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The Morning Download: New Tech Comes to the Mall, Sparking Privacy Debates
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Good day, CIOs. From Bluetooth beacons designed to ping nearby shopper smartphones with deals to interactive mirrors in fitting rooms, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are finding their own high-tech ways to compete against online retailers. But such efforts are attracting the attention of privacy advocates, including those in Congress. The Wall Street Journal's John McKinnon reports on the challenges many companies—and not just retailers—are facing as the privacy debate moves beyond the digital into the physical world.
Retailers say. Technology such as in-store smartphone tracking using beacons and interactive mirrors that provide clothing suggestions are largely aimed at improving the shopping experience. In-store tracking helps alert customers to sale items, for example, and facial recognition can let shoppers breeze through checkout stands by speeding up the payment process.
Critics say. “Technology is rapidly erasing any differences between how precisely people can be tracked online and in a physical space,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union. “So we’re going to need all the same protections offline that we do online.”
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Legislation. Key committee leaders in both the House and Senate are vowing to include bricks-and-mortar retailers in any legislation. Suporting the effort are Amazon.com Inc. and other e-commerce vendors who argue that the rules should be uniform for all retailers
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A robot and a dancer perform during the opening ceremony of the Hannover Industry Fair, in Hanover, Germany, March 31, 2019. PHOTO: JENS SCHLUETER/SHUTTERSTOCK
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How robots could set the tone for social interactions. Artificial intelligence will likely reshape our economy, society and personal lives in the decades to come. But attaining AI’s broad potential will require not only a continuing slew of technological innovations, but research into societal challenges, says CIO Journal Columnist Irving Wladawsky-Berger.
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Google is disbanding a panel in the U.K. to review its artificial-intelligence work in health care. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Google quietly disbands another AI review panel. The London-based panel was created to review its artificial-intelligence work in health care, but panel members and DeepMind, Google’s U.K.-based AI research unit, had continuing disagreements, the WSJ reports.
The second in a month. Earlier Google unveiled a separate high-profile, global, independent AI ethics council. A week later, it disbanded the council following an outpouring of protests about the panel’s makeup.
China tracks ethnic group with AI-enabled facial recognition. China is enlisting local AI startups in its mobilization against a largely Muslim Uighur ethic group, an effort that includes detention camps. The New York Times reports that networks of surveillance cameras in China now host facial recognition technology to identify Uighur based on their appearance.
Minority report. The NYT surfaces marketing for Chinese startup CloudWalk which ties its technology to ethnic profiling. “If originally one Uighur lives in a neighborhood, and within 20 days six Uighurs appear,” it said on its website, “it immediately sends alarms” to law enforcement.
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Remember the Arab Spring?
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It’s all a very long way from the heady days when techno-optimists assured us that the internet and the proliferating software and platforms that operated on and through it were going to be the greatest liberating force humanity has ever seen.
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Analysis by Gerard Baker
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Qualcomm’s Steven Mollenkopf in 2017. PHOTO: NELVIN C. CEPEDA/SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE/ZUMA PRESS
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Apple and Qualcomm’s billion-dollar CEO staredown. A years-long feud between Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. over patents and royalties heads toward a showdown this coming week, when Apple’s patent lawsuit against Qualcomm is set to go to trial. At stake is the future of Qualcomm’s licensing model and billions of dollars in royalties that Apple will pay or keep.
This is where the CEO shines. Close relationships between CEOs have been critical to resolving some big corporate feuds, the WSJ's Tripp Mickle and Asa Fitch report. “You pick up the phone and make a phone call or ask for a meeting. It’s based upon trust,” said John Chambers, the CEO at Cisco Systems Inc. from 1995 to 2015.
But not in this case. Apple's Tim Cook and Qualcomm's Steve Mollenkopf have a 'frosty relationship,' says the WSJ. “It’s personal. I don’t see anybody who can bridge this gap,” a person familiar with their thinking says.
Two management styles. Mr. Mollenkopf has often made decisions after consulting individually with his top lieutenants, but many have left over the years, leaving him isolated and reliant on counsel from outside advisers. Mr. Cook is an operations whiz who works to build consensus among Apple’s top-dozen leaders, often asking them, “What is the right thing to do?”
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“We can’t stop it. We’ll become suckers for anthropomorphizing a halfway-intelligent machine, as long as it gestures and looks like us.”
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— Novelist Ian McEwan
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The race to 5G is a race America must win,’ President Trump said Friday. PHOTO: ALEX WROBLEWSKI/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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FCC announces 5G spectrum auction, rural internet boost. The Federal Communications Commission is planning the agency's third 5G spectrum auction on Deb. 10, Reuters reports. Chairman Ajit Pai on Friday also proposed a $20.4 billion investment over 10 years towards rural broadband efforts.
Facebook, Google gain unusual allies in fight against EU regulation. The WSJ reports that in recent months nativist and anti-European Union parties have joined left-wing groups, privacy campaigners and open-internet activists in opposing legislation that would require internet platforms to block the uploading of content that infringe on copyrights.
Small, self-driving trucks on Hwy. 101. California regulators are looking at allowing vehicle makers to test self-driving delivery trucks on the state's public roads, Reuters reports.
DHS reports on VPN vulnerability. Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division on Friday sent an alert detailing vulnerabilities in enterprise virtual private network apps from Cisco Systems Inc., Palo Alto Networks, Pulse Secure and F5 Networks. TechCrunch has more.
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Everything Else You Need to Know
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Former Federal Reserve officials and foreign central bankers say President Trump’s combative stance toward the U.S. central bank could over time weaken the institution and its role in the global economy. (WSJ)
The grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX jetliners continues to ripple through the airline industry, with two airlines now extending flight cancellations into August, as efforts to fix the planes are beset with delays. (WSJ)
Many investors are trying to square their big returns with the fact that they have arrived while the global economic outlook has grown progressively dimmer, leaving some to wonder how much longer the rally can last. (WSJ)
Tiger Woods shot a 2-under 70 on Sunday to win the Masters by one shot, completing a long comeback from injury and personal setbacks. (WSJ)
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