Data firm Palantir Technologies is going public today through a direct listing. The company, which uses machine-assisted analysis to help analyze data, ranks among the top 20 most valuable VC-backed AI companies, according to PitchBook data. Its market debut is among the highest-profile of the year.

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• As of July, Palo-Alto based Palantir had a valuation of $20.3b after receiving $549.73m worth of financing from Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Holdings.
• The company was created to help defense and intelligence agencies analyze data about potential threats. The business currently offers its solutions to non-defense customers. 
• The company's founders include Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an angel investor in Facebook. The CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel was one of the early investors in Palantir.
• Foundry says it sells the end-to-end infrastructure for organizations to apply AI/ML to "real problems and real data." You can read more about its AI/ML solutions here.

Related:

• Asana, a project management and productivity tool founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz, is also going public today via a direct listing. Asana sells an intelligent meeting content platform for the workplace, called adam.ai, and offers automation features for its software, including a mobile optical computer recognition tool on its iOS app.

The Pentagon should prioritize AI and other emerging technologies, which are making traditional battlefields "increasingly irrelevant," according to a congressional panel. A new report from the House’s Future of Defense Task Force suggests strategies for the U.S. to remain competitive to win the AI race, including using the Manhattan Project as a model to further develop AI technologies. The bipartisan task force is chaired by House Armed Services Committee members Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Jim Banks, R-Ind.

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• The report says the Pentagon should prioritize AI over legacy systems, which will require major changes. The potential of losing the AI race to China "carries significant economic, political, and ethical risks" for the U.S. and its allies in the coming decades, noting that many emerging technologies like AI can be used nefariously.
• The U.S. should establish the standards worldwide for how to publicly and privately deploy AI technologies. While the Pentagon is spending more on AI and created the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, "cultural resistance to its wider adoption remains," it says.
• Every major defense acquisition program should evaluate at least one AI project (or autonomous alternative) before it's funded. All programs should be required to be AI-ready.
• The U.S. should also lead a global treaty on AI, similar to the Geneva Conventions, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This would create protections for military and civilian use of AI, including creating an international code of ethics and privacy protection, the report states.

The pandemic's impact on AI

A new survey of IT directors shows most large companies spend $1m or more on AI projects and actually plan to raise their AI/ML spending due to the pandemic. Algorithmia, which sells ML operations and management software, asked over 100 IT directors working at large companies about their AI/ML trends before, during, and after the pandemic. Organizations are now more worried about a lack of funding and executive buy-in.

The findings:

• Two thirds (66%) said they realized that AI/ML projects matter more than they thought before the pandemic. 23% said they think it should have been their company's highest priority.
• Half said they plan to spend more on AI/ML as a result of the pandemic. 21% plan to spend a lot more.

• More than half of large enterprises have more than 20 AI/ML projects going on right now. The largest segment (31%) had 50 or more projects.

• The top priorities are projects that generate short-term cost savings and/or insights about customer behavior. Long-term process automation and back-office projects have fallen priority-wise.
• Many of the businesses have refocused their AI/ML efforts toward projects that support remote workers and impact customer experiences. 17% reduced their project staff size...

GM is testing its Ultium battery system within its Cruise Origin autonomous vehicle. In January, GM’s Cruise unit showed off the vehicle, which was intended for ride-hailing usage. Earlier this month, GM said the battery platform would power five interchangeable drive units and three motors.

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• The Origin’s test vehicle with Ultium is currently being tested on a track in Milford, Connecticut, with other pre-production vehicles using the technology coming in 2020.
• The automaker said it also tested the Ultium battery system on its fleet of autonomous Chevrolet Bolts used by Cruise Automation. These vehicles are currently being used to help food banks in the Bay Area.
• Ultium is a joint venture between GM and battery manufacturer LG Chem. Ultium is expected to power a series of vehicles from competing automakers, including Honda.

A version of this story first appeared in Inside Electric Vehicles.

Injury rates at Amazon fulfillment centers have been on the rise since 2016, despite claims by the company that it's invested heavily in robots to automate its processes, a new investigative report shows. The rate of serious injuries has been 50% higher at warehouses with autonomous robots than those that don't have them, according to the data obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting's Reveal publication. While critics argue Amazon downplays the dangers of its warehouses, the company claims the report skews what qualifies as a serious injury.

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• Amazon experienced 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees in 2019, which is a 33% jump from 2016 and double the industry standard. Last year, over 14,000 serious injuries requiring days off and/or job restrictions were reported at warehouses. Rates still rose even after Amazon pledged to reduce injury rates by 20% in 2018 and 5% in 2019, the report shows.
• The reason so many injuries occur more at robotic warehouses is reportedly tied to company expectations, as workers are expected to scan more items. About 50 Amazon fulfillment centers, out of 150 in the U.S., use robotics to move products and fulfill deliveries, including autonomous robots shaped like Roomba vacuums that move product bins weighing thousands of pounds.
• In its response, Amazon said it hasn’t “misled anyone” and Reveal misinterpreted an OSHA safety metric, called a Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred (DART) rate, that the report mistakenly considered a "serious injury rate."
• The company claims it continues to experience "improvements in injury prevention and reduction" through better robots, equipment, workstations, forklifts, and ergonomics.

Related news:

• Former Amazon robotics leader Brad Porter is now the CTO of Scale AI, a startup that delivers training data for AI applications in areas like robotics, self-driving cars, and virtual reality.
• Academic teams can now apply for Amazon's Alexa Prize Socialbot Challenge, which carries a $500,000 grand prize for the team that designs the most conversational chatbot.
• Tech executive Elizabeth Scallon recently joined the Amazon Alexa Fund and startup team engaging startups in AI and other technology.
• In a recent CNET review, Amazon's Alexa beat out Google Assistant in hardware, but lost on the software side.

New job postings in AI/ML:

AI Research Scientist - Senior Associate
JPMorgan Chase Bank | New York, N.Y.

Senior Data Scientist
AstraZeneca | Gaithersburg, Md.

Senior Data Scientist
Zest AI | Burbank, Calif...

Quick Hits

• AI chip developer Hailo launched its M.2 and Mini PCIe high-AI acceleration modules for edge devices.
• Intel and the Heidelberg University announced a new academic center to support research on Intel's AI development platform oneAPI.
• Cogniac, an AI image and video analysis platform, has raised $10m in a round led by Autotech Ventures.
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Tweet of the Day: Starting tomorrow, philosopher John Tasioulas will become the inaugural director of Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics in AI.