US defense department awards contracts to Google, Musk's xAI
The contracts will enable the DoD to develop agentic AI workflows and use them to address critical national security challenges, the department's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said.
'The adoption of AI is transforming the (DoD's) ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,' Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty said.
U.S. government agencies have been expanding their use of AI, driven by a White House order in April promoting adoption. President Donald Trump has also moved to soften regulation on the technology by revoking a 2023 Biden-era executive order, which sought to reduce AI risks through mandatory data disclosures.
Separately on Monday, xAI announced a suite of its products called 'Grok for Government', making its advanced AI models — including its latest flagship Grok 4 — available to federal, local, state and national security customers.
The Pentagon announced last month that OpenAI was awarded a $200 million contract, saying the ChatGPT maker would 'develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains'.
The contracts announced on Monday deepen the ties between companies leading the AI race and U.S. government operations, while addressing concerns around the need for competitive contracts for AI use in federal agencies.
In May, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren had urged DoD to ensure competitive AI contracting at a time when Musk's Grok chatbot was gaining ground in the federal government. - Reuters
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The Star
2 hours ago
- The Star
Trump's order to block 'woke' AI in government encourages tech giants to censor their chatbots
Tech companies looking to sell their artificial intelligence technology to the US federal government must now contend with a new regulatory hurdle: prove their chatbots aren't "woke.' President Donald Trump's sweeping new plan to counter China in achieving "global dominance' in AI promises to cut regulations and cement American values into the AI tools increasingly used at work and home. But one of Trump's three AI executive orders signed July 23 – the one "preventing woke AI in the federal government' – marks the first time the US government has explicitly tried to shape the ideological behavior of AI. Several leading providers of the AI language models targeted by the order – products like Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot – have so far been silent on Trump's anti-woke directive, which still faces a study period before it gets into official procurement rules. While the tech industry has largely welcomed Trump's broader AI plans, the anti-woke order forces the industry to leap into a culture war battle – or try their best to quietly avoid it. "It will have massive influence in the industry right now,' especially as tech companies are already capitulating to other Trump administration directives, said civil rights advocate Alejandra Montoya-Boyer, senior director of The Leadership Conference's Center for Civil Rights and Technology. The move also pushes the tech industry to abandon years of work to combat the pervasive forms of racial and gender bias that studies and real-world examples have shown to be baked into AI systems. "First off, there's no such thing as woke AI,' Montoya-Boyer said. "There's AI technology that discriminates and then there's AI technology that actually works for all people.' Moulding the behaviours of AI large language models is challenging because of the way they're built and the inherent randomness of what they produce. They've been trained on most of what's on the internet, reflecting the biases of all the people who've posted commentary, edited a Wikipedia entry or shared images online. "This will be extremely difficult for tech companies to comply with,' said former Biden official Jim Secreto, who was deputy chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, an architect of many of Biden's AI industry initiatives. "Large language models reflect the data they're trained on, including all the contradictions and biases in human language.' Tech workers also have a say in how they're designed, from the global workforce of annotators who check their responses to the Silicon Valley engineers who craft the instructions for how they interact with people. Trump's order targets those "top-down' efforts at tech companies to incorporate what it calls the "destructive' ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion into AI models, including "concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism.' For Secreto, the order resembles China's playbook in "using the power of the state to stamp out what it sees as disfavored viewpoints." The method is different, with China relying on direct regulation through its Cyberspace Administration, which audits AI models, approves them before they are deployed and requires them to filter out banned content such as the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989. Trump's order doesn't call for any such filters, relying on tech companies to instead show that their technology is ideologically neutral by disclosing some of the internal policies that