Credit: AntaranewsIndonesia’s National AI Strategy, now known as Stranas KA was launched in a live TV broadcast marking the country’s National Technology Awakening Day (via CarringtonMalin.com) The Indonesia National AI Strategy, now known as Stranas KA (Strategi Nasional Kecerdasan Artifisial), has been published. The new strategy was announced by the Minister of Research and Technology and head of the BRIN (the National Research and Innovation Agency) Bambang PS Brodjonegoro in an television address made last Monday to mark the country’s 25th National Technology Awakening Day. The minister a ..read more

Global blockchain network and open-source AI modeling platform launched to grow global ecosystems We’ve seen one big technology announcement after another from China over the past few months, as the government and the technology sector strive to ramp-up the post-lockdown economy. In May, the government announced a multi-trillion dollar high-tech infrastructure plan and called on China’s tech giants to invest with it. Announcements of multi-billion dollar strategic investments soon followed from the likes of Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. However, whilst China tries to wrestle global technolo ..read more

It seems very unlikely that any U.S. technology company is breaking U.S. trade rules in doing business with China PayPal co-founder and tech billionaire Peter Thiel published an opinion piece in the New York Times at the end of the week — ‘Good for Google, Bad for America’ — in a follow-up to his Washington DC speech a couple of weeks ago, during which he called for a probe into Google’s ‘seemingly treasonous acts’. In the current atmosphere of ‘China fever’ and President Trump’s new trade tariffs, this has naturally gone down rather well in some circles and I’m sure Mr Thiel will be delighted ..read more

A Bengaluru-based start-up is developing India’s first attack swarm drone prototype in conjunction with state-owned contractors Hindustan AeronauticsCredit: IAFA report from NDTV last week confirmed that India’s military is developing weaponised autonomous swarm drones. It has been much publicised that these are being developed by China, Russia and the U.S., but not so India — until this year.Earlier this year, the Indian Air Force (IAF) confirmed that state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd was developing a killer ‘Wingman’ drone. India also confirmed that it was working with the U.S. on the deve ..read more

China’s five-year venture capital funding party is over, but it remains to be seen whether they’ll be a hangoverPhoto by Ylanite Koppens from PexelsYesterday’s Bloomberg story quoting new figures from UK market research firm Preqin, tells a similar story to those we’ve been reading during the past week. The stats show the same downward trend for venture capital activity in China, with the value of venture deals during the second quarter of 2019 falling far short of Q2 2018.According to Preqin, VC investments in China dropped by 77% in the second quarter compared with last year’s figures, regis ..read more

The first Modi 2.0 budget has been called cautious, incremental and lacking a blueprint; Will India be able to implement the right programmes at the speed required to remain competitive?Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with India’s Budget 2019 (credit: Press Trust of India)Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Modi government’s budget for 2019/2020 to India’s parliament on Friday, in a statement full of vision for the future, drawing heavily on the themes from the national Economic Survey 2018–19 released last week. In a speech that aimed to garner popular appeal, Sitharaman pri ..read more

Chinese AI venture investment deals fell 63 percent in value during the first half of 2019, but AI leaders remain upbeatImage by moerschy from PixabayAs mentioned in Wednesday’s post, investment in Chinese tech ventures has continued to slow down throughout the first half of 2019. As we leave H1 behind, more and more data is coming out to support this.Yesterday, the South China Morning Post published figures from Beijing-based information source ITJUZI.com, reporting that ‘new economy’ investments in China continued their slide into the second quarter, dropping 62 per cent year -on-year to RMB ..read more

Image by Gerd Altmann from PixabayFacial recognition appears more and more in headlines and this week is no exception. It’s one emerging technology that pushes lots of buttons at once: privacy, data protection, data permissions, personal freedoms, other legal and human rights. And it’s also worth a lot of money: one study forecasts that the global facial recognition technology market will reach annual revenues of $9.6 billion by the year 2022.Human rights activists are currently up-in-arms over Thailand’s new telecom policy that all cellphone users in the south of the country must submit pictu ..read more

Image credit: SK TelecomAccording to a recent report by Canalys, South Korea’s smart speaker growth rate is second only to China with Canalys predicting 132% growth during 2019. It’s now well publicised that China’s own smart speaker manufacturers are driving China’s 166% market growth. So, what’s the catalyst for South Korea’s growth? It could well be home-grown innovation.SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest wireless operator, introduced NUGU in 2016 — the first AI-virtual assistant for the Korean language (so, two years after the U.S. Amazon Alexa launch).The operator launched its first NUGU W ..read more

VC investment in China’s AI startups drops in H1 2019The growth in China’s investment in artificial intelligence ventures over the past few years has been nothing less than explosive. China is now home to more ‘AI unicorns’ than anywhere else in the world (statistics differ greatly, but CB Insights counts six out of the top 11 unicorns in its top AI startups list, while some others put the count much higher).According to ZDNet, China’s funding of AI startups grew from about $1 billion in 2016 to more than $8 billion in 2018, accounting for 44 percent of all global AI startup funding (with the ..read more