AI wins DARPA dogfight, TikTok sale is jeopardized and Palantir files to go public

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Worth Knowing

Chinese Export Controls Complicate TikTok Sale: On Friday, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced new technology export restrictions that may impede the planned sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations. The AI technologies listed — including speech recognition, speech evaluation and personalized recommendation systems — can be exported only with special permission. Media reported that TikTok said it will “strictly comply” with the updated Chinese export controls. TikTok is preparing to divest U.S. operations after President Trump issued executive orders targeting it and its parent company, ByteDance. An announcement about a buyer may come as soon as this week. On August 24, TikTok sued the Trump Administration, saying the executive orders violate the company’s right to due process.
Palantir Files for IPO: On August 25, data analytics company Palantir filed to go public via a direct listing. The filing revealed that the 17-year-old company brought in $742 million in 2019 but has never been profitable. CEO Alex Karp’s introductory letter, which criticized the “engineering elite” of Silicon Valley for refusing to work with defense and intelligence agencies, also attracted significant media attention. Palantir often partners with the federal government — sometimes taking on controversial contracts, including Project Maven. One estimate of federal contracts over the last four years ranges between $741 million and $2.9 billion.
New Chips Unveiled at Semiconductor Conference: During the August 16-19 leading semiconductor conference Hot Chips, several companies announced innovations. U.S.-based Cerebras teased its second-generation Wafer Scale Engine, the largest chip ever built. The new WSE is specialized for deep learning and represents a significant improvement over the first generation released last year. U.S. chip startup Lightmatter unveiled its silicon photonics chip, Mars, which uses light instead of electrical signals to perform AI calculations. Several other companies also revealed the next generations of their AI chips.
Government Updates

AI Agent Wins AlphaDogfight Against Human Pilot: In a series of simulated dogfights, Heron Systems’ F-16 AI agent defeated an Air Force F-16 pilot five times out of five. DARPA’s AlphaDogfight Trial had three phases: first, AI agents from eight companies faced off against DARPA’s AI system, then the agents played each other. Finally, the top AI system competed with a human pilot. This trial isn’t the first time an AI pilot has defeated a human: In 2016, an AI beat a combat flight instructor in a simpler competition. Heron said its winning AI agent was trained with reinforcement learning, using four billion simulations equivalent to roughly 12 years of human fighter-pilot experience. DARPA Program Manager Col. Dan Javorsek called the trials a success, saying the goal was for AI systems “to earn the respect of a fighter pilot.”

White House Announces Funding for New AI Institutes: The Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy announced the creation of 12 new AI and quantum information science institutes, with plans to spend $1 billion over five years. NSF is awarding $140 million to a total of seven machine learning research institutes, and ultimately plans to invest more than $300 million. Six universities will host a combined seven institutes focused on using AI for weather forecasting, STEM education, molecular discovery, food systems, agricultural resilience and more. In the same announcement, the White House announced five quantum information science institutes led by Department of Energy National Laboratory teams.

Comments Requested on Export Controls for Foundational Technologies: The Department of Commerce issued a call for comments on how to identify foundational technologies essential to U.S. national security as it weighs possible export controls. The notice requests information on defining and identifying foundational technology, determining whether technology is essential to national security, and predicting the potential impact of export controls on foreign and domestic industry. The rule gives the example of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and associated tools as foundational technologies that may be tied to military efforts in China, Russia or Venezuela. Comments are open through October 26.

NIST Releases Draft Principles of Explainable AI: Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have drafted four principles to help judge the clarity of AI decisions. They argue that explainability — understanding why an AI system made a given decision — will be a key component in trusting AI in high-stakes scenarios. The four principles are: decisions should be accompanied by explanations, explanations should make sense to users, explanations should be accurate and the system should not operate when it isn’t confident in its decision. NIST requests comments on the principles through October 15.

In Translation
CSET’s translations of significant foreign language documents on AI

Applications of Health Technology for Epidemic Control: Example Applications of Digital Health Technology for Epidemic Prevention and Control. This translation, excerpted from a Chinese government think tank report, describes several examples of how PRC AI companies are using AI technology to improve COVID-19 prevention and treatment. The examples range from meal delivery robots to tracking mobile phones of suspected infected individuals. For more on China’s use of AI in its COVID-19 response, see CSET’s most recent report by Emily Weinstein.

2019 Annual Budgets: These are translations of the 2019 annual budgets of several Chinese agencies:
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