Reporter's Notebook: Television, heal thyself. Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and chief executive of Uniphore Software Systems Pvt. Ltd., envisions a day when yelling at a malfunctioning television set isn’t a waste of breath.

Mr. Sachdev, whose 11-year-old company makes speech-recognition software powered by artificial intelligence, said the combination of AI, Internet-of-Things and 5G technology will soon make it possible for more devices to be controlled by a hands-free, voice-enabled interface.

Ask the TV a question. AI-enabled voice-recognition tools, integrated into household appliances or workplace machines through IoT-connected devices and supercharged by a high-speed 5G network, will allow users to simply ask a TV—or a washing machine or office printer—why it isn’t working and how quickly it can fix itself.

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“Let’s say my TV doesn’t come on,” Mr. Sachdev told WSJ's Angus Loten. Today, he said, you can contact a customer-service agent or chatbot to set up an appointment with a technician to come to your home and at the very least identify the problem.

“But when my device is a 5G-enabled TV with AI, IoT and voice recognition on it,” Mr. Sachdev added, “my natural reaction will be to press a button on the remote and say, ‘TV, why aren’t you working?’”

Together, these digital capabilities will be able to run an immediate diagnostic check and determine the issue—even order and ship parts for a simple home repair, such as new fuses or cables, he said: “This is customer service moving to the edge.” 

Mr. Sachdev said he sees these and other advances coming within the next five years.

Company raised $51 million in latest round. Uniphore, whose biggest clients are customer-service providers, in August raised $51 million in its latest venture-capital round, boosting its valuation to an estimated $125 million. The company's revenue more than quadrupled in 2018 from the previous year, Mr. Sachdev said. Uniphore has dual headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., and Chennai, India.

Expanded U.S. blacklist hits China’s AI ambitions. The U.S. decision to add eight Chinese companies to its trade blacklist strikes directly at China’s ambitions in artificial intelligence, threatening its companies’ access to crucial components and relationships with U.S. firms, the WSJ reports.

Some of the companies affected are among China’s most advanced in core areas of AI, including technology involved in recognizing sounds and faces, autonomous driving and surveillance.

Cutting-edge research could slow. Although many of the companies targeted have likely been stockpiling components and can shift to backup supply chains, cutting-edge research efforts could slow, given their heavy reliance on advanced U.S. chips. In the long-term, the move could spell an end to partnerships with U.S. companies and institutions that go back years and limit access to top overseas talent, experts said.

The U.S. Commerce Department added 28 entities in total to its blacklist—the eight companies and 20 other organizations, mostly local public-security bureaus—citing their role in Beijing’s repression of Muslim minorities in China’s northwest Xinjiang region. The move, which blocks the sale of American-sourced products and technology without a license, comes just days before high-level trade talks are set to resume in Washington.

Megvii and SenseTime on the list. Targets of the action include video-surveillance and facial-recognition giants Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, Megvii Technology Inc. and SenseTime Group Ltd. They join telecommunications giant Huawei, added in May.

“It’s leading a lot of private tech companies [in China], as well as the government, into a defensive crouch, where they feel like they need to band together and really once again turn inwards,” said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at MacroPolo, part of the Paulson Institute think tank that focuses on the Chinese economy.

Goldman weighs IPO role. In an early sign of the measure's impact, Goldman Sachs said it is evaluating its involvement in the planned initial public offering of one of the companies, Megvii Technology, “in light of the recent developments.” The bank is a joint sponsor for Megvii's planned Hong Kong listing alongside J.P. Morgan and Citigroup. 

Megvii provides facial-recognition authentication solutions for Android smartphones and internet of things services. 

Tech runs into privacy barrier. As privacy laws continue to roll out in Europe, California and other regions, privacy and security experts disagree over how technologies including facial recognition, artificial intelligence and 5G should be regulated, reports WSJ Pro Cybersecurity’s Adam Janofsky.

Bans could have unintended consequences. Some proposals to ban these tools or place strict restrictions on them could have undesirable repercussions, said Ruby Zefo, chief privacy officer at Uber. She was speaking Tuesday on a panel at a cybersecurity event hosted by Nasdaq and the National Cyber Security Alliance, a nonprofit that works with the public and private sectors.

For example, she said, efforts to ban the use of facial-recognition technology could inhibit the development of tools designed to promote consumer safety. Facial-recognition technology and other biometric tools can help companies like Uber authenticate drivers on behalf of customers.

