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Investors Turn Smart Software on Themselves; Robot Therapists Undergo Analysis
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Welcome back. Technology giants call it “customer zero.” Tech startups call it “eating your own dog food.” However it’s described, the corporate strategy of using your own products or services is catching on with venture capitalists invested in artificial-intelligence startups. A handful of VC firms has begun gauging prospective funding targets by feeding information from startup founders’ pitch decks into algorithms trained on market data. It’s one of an expanding number of areas where manual processes are being replaced by smart software. That rapid growth is reaching into some unexpected areas.
Separately, mental-health experts are debating whether the ability of algorithms to detect hidden patterns can make them better therapists than humans with decades of training and experience.
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Tech startup DoorDash made its trading debut in December.
PHOTO: COURTNEY CROW/NYSE HANDOUT/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Investors, who have poured money into the development of AI for years, are using smart algorithms themselves, aiming to edge out competitors by identifying the most promising startup-funding prospects, WSJ’s Jared Council reports.
Finding prospects. Correlation Ventures built its own machine-learning system that parses troves of startup data from pitch decks supplied by founders seeking funding, while EQT Ventures is using its own AI platform to rank investment opportunities.
What’s next. Venture capitalists is expected to employ AI models and simulations that will change how financials are reviewed, analysts say.
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Alan Turing, the British wartime cryptographer and a pioneer of AI, will be featured on a new £50 note unveiled by the Bank of England, which it plans to put into circulation in late June, WSJ’s Jared Council reports.
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Crypto currency. The note will include a table from a paper Mr. Turing published in 1936 that is widely seen as being foundational to computer science, and his design for one of the first electronic stored-program computers.
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A thinking machine. Mr. Turing developed the Turing test, which evaluates a machine’s ability to think, and is often used as a game that seeks to identify a person from a computer program.
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“AI research has moved from academic dreams and papers to engineered technologies that are moving into many sectors of society.”
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— Yoshua Bengio, founder and scientific director of Montreal-based research institute Mila, and a 2018 Turing Award recipient.
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AI may help alleviate a shortage of mental-health professionals.
PHOTO: ISTOCK PHOTO AND KEITH A. WEBB
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Researchers are teaching algorithms to dispense mental-health advice by training them on large amounts of data generated from electronic health records, therapy-session transcripts, brain scans and other sources. But can AI really replace human therapists? The Wall Street Journal recently asked three experts in the field to weigh in on the issue. Here are edited excerpts.
AI can speed up access to appropriate services, like crisis response. The current Covid pandemic is a strong example where we see both the potential for AI to help facilitate access and triage, while also bringing up privacy and misinformation risks. This challenge—deciding which interventions and information to champion—is an issue in both pandemics and in mental-health care, where we have many different treatments for many different problems.
— Adam Miner, an instructor at the Stanford School of Medicine.
As more people use apps as an introduction to care, it will likely increase awareness and interest of mental health and the demand for in-person care. I have not met a single therapist or psychiatrist who is worried about losing business to apps; rather, app companies are trying to hire more therapists and psychiatrists to meet the rising need for clinicians supporting apps.
— John Torous, director of the digital-psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
I might be a bit of a downer here—building AI to replace current diagnostic practices in mental health is challenging. Determining if someone meets criteria for major depression right now is nothing like finding a tumor in a CT scan—something that is expensive, labor intensive and prone to errors of attention, and where AI is already proving helpful. Depression is measured very well with a nine-question survey.
— Zac Imel, professor and director of clinical training at the University of Utah and co-founder of LYSSN.io, a company using AI to evaluate psychotherapy.
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China’s private-technology giants are likely to play an outsized role in Beijing’s push to be self-sufficient in semiconductors, including smart chips used in a growing number of AI and machine learning applications, WSJ reports.
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Tax breaks. China has poured billions into the chip sector, has provided tax credits for semiconductor companies, fostering the creation of over 50,000 new chip-related companies in 2020.
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Do-it-ourselves. Echoing a trend in the U.S., ByteDance, Alibaba, Baidu and other Chinese tech firms are increasingly trying to build their own custom semiconductors via in-house chip-design units.
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$2.35 billion
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The amount China-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International is planning to spend on a new foundry in Shenzhen.
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Join us on March 31 for the WSJ Pro AI Forum that will feature panel discussions with corporate leaders, case studies, breakout groups and more. Topics will include reinventing the supply chain, AI in medicine and the revolution in tech regulation. More information is available here.
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Deliveroo stock is set to start trading in London on Wednesday under the ticker ROO.
PHOTO: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Deliveroo sets lower-range IPO price. Amazon-backed food-delivery startup Deliveroo, which uses AI for rapid customer-identity checks, filed paperwork on Monday for an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange with an expected value of around $10 billion. (The Wall Street Journal)
A better boxing bot. Boston Dynamics, the U.S.-based robotics maker, on Monday unveiled a robot designed to improve the way boxes are moved around warehouses, outfitted with a small mobile base, a smart-gripper arm and advanced sensing and computer vision cameras. (Reuters)
Smart warfare prep. The early stages of AI adoption is sparking the need to negotiate global agreements over the way smart technology can be used in waging wars, similar to the way earlier treaties on nuclear and biological weapons were struck in post-war period. (The Brookings Institution)
Is that you, Homer? Animators are mimicking actors’ voices using AI software by splicing together snippets of past recordings as a backup for actors who have died or left a show. (NPR)
Volkswagen revs up AI unit. Johan de Nysschen, the CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, said the carmaker is accelerating research and development at its new AI Detroit unit, based in Motor City, as it seeks to leverage new opportunities to support workers and increase efficiency. (CarBuzz)
Catching errors in meds. A new AI-powered system seeks to help detect errors in a patient’s medication self-administration methods, such as medications in insulin pens or inhalers, which can lead to poorer treatment results and increased hospitalizations. (HealthITAnalytics)
Chip fire damage worse. Renesas Electronics Corp. said Monday that damages from a fire at one of its semiconductor plants in northern Japan earlier this month was more extensive than it first thought, knocking out six more machines than initially reporter. (Retuers)
Ask. Me. Anything. William Shatner, the 90-year-old actor best known for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk on the Star Trek television series, along with a halting style of delivering lines, has recorded over 45 hours of audio that can be sorted by AI to answer fans’ questions. (Reuters)
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As Apple Inc. moves ahead with long-promised plans to make it harder to target certain iPhone users with ads, advertising companies and software developers are preparing for major disruptions to the $400 billion digital advertising industry. (The Wall Street Journal)
Spotify Technology SA is making its move into live audio by acquiring the sports-talk app Locker Room and its maker Betty Labs, in a deal values the company at roughly $50 million. (The Wall Street Journal)
Dapper Labs Inc. said Tuesday it raised $305 million from investors including the NBA legends Michael Jordan and Kevin Durant, boosting it valuation to $2.6 billion. (The Wall Street Journal)
WeWork has agreed to merge with a special-purpose acquisition company in a deal to take the shared-office provider public nearly two years after its high-profile failure to launch a traditional IPO. (The Wall Street Journal)
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