Microsoft Corp president Brad Smith on Friday said the company is on track to pump about US$80 billion into artificial intelligence (AI) this fiscal year ending at the close of June.
Smith contended AI is poised to transform all aspects of life, and it is imperative that the US be the global leader when it comes to the technology, he wrote in an online post.
“In many ways, artificial intelligence is the electricity of our age, and the next four years can build a foundation for America’s economic success for the next quarter century,” Smith said.
Photo: Reuters
He called on US president-elect Donald Trump and Congress to expand support for AI innovation with moves such as increased funding for research at universities and the National Science Foundation.
China and the US are racing to spread their AI systems to other countries in an effort to become the de facto standard, Smith said.
“Given the nature of technology markets and their potential network effects, this race between the US and China for international influence likely would be won by the fastest first mover,” Smith said.
“Hence, the United States needs a smart international strategy to rapidly support American AI around the world,” he added.
China has started offering developing countries subsidized access to scarce computer chips and help building local AI datacenters, Smith said.
“The Chinese wisely recognize that if a country standardizes on China’s AI platform, it likely will continue to rely on that platform in the future,” Smith said.
The US should move quickly to promote its AI technology as superior and more trustworthy, enlisting allies in the effort, he said.
For its part, Microsoft is on pace to invest about US$80 billion this year to build out AI datacenters, train AI models and deploy cloud-based applications around the world, Smith said.
Microsoft rivals Amazon.com Inc, Google and OpenAI have also been spending billions of US dollars on AI even, although it remains unclear how and when they expect to profit from those investments.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS