What’s happened in AI: April 23rd-29th

By | May 1, 2018
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This week featured many positive news stories. Most notable was the use of new facial recognition software by police in India to find thousands of missing children. Always great to see the use of AI to help make the world a safer and better place.

Company developments:

IAI developing autonomous vehicles – Apr. 29, 2018 (Globes)

  • Israel Aerospace Industries is developing autonomous bulldozers for mining companies and unmanned military vehicles to save soldiers’ lives
  • One of the main developments recently reported by IAI is aimed at the global mining industry through a system named Euphemus based on advanced algorithms that makes it possible to convert huge trucks used to transport dirt in open mines into completely autonomously driven trucks. These converted trucks can be operated independently according to definitions made in advance through commands given to them remotely
  • Over the past year, IAI has already signed several deals with a number of mining companies around the world, and IAI heads are calling the new applications achieved in robotics one of the company’s main growth engines for the coming years. IAI recently revealed its intriguing developments aimed at this sector in the framework of the Expomin exhibition that took place in Santiago, Chile, which was attended by the world’s major mining companies, in an attempt to obtain additional deals for IAI in this sector

China’s JD.com looks to Silicon Valley center for innovation – Apr. 29, 2018 (WTOP)

  • Great Q&A with Dr. Hui Cheng, the head of robotics research at JD.’s Silicon Valley Research Center, who recently spoke with The Associated Press about the priorities of the Silicon Valley lab
  • JD.com, the largest challenger to Alibaba’s e-commerce empire in China, is investing in technology to speed up warehouse operations and delivery to shoppers who want service quickly
  • In China, it’s testing drone delivery, has opened an automated warehouse that’s improved on manual sorting, and it’s testing deliveries using unmanned vehicles at universities in Beijing. It also uses these self-driving vehicles that look like rolling ice cream carts to move goods inside its warehouses

Alexa will soon gain a memory, converse more naturally, and automatically launch skills – Apr. 26, 2018 (TechCrunch)

  • The news was announced this morning in a keynote presentation from the head of the Alexa Brain group, Ruhi Sarikaya, speaking at the World Wide Web Conference in Lyon, France
  • He explained that the Alexa Brain initiative is focused on improving Alexa’s ability to track context and memory within and across dialog sessions, as well as make it easier for users to discover and interact with Alexa’s now over 40,000 third-party skills
  • For example, you might direct Alexa to remember an important day by saying something like, “Alexa, remember that Sean’s birthday is June 20th.” Alexa will then reply, “Okay, I’ll remember that Sean’s birthday is June 20th.” This effectively turns Alexa into a way to offload information you’d otherwise have to store in your own brain, and is reminiscent of earlier bots, like Wonder, which were designed to remember anything you told it, for later retrieval over SMS or messaging platforms

Pony.ai Q&A: Having a China background will be key to autonomous driving success – Apr. 26, 2018 (Tech Node)

  • Great Q&A with Pony.ai co-founder, Lou Tiancheng
  • In January 2018, Pony.ai got $112 million in Series A funding only 1 year after its inception. This is enough funding to make it instantly a serious contender in the sector anywhere in the world. The two founders James Peng and Lou Tiancheng have backgrounds at both Baidu and Google’s autonomous driving projects

BMW chooses Israeli co Innoviz’s autonomous car sensors – Apr. 26, 2018 (Globes)

  • Israeli company Innoviz Technologies, which provides advanced laser-based sensor solutions (LiDAR), today announced that auto manufacturer BMW had selected its InnovizOne LiDAR sensor for installation in its autonomous and semi-autonomous series of vehicles starting in 2021. These vehicles will have autonomous driving capabilities from Level 3 (driving without hands on the wheel for short periods in restricted lanes) to Level 5 (completely autonomous driving)
  • Innoviz’s advanced sensor solution facilitates advanced scanning capability that generates highly accurate 3D mapping of the vehicle’s surroundings, and allows it to operate effectively in difficult weather conditions, while substantially lowering the cost. The finished integrated product will be installed in BMW vehicles by Magna, one of the world’s leading auto industry suppliers and a leading investor in Innoviz
  • Innoviz was founded in 2016 with the help of a group of investors that included Zohar Zisapel, Gil Agmon, Delek Motors CEO Gil Agmon, and others who had also taken part in the seed round of Argus Cyber Security, sold last year for $400 million. Innoviz has raised $82 million to date, with the company’s most recent financing round including Softbank Ventures, Samsung, tier-1 companies Magna and Delphi, and a number of funds

