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Companies Boost AI Budgets; Investors Back Homegrown Chips
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Welcome back. Companies are investing a lot of cash in artificial intelligence. The latest evidence comes from information-technology research and consulting firm Gartner Inc.
Businesses world-wide are expected to shell out more than $62 billion on AI capabilities next year, up roughly 21% from this year, Gartner estimates. The gains come as the corporate world increasingly leverages smart software for everything from parsing customer data to driving autonomous delivery trucks.
It’s easy to see why: For many companies, AI is paying off. At New York-based marketing agency Wunderman Thompson, AI tools are delivering better and faster results for clients, Alex Steer, the company’s global chief data officer, tells WSJ Pro AI. Wunderman Thompson, which leverages AI to design marketing campaigns, plans to increase AI spending next year, Mr. Steer says.
Likewise, the Mayo Clinic expects to boost its AI spending in 2022, as the use of smart software accelerates across more departments, the health-care giant’s chief information officer says.
The pace of spending is likely to pick up momentum as more businesses begin to scale early experiments, says Alys Woodward, a senior research director at Gartner: “If companies were to mature more quickly and act more quickly, then yes, the spending could grow more quickly."
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WPP unit Wunderman Thompson has developed an AI application to analyze data about a brand's customers.
PHOTO: TOBY MELVILLE/REUTERS
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The AI software market is expected to hit $62.5 billion next year, a 21.3% increase from this year, according to a Gartner Inc. report released last week, as companies boost their AI spending, WSJ’s John McCormick reports.
Higher demand. Gartner says businesses are increasingly using AI apps to capture information about their customers, products and markets, or to develop virtual assistants and autonomous vehicles.
Room to grow. Many businesses are still in the experimental stage with the technology and trying to find better processes for scaling their applications development, which has resulted in what Gartner calls a “deceleration effect on spending.”
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75
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The number of AI projects under way at the Mayo Clinic's AI factory
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An Intel chip-making facility in Arizona. The company is expanding capacity in the U.S.
PHOTO: INTEL CORP.
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Recent investments promise to boost U.S. production of advanced chips after decades of ceding ground to locations in Asia, including China and South Korea, though the effort comes as chip makers are investing heavily in these locations, too, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Homegrown. Samsung Electronics Co. ’s planned $17 billion chip factory in Texas is expected to crank out top-end semiconductors that are essential to 5G cellular networks, self-driving cars and AI, along with other hefty bets on U.S. soil by Intel Corp., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Texas Instruments Inc.
Playing catchup. About three-quarters of global semiconductor production capacity sits in just four Asian locations: Taiwan, South Korea, China and Japan, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. The U.S. accounts for just 13%.
High demand. A chip shortage has snarled global business and amplified calls from governments world-wide to boost local production.
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For three weeks in February and March, Belgian authorities used AI to parse a giant trove of messages exchanged by criminals using the messenger service Sky ECC to coordinate massive drug shipments, plan hits and exchange photos of cash, cocaine and corpses, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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Belgium has detained more than 500 suspects and seized 88 metric tons of cocaine.
PHOTO: NICOLAS MAETERLINCK/BELGA/ AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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High-tech stakeout. Authorities launched a live operation in mid-February, reading messages in near-real-time. Dozens of Belgian police across sites in Brussels and Antwerp, along with teams in France and the Netherlands, tracked the conversations of top targets and received messages from others filtered for keywords by artificial intelligence.
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Tools of the trade. Sky, through its website and a network of resellers, offered crime rings Apple, Google and BlackBerry handsets loaded with sophisticated encryption software and with their GPS, cameras and microphones disabled.
The bust. Authorities gathered roughly one billion messages from tens of thousands of Sky-enabled devices world-wide, which could feed investigations for years. Belgium has detained more than 500 suspects and seized 88 metric tons of cocaine.
Counter intel. U.S. and Western intelligence officials tell The Wall Street Journal that foreign adversaries are using AI to root out spies by rapidly sifting through data gathered from surveillance cameras, biometric border controls, smartphones, watches and other digital tools.
