Huawei
Huawei's Mate XT Ultimate phone, which launched in February. Credit - Courtesy Huawei
As China's tech ambitions feel the squeeze from U.S. export controls, one national champion has been entrusted to plug the gap: Huawei. Seeking to limit China's technological development, Washington has cut its superpower rival off from Nvidia's most advanced AI products. However, Huawei's Ascend 910C AI chip now reportedly achieves up to 60% of performance in inference tasks when compared to Nvidia's latest H100 AI-powered semiconductor chips. Already a market leader in 5G technology, Huawei is now at the vanguard of 6G development as well as several next-generation technologies, including cloud and EVs. Huawei reported 2024 revenue of $118.2 billion, a 22.4% year-on-year rise, and has just launched a laptop with an 18-inch foldable display powered by its own Harmony operating system. 'Huawei is committed to building a solid computing power base in China—and a second option for the world,' Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's chief financial officer (and daughter of co-founder Ren Zhengfei) said in November.
Write to Charlie Campbell at charlie.campbell@time.com.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why GE Appliances will make more washing machines in Kentucky instead of China. It's not what you think
Some of President Donald Trump's steepest tariffs are on products like washing machines, and on Thursday, GE Appliances said it would spend a half a billion dollars to make even more of them in the United States. Tariffs, however, weren't the driving factor behind the decision, the company's CEO says, but they did serve as an accelerant. GE Appliances announced it would spend $490 million to move some washing machine production from China and build a high-tech clothes care operation at its massive industrial park and headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, where it already churns out washers and dryers for the US market. The move of more than a dozen front-load washer models comes as US trade policy uncertainty has reached a high-stakes fever pitch as Trump's July 9 tariffs deadline approaches. GE Appliances move that is expected to be complete in 2027 and add 800 jobs, has been in the works for six years — shortly after a new line of front-load washers launched in 2019 — and follows a several-year stretch of high-dollar investments made to bolster the company's US manufacturing footprint, CEO Kevin Nolan told CNN. 'We've had a strategy that making appliances in America makes sense; it's an economic thing, and it's also how we can serve our customers in a better, more efficient way,' Nolan said, adding that GE appliances is 'not a company that was saying, 'Hey, we're going to outsource everything, and oh my God, now we've got to bring it back.'' '[The trade policy] makes the payback for these things much, much greater,' Nolan added. 'And with that, of course it's going to accelerate (plans), because the quicker we can do these things, the quicker we can realize those benefits.' The emergence and threat of tariffs also are influencing future decisions, Nolan said, noting that plans to reshore other components and parts are moving up the pecking order. Earlier this week, an expansion of Trump's 50% tariffs on steel extended to 'derivative products,' including consumer appliances such as dryers, washing machines, refrigerators, ovens and garbage disposals. The US currently has a minimum 30% tariff on Chinese exports; however, it has soared as high as 145% in recent months. 'The current trade policy is the most dynamic thing anyone's ever seen in their business career; I mean, it can change in a day, it can change in a week, it can change in a month,' Nolan said. 'These investments are strategic, and you've got to look at the long term and what makes sense. You can't do these just for trade policies.' The move follows similar reshoring efforts made by GE Appliances in recent years, Nolan said. The company, which has been a subsidiary of China-based Haier Group since 2016, has invested $3.5 billion in its US manufacturing facilities during the past decade, he said. Still, in recent months, the dramatic shifts in US trade policy and the Trump administration's tumultuous tariff rates have loomed large over manufacturers like GE Appliances and its parent company's appliance-making affiliate Haier Smart Home. Earlier this month, Haier Smart Home executives told investors that the company's localized supply chain in North America could help reduce its tariff exposure, according to translated company filings from June 4. Haier also flagged opportunities in 'tariff-driven competitor weakness,' according to the filing. In 2019, GE Appliances wanted to move quickly to market after developing what it believed was an innovation in the clothes care space: Making a less stinky front-load washer. 'To get this washer out fast, we said we're going to tackle building the dryer plant (in Louisville) to make those and we'll share the load and have the washer made in China,' he said. 'We always had a forward-looking view that this thing was going to come back to America, but to get the things in the market quick, we did it that way in China first.' The high-tariff environment 'definitely made the numbers on this look very good; so, we said, 'OK, let's pull this thing in; let's get this thing done now,' because it just makes sense. The engineering work's been going on; there's a reason we can move fast on this,' he said. 'But these tariffs could go away tomorrow, and once we make these decisions, we don't back off. So that's where you've got to make sure it's the right thing to do.' The half-a-billion-dollar investment announced Thursday will bring over more than 15 models of front-load washing machines, including a washer-dryer combo, to the 750-acre, multi-plant Appliance Park, where the company already manufactures top-load washers and clothes dryers. The latest addition — which is expected to heavily feature automation, including robotics, automated guided vehicles and autonomous mobile robots — is expected to bring the company's clothes care production at the site to 33 football fields in size. Still, when it's complete in 2027, the new production lines are expected to result in the addition of 800 full-time jobs to the 8,000-person campus. 'It'll definitely be our flagship plant from a technology standpoint, so a lot of opportunities for upskilling employees,' Nolan said, referring to efforts for employees to learn new skills. 