The recent surveys, studies, forecasts and other quantitative assessments of the health and progress of AI provided new numbers regarding business leaders' assessment of China as a global AI leader, the current worldwide ranking of China's AI-related entrepreneurial and research activities, plans for AI adoption by U.S. enterprises and expectations regarding its impact on jobs, and the use of AI in face recognition, physical security monitoring, cashierless retail, categorizing open-ended survey responses, and detecting plant diseases and atrial fibrillation. A doctor examines a magnetic resonance image on a computer screen during the CHAIN Cup at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, June 30, 2018. A computer running artificial intelligence software defeated two teams of human doctors in accurately recognizing maladies in magnetic resonance images in a contest that was billed as the world's first competition in neuroimaging between AI and human experts. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates face recognition will scrutinize 97% of outbound airline passengers by 2023 [The Economist] More than 4.5 million websites use reCAPTCHA and the system collects hundreds of millions of daily solves or more than 100 person-years of labor every day; Google/reCAPTCHA has extracted to date over $7 billion of free labor [hcaptcha] The Bureau of Labor Statistics' injury and illness database is built upon text-based descriptions of work-related injuries and illnesses it receives from workplaces across the country each year; categorizing the description into actionable data used to be done manually, but this year, the BLS has done 80% of that automatically using deep neural networks [governmentCIO] The AI market worldwide is estimated to grow by $75.54 billion from 2019 to 2023 [Technavio] The AI market worldwide is estimated to reach $202.57 Data is eating the world quote of the week: "The market for data labeling passed $500 million in 2018 and it will reach $1.2 billion by 2023, according to the research firm Cognilytica. This kind of work, the study showed, accounted for 80 percent of the time spent building A.I. technology"--The New York Times AI is "mimicking the brain" quote of the week: "Computer vision… is nothing like the human sort"--The Economist Robots are eating the world quote of the week: "A human can certainly move a part faster than a cobot [collaborative robot]. However, it does not take coffee breaks and continues to work for several hours after we have already gone home"--Pekka Myller, Ket-Met Robots are eating the world quote of the 19th century: "[A Linotype] could work like six men and do everything but drink, swear, and go out on strike"--Mark Twain

The US House Oversight and Reform IT Subcommittee today released the results of a months-long investigation into Federal investment and oversight in artificial intelligence. There's a lot to unpack here, and most of it is bad. TL;DR: If the Trump administration doesn't make drastic changes China will pass us in AI R&D spending this year, and will likely lead the globe in AI technologies long before the 2030 deadline its government issued last year. On a day when the leaders of the free world openly laughed at US President Donald Trump as he claimed to have accomplished more than "almost any other" administration in US history, a bipartisan effort back home to make the White House care about the future took the form of a research paper. Congressman Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, and Representative Robin Kelly, an Illinois Democrat, published "Rise of the Machines: Artificial Intelligence and its Growing Impact on U.S. Policy," after spending the majority of 2018 holding subcommittee hearings to interview AI experts.

China's top administrative body has laid out a three-step approach to make artificial intelligence (AI) the key driving force of the country's economic growth for the next decade. According to the plan initiated by the State Council and released last week, China will first keep pace with other leading countries in terms of AI technology and applications by 2020, aiming for a core AI industry worth 150 billion yuan ($22 billion) and AI-related fields worth 1 trillion yuan, according to a Tencent news report. After the conclusion of the second phase by 2025 when legal grounds for the industry are established, the government plans to be the global leader in AI theory, technology, and applications and the major AI innovation centre globally by 2030. At which time, the core AI industry will value 1 trillion yuan and AI-related industries 10 trillion yuan, according to the blueprint. The government has also pushed for vigorous development of AI-related emerging industries in China, including intelligent hardware and software, intelligent robots, and Internet of Things based devices.