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China's Huawei Has Big Ambitions To Weaken the US Grip On AI Leadership (technologyreview.com) 62

MIT Technology reports of how Huawei's technology road map, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, is progressing more rapidly than any other business in the world. "The [Chinese] government and private sector approach is to build companies that compete across the full tech stack," says Samm Sacks, who specializes in cybersecurity and China at New America, a Washington think tank. "That's what Huawei is doing." Huawei's AI strategy "will also raise a host of new security issues," the report notes. "The company's technological ubiquity, and the fact that Chinese companies are ultimately answerable to their government, are big reasons why the U.S. views Huawei as an unprecedented national security threat." From the report: In an exclusive interview with MIT Technology Review, Xu Wenwei, director of the Huawei board and the company's chief strategy and marketing officer, touted the scope of its AI plans. He also defended the company's record on security. And he promised that Huawei would seek to engage with the rest of the world to address emerging risks and threats posed by AI. Xu (who uses the Western name William Xu) said that Huawei plans to increase its investments in AI and integrate it throughout the company to "build a full-stack AI portfolio." Since Huawei is a private firm, it's tricky to quantify its technology investments. But officials from the company said last year that it planned to more than double annual R&D spending to between $15 billion and $20 billion. This could catapult the company to between fifth and second place in worldwide spending on R&D. According to its website, some 80,000 employees, or 45% of Huawei's workforce, are involved in R&D.

Machine-learning services are a new source of risk, since they can be exploited by hackers, and the data used to train such services may contain private information. The use of AI algorithms also makes systems more complex and opaque, which means security auditing is more challenging. As part of an effort to reassure doubters, Xu promised that Huawei would release a code of AI principles in April. This will amount to a promise that the company will seek to protect user data and ensure security. Xu also said Huawei wants to collaborate with its international competitors, which would include the likes of Google and Amazon, to ensure that the technology is developed responsibly. It is, however, unclear whether Huawei might allow its AI services to be audited by a third party, as it has done with its hardware.
In other Huawei-related news, Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou is suing Canada for violating her constitutional rights when border officials detained and interrogated her for hours. "Meng, the chief financial officer of the Chinese telecom firm Huawei, was arrested by Canadian officials in December at the request of the United States," reports NPR. "The U.S. had sought Meng's arrest on charges of fraud, arguing Huawei had violated U.S. sanctions on Iran."
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China's Huawei Has Big Ambitions To Weaken the US Grip On AI Leadership

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Maybe China will finally show that it's societal structure can provide technological innovations on their own.

    Since inventing paper they have not done much except copy or questionably iterate.

    • by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      you forgot buying brand names your father or grand father barely remember making something and slapping it on a c grade TV

  • The Inscect Brain (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rtb61 ( 674572 )

    AI best goal, mimic the insect brain, which is more than good enough for any specific task and when you combine different AIs, in combination they achieve greater outcomes. However the problem with AI it is dead easy to poison, inject false data and it will fail every time. You definitely want to isolate them from uncontrolled interaction, so effectively for the AI delusion, you need an AI to feed data to the AI and another AI to control and monitor the AI but then those other AIs can also be data poisoned.

    • They also want to create fake people en masse to saturate the internet with corporate propaganda, a planet with 7 billion people and 7 trillion fake AI identities to drown out the 7 billion on the internet.

      Dude, where the heck did you get this from? In short, citation needed.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      AI are the new contrails apparently.

      • Regardless, all we needed to know is right here:
        "As part of an effort to reassure doubters, Xu promised that Huawei would release a code of AI principles in April. This will amount to a promise that the company will seek to protect user data and ensure security. " A promise. That should keep things on the up and up, no?

        It's worked for Facecrook for years now, even as they blatantly shred that promise to ribbons.

  • ...Brits march all over Kingdom Come chasing people who knew the land and thus fucked with their mind via snipers and hit-and-run. Actual battles were relatively rare.

    Let Huawei/China go right ahead and blow their wad on over-hyped shit.

  • China AI Report (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Here is a report that helped me understand what is going on in China's AI ecosystem from an economic and military perspective

    https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/understanding-chinas-ai-strategy

  • The only one that makes a stable generic driver for my graphics cards
  • Huawei's "big ambitions" were not without controversy. The director in the interview conveniently neglected to mention that they are under investigation for wire fraud, money laundering, and evading international sanctions against Iran [theguardian.com], have been caught red-handed engaging in industrial espionage [homelandse...wswire.com], and has a bonus system for employees who engage in theft of US trade secrets [businessinsider.com].
  • Seriously, America has been coasting since reagan. Back when we had the economy, we poured loads of money into R&D. Since 1980, America's GOP have continue to gut R&D, esp. basic R&D. Now, China is about to force us to change or lose.
  • Screw the AI. How much blockchain technology are they investing in?

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