'In order to be able to successfully manufacture in the United States, we have to be efficient.' In recent years GE Appliances has touted a 'zero distance' strategy to be closer to customers from a physical and design standpoint. To that end, the company's 11 US plants include maker spaces and microfactories aimed at innovation and small-batch production. The approach is a far cry from that taken in the 1980s and 1990s, when then-General Electric CEO Jack Welch leaned heavily into outsourcing and offshoring. GE Appliances declined to share specifics as to what percentage of its manufacturing is now domestic versus overseas; however, the intent is to continue the reshoring efforts and expanding US manufacturing operations, Nolan said. Trump, like presidents Obama and Biden before (and after) him, has long stated a desire to revive the US manufacturing industry and sought to wield tariffs to make that happen. However, economists and supply chain efforts have questioned the effectiveness in broad-based tariffs to that approach. Several companies in recent months have announced plans to make investments in US manufacturing in recent months — with the White House taking credit — however, not only were these decisions already longer term in nature, any kind of large-scale rebound in domestic manufacturing will take time, said Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University. 'Right now, given all the profound uncertainty about tariffs, folks are not going to take action until some clarity emerges,' he said. Companies that are able to announce or make moves now, he added, likely have existing capacity currently in place. To build a factory from scratch not only would take many months, if not many years, and then companies would run up against another challenge: finding enough skilled workers, he said. About 22% of US plants have cited a lack of labor or labor skills as a key reason for their facilities running below full capacity, Miller said, citing his analysis of recent Census Bureau data. GE Appliances has a waitlist of folks for jobs at its plants, but there's still a huge need for a stronger pipeline of skilled workers, Nolan said. 'That's just a national shortage,' he said. 'When you look at us versus other countries, how many engineers are graduated, we're way underrepresented. And then when you look at out of those engineers who are skilled in the art of manufacturing, it's even worse. That's the thing as a nation we've got to really grapple with.'
Entrepreneur
19 minutes ago
- Entrepreneur
Meta Wins AI Copyright Case Over Sarah Silverman, Junot Diaz
A district judge sided with tech giant Meta on Wednesday in a major copyright infringement case, Richard Kadrey, et al. v. Meta Platforms Inc. It marks the second time this week that tech companies have scored major legal victories over AI copyright disputes against individuals. In the case, 13 authors, including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, Junot Diaz, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, argued that Meta violated copyright laws by training its AI models on their copyrighted works without their permission. They provided exhibits showing that Meta's Llama AI model could thoroughly summarize their books when prompted to do so, indicating that the AI had ingested their work in training. The case was filed in July 2023. During the discovery phase, it was uncovered that Meta had used 7.5 million pirated books and 81 million research papers to train its AI model. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco ruled in a 40-page decision that Meta's use of books to train its AI model was protected under the fair use doctrine in U.S. copyright law. The fair use doctrine permits the use of copyrighted material without obtaining permission from the copyright holder in certain cases. What qualifies as fair use depends on factors like how different the end work is from the original and whether the use harms the existing or future market for the copyrighted work. Related: 'Bottomless Pit of Plagiarism': Disney, Universal File the First Major Hollywood Lawsuit Against an AI Startup Chhabria said that while it "is generally illegal to copy protected works without permission," the plaintiffs failed in this case to show that Meta's use of copyrighted material caused "market harm." They didn't show, for instance, that Meta's AI spits out excerpts of books verbatim, creates AI copycat books, or prevents the authors from getting AI licensing deals. "Meta has defeated the plaintiffs' half-hearted argument that its copying causes or threatens significant market harm," Chhabria stated in the ruling. Furthermore, Meta's purpose of copying books "for a transformative purpose" is protected under the fair use doctrine, the judge ruled. Earlier this week, a different judge came to the same conclusion in the class action case Bartz v. Anthropic. U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco stated in a ruling filed on Monday that $61.5 billion AI startup Anthropic was allowed to train its AI model on copyrighted books under the fair use doctrine because the end product was "exceedingly transformative." Related: 'Extraordinarily Expensive': Getty Images Is Pouring Millions of Dollars Into One AI Lawsuit, CEO Says Anthropic trained its AI on books not to duplicate them or replace them, but to "create something different" in the form of AI answers, Alsup wrote. The ruling marked the first time that a federal judge has sided with tech companies over creatives in an AI copyright lawsuit. Now Chhabria's decision marks the second time that tech companies have triumphed in court against individuals in copyright cases. The judge noted that the ruling does not mean that "Meta's use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful," but only means that "these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments" and that Meta's arguments won in this case. "We appreciate today's decision from the Court," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday, per CNBC. "Open-source AI models are powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and fair use of copyright material is a vital legal framework for building this transformative technology." Other AI copyright cases are making their way through the courts, including one filed by authors Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent, and several others against Microsoft earlier this week. The lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, alleges that Microsoft violated copyright by training AI on the authors' work.
