U.S. chip industry fears long-term damage from China trade fight. The U.S. semiconductor industry is warning that its position as the global market leader could become a casualty of the trade spat between the U.S. and China, The Wall Street Journal's Asa Fitch and Bob Davis report.
This week in D.C. Cabinet-level officials are set to discuss proposed changes to Commerce Department regulations that would further restrict U.S. sales to Chinese companies that U.S. officials have said pose espionage risks.
A report tallies the potential damage. Regulations, if implemented, could cost U.S. chip makers about $36 billion in revenue, according to a new industry-commissioned report by the Boston Consulting Group.
Meanwhile... Huawei Technologies has already replaced some U.S. components with ones sourced elsewhere. The Chinese tech company also has said it now can make 5G base stations entirely without U.S.-made parts.
Tech firms seek to head off bans on facial recognition. The market for technologies involving some form of facial recognition could be worth $14.5 billion in 2025, up from $2 billion last year, according to research firm Omdia. Big tech firms, seeing their opportunity to profit threatened by campaigns aimed at restricting the technology's use, are pushing for regulation. The Wall Street Journal's Ryan Tracy reports.
We're all in this together. “If we don’t move past the polarizing debates that have blocked progress, people will continue to be left without any protection under the law,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement.
Nice try. Privacy advocates view industry-supported regulations as ploys to conduct business as usual. “They are effectively geared to allow these companies to continue selling and profiting from these technologies, more or less unhindered,” said Meredith Whittaker of New York University’s AI Now Institute.
Made-in-China censorship for sale. Tech giants like Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings are developing content-moderation systems that intentionally target political content—and are selling those systems to anyone who wants to use them.
Anyone can buy them. The WSJ's Shan Li reports that the widening availability of such tools makes China’s largest tech companies bigger partners in Beijing’s censorship program. It also increases the odds other countries will use content moderation the same way, as Chinese systems become easier to obtain.
Facebook fights hoaxes and hysteria in its virus-themed Groups. To suppress misinformation about the coronavirus, Facebook has altered its search results, created pop-ups directing users toward public-health authorities and offered the World Health Organization what Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called “as many free ads as they need, The Wall Street Journal's Jeff Horwitz reports.
But on Facebook Groups. Numerous user-created communities have emerged as a source of garbage information on the virus. Some groups appear to be commercially motivated, notes the WSJ, with organizers hawking surgical masks, purported immune-boosting zinc lozenges or other preparedness products.
Remote work updates. Employees at San Francisco-based Salesforce will work remotely in March, says CNBC.
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