guide the chatbots. "The Trump administration is taking a softer but still coercive route by using federal contracts as leverage,' Secreto said. "That creates strong pressure for companies to self-censor in order to stay in the government's good graces and keep the money flowing.' The order's call for "truth-seeking' AI echoes the language of the president's one-time ally and adviser Elon Musk, who frequently uses that phrase as the mission for the Grok chatbot made by his company xAI. But whether Grok or its rivals will be favored under the new policy remains to be seen. Despite a "rhetorically pointed' introduction laying out the Trump administration's problems with DEI, the actual language of the order's directives shouldn't be hard for tech companies to comply with, said Neil Chilson, a Republican former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission. "It doesn't even prohibit an ideological agenda,' just that any intentional methods to guide the model be disclosed, said Chilson, who is now head of AI policy at the nonprofit Abundance Institute. "Which is pretty light touch, frankly.' Chilson disputes comparisons to China's cruder modes of AI censorship. "There is nothing in this order that says that companies have to produce or cannot produce certain types of output,' he said. "It says developers shall not intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments. That's the exact opposite of the Chinese requirement.' So far, tech companies that have praised Trump's broader AI plans haven't said much about the order. OpenAI on Thursday said it is awaiting more detailed guidance but believes its work to make ChatGPT objective already makes the technology consistent with what the order requires. Microsoft, a major supplier of email, cloud computing and other online services to the federal government, declined to comment Thursday. Musk's xAI, through spokesperson Katie Miller, a former Trump official, pointed to a company comment praising Trump's AI announcements as a "positive step' but didn't respond to a follow-up question about how Grok would be affected. xAI recently announced it was awarded a U.S. defense contract for up to US$200mil, just days after Grok publicly posted a barrage of antisemitic commentary that praised Adolf Hitler. Anthropic, Google, Meta, and Palantir didn't immediately respond to emailed requests for comment Thursday. AI tools are already widely used in the federal government, including AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini for internal agency support to summarize the key points of a lengthy report. The ideas behind the order have bubbled up for more than a year on the podcasts and social media feeds of Trump's top AI adviser David Sacks and other influential Silicon Valley venture capitalists, many of whom endorsed Trump's presidential campaign last year. Much of their ire centered on Google's February 2024 release of an AI image-generating tool that produced historically inaccurate images before the tech giant took down and fixed the product. Google later explained that the errors – including one user's request for American Founding Fathers that generated portraits of Black, Asian and Native American men – were the result of an overcompensation for technology that, left to its own devices, was prone to favoring lighter-skinned people because of pervasive bias in the systems. Trump allies alleged that Google engineers were hard-coding their own social agenda into the product, and made it a priority to do something about it. "It's 100% intentional,' said prominent venture capitalist and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen on a podcast in December. "That's how you get Black George Washington at Google. There's override in the system that basically says, literally, 'Everybody has to be Black.' Boom. There's squads, large sets of people, at these companies who determine these policies and write them down and encode them into these systems.' Sacks credited a conservative strategist who has fought DEI initiatives at colleges and workplaces for helping to draft the order. "When they asked me how to define 'woke,' I said there's only one person to call: Chris Rufo. And now it's law: the federal government will not be buying WokeAI,' Sacks wrote on X. Rufo responded that, in addition to helping define the phrase, he also helped "identify DEI ideologies within the operating constitutions of these systems.' – AP
The Star
2 hours ago
- The Star
DeepSeek, Trump's plan steer agenda at China's premier AI forum