ABBYY Launches Text Analytics for Contracts – Apr. 26, 2018 (Bristol Herald Courier)

  • ABBYY, a global provider of content intelligence solutions and services, today announced the launch of ABBYY Text Analytics for Contracts, a managed service that automatically discovers insights from contracts and leases to speed up risk mitigation, obligation analysis and content migration. With Text Analytics for Contracts, businesses can leverage the entire ABBYY technology portfolio to accelerate time-to-value and successfully implement their contract lifecycle management, robotic process automation and digital transformation strategies
  • ABBYY’s human-like understanding of contracts enables users to speed-read documents by pinpointing sections, clauses and facts for systems of records or other business processes to drive contextually informed, accelerated decision-making. The service is well suited for large and medium-sized enterprises, large-scale system integrators and independent software vendors who need to automatically leverage the intelligence embedded within sectioned documents, including contracts, leases, regulatory filings and more, to augment business decision-making processes and ensure compliance with emerging regulations such as GDPR and ASC606

World’s most valuable AI start-up SenseTime eyes move into online censorship – Apr. 25, 2018 (South China Morning Post)

  • The Beijing-based company, which is known for providing AI-powered surveillance software for China’s police, on Wednesday unveiled a product it claims can automatically screen out online videos that contain pornographic or violent images, as well as text containing messages deemed sensitive by the authorities
  • The new product comes amid the Chinese government’s ongoing crackdown on “inappropriate” online media, which has included sexually provocative material uploaded by under aged users, as well as off-colour jokes and content deemed as vulgar. In recent weeks Chinese authorities have ordered online media to remove offending content and step up their self-censorship efforts
  • Dai Juan, Sensetime’s Executive Director, said a human content reviewer can only screen several thousand pictures and videos a day, meaning a platform that receives more than 1 million user generated videos daily would need a team of at least 2,000 people monitoring content, costing around 400,000 yuan (US$63,261) a day. SenseTime’s AI-based solution, called SenseMedia, only costs 3,000 yuan per day to operate and has an accuracy rate of 99.5 per cent, she said

Mapbox Hires Former Tesla Autopilot Designer to Rethink Driverless-Car Maps – Apr. 25, 2018 (WSJ)

  • Brennan Boblett, who helped pioneer the look of touch screen interfaces in increasingly autonomous vehicles, is joining well-funded startup Mapbox Inc. to help create digital maps for passengers in driverless cars
  • Mapbox provides mapping and location-search technology to a variety of companies including messaging-app developer Snap Inc. and General Electric Co. In October, it raised $164 million in a round led by SoftBank Group to expand its efforts into the automotive industry
  • Mr. Boblett spent several years as a designer at auto maker Tesla Inc., leading a team that created the interfaces of digital touch screens that rest on the dashboards of the electric vehicles, including how the user interacted with the company’s semiautonomous Autopilot system

Oracle NetSuite Launches Upgrades To Accelerate Growth – Apr. 24, 2018 (Light Reading)

  • Oracle NetSuite introduced vertical industry customizations, internationalization, AI and machine learning capabilities quick-to-deploy storefronts at its annual conference
  • Oracle NetSuite today announced a series of new innovations to help organizations across industries drive growth, reduce costs and quickly and easily achieve the benefits of cloud computing. The latest innovations within the NetSuite platform include new SuiteSuccess industry cloud solutions, enhanced financial management and HR capabilities, new innovations for product and service companies, and a powerful new data analytics solution

Xiaomi Upcoming Smartphone Mi 6X To Feature AI-Based Smart Assistant – Apr. 23, 2018 (Gizmo China)

  • Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi is all set to launch its new smartphone Xiaomi Mi 6X, the successor of the Mi 5X at a launch event on 25th April
  • The company has been teasing features of the upcoming smartphone to build the hype around the smartphone. Everything related to the device has been leaked online, including specifications, features, and images
  • This is a step forward for the China-based company in the AI-based smart assistant space. The company had previously launched a couple of AI-based smart speakers. Most recently, the company launched Xiaomi AI Mini Speaker for 169 Yuan (~$27)