New York Post
20 minutes ago
- New York Post
UCLA grad brazenly shows off ChatGPT that did his assignments for him — and critics aren't happy: ‘We're so cooked'
Was it CheatGPT? It's no secret that artificial intelligence use is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in academia. But while most prefer to keep their AI schoolwork aids confidential, one student at the University of California, Los Angeles, brazenly boasted about employing the tech during his commencement ceremony. The shocking moment was captured during UCLA's livestream at the Pauley Pavilion earlier this month, but videos have since been reshared to Instagram and X, where they've amassed millions of views. 3 The grad shows off the ChatGPT text he used for his final exams in front of fellow students. Instagram/andremaimusic In the brief clip, which was displayed on the facility's Jumbotron, Andre Mai, a computational and systems biology major, is seen holding up his laptop to show off walls of AI-generated text that he ostensibly used for his final exams. The footage shows the undergrad proudly scrolling through the evidence of his so-called high-tech homework hacking as the rest of the graduating class of 2025 whoops and cheers in the background. 'Let's gooooo!!!!!!' he mouths while hyping up the crowd. 3 'If ChatGPT is why you graduated, ChatGPT has already taken your job,' said one critic. Instagram/andremaimusic The video didn't sit nearly as well with online viewers, many of whom saw it as indicative of societal decline. 'We're so cooked,' lamented one disillusioned commenter under a repost on X, while another wrote, 'Pandora's Box has been opened.' 'We're still supposed to take college degrees seriously btw,' scoffed a third. 'Our future doctors really gon have one AirPod in asking ChatGPT how to do open heart surgery,' quipped one X wit. 'If ChatGPT is why you graduated, ChatGPT has already taken your job,' theorized one poster, reiterating techsperts' concerns that AI could render effectively render human employees obsolete. 3 Academics are growing increasingly concerned over the prevalence of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots in the classroom. AlexPhotoStock – These fears were also echoed on Reddit. 'This is going to be the biggest problem,' fretted one poster. 'People just aren't going to learn anything anymore, instead of a tool to help you learn people are just going to think it's a magic answer box.' However, some defenders applauded Mai for seemingly gaming the system with one X fan writing, 'Hot take ChatGPT and AI are tools that are going to be with us for good or bad for the foreseeable future.' 'So proving that they can effectively use the tools he had to achieve what was required of him is not cheating,' they added. 'It proves he will be able to provide similar results in the real world.' Mai, who is also a DJ, addressed the viral moment in a video on Instagram, explaining, 'you guys might know me from this viral clip from graduation today. I wanna let you guys know what was actually on my computer screen.' In the post, which was reshared by ChatGPT's official page, the tech whiz clarified that he'd used the chatbot to help with two complicated finals, one of which was due at 5pm and the other at midnight. 'I was wrapping up all the documentation that I've ever [done] for my machine learning lab,' he declared. 'I also had to use AI to summarize the key equations that I'd be using for what would essentially be the last test I'd ever take in my undergraduate career.' Mai suggested that this wasn't cheating as he had his teachers' blessing. 'My professors have really encouraged the use of AI,' he said. 'So much so that when the jumbotron people came around, I just flipped my screen around and I had to show them what I was doing. I never could have imagined all this exciting attention.' Mai added that he's used the tech AI in 'so many different ways as a college student,' ranging from understanding 'operating systems or computer networking' to selecting the best DJ equipment. Nonetheless, techsperts remain concerned over the omnipresence of AI in the classroom. According to a winter survey by the Pew Research Center, approximately 26% of teen students used the AI chatbot to help them with assignments in 2024 — up from just 13% in 2023. Unfortunately, using ChatGPT to fudge assignments could potentially make people dumber in the long run. An alarming study by researchers with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that students who use ChatGPT to complete essays have poorer cognitive skills than those who rely on just their brain.
