilot 🛩️

• AI Enters Photo Contest 📸

• The Future of Warfare ☢️

ACE Pilot 🛩️

The future of flying might not be what you expect.

DARPA, also known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense.

The Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program was designed by DARPA to "increase trust in combat autonomy by using human-machine collaborative dogfighting as its challenge problem.

The technology developed by the ACE program has four primary goals:

1. Increase air combat autonomy performance in local behaviors

2. Build and calibrate trust in air combat local behaviors

3. Scale performance and trust to global behaviors

4. Build infrastructure for full-scale air combat experimentation

The ACE program utilizes A.I. and they recently had a major breakthrough.

In December 2022, A.I. software developed by ACE flew a specialized F-16 known as VISTA (Variable in-flight Simulator Test Aircraft).

The aircraft was flown for over 17 hours, and it performed takeoffs/landings.

DARPA, the Air Force Test Pilot School, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and performer teams (i.e. Lockheed Martin) have all worked closely together on the ACE program.

Check out the full briefing here.

AI Enters Photo Contest 📸

It’s golden hour on a beach.

Waves come crashing in as the sky and sea are transformed by the glow of the sun.

You’re watching two surfers adventure into the ocean.

Close your eyes and imagine this scene.

Did it look something like this?

This image was taken by ‘Jane Eykes’ using a drone.

It was entered into a photography contest hosted by digiDirect.

What’s the catch?

The photo is actually an AI-generated image by Absolutely AI.

Guess who won the contest?

Yup, the AI-generated image ended up winning the entire contest.

This story has raised concerns, especially since the photo contest was judged by professional photographers.

In just a span of years, AI-generated art has grown rapidly.

Who knows what this space will look like in the future?

The Future of Warfare ☢️

The rapid growth of AI has flipped many industries upside down.

However, militaries around the world have been treading lightly, due to the potential for catastrophic effects on society.

Last week, the first global summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (REAIM) was hosted in the Netherlands.

Representatives from over 60 countries attended the event and participated in the talks.

You know it’s serious when even China agrees something should be done before it’s too late.

Bonnie Jenkins, the United States Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, stated “We want to emphasize that we are open to engagement with any country that is interested in joining us.”

We think this is a step in the right direction.

What do you think?

You can read more about the summit here.

That’s it for today! We’ll see you back here tomorrow.