Borealis AI expands lab network into Vancouver – Apr. 23, 2018 (Newswire)

  • Building off its recent investments in the Canadian artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem, Borealis AI today announced it is expanding its network of labs across Canada into Vancouver. The new research centre will focus on computer vision, a subfield of machine learning that trains computers to see, process and understand the visual world. It is expected to open in the fall of this year
  • Professor Greg Mori, director of computing science at Simon Fraser University and an internationally recognized expert in computer vision, will head research efforts at the lab as research director. He will be joined by University of British Columbia professor Leonid Sigal, who will serve as academic advisor. Both professors will continue to teach at their respective universities while working with Borealis AI
  • Prof. Mori’s research includes semantic segmentation, a series of machine learning techniques that seek to label every object in a natural image down to the pixel level – whether it’s a window pixel, a tree pixel or a pixel of a human face. This degree of granularity allows us to understand the world at a fine level of detail and create applications that can benefit environmental, agricultural and humanitarian initiatives

Studies / breakthroughs:

Top Go Player Ke Jie Loses to Made-in-China AI – Apr. 27, 2018 (Sixth Tone)

  • A China-developed artificial intelligence program defeated the world’s second-ranked Go player on Friday afternoon, nearly a year after the same player lost to AlphaGo, an AI project backed by Google, three games to zero
  • After launching on April 12, the Chinese AI, Golaxy, won 28 of 30 games against top-ranked Go players — including a victory over world No. 1 Park Junghwan of South Korea — prior to facing Ke. Funded by Beijing-based investment firm NCF Group, Golaxy is expected to rival or even surpass its predecessor, AlphaGo
  • The match between Golaxy and Ke is intended not only to show off the lofty level of AI technology in China, but also to encourage people to think about how such sophisticated machine-learning processes could be applied to other fields in the future, said Lin Jianchao, head of the Chinese Go Association

Chinese AI is half as good as U.S. capability, report says – Apr. 25, 2018 (Axios)

  • For all China’s vaunted reams of data and outsized R&D spending, its development of artificial intelligence is only half as good as the United States’, according to a side-by-side assessment by an Oxford University researcher
  • “I think some of the rhetoric about China’s AI advances has been overblown,” says Jeffrey Ding at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. He tells Axios, “The U.S. still has significant advantages in talent and hardware, and it should continue to ensure that talented researchers and scientists want to work and stay in the U.S.”
  • In a long, must-read report, Ding uses an index in order to parse China’s AI capabilities. He finds:
    • The U.S. is ahead in all AI metrics except the volume of data to which it has access. Even there, Chinese AI has the benefit of much more data; but it is all Chinese data, collected at home, and thus narrow
    • Taking into context the variables he identified, he finds that Chinese capabilities are about half the United States’
    • AI ethics are an issue in China, just as they are in the West.

Fundraising / investment:

Allegro.AI nabs $11M for ‘deep learning as a service’, for businesses to build computer vision products – Apr. 25, 2018 (TechCrunch)

  • Allegro.AI, which has built a deep learning platform that companies can use to build and train computer-vision-based technologies — from self-driving car systems through to security, medical and any other services that require a system to read and parse visual data — is today announcing that it has raised $11 million in funding, as it prepares for a full-scale launch of its commercial services later this year after running pilots and working with early users in a closed beta
  • The round may not be huge by today’s startup standards, but the presence of strategic investors speaks to the interest that the startup has sparked and the gap in the market for what it is offering
  • Nir Bar-Lev, the CEO and cofounder (Moses Guttmann, another cofounder, is the company’s CTO; and the third cofounder, Gil Westrich, is the VP of R&D), started Allegro.AI first as Seematics in 2016 after he left Google, where he had worked in various senior roles for over 10 years. It was partly that experience that led him to the idea that with the rise of AI, there would be an opportunity for companies that could build a platform to help other less AI-savvy companies build AI-based products

Softbank, Google join $1.9 billion investment in China truck-hailing firm – Apr. 24, 2018 (Reuters)

