“When I talk about space tech, I usually talk about it in relation to the defense sector. The whole idea of a moon base is not about economics or doing business on the moon. It is about geopolitics. It is about winning the competition. When people come to me and say they're going to mine helium-3 on the moon, to me it sounds like science fiction. The moon is about the strategic competition. That is it.”

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW

Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

“Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare.

The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. Russian soldiers were killed.

The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage “Terminator mode”, in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets

‘We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,’ says Kokhanovskyy. ‘There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.’”

NewScientist

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“Project Open Hand, a nonprofit founded in 1985 by local grandmother and HIV-awareness advocate Ruth Brinker, prepares and packages meals to meet the diverse nutritional requirements of people who need them. The effort began in response to the AIDS crisis, but the nonprofit has since expanded the meals it makes for people with conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease.

But it takes many people to make these meals, and Project Open Hand has struggled to entice volunteers to help fill the meal kits. The organization is housed in a four-story building in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. During peak hours, the place feels like a big operation, usually bustling with people. Some of them are there in need of the free meals, some are staff and volunteers there to make the food and keep the place running.

The process of putting together medically tailored meal boxes can get complicated. Different patients have different needs, so the meals that go out for donation cannot be one-size-fits-all and have to account for allergies and nutrient requirements based on people’s needs and medical conditions. That’s where the robots come in.

“It's not even that they’re faster,” says Alma Caceres, a sous chef who works on the meal prep process at Project Open Hand. “It’s that we don't have the volunteers.”” (via WIRED)

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