Keith’s note: The White House, Department of Energy, and OSTP just launched a big flashy national AI thing called “Genesis Mission”. The Executive Order says “This order launches the “Genesis Mission” as a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century.” Alas, there is no mention of NASA in the Genesis fact sheet and the press release mentions NSF, NISH, and NIH – but not NASA. There is no mention either of NASA things like space, astronomy, or aviation. NASA is trying to understand the scope and origin of the universe, search for life on other worlds, and build spaceships unlike any ever built before – and it is employing advanced computing and AI in all of this. But NASA apparently does not pass muster when it comes to inclusion in the White House/OSTP Genesis Mission.

Keith’s note: Hooray! There is a new AI.gov website. And it has an Action Plan page – and a 28 page “Winning the Race AMERICA’S AI ACTION PLAN” PDF. NSF, NIST and other agencies are mentioned. But other than a throw-away line “Just like we won the space race” on the first page there is no mention of NASA, space exploration, etc. Oh well.

Keith’s note: According to 404 (free subscription required) “Here is NASA’s Contract with Clearview AI“ – “Clearview AI is an OSINT [open source intelligence] platform used to aid in the identification and investigations of persons of interest, by allowing users to search its database of 50+ billion facial images sourced from public-only web sources, including news media, mugshot websites, public social media, & many other open sources,” one part of the documents reads.” … “Previously, NASA told 404 Media that that license was purchased on behalf of the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).” According to Futurism “Clearview’s value proposition is basically to scrape billions of photos from Facebook, Google, and Twitter – without anybody’s consent – and then charge cops to use all that private data to help identify “suspects.” Why does any part of NASA need this technology? Security? Or something new? Who are they watching and how could they use this new software to match this information up with other sources – such as (private) public social media accounts? NASA is not talking about this. Ask your manager. See if they know. Doubtful.

Why Google’s new quantum computer could launch an artificial intelligence arms race, Washington Post “Ever since the 1980s, researchers have been working on the development of a quantum computer that would be exponentially more powerful than any of the digital computers that exist today. And now Google, in collaboration with NASA, says it has a quantum computer the D-Wave 2X that actually works. Google claims the D-Wave 2X is 100 […]