  • Japan’s Softbank Group and Alphabet Inc’s venture capital fund CapitalG are among investors pouring $1.9 billion into a truck hailing service platform Manbang, the Chinese company said in a statement on Tuesday
  • Manbang, formally known as Full Truck Alliance Group, said the investment was led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund – which counts Apple Inc, Foxconn and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund among its backers. Investors also include state-backed private equity firm China Reform Fund and Hong Kong-based investment firm Ward Ferry, said Manbang
  • Often described as China’s “Uber for trucks”, Manbang runs an app that allows shippers to connect with truck drivers, tapping into demand for haulage in one of the world’s busiest markets for goods transport. The investment was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing sources, who said the fund raising would put the company’s valuation north of $6 billion

Partnerships:

Baidu, Peking University cooperate on AI research – Apr. 29, 2018 (China.org.cn)

  • Robin Li, founder of search engine Baidu, Saturday announced a donation of 660 million yuan (104 million U.S. dollars) to Peking University (PKU) to promote research on artificial intelligence (AI)
  • The “PKU-Baidu fund” will be used to support frontier research in AI-related subjects such as information science, medicine, economics, communication, psychology, and sociology, which are highly consistent with Baidu’s long-term endeavors in the AI sector
  • Lin Jianhua, president of PKU, said the establishment of the fund, just days before the university’s 120th anniversary, will lead the next generation into the future and help them seize new opportunities in the new era

Intel’s Drone And Artificial Intelligence Technology To Help Restore China’s Great Wall – Apr. 28, 2018 (UNN)

  • Intel and the China Foundation for Cultural Heritage Conservation have created a partnership to protect and restore the Great Wall of China. Over the next few months, Intel’s Falcon 8+ drones will capture aerial photography of the walls to obtain high-definition 3-D images, helping teams gauge the Great Wall’s current condition. Intel Artificial Intelligence data capture will create a visual representation of the Great Wall to help efficiently and safely identify sections in need of repair
  • The Great Wall’s Jiankou section is among its most famous stretches, as well as its steepest. Located in thick vegetation, the section of the wall, which dates to the third century B.C., has naturally weathered and requires repair. Intel’s AI and Falcon 8+ drone technologies will be used to remotely inspect and map the Jiankou section, which has been difficult for repair teams to reach

Microsoft-OOCL Partnership to Develop Shipping AI – Apr. 24, 2018 (Port Technology)

  • The collaboration between the technology giant and the Hong Kong-based international container transportation, logistics and terminal company will involve over 200 AI developers over the next 12 months
  • OOCL processes and analyzes over 30 million vessel data every month, and by leveraging AI technology and machine learning, the company develops predictive analytics on vessel schedules and berth activities
  • Steve Siu, Chief Information Officer of OOCL (pictured above), said: “With MSRA’s efforts and expertise, we expect to save around US$ 10 million in operation costs annually by applying the AI research and techniques for optimizing shipping network operations from our most recent 15-week engagement

UK To Work With Michigan On Driverless Cars – Apr. 23, 2018 (Silicon)

  • The British government is to collaborate with the US state of Michigan – home to the country’s top three automakers – on the development of autonomous vehicles and smart roads
  • A memorandum of understanding signed by Michigan governor Rick Snyder and UK business minister Richard Harrington is to see agencies and businesses in Detroit work with organisations in the UK such as the government’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and Transport Systems Catapult on technologies and new rules to govern them
  • British organisations will be able to share experiences with those in Michigan and make use of MCity and the American Center of Mobility, two driverless car test grounds, Snyder said

Universities:

How chatbots are changing Australian universities – Apr. 26, 2018 (Study International News)

  • At the University of Adelaide, chatbots are now deployed to help students calculate their adjusted ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) scores, which includes bonus points across a couple of categories. It’s helped students receive this critical information almost immediately, according to director of student recruitment and admissions services Catherine Cherry
  • Other Australian universities are putting the chatbots to use too. “Lucy” and “Bruce” at the University of Canberra answer questions by students and staff respectively on issues ranging from class schedules to student services
  • At Deakin University, student chatbot “Genie” – using the intelligence behind IBM’s supercomputer system, Watson – was trialled earlier this year and in the works to be fully launched in July. Genie will then be able to help students how to find the next lecture hall, apply for next semester’s class, submit assignments and find out where a counselor can be reached, according to Chatbots Magazine