SHANGHAI: Star founders, Beijing officials and deep-pocketed financiers converge on Shanghai by the thousands this weekend to attend China's most important AI summit. At the top of the agenda: how to propel Beijing's ambitions to leapfrog the US in artificial intelligence - and profit off that drive. The World Artificial Intelligence Conference, which has featured Elon Musk and Jack Ma in years past, was devised to showcase the cutting-edge of Chinese technology. This year's attendance may hit a record as it's taking place at a critical juncture in the US-Chinese tech rivalry. This week, US President Donald Trump unveiled his so-called AI Action Plan - a sort of call to arms to ensure the country keeps its lead in the post-ChatGPT epoch. At the same time, the emergence of DeepSeek in January galvanised a generation of Chinese developers to ride a nationwide investment and innovation wave. From Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to fledgling firms such as Minimax, the country's AI aspirants have since moved aggressively to try and close the gap with the likes of OpenAI and Google. "While many recognise DeepSeek's achievements, this represents just the beginning of China's AI innovation wave,' said Louis Liang, an AI sector investor with Ameba Capital. "We are witnessing the advent of AI mass adoption, this goes beyond national competition.' The Shanghai conference rundown for now remains largely unknown - as it has in years past just days before kickoff. Chinese Premier Li Qiang will attend, and tech leaders from Tencent Holdings Ltd. to ByteDance Ltd. and startups like Zhipu AI and Moonshot are likely to turn out in force. Here's what we can expect from the summit starting Saturday. DeepSeek's Aura Neither the startup nor its reclusive founder Liang Wenfeng feature in the advance literature for the event. And yet, the two-year-old firm is likely to be one of the topics du jour. Since its low-cost, high-performance AI model humbled much of Silicon Valley, the industry has watched China closely for another seismic moment. In a field notorious for splashing billions of dollars on Nvidia Corp. chips and data centres, DeepSeek's no-frills approach inspired a re-think of traditional models. And it challenged what till then was unquestioned US supremacy in bleeding-edge technology: Xi Jinping himself turned out in public in February to congratulate Liang and his fellow tech entrepreneurs. China craves another big breakthrough. Downloads and usage of DeepSeek models have slowed, as has the pace of new model rollouts that peaked over the spring at once every few days. Now, much of the industry talk centres on why DeepSeek's R2 - the followup to its seminal R1 - hasn't yet emerged. Local media have blamed everything from Liang's perfectionist streak to performance glitches. Trump's, and Xi's, Ambitions The conference gets underway days after the US leader signed executive orders to loosen regulations and expand energy supplies for data centres. "From this day forward, it'll be a policy of the United States to do whatever it takes to lead the world in artificial intelligence,' Trump told executives and lawmakers at a DC event. Among the attendees was Jensen Huang, whose Nvidia is one of the companies at the heart of the global AI movement. Much has been made in Washington of China's seemingly meteoric ascent in AI, with observers saying the country is now perhaps just months behind the US in terms of AI sophistication. That's a wafer-thin margin compared with sectors such as semiconductors, where America is regarded as many years or even generations ahead. Trump's newly announced action plan is likely to spur Chinese companies into accelerating their own plans to go global, in part by aggressively open-sourcing their AI platforms. Beijing wants AI to become a US$100 billion industry by 2030. At the Communist Party's April Politburo study session, Xi emphasised that China must push for breakthroughs in critical areas like high-end chips and AI research. Rise of the Robots Chinese humanoid makers are expected to showcase their most advanced models. Last week, UBTech posted a video of its Walker S2 humanoid walking to a battery station, removing the pack from its back, placing it on the recharge pad before fitting itself with a new battery. While obviously edited and choreographed, it encapsulated the advances that Chinese firms have made in a wide-open field - and their lofty ambitions. Unitree teased a bargain-basement price of under US$10,000 for its androids. It joins the likes of AgiBot and UBTech in collectively driving a promising field in which American companies have so far failed to stake out a clear lead, despite decades of effort. The Chinese companies "are targeting hundreds to thousands of units to be delivered this year, racing to establish the ecosystem,' Morgan Stanley analyst Sheng Wong said in a note this week. Show the Money Venture capitalists and deal-makers will be hunting for emerging tech leaders. And not all of them are Chinese. China's largest venture capital houses are tapping the market for at least US$2 billion in new funds. At least six of the country's most prominent VC firms - including Lightspeed China Partners and Monolith Management - are creating dollar-denominated funds designed to allow overseas investors to pool bets on Chinese companies. That's a wave of fundraising that hasn't been seen among Chinese VCs for years. It's unfolding as global investors reassess the country's startup landscape and economy, which are showing signs of revival after years of Covid-era stagnation and regulatory headwinds. Organizers promise a breakout event that will feature startup pitches and live demos for dealmakers. Startups by the hundreds are expected to fill a 70,000 sq-metre exhibition hall, showing off everything from autonomous delivery drones to machines that dispense toilet paper. Missing Global Touch Attendees are unlikely to spot