The Trump administration Monday banned six Chinese companies that work on artificial intelligence from doing business with US firms, accusing the companies of helping to violate the human rights of Muslims in China's northwestern province of Xinjiang. Four of the companies, SenseTime, Megvii, iFLYTEK, and Yitu, make software for facial recognition and voice transcription that's reportedly been used in a campaign of repression and control in Xinjiang that has drawn international condemnation. The other companies, Hikvision and Dahua Technology, make surveillance equipment such as cameras that incorporates AI. Besides drawing attention to an important issue, the ban is also the latest effort by the US to curb China's progress in an increasingly important technology. "This is part of the broader tech cold war," says Rebecca Fannin, a technology consultant and author of Tech Titans of China, a book that charts China's recent progress in technology and innovation. The rise of China's tech industry has coincided, in recent years, with a revolution in AI.

The UK government went ahead with a face-detection system for its passport photo checking service, despite knowing the technology failed to work well for people in some ethnic minorities. Face recognition technology has a record of failing to recognise people with certain skin tones. For example, Google had to apologise in 2015 when its photos app labelled a black couple as gorillas. Now, documents released by the Home Office this week show it was aware of problems with its website's passport photo checking service, but decided to use it regardless. "User research was carried out with a wide range of ethnic groups and did identify that people with very light or very dark skin found it difficult to provide an acceptable passport photograph," the department wrote in a document released in response to a freedom of information (FOI) request.

Just over two years ago, China announced an audacious plan to overtake the US and lead the "world in AI [artificial intelligence] technology and applications by 2030". It is already widely regarded to have overtaken the EU in many aspects. But now its plans may be knocked off course by the US restricting certain Chinese companies from buying technologies developed or manufactured in the States. Washington's justification is that the organisations involved have made products used to commit human rights abuses against China's Muslim ethnic minorities. But it is notable that those on its blacklist include many of China's official "national AI champions", among them: Like the telecoms firm Huawei before them, they now face major disruption as a consequence of the Trump administration's intervention.

Robotics is a combination of engineering and technology, which includes mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, computer science, and other engineering domains. Robotics is one of the emerging fields now in the industry. Now in approximately every sector robots are using for making simple the situations. For a robotic process, the system requires a combination of software and physical components such as power supply, actuators, sensors, locomotive parts, storage devices, and control software. Robotics is now widely used in military, security, construction, and field of medical, agriculture, household operation, and education.

The Trump administration is adding a group of Chinese tech companies that develop facial recognition and other artificial intelligence technology to a U.S. blacklist over concerns that the tech is being used to repress China's Muslim minority groups. The move comes ahead of trade talks between the U.S. and China later this week, which one analyst said sets a "negative tone" for the negotiations. The 28 companies added to the blacklist include Hikvision and Dahua, both of which are global providers of video surveillance technology, as well as prominent Chinese AI firms such as Sense Time, Megvii and iFlytek. The Commerce Department on Monday placed the companies on a so-called Entity List for acting contrary to American foreign policy interests. The blacklist effectively bars U.S. firms from selling technology to the Chinese companies without government approval.

The US Commerce Department has said it is adding 28 Chinese government organizations and private businesses, including eight tech giants, to its so-called Entity List for acting against American foreign policy interests. The move effectively bars any US companies from selling technology to the blacklisted firms and organizations without US government approval. The US says they have been involved in human rights violations against Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region. The list notably includes several companies that serve on China's national AI team, which the government formed as part of its strategy to become a global leader in the technology. These are video surveillance company Hikvision, voice recognition giant iFlytek, image recognition companies Megvii and SenseTime, and machine vision and voice recognition company Yitu.

Police chief calls Tlaib's comments racist; Democratic strategist Monique Pressley and Blexit Movement founder Candace Owens react. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., last week responded to backlash after she told Detroit police to hire only black facial recognition analysts, writing in a scathing op-ed that her comments were neither "racist" nor "inappropriate" and pushed further for a total ban of the technology used to identify criminal suspects. "I'm going to call out every injustice I see. It's probably what makes most people uncomfortable when I speak the truth," Tlaib wrote in an op-ed in The Detroit News. It is inappropriate to implement a broken, flawed and racist technology that doesn't recognize black and brown faces in a city that is over 80% black." "I was elected to serve my residents, and I cannot in good conscience sit by while inaccurate facial recognition technology is deployed in ways that run the risk of false arrests and over-policing," she continued. "Facial recognition technology will have racist results and relying on human analysts for intervention is inadequate.

The General Services Administration is making artificial intelligence the sixth pillar of its Centers of Excellence program, and agency leaders are already teasing a few of their potential areas of focus. The new AI center will be rooted in GSA's work with the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, which last month became the fifth government organization to participate in the CoE initiative. After helping the JAIC accelerate its development of AI technologies and increase the Pentagon's adoption of those tools, GSA officials see the opportunity to reapply that work to help the rest of the government reap the benefits of the emerging tech. "We can learn from [the JAIC partnership] … and frankly, we can reuse all that foundation for our existing agencies and agencies outside the Department of Defense," Anil Cheriyan, head of GSA's Technology Transformation Service, said Tuesday during the agency's IT Modernization Showcase. "The need for artificial intelligence is growing and significant across federal government."

Across Asia, governments are increasingly seeking to leverage the potential of AI with a mix of coordinated top-down approaches, and by providing incentives and support to the private sector to lead development. We view that the potential for AI is greatest in markets where governments have a vested interest in developing'smart', digital infrastructure; this is especially the case for developed markets, where governments are forced to leverage new, innovative technologies for productivity growth, as capital deepening and expanding the labour force become less reliable growth drivers. At the same time, we view that countries with strong institutional and business environments will stand to benefit the most from AI (see'What Our Clients Want To Know: The Fourth Industrial Revolution', October 2 2019). China Sees Bustling Activity, Set To Be Asia's Leader Over the years, China's protectionist Internet market, and relative lax in rules governing data use has resulted in the rise of several well-established consumer Internet players in Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, and ByteDance, among others, which have become extremely adept at leveraging data on their customers as key pillars of their overall strategy. The government further adopts a very centrally-coordinated approach the overall development of the technological landscape; its'Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan', launched in mid-2017, highlights a structured timeline to boost its position as a world leader in the technology by 2030 by, among others, investing up to USD15bn into projects which it deems strategically important for AI development.

The United States is blacklisting a group of Chinese tech companies that are developing facial recognition along with other artificial intelligence technologies that the U.S. says is used to repress China's Muslim minority organizations. A move Monday by the U.S. Commerce Department places the businesses on a so-called Entity List for acting in contrast to American foreign policy pursuits. The blacklist efficiently bars U.S. companies from offering technology to Chinese businesses with no government approval. The global providers of Video Surveillance Technology Hikvision and Dahua, are the blacklisted companies. Hikvision stated inside a declaration statement Monday it respects human rights and highly opposes the Trump administration's choice.