For a while in the mid-2000s, a refrigerator-sized box in Abu Dhabi was considered the greatest chess player in the world. Its name was Hydra, and it was a small super-computer--a cabinet full of industrial-grade processors and specially designed chips, strung together with fiber-optic cables and jacked into the internet. At a time when chess was still the main gladiatorial arena for competition between humans and AI, Hydra and its exploits were briefly the stuff of legend. The New Yorker published a contemplative 5,000-word feature about its emergent creativity; WIRED declared Hydra "fearsome"; and chess publications covered its victories with the violence of wrestling commentary. Hydra, they wrote, was a "monster machine" that "slowly strangled" human grand masters.

In November, a year after ChatGPT's release, a relatively unknown Chinese startup leaped to the top of a leader board that judged the abilities of open-source artificial intelligence systems. The Chinese firm, 01.AI, was only eight months old but had deep-pocketed backers and a 1 billion valuation, and was founded by a well-known investor and technologist, Kai-Fu Lee. In interviews, Lee presented his AI system as an alternative to options such as Meta's generative AI model, called LLaMA. There was just one twist: Some of the technology in 01.AI's system came from LLaMA. Lee's startup then built on Meta's technology, training its system with new data to make it more powerful.

United States officials issued new warnings Friday about China's ambitions in artificial intelligence and a range of advanced technologies that could eventually give Beijing a decisive military edge and possible dominance over healthcare and other essential sectors in the US. The warnings include a renewed effort to inform business executives, academics and local and state government officials about the risks of accepting Chinese investment or expertise in key industries, officials at the National Counterintelligence and Security Center said. While the centre does not intend to tell officials to reject Chinese investment, it will encourage efforts to control intellectual property and implement security measures. National security agencies under President Joe Biden's administration are making an aggressive public push against China, which some officials have called the greatest strategic threat to the US. The Biden administration has simultaneously tried to ease some tensions with Beijing that date from the administration of former US President Donald Trump and seek common ground on trade and climate change.

The U.S., which once had a dominant head start in artificial intelligence, now has just a few years' lead on China and risks being overtaken unless government steps in, according to a new report to Congress and the White House. Why it matters: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who chaired the committee that issued the report, tells Axios that the U.S. risks dire consequences if it fails to both invest in key technologies and fully integrate AI into the military. Driving the news: The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence approved its 750-page report on Monday, following a 2-year effort. Schmidt chaired the 15-member commission, which also included Oracle's Safra Catz, Microsoft's Eric Horvitz and Amazon's Andy Jassy. "We don't have to go to war with China," Schmidt said.

Biomind was developed in a joint venture between a Singaporean tech company, Hanalytics, and China's prestigious Tiantan Hospital. Since December, when the venture started up, tens of thousands of medical images collected over a decade have been used to teach Biomind its job. After months of deep learning, the machine was ready for a competition against 25 experienced doctors at Beijing's China National Convention Center testing their ability to analyze images of the brain.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has taken huge leaps forward in recent years, driven by a combination of factors. Firstly, Web 2.0 paved the way for "big data" – vast amounts of quantitative and qualitative data covering many aspects of human behavior, collected by companies such as Google. Secondly, developments in cloud computing led to the rapid evolution of neural networks that have the processing capacity for such huge volumes of data. Jointly, these factors have enabled the development of machine learning, which is one major application of AI. Machine learning is rooted in statistical pattern recognition – essentially using large volumes of data to predict a particular outcome, based on precedent. This progression has led to various potential applications for AI technologies.

Facebook is known for a variety of mantras embedded in its culture, often spelled out on signs at its offices or recited by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives: "Code wins arguments," "Move fast and break things," or "Done is better than perfect." A sign on the wall at the company's New York office perfectly sums up the approach Yann LeCun brings to his leadership of Facebook's nascent efforts in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning: "Always be Open." Artificial intelligence has become a vital part of scaling Facebook. It's already being used to recognize the faces of your friends in photographs, and curate your newsfeed. DeepText, an engine for reading text that was unveiled last week, can understand "with near-human accuracy" the content in thousands of posts per second, in more than 20 different languages. Soon, the text will be translated into a dozen different languages, automatically. Facebook is working on recognizing your voice and identifying people inside of videos so that you can fast forward to the moment when your friend walks into view. Facebook wants to dominate in AI and machine learning, just as it already does in social networking and instant messaging.

The resounding win by a Google artificial intelligence program over a champion in the complex board game Go this month was a statement not so much to professional game players as to Google's competitors. SEE ALSO: Chief of LG said Apple iPhone SE is'same old tech' Many of the tech industry's biggest companies are jockeying to become the go-to company for AI. In the industry's lingo, the companies are engaged in a "platform war." If true believers in AI are correct that this long-promised technology is ready for the mainstream, the company that controls AI could steer the tech industry for years to come. "Whoever wins this race will dominate the next stage of the information age," said Pedro Domingos, a machine learning specialist.