POLICY

Tech Policy Roadmap

U.S. tech policy had an even more exciting week than Crocs did: The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) published its 2020 interim report, while the Trump Administration released a national strategy for emerging technologies. 

The tl;dr for both reports is a tale as old as 1776: The U.S. wants to be #1. 

The dreamers 

The Trump Administration’s national strategy is heavy on overarching goals, light on detailed steps. Some key priorities: 

• Increase R&D funding for emerging tech 
• Limit bureaucracy and red tape 
• Train and recruit top talent 

The doers 

Think of the NSCAI as the high school overachiever who did the optional homework questions. In its report, it offered 66 actionable recommendations...including three that correspond with the White House’s tech priorities. 

Mo’ money, mo’ innovation: The NSCAI recommends creating $$$ awards for researchers pursuing cutting-edge initiatives, plus a DARPA challenge for AI defense applications (e.g., “human-robotics teaming”). 

Move fast and break through red tape: If the DoD had a dedicated fund for maturing and prototyping promising AI, that would help the government “move as fast as U.S. competitors,” the report argues. Since it currently requires planned program funding (which restricts who can use the resources), money earmarked specifically for funneling into promising AI could speed up the process. 

Hidden talent: Government departments should launch digital talent recruiting offices and create more than 300 AI-specific internships.

•  Plus, NSCAI wrote that Congress should set aside $30 million for tech education at community colleges. 

+1 rec outside of President Trump’s emerging tech framework: The government should “curate, host, maintain, and make publicly accessible” open-source data sets to advance AI development—plus make use of publicly available Internet of Things data, which “rivals government-owned intelligence-gathering systems.” (Brb, throwing my smart coffeemaker out the window.) 

Looking ahead... 

As usual, the government is concerned—from both a defense and commercial perspective—about China.  

In the near future, we should see more public money funneled into AI, quantum, semiconductors, and beyond. That will come in the form of research awards, R&D funding, scholarships, and good-old-fashioned job openings.

AI

Google Leaves Waldo few Options

Waldo’s mission = hiding. Google’s mission = organizing the world's info. Waldo had Google in the first half, not gonna lie, but the company is indexing the universe and leaving him few hideouts.

Yesterday, Google demoed how it’s productizing cutting-edge AI research in service of its mission.

Priority #1: Invest in new touchpoints for search, from audio (Google Assistant) to mobility (Maps) to visualizing the world (Lens).

And #2: Expand what’s searchable. Semantic search has leapt from pages to passages. That means Google will highlight the answer to your query, if it can, rather than just give you a link. Other new features: 

• Long-press an image and search for the product/object that’s in it.
• Hum a song to Google Assistant and find the name. 
• Scan your homework’s quadratic formulas and get step-by-step help. 

Zoom out: The specter of antitrust enforcement looms large over Google. On the one hand, powerful feature upgrades increase the chance users stay within its ecosystem. On the other hand, Google can say it’s expanding the utility, accessibility, and user-friendliness of its services. 

+ Read about natural language processing, object recognition, and other tech powering these advances in our AI guide.

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• 23 percent: How much Winc investments have appreciated since their last fundraising round.

• 137, 745: New customers Winc acquired from March to June alone.

• 4.1 million: Number of Winc wine ratings, allowing personalization through data.

If that isn’t music to your future wallet, we don’t know what is. Own a piece of the wine industry’s future by investing in Winc.

AV

We’re Getting Really Motional

Earlier this year, Hyundai and auto supplier Aptiv renamed their self-driving joint venture Motional. But we’ll judge Motional on its merits, not its moniker. 

Emerging Tech Brew sat down virtually with Motional CTO Laura Major to talk all things on the self-vroom-vroom beat. A few highlights: 

• What has Motional learned from completing 100,000+ passenger trips on the Las Vegas Strip? Ryan took one in January, but we wanted a more empirical answer. 
• How do humans’ driving behaviors vary by regions? Looking at you, Boston...
• Motional recently checked the pulse of U.S. adults’ attitudes toward self-driving. One in four respondents said they were excited to ride in self-driving cars regularly once they’re available. 

There’s plenty more packed in the Q&A. Read the full thing here.

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Elon Musk tweeted that the price of Tesla’s Model S would change to $69,420 on Wednesday. 

Quote: “Before the end of the year, we’ll be sending cars out onto the streets of SF—without gasoline and without anyone at the wheel."—Dan Ammann, CEO of Cruise. The company has received a permit to test driverless EVs on some SF streets. 

Listen: We love when alumni interviewees of Emerging Tech Brew go on Business Casual, Morning Brew’s newsletter for your ears. Check out yesterday’s episode with Steve Case, CEO of VC firm Revolution and former chief of AOL. 

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Twitter had a global outage last night. 
• TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, raised revenue forecasts after booking record profits last quarter.  
• The FAA is updating the rules for non-government space launches. 
• Huawei 5G base stations still heavily rely on U.S. parts, Nikkei reports. 
• U.S. safety regulators are investigating vehicle fires in Chevy Bolt EVs.
• Researchers announced the first room-temperature semiconductor.

GOING PHISHING

Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

1. The LA Fire Department hired the U.S.’ first firefighting robot. 
2. Someone played Microsoft’s xCloud gaming service on their Samsung smart fridge. 
3. The next-gen PlayStation will be able to render full holograms.
4. Researchers built a robotic squid, complete with a water jet.

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For autocomplete on steroids: A great YouTube primer on impressive AI software that can seamlessly remove people and their silhouettes from videos.

For sharing your feelings: An interactive AI tool from Microsoft attempts to guess your emotion based on what you type. Try it out here.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• China’s digital yuan giveaway 
• AI advancements in Amazon Alexa: follow-up questions 
• Waymo expands driverless service in Phoenix 

GOING PHISHING ANSWER

Sony’s PlayStation 5 may not render full holograms, but the company has created a $5,000 15.6-inch 4K hologram display.