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“While U.S. domestic manufacturing flatlined, China, South Korea and others are investing heavily in their own industries, aiming to ensure global manufacturing leadership and leave the United States behind.”
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—A U.S. Chamber of Commerce report on the global semiconductor market
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Soundchecking the Beatles
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The Beatles during their 1969 rooftop concert.
PHOTO: APPLE CORPS LTD.
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Hear There and Everywhere
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The creators of “The Beatles: Get Back,” a new three-part documentary on the fab four’s 1969 studio session that ended with their iconic rooftop concert, used AI to filter out ambient noise in 50-year-old footage and tune in to a few off-mic conversations, director Peter Jackson says. That includes snippets from more than 150 hours of audio. Here are a few hidden gems from a day in the life of the Beatles:
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In a private conversation, John Lennon and Paul McCartney discuss George Harrison’s return to the band after storming out mid-session. George will return, says Paul, “and probably, when we’re all very old, we’ll all agree with each other and we’ll all sing together.”
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Audio picked up from John shows he is not the abrasive or sarcastic character he presented in, say, “A Hard Day’s Night” but sweet, funny and deferential to Paul, his longtime songwriting partner.
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“The Beatles have been in the doldrums for at least a year,” Ringo Starr says at one point, apparently referring to the 1967 death of Brian Epstein, the band’s manager.
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Clearlake Capital's deal to buy Quest Software comes a month after it purchased identity access-management business OneLogin for an undisclosed sum.
PHOTO: ONELOGIN INC.
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Clearlake Capital to Buy Quest Software. Clearlake Capital Group LP said it struck a $5.4 billion deal with Francisco Partners to buy former Dell Technologies Inc. unit Quest Software Inc., which makes enterprise IT software for internal systems management, data protection and security, including AI-enabled platforms. (The Wall Street Journal)
Robots that can relate. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a machine-learning model with the human-like ability to understand the underlying relationships between a collection of objects in an overall scene, such as the position of a spatula as being on a cutting board next to the stove, which could enable a robotic assistant to better interpret voice commands. (MIT News)
Commerce chief pushes homemade chips. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is calling on Congress to approve $52 billion in spending to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing, including smart chips, as ongoing shortages expose dangers in relying on global producers. (Reuters)
A cure for writers’ block? Sudowrite, a GPT-3 powered language-recognition app, was able to imitate the writing style of New Journalism pioneer Gay Talese, auto-completing sections of his popular 1966 Esquire article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” at a level the author himself described as “a correct interpretation.” (The Washington Post)
Do the right thing. Researchers at the Seattle-based Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence say they have an AI model designed to generate ethical judgments on a variety of everyday situations, based on a dataset of 1.7 million descriptive ethics examples. (GeekWire)
AI pioneer blasts smart weapons. Stuart Russel, a British computer scientist who co-wrote a seminal textbook on AI more than 25 years ago, has warned officials at the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense that AI-enabled weapons pose a grave threat to humanity, and is calling for an international moratorium on autonomous weapons. (The Financial Times)
Unesco adopts AI guidelines. All 193 member states of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recently adopted an agreement that lays out a set of shared values and principles for the development of AI, including issues around transparency, accountability and data privacy, among other policies. (Homeland Security Today)
Exploring another kind of web. Scientists from Johns Hopkins University are using a combination of night vision and AI algorithms to understand how spiders build complex geometric webs, with early results showing the process relies on spiders’ sense of touch and finely tuned motor skills, rather than vision. (Digital Journal)
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Twitter Inc. said Chief Executive Jack Dorsey is stepping down, a departure driven in part by investors uncomfortable with his roles running two large, publicly traded companies, according to people familiar with the matter. (The Wall Street Journal)
Nissan Motor Co. said it plans to spend $17.6 billion over the next five years as it adds 20 new battery-powered vehicles to its lineup. (The Wall Street Journal)
Australia said it would introduce legislation to make social-media companies liable for defamatory comments published on their platforms, in a move that risks exposing tech companies to future lawsuits. (The Wall Street Journal)
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