Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, told me in a recent conversation, he expects China will surpass Silicon Valley in artificial intelligence advances in about a year. Edward Tseexplains why.
.. “China has an edge in its ability to combine strong, top-down government directive with vibrant grass-roots-level innovation. Beyond this, China has an abundance of data to train AI-learning algorithms because of its huge population of Internet users — more than 700 million. China’s thriving mobile Internet ecosystem also provides a test bed for AI researchers to collect and analyze valuable demographics and transactional and behavioral big data and to conduct large-scale experiments at a much higher level than foreign counterparts.”
.. In China, the security state is well on its way to becoming an all-seeing Big Brother.
Acknowledging Fears, Microsoft’s Nadella Remains Optimistic About AI
Satya Nadella, who says artificial intelligence could be an influential catalyst for human empowerment and inclusion.
.. “It’s a worthy discussion for us to have because artificial intelligence is not just another piece of technology, it could be one of the more fundamental pieces of technology the human race has ever created,” Mr. Nadella said at the event.
.. Mr. Nadella also spoke at the event about augmented reality’s potential impact on business. Augmented reality, which superimposes digital content including hologram-like images onto a user’s view of the real world, is being used in manufacturing and educational settings.
.. In essence, Mr. Nadella said, HoloLens allows a person to “teleport” themselves into a different environment.
.. Mr. Nadella also talked about the role of quantum computing, saying the cutting-edge technology and powerful computing technique could help solve problems related to climate, food production and drug discovery.
Will Mark Zuckerberg ‘Like’ This Column?
Some lawmakers suspect that the Russians had help in figuring out which women and blacks to target in precincts in Wisconsin and Michigan.
Senator Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee looking into Russia’s intervention in 2016, has a suspect in mind. “Paul Manafort made an awful lot of money coming up with a game plan for how Russian interests could be pushed in Western countries and Western elections,” Heinrich told Vanity Fair.
.. Zuckerberg, whose project last year was building a Jarvis-style A.I. butler for his home, likes to paint himself as an optimist and Musk as a doomsday prophet
.. Vladimir Putin has denied digital meddling in the U.S. elections. But he understands the possibilities and threat of A.I. In a recent address, the Russian president told schoolchildren, “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.” Musk agreed on Twitter that competition for A.I. superiority would be the “most likely cause of WW3.”
Watson Won Jeopardy, but is it smart enough to Spin Big Blue’s AI into Green
Talking about Watson is a good way to trigger eye rolls from people in the machine learning and AI community. There’s widespread agreement that its triumph on the specific backward-question problem of Jeopardy! was notable. Making sense of language remains one of the biggest challenges in artificial intelligence. But IBM quickly turned Watson into an umbrella brand promising a bewildering variety of bold new applications, from understanding the emotional tone of Tweets to scouring genomes for mutations. It bought startups and rebranded their wares as Watson and touted cute but hardly lucrative projects like Watson-designed recipes and dresses. In one TV commercialWatson chatted with Bob Dylan, confessing “I have never known love.”
Overhyped
Critics say IBM executives overshot badly by allowing marketing messages to suggest that Watson’s Jeopardy! breakthrough meant it could break through on just about anything else. “The original system was a terrific achievement, there’s no question about that,” says Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for AI. “But they’ve really over-claimed what they can deliver in a big way; the only intelligent thing about Watson is their PR department.”
.. MD Anderson had walked away from more than $62 million and four years spent on contracts promising a Watson system to help oncologists treat patients. An internal audit reserved judgment on Watson’s intelligence but said the center had struggled to connect it with an upgraded medical records system. IBM maintains the system could have been deployed if MD Anderson had kept going; the center is now seeking a new partner to work with on applying AI to cancer care.