Events:

Applied Brain Research Inc. Demonstrates Leading Edge Neuromorphic AI Stack at Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery 2018 – Apr. 27, 2018

  • In a Canadian first, Applied Brain Research Inc. (ABR), and Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) are pleased to announce that Intel’s newest neuromorphic research chip, Loihi, will be demonstrated live at this year’s Discovery conference
  • The brain-like chip will be running several real-time, online learning artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The award-winning Discovery conference takes place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre April 30 and May 1 in Toronto, Ontario. This is the first time the Intel Loihi chip has been demonstrated in Canada
  • ABR created a number of AI applications using Nengo, ABR’s neuromorphic compiler, including a keyword speech recognition app and a neuromorphic robotic controller. The speech recognition network was trained using deep learning and then converted to a spiking neural network using ABR’s neural network transfer methods. The robotic controller uses an online non-linear adaptive algorithm running on Intel’s Loihi chip to control a Canadian Kinova Jaco2 arm. The Loihi controller allows the Jaco2 arm to accurately reach to an object detected using a deep learning vision system, even when the friction, weight, and other properties of the arm change unpredictably

Facial Recognition in Uruguayan Football – Apr. 26, 2018 (PR Newswire)

  • The implementation of facial recognition in Uruguayan football was promoted by the Ministry of the Interior and could be achieved thanks to the efforts of the Uruguayan Football Association (AUF) and its two most important clubs. The execution of the project was granted through a public tender to the company H&O Tecnología (DDBA Ltda.), which selected Herta’s facial recognition technology, and whose results in the preliminary live tests were the best among all the participants. One of the leading VMS platforms in the market, Wavestore, was integrated for the video managem
  • At present, the three most important stadiums in the country have Herta facial recognition systems, all of them supplied by DDBA. These stadiums are: Centenario Stadium, Great Central Park (the stadium of the National Football Club) and Champion of the Century (the stadium of the Athletic Club Peñarol). The first to enter into operation was the Centenario stadium, which inaugurated this device on April 1, 2017

Indico to Speak on Machine Learning at 2018 ODSC East – Apr. 24, 2018 (Global Newswire)

  • Indico machine learning architect and co-founder, Madison May will be a featured presenter at the 2018 Open Data Science Conference (ODSC) taking place May 1 – 4 at the Boston Convention Center
  • May will deliver a technical talk on transfer learning and how it can be used to deliver efficiencies in machine learning on text-based content. May has played a key role in the development of Indico’s enterprise AI solution for unstructured content and designed and built an NLP system at Fetchnotes. He was also an active open source contributor to projects like Python3, Pylearn2, and Theano
  • Indico will also be a sponsor at the event, showcasing its enterprise AI solution. The platform enables users to work with much smaller sets of data to create customized models for automating manual, document-based business processes and extracting valuable insights from existing unstructured enterprise data

Government / policy:

The Pentagon Could Get Self-Driving Vehicles First – Apr. 30, 2018 (Bloomberg)

  • “We’re going to have self-driving vehicles in theater for the Army before we’ll have self-driving cars on the streets,” Michael Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, told lawmakers at a hearing on Capitol Hill this month. “But the core technologies will be the same.”
  • Griffin, 52 percent of casualties in combat zones can been attributed to military personnel delivering food, fuel and other logistics. Removing people from that equation with systems run on artificial intelligence could reduce injuries and deaths significantly, he added
  • With an annual budget of almost $700 billion, the Pentagon can afford to aggressively pursue autonomous vehicle technology well beyond fuel and food delivery trucks. The Army, for instance, is pushing forward with efforts to develop unmanned tanks and smarter vehicles for bomb disarmament, though many of those technologies will be remote-controlled, not autonomous

US government review threatens to block firms’ Artificial Intelligence work with China – Apr. 27, 2018 (South China Morning Post)

  • The US government may start scrutinising informal partnerships between American and Chinese companies in the field of artificial intelligence, threatening practices that have long been considered commonplace for technology companies, sources familiar with the discussions said
  • This possible new expansion of the mandate – which would serve as a stop-gap measure until Congress imposes tighter restrictions on Chinese investments – is being pushed by members of Congress, and members of Donald Trump’s administration who worry about theft of intellectual property and technology transfer to China, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters
  • A White House official said that they do not comment on speculation about internal administration policy discussions, but added “we are concerned about Made in China 2025, particularly relevant in this case is its targeting of industries like AI”

