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China Tightens Grip on Smart Tech Exports; AI Spending Expected to Double in Four Years
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Welcome back. Artificial intelligence is getting pulled into an intensifying trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. China on Friday announced new export restrictions on a range of AI-powered technologies, an apparent broadside against an executive order by President Trump forcing Chinese-owned video app TikTok to sell its U.S. business to an American buyer. The move comes less than a week after the White House committed more than $1 billion to AI research. Whatever the outcome, the saber rattling is unlikely to slow the rapid growth of global AI spending in the years ahead, the latest forecast shows.
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China’s Commerce Ministry, pictured, and Ministry of Science and Technology unveiled the new export restrictions on Friday.
PHOTO: ANDY WONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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China’s ministries in charge of commerce and science and technology have issued a laundry list of technologies that Chinese-based firms can no longer sell abroad without a license from local commerce authorities, The Wall Street Journal reports. The list includes such AI staples as text analysis, content recommendation, speech modeling and voice-recognition tools.
Broad impact. Under the new rules, any updated algorithms developed at home by Chinese tech firms and sent to businesses overseas are considered tech exports and risk being tied up in red tape.
Market disruptions. The restrictions are likely to throw a wrench into global business involving Chinese tech firms. TikTok’s China-based owner ByteDance Ltd., for one, says it will “strictly comply with” the export regulations in talks with potential U.S. buyers, even as it faces pressure to sell from the White House.
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Technology Budgets: Big Spenders
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Global spending on artificial intelligence is projected to double in the next four years, hitting more than $110 billion in 2024, according to International Data Corp.’s latest forecast. The tech research firm says companies are increasingly being drawn to the promise of leveraging smart software to boost innovation, improve customer service and automate.
Spending on what? “AI is going to be used in every aspect of the business, whether it’s the front office or the back office, for operational efficiencies, for human augmentation—the list goes on,” said Ritu Jyoti, program vice president for artificial intelligence at IDC.
A shorter shopping list. The projected increase stands in stark contrast to the outlook for broader information-technology spending, which is expected to decline 2.2% this year to $2.28 trillion, as companies trim IT budgets to cope with a downturn in business sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.
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The White House last week announced plans to invest more than $1 billion over the next five years to establish a dozen new AI- and quantum information science-focused research institutes, WSJ's Jared Council reports.
How will the cash be used? One recipient is a University of Illinois project to advance research in computer vision, machine learning, soft-object manipulation and intuitive human-robot interaction to solve major agricultural challenges, the university announced.
Solving math problems. Other recipients include a team of physicists looking into the use of AI to detect the substructure of dark matter in halos of galaxies.
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540,000
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The number of users world-wide who have signed up to receive Covid-19 information alerts from an AI-enabled World Health Organization app that allows individuals to receive automated responses to natural-language queries about the pandemic.
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Sports Tech: Game of Drones
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Defending Tour de France champion Egan Bernal, in white jersey, during the second stage of the Criterium du Dauphine on Aug. 13.
PHOTO: ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Cycling fans will be able to watch this year’s race via an AI-powered augmented reality app designed to provide a "view from the sky," organizers said, as riders pass through mountains, valleys, rivers and beside lakes. The tool is one among a half dozen tech initiatives aimed at bolstering fan engagement in the age of social. Machine learning will also provide real-time predictions as riders jockey for position along the route.
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The U.S. Tennis Association is also turning to enhance stay-at-home fan experiences at this week’s tournament in New York, WSJ’s James Rundle reports. One tool, dubbed Open Questions, uses natural processing to provide rapid answers in a bid to help settle arm-chair coaches’ debates over players and stats. The platform searches more than 40 million pieces of sports news and analysis data on wins, losses and other records. A similar tool generates player factsheets before each match.
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Exclusive: AI and the Covid-19 Workforce
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IPsoft, an automation-software maker, and market-research firm Censuswide recently surveyed 250 corporate vice presidents and chief experience officers at U.S. firms to gauge the uptake of enterprise AI tools during the pandemic. Here’s what they found.
Driving remote work. Among survey respondents, 88% said their companies had increased their use of AI since the onset of the pandemic, as employees began working from home.
Smart reopening. More than 80% said their companies also plan to use AI-powered software to support prolonged workplace closures or partial reopenings.
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Meirwen Jenking-Rees works on the part of the Mayflower that will house the ship’s science payload.
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Totally crewless. Ocean-research nonprofit Promare plans to re-enact the 1620 trans-Atlantic voyage of the Mayflower with a fully autonomous ship, sailing without a crew from the U.K. to the U.S. The robot ship, designed in partnership with International Business Machines Corp., is scheduled to set sail in September 2021. (WSJ)
Shadow IT. A team composed of researchers and engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google and UC Berkeley has developed a tool for eliminating unwanted shadows in digital photos from mobile phones, using neural-network technology. The tool can also improve ratios of lighting after a photo has been taken. (The Daily Californian)
Brain-to-machine tech. Tesla founder Elon Musk has unveiled a pig named Gertrude with a coin-sized computer chip in her brain, an early-stage experiment aimed at demonstrating the possibility of creating a working brain-to-machine interface, he said. (BBC)
Algorithm finds planets. Researchers from the Alan Turing Institute and the University of Warwick's Departments of Physics and Computer Science confirmed the existence of 50 planets beyond the solar system, using an algorithm trained with the Kepler dataset of unconfirmed exoplanets. (TechRepublic)
Smart ship repair. The U.S. Navy plans to pair Google Cloud’s machine-learning technology with drone imagery to better detect when vessels and naval facilities need repair. According to Google, the Navy spends billions per year maintaining and repairing ships. (Axios)
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KKR & Co. is nearing a deal to sell Epicor Software Corp. to a group led by private-equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice LLC for around $4.7 billion, including debt. (WSJ)
Billionaire Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group Corp. said it would sell a $14 billion chunk of its Japanese mobile unit, adding to a string of asset sales aimed at bolstering the company’s debt-laden balance sheet. (WSJ)
Tesla Inc. said it plans to raise up to $5 billion in stock offerings, announcing the move after the electric-vehicle maker’s 5-for-1 split on Monday sent shares up 13% to just under $500. (WSJ)
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