US companies - at least not in major fashion. In 2024, Tesla Inc. popped up with its Cybertruck and Optimus robot. This year's speaker lineup doesn't (yet) include Musk but does list Yoshua Bengio, the Canadian scientist who pioneered artificial neural networks. With the US-China tech rivalry accelerating, many American companies remain wary of drawing the spotlight. Still, Beijing is likely to take the opportunity to continue pushing its international agenda. One of the conference centerpieces is a "High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance' to discuss the challenges in deploying AI responsibly. To many observers, it's also emblematic of China's overarching goal of setting global standards. "Since 2018, China has used WAIC to stake its claim on global AI technical and political leadership,' said Tom Nunlist, associate director of the Beijing-based consultancy Trivium. "With the race to AI now neck and neck between the US and China, that play is more compelling than ever.' - Bloomberg
Malay Mail
4 hours ago
- Malay Mail
Trump, Fed chief Powell bicker during tense central bank visit
WASHINGTON, July 25 — Donald Trump and US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell appeared together for a tense meeting yesterday as the president toured the central bank after ramping up his attacks on its management of the economy. Trump—who wants to oust Powell for refusing to lower interest rates but likely lacks the legal authority to do so—has threatened to fire the Fed chief over cost overruns for a renovation of its Washington headquarters. During a brief but painfully awkward exchange in front of reporters during a tour of the building, the pair bickered over the price tag for the makeover, which Trump said was US$3.1 billion. The actual cost of the facelift has been put at US$2.5 billion and Powell was quick to correct the president, telling him: 'I haven't heard that from anybody.' Trump produced a sheet of paper apparently listing construction costs and was told curtly that he was including work on the William McChesney Martin Jr. Building, which was not part of the project. 'You're including the Martin renovation—you just added in a third building,' Powell scolded. Trump stuck to his guns, saying it was part of the overall redevelopment. Powell shot back: 'No, it was built five years ago. We finished Martin five years ago... It's not new.' Trump moved on but the tense atmosphere between the pair was almost palpable, with the Republican leader unaccustomed to being contradicted live on air. The tour came with Trump desperate to shift the focus away from the crisis engulfing his administration over its decision to close the file on multi-millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on trafficking charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi informed the president in the spring that his name appeared in the Epstein files, according to the Wall Street Journal. Epstein was accused of procuring underage girls for sex with his circle of wealthy, high-profile associates when he died by suicide in a New York jail cell. Trump has picked all manner of targets, including his Democratic predecessors and former chiefs of the security and intelligence services, as he tries to move Epstein out of the headlines. He berated Powell over interest rates on Wednesday, and alluded to his annoyance over the cost of borrowing more than 10 times during Thursday's tour. 'As good as we're doing, we'd do better if we had lower interest rates,' he told reporters. 'Do the right thing' Presidential visits to the Federal Reserve are not unheard of—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush all made the trip—but they are rare. Trump has criticized Powell for months over his insistence on keeping the short-term interest rate at 4.3 percent this year, after cutting it three times last year, when Joe Biden was in office. Powell says he is monitoring the response of the economy to Trump's dizzying array of import tariffs, which he has warned could lead to a hike in inflation. But Trump has angrily accused Powell of holding back the economy, calling the man he nominated in his first term 'stupid' and a 'loser.' The president struck a more conciliatory tone later Thursday, telling reporters they'd had a 'productive talk' on the economy, with 'no tension.' 'It may be a little too late, as the expression goes, but I believe he's going to do the right thing,' Trump said. Soaring costs for the Fed's facelift of its 88-year-old Washington headquarters and a neighboring building—up by $600 million from an initial $1.9 billion estimate—have caught Trump's eye. A significant driver of the cost is security, including blast-resistant windows and measures to prevent the building from collapsing in the event of an explosion. The Federal Reserve, the world's most important central bank, makes independent monetary policy decisions and its board members typically serve under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Experts question whether Trump has the authority to fire Powell, especially since a Supreme Court opinion in May that allowed the president to remove other independent agency members but suggested that this did not apply to the Fed. — APF