Indian Police Use New Facial Recognition Tool to Locate Thousands of Missing Children – Apr. 25, 2018 (Observer)

  • The New Delhi police recently implemented a new facial recognition pilot program to track down lost children. And in less than a week, the system was able to locate almost 3,000 missing kids
  • India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development hopes to use the facial recognition software to identify 45,000 orphaned young people. In the first four days of the program, 2,930 children were correctly identified
  • So a child welfare organization called Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) developed the facial recognition software to automate TrackChild’s photo comparison process. The software stores the facial features of any child and matches them with photographs in the country’s database to instantly establish an identity.

Europe eyes boosting data re-use and funds for AI research – Apr. 25, 2018 (TechCrunch)

  • The European Union’s executive body, the EC, has taken a first pass at drawing up a strategy to respond to the myriad socio-economic challenges around artificial intelligence technology — including setting out steps intended to boost investment, support education and training, and draw up an ethical and legal framework for steering AI developments by the end of the year
  • On the investment front the Commission says its target is to increase investments in “AI research and innovation” in the bloc by at least €20BN between now and the end of 2020 — across both public and private sectors
  • To support that it says it will increase its investment to €1.5BN for the period 2018-2020 under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program — and is expecting this to trigger an additional €2.5BN of funding from existing public-private partnerships, such as on big data and robotics

United Kingdom Plans $1.3 Billion Artificial Intelligence Push – Apr. 25, 2018 (Fortune)

  • The United Kingdom is planning a big investment in artificial intelligence technologies in a deal worth nearly £1 billion, or about $1.3 billion
  • The U.K. government said Thursday that part of its multi-year AI investment–about £300 million, or more than $400 million–would come from U.K.-based corporations and investment firms and those located outside the country
  • As part of the deal, the Japanese venture capital firm Global Brain plans to invest about $48 million in U.K. tech startups and will open a European headquarters in the United Kingdom. The University of Cambridge will also give U.K. businesses access to a new $13 million supercomputer to help with AI-related projects. Canadian venture capital firm Chrysalix will also open a European headquarters in the U.K. and plans to invest more than $100 million in local startups specializing in AI and robotics

Shenzhen police can now identify drivers using facial recognition surveillance cameras – Apr. 25, 2018 (South China Morning Post)

  • Shenzhen is expanding a network of facial recognition surveillance cameras to catch more violations, after the success of an earlier trial to publicly name and shame jaywalkers
  • The so-called electronic police system captures photos of vehicles that violate the traffic rules in the metropolis of 12 million people, providing an image of not only the number plate but also the driver’s face, which can then be identified from the police database using facial recognition technology
  • “Cameras with 7 million pixels of resolution ensure that the image of drivers’ faces behind the [windscreen] are good enough for a facial comparison by our system, but only if the drivers’ facial information has been stored in the traffic police database can our system immediately recognise them,” Wang Jun, director of marketing solutions from Intellifusion, said in a phone interview
  • The Shenzhen-based AI firm, which provides technology to the city’s traffic police, provided 20 ultra-HD cameras with 7 million pixel resolution and the same number of conventional 2 million pixel cameras. Ultra HD, or 4K surveillance cameras, can digitally zoom into a spot in the frame without losing resolution, leaving the days of grainy analogue CCTV footage far behind

Scientists plan huge European AI hub to compete with US – Apr. 23, 2018 (The Guardian)

  • Leading scientists have drawn up plans for a vast multinational European institute devoted to world-class artificial intelligence (AI) research in a desperate bid to nurture and retain top talent in Europe
  • The new institute would be set up for similar reasons as Cern, the particle physics lab near Geneva, which was created after the second world war to rebuild European physics and reverse the brain drain of the brightest and best scientists to the US
  • In an open letter that urges governments to act, the scientists describe how Europe has not kept up with the US and China, where the vast majority of leading AI firms and universities are based. The letter adds that while a few “research hotspots” still exist in Europe, “virtually all of the top people in those places are continuously being pursued for recruitment by US companies.”