Public officials found using facial recognition without oversight, TSMC’s $100B expansion plans, and the Army teams up with Microsoft for high-tech headsets

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Worth Knowing

Public Officials Used Facial Recognition Tool, Many Without Oversight: A BuzzFeed News investigation found that more than 7,000 individuals from 1,803 publicly funded agencies had run searches using Clearview AI, a commercially-available facial recognition system, in many cases without superiors’ knowledge or approval. BuzzFeed identified nearly 340,000 searches from people at agencies in every state except Vermont, as well as from several federal agencies and organizations, including DOJ, FBI, ICE, DHS, DOD, the State Department and the Secret Service. The Clearview AI platform has attracted criticism for scraping photos from social media without users’ knowledge or consent and for its aggressive marketing to individual law enforcement officers. While the company has now placed restrictions on its free trial program — requiring a superior’s approval and some administrator oversight, for example — few legal restrictions exist outside of the handful of cities that have banned police use of facial recognition technology.
TSMC Plans $100 Billion Investment to Expand Capacity: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. confirmed plans to spend $100 billion over the next three years to expand its chipmaking capacity. The world’s largest contract chipmaker, TSMC produces advanced chips for many of the world’s biggest companies, among them Apple, AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm. The news comes after rival Intel announced its own plans to spend $20 billion building two new chipmaking fabs in Arizona. While these investments will do little to ease the chip shortage plaguing the global economy in the short term, observers say they are an acknowledgement that the surge in demand for the highest-end chips is here to stay. While TSMC did not specify where its $100 billion would be spent, some of it may be headed to the United States. Last year, the company secured approval for a $12 billion fab, also in Arizona, but Taiwanese media sources report that TSMC is now planning to pour as much as $35 billion into the site.
Nvidia Announces a New CPU For AI Supercomputing: Earlier this week, Nvidia Corporation announced plans for a new CPU, dubbed “Grace,” designed for advanced applications such as AI supercomputing and natural language processing. GPUs designed by the Silicon Valley-based company are already found in most of the world’s AI supercomputers, but they are typically paired with CPUs from other companies. By closely integrating Nvidia-designed GPUs and CPUs, the company claims it will be able to achieve 10 times the performance of today’s fastest systems. The new chip, slated for release in 2023, is based on technology from the British semiconductor company Arm Ltd., which Nvidia is in the process of acquiring for $40 billion. Though the chip is still two years away, Nvidia has already reached deals with the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory to supply the CPUs in their new supercomputers. 
Government Updates

Army Inks $22 Billion Contract With Microsoft For AR Headsets: Microsoft won a contract worth up to $21.88 billion to supply the U.S. Army with augmented reality headsets. The Integrated Visual Augmentation System — based on Microsoft’s commercially-available HoloLens headsets — gives soldiers a heads-up-display with tactical data, targeting displays, live video and more. Microsoft began developing AR headsets for the Army in 2018. Its early designs didn’t work in the rain and received low grades from the troops who tested them, leading Congress to cut funding for IVAS procurement last year. Army officers overseeing the project say those problems have been ironed out in the newest version of the headsets, which were rolled out for tests late last year. While the new contract could be worth nearly $22 billion over ten years, that large sticker price will depend on the program’s performance. The program is split into two five-year increments, meaning the Army could cut it short if the headsets fail to live up to expectations.      

Biden Infrastructure Plan Includes AI-Relevant Funding: The Biden administration introduced the “American Jobs Plan,” a sweeping $2 trillion infrastructure proposal that would invest money across the U.S. economy. AI-relevant aspects of the plan include:
  • Funding the $50 billion for semiconductor manufacturing and research authorized by the CHIPS for America Act.
  • $50 billion for a new office in the Department of Commerce to monitor and support critical supply chains.
  • $14 billion for NIST to “advance technologies and capabilities critical to future competitiveness.”
  • $50 billion for the National Science Foundation, in part to create a new technology directorate within the agency that would focus on converting basic research into deployed technology.
  • $40 billion for upgrading research labs — both their facilities and their computing power — across the country.  
  • $30 billion in R&D funding directed toward innovation and job creation in rural areas.
  • $100 billion to expand high-speed broadband access.
On Monday, President Biden met with a bipartisan group of Congressional lawmakers to discuss details of the proposal. While the president says he hopes to get some Republican support for his proposal, observers say the plan may move via the budget reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes to pass the Senate.

Congressional Hearings With AI Implications: Two Senate committees held hearings yesterday with potential implications for artificial intelligence and national security policy:
In Translation
CSET’s translations of significant foreign language documents on AI

Speech from former PRC Minister of Industry and Information Technology: Miao Wei: Advancing the High-Quality Development of the Manufacturing Industry. Former PRC Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei, in a March 2021 speech, contends that China needs 30 more years to develop into a true “manufacturing powerhouse.” Miao states that China needs to devote more time and attention to its manufacturing industry to reduce its dependency on foreign technology and talent.

PRC Notice on Semiconductor Manufacturing: Notice of the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs, and the State Taxation Administration on Import Duty Policies to Support the Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry and the Software Industry. This PRC government notice announces import duty exemptions for several types of goods and materials related to semiconductor and microchip manufacturing. The tax waivers only apply to items that China’s domestic industries cannot currently supply at an acceptable level of quality.

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What We’re Reading

Report: Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (April 2021)

Report: Labs over Fabs: How the US Should Invest in the Future of Semiconductors, Chris Miller, Jordan Schneider and Danny Crichton, FPRI (March 2021)  

Article: The Perils of Overhyping Artificial Intelligence: For AI to Succeed, It First Must Be Able to Fail, Julia Ciocca, Michael C. Horowitz and Lauren Kahn, Foreign Affairs (April 2021)

Report: China as a ‘cyber great power’: Beijing’s two voices in telecommunications, Rush Doshi, Emily de La Bruyère, Nathan Picarsic and John Ferguson, Brookings (April 2021)

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