The privacy threat. Lawmakers and privacy advocates, however, have pushed back against the use of facial-recognition tools. In May, San Francisco banned the use of facial-recognition technology by city agencies, and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) has said he supports a federal ban on police use of the tools.

Panelist Ben Voce-Gardner, director of cybersecurity and threat mitigation policy at New York state’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, said that efforts to safeguard privacy should be weighed against the benefits brought by certain uses of the technology. Facial recognition and similar tools allow government agencies to spot and monitor potential terrorists, for example.

“Facial recognition, if used properly, allows us to react faster to a potentially dangerous situation,” he said. But he said the technology should be limited, and agencies should be transparent in how they use it. “It’s critical for the government to make the argument for why [facial recognition] is necessary,” he said.

SparkCognition raises $100 million. Industrial AI developer SparkCognition raises $100 million. SparkCognition Inc., the Boeing Co.-backed startup that develops AI for industrial use, has raised $100 million, Reuters reports. The private round, led by Santa Monica-based March Capital Partners, brings SparkCognition’s total funding to $175 million. The company is valued at more than $725 million, Reuters said, citing Pitchbook.

Other investors in the latest round include Temasek, the Singapore state investment company.

Self-driving planes. The Austin-based startup, launched in 2013, said last year it would partner with Boeing to create a routing system for self-driving planes. “You hear a lot about self-driving cars. But why can’t every industrial vehicle drive itself? Why can’t every industrial asset maintain itself? That’s the runway we’re talking about,” SparkCognition founder and CEO Amir Husain told Reuters in an interview.

Facial recognition becoming more common at airports. Facial recognition systems are being deployed at airports on both sides of the Atlantic, according to CNN.

At London’s Heathrow, when a British Airways passenger arrives at the airport and passes through an initial security checkpoint, a facial image is “grabbed” and the image is linked with the traveler’s boarding pass, according to the report. Then, when the person goes to board a flight, a camera takes a face shot, which is synced up with their photo from when they arrived.

On the other side of the pond. On the U.S. side of the Atlantic, U.S. Customs and Border Protection told CNN it has deployed facial biometric capabilities at 15 airports.

Pros and cons. Advocates say the technology promises to boost security and ease travel. However, some groups have concerns about airport facial recognition. Evan Greer, deputy director at the nonprofit organization Fight for the Future, which works for the freedom of expression online, is concerned that  U.S. airports and air carriers are a "testing ground" for the technology, according to CNN.  Her organization is worried  could expand both domestically and internationally and be used to target undocumented people traveling in the the country, according to the report.

Energy Department to launch AI research center. The department plans to open a $5.5 million research center where staffers from Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Georgia Institute of Technology will collaborate on AI developments, reports Nextgov. The team at the new Center for Artificial Intelligence-Focused Architectures and Algorithms, or ARIAA, will focus on the power grid, cybersecurity, graph analytics, and computational chemistry, according to the report.

Waymo hits the streets of L.A. Alphabet's self-driving division said it would begin driving its autonomous vehicles in Los Angeles, according to the Verge. Initially, Waymo vehicles, which will have human operators, will be mapping the city’s streets, but the company may look to have the vehicles operate in autonomous modes, according to the report.

What: WSJ Tech Live Conference
Where: Laguna Beach, Calif.
When: Oct. 21-Oct. 23, 2019

The Wall Street Journal’s global technology conference, WSJ Tech Live, returns to Laguna Beach, Calif., for its fifth year on Oct. 21 to Oct. 23 at the Montage hotel. Join top leaders in tech, media and business for newsmaking onstage interviews with Robert Iger, CEO of Walt Disney; Jeff Wilke, CEO of the world-wide consumer business at Amazon; Shari Redstone, vice chair of CBS and Viacom; Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; Michael Schroepfer, chief technology officer of Facebook; and many more.

Some of the themes we’ll be exploring this year:

• Big tech and regulation
• The streaming wars
• The race to 5G
• The landscape of threat and security
• The U.S.-China trade war and its impact on technology

The full speaker list for 2019 and the agenda can be found here.

Write to Enterprise Technology Editor Steven Rosenbush and Pro AI Deputy Editor John McCormick.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjproai, @jaymac59, @steve_rosenbush, @JaredCouncil.