John Neuffer is the President and CEO of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). Today's quote is from a blog post he published on the day
President Trump signed Executive Order No. 138959 on "Maintaining American Leadership In Artificial Intelligence."
Artificial intelligence or AI is easier to illustrate than to define, or so it seems to us. We shall get to illustrations and definitions in a moment. The one thing that seems clear is that, however defined and in whatever settings, AI uses lots of semiconductors. Mr. Neuffer underscored that point in his February 11 post. Here is the full first paragraph of that entry.
JOHN NEUFFER:
Artificial intelligence - enabled by tremendous advances in semiconductor technology - holds the potential to greatly benefit society and strengthen America's economy, national security, and global technology leadership. We welcome President Trump's executive order, signed earlier today, launching an "American AI Initiative" and look forward to working with his Administration and Congress to ensure this country remains the world leader in this burgeoning technology.
The same post directed the reader to an SIA background paper on artificial intelligence. Written by
Falan Yinug, SIA's director for statistics and economic policy, the paper is particularly helpful on the three points of definitions, illustrations and American leadership, and we shall shamelessly borrow from it in dealing with those topics.
What is AI? Mr. Yinug explains:
AI is often defined as the ability of machines to perform cognitive functions associated with the human mind. Machine learning (ML), a particular approach to AI, involves powerful computers digesting massive amounts of data to develop models, which can be used to infer the desired output when given similar parameters in other scenarios. This is vastly different from traditional programming, where humans instruct a predefined set of algorithms and the role of computers is merely to process and execute. In machine learning, computers take one step further, to "learn" from the given data and figure out the program themselves. Where computer systems once had to be programmed to execute rigidly defined tasks, they can now be given a generalized strategy for learning, enabling them to adapt to new data inputs without being explicitly reprogrammed.
What Are Some Examples of AI? SIA and others point to things like self-driving cars, computer assisted medical diagnoses, and cybersecurity. More broadly, the SIA article projects that
"AI could add over $8 trillion in gross value added to the U.S. economy boosting annual growth from 2.6 percent to 4.6 percent by 2035."
Who Is the Leader? The SIA paper notes that "the U.S. semiconductor industry currently leads in AI investment" but adds that this is an area where the U.S. faces intense competition. More on the competition in a moment.
More immediately,
What Does the Executive Order Do? For that matter, what does any executive order do? The Wikipedia article on executive orders opens with the declaration that
In the United States, an executive order is a directive issued by the President of the United States that manages operations of the federal government and has the force of law.
And this one? Specifically, it encourages - no directs - federal agencies, where appropriate, to focus their efforts on advancing AI research and education. The links below will take you to the Executive Order itself and to the accompanying fact sheet. For the Cliff notes version, we'll turn to an article by
Michael Kratsios, who is the Deputy Assistant to the President for Technology Policy.
MICHAEL KRATSIOS
America has been the leader in AI since its inception. The American AI Initiative will build on this success by leveraging our R&D ecosystem of industry, academia, and government and prioritizing federal investments of cutting-edge ideas that can directly benefit the American people. An integral part of the initiative will include federal agencies developing AI R&D budgets to support their core missions.
