AI Technology & Industry Review
AI highlights.
On July 7, the University of Texas at Austin announced that it has teamed up with major wireless companies to set up a new 6G research center, the 6G@UT. Founding affiliates Samsung, AT&T, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and InterDigital will each fund at least two projects for three years at the center.
On July 17, Baidu rolled out its Apollo Robotaxi in the streets of China’s southern city Guangzhou. Users can access the self-driving taxi service via the Baidu Map and Apollo GO apps, and board the vehicles from 9:30 to 23:00, at 237 stops across the city.
On July 13, Alibaba announced the establishment of the Alibaba Artificial Intelligence Governance Laboratory (AAIG, https://s.alibaba.com/cn/aaig). The laboratory will promote sustainable, reliable, credible, and usable AI.
On July 8, e-commerce giant Amazon announced its plan to set up a R&D centre in Helsinki, Finland, to develop technologies for its Scout unmanned delivery robot.
Intel plans to invest 20 billion U.S. dollars to build chip factories in a number of EU countries, and is actively lobbying governments, including France and Italy.
At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) held in Shanghai on July 9, Daosheng Tang, the senior vice exectuvie of Tencent and president of the Tencent cloud and smart industry group, said that the company’s Yangtze River AI Supercomputing Center with RMB 45 billion (approx. USD 7 billion) investment will soon commence operation.
On July 4, according to notice mandated by China’s Cyberspace Administration (CAC), ride-hailing giant “Didi Chuxing” app has serious violations of laws and regulations with its collecting and use of users’ personal information.
On June 28, Shenzhen promulgated the draft of Regulations on the Promotion of Artificial Intelligence Industry of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which seeks to establish an overarching framework for AI, such as the approval framework for market entrance of AI products and services.
According to media reports on June 28, South Korea is investing KRW 1.1 trillion (USD 1 billion) on L4-level self-driving, involving the government’s science, transport and police units. The government task force also announced 53 projects for commercializing L4 and high levels of autonomous driving by 2027.
According to a securities report released on June 24, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda is personally investing USD 45.3 million into Woven Planet Holdings, the smart city unit of his company spearheading autonomous driving research.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger expect the global chip shortage to continue worsen, and the world will have wait for “a healthy supply-demand situation until 2023″.
On June 23, India’s antitrust regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), released the investigation results of tech giant Google’s alleged abuse of the country’s smart TV market via the Android operating system.
On June 26, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) announced that Tesla Motors (Beijing & Shanghai) are to recall approximately 286,000 vehicles over faulty active cruise control system.
On June 16, Tencent Quantum Lab and the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University signed an MoU regarding cooperation on functional material databases, machine learning-assisted material computation methods, and material virtual screening cloud platforms.
On June 21, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) issued a document stating that it had appointments with major state-owned banks and mobile payment provider Alipay for providing cryptocurrency transaction services.
On June 22, LG Electronics announced the launch of a new “digital x-ray detector” (DXD). The new product is equipped with assisted AI diagnostic functions, which are designed by healthcare AI solutions company VUNO. The product will detect chest X-ray images for abnormal findings and enhance lesion areas with coloring and outline, to help medical professionals accurately identify lung diseases including tuberculosis, pneumonia, and cancer.
On June 18, China completes the building of the self-driving expressway in Jiangsu province, which will be open to traffic at the end of this month.
On June 16, LVMH and Google Cloud announced a strategic partnership to accelerate innovation and develop new cloud-based artificial intelligence solutions.
On June 16, General Motors Co. announced it will increase its electric vehicles (EV) and autonomous vehicles (AV) investments from 2020 through 2025 to USD 35 billion, representing a 75 percent increase from its initial commitment announced prior to the pandemic
On June 11, China’s rise-hailing giant Didi Chuxing formally submitted its IPO prospectus to the SEC. In the 12 months ending March 31, 2021, Didi had 493 million global annual active users and 15 million global annual active drivers.
On April Fool’s Day in 2016, Google secretly uploaded a video of an autonomous bicycle roaming through the busy streets. Two days after the post went viral, Google clarified that it was actually the result of superb video editing. Five years later, Zhi Hui Jun, a vlogger from Beijing with more than 800,000 fans, spent four months (mainly on weekends) making the joke into a reality.
To meet the goal of carbon neutrality, Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture and conglomerate Toyota announced the plan to build a hydrogen-powered smart city on June 4. A dozen of companies including Asahi Group, Aeon, and Isuzu Motors is to participate in the project as of the announcement date.
On June 3, the White House and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department announced a new ban signed by the Biden administration restricting American investment in 59 Chinese companies, including companies such as Huawei, Hikvision, and SMIC.
Google says it will allow global advertisers offering cryptocurrency exchange and wallet products and services to market on its platform including search engine and Youtube, according to announcement on June 2.
On May 31, in Wuhan East Lake National Comprehensive Science Center， Huawei’s Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center was completed and putContinue Reading
Didi Autonomous Driving is to complete a USD 300 million new round of financing, with USD 200 million from the Guangzhou Automobile Group and its capital investment arm.
According to Nikkei reports, the Japanese government will provide half of the funds for TSMC’s relocation research facility in the Ibaraki Prefecture, which is north of Tokyo, and it is expected that R&D will be officially launched in 2022.
According to media reports on May 31, Shenzhen is building its tallest smart parking lot, which is expected to beContinue Reading
On May 30, media reported that the South Korean regulatory agency Fair Trade Commission has approved SK Hynix’s USD 9 billion acquisition of Intel’s NAND flash memory and SSD businesses.
On May 27th, SberAutoTech, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned banking company PJSC Sberbank, unveiled a self-driving taxi “Flip” developed byContinue Reading
The US government is advancing the “Artemis” moon landing plan in 2024, using a new type of autonomous rover, or Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV), to explore places that it has never set foot in before.
On May 24, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 announced exclusively investment of USD 175 million in Riiid, a South Korean AI tutor company.
South Korea’s largest telecommunications company will join hand with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) to establish a AI research institute.
On May 28, Reuters quoted sources saying that BMW, Daimler and Ford have set up facilities in China to store data generated by cars locally.
The magnetic fusion energy reactor Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), known as the “artificial sun”, at the Hefei Institute of Material Science of Chinese Academy of Sciences, set a new world record.
On May 26, OpenAI unveiled a new $100 million startup fund called the “OpenAI Startup Fund”, focusing on early-stage startupsContinue Reading
On May 25, Tesla announced that it will abandon LiDARs and roll out camera-only Autopilot assisted driving system called “Tesla Vision” in its North American Model 3 and Model Y vehicles starting in June.
On May 21, leading IoT cloud platform Tuya Smart hosted a panel to discuss resilience and innovation for the IoT industry in North America during COVID-19 outbreak.
Industry report unveiled that Waymo, the self-driving arm of Google, is seeking a USD 4 billion investment from external investors to fuel its autonomous vehicle business.
On May 20, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance and owner of TikTok since 2012, issued an internal letter to all employees announcing his resignation as CEO.