A month ago Donald Trump issued an executive order designed to maintain America’s greatness on artificial intelligence. I reviewed it unfavorably for its lack of specifics, absence of funding details, and preponderance of management-consultant fluff. About a month later the semiconductor giant Intel offered its own A.I. plan, a 13-page whitepaper of its recommendations for a U.S. strategy on A.I. Intel sites the work of many management consultants, and it uses (in an accompanying fact sheet ) some interestingly diplomatic language, like grouping together China, India, Japan, and the European Union as “global neighbors” to the U.S. (One president’s punching bags are a multinational corporation’s neighbors.) On balance, though, the Intel proposal is a cut above the White House’s. It too refrains from offering specific dollar values, but Intel’s report does specify where money should be spent. It calls, for example, for government funding on research to determine the best areas for A.I. spending and for allocations for fundamental research, much as Washington spends heavily on health research. Intel has much to gain from a national A.I. strategy; its chips should power the machines and sensors that A.I. enables. But offering one also places the company in a precarious position given its significant global operations, particularly in China. That a company as serious and substantial as Intel feels compelled to offer a “national strategy” on A.I. shows that this topic is more than just hype—though there’s plenty of hype around it too. To that end, Fortune is pleased to announced its newest newsletter, “Eye on A.I.,” a weekly compendium of business-related A.I. articles with a dash of considered viewpoints and original reporting. As readers of Data Sheet, we know you are interested in technology. That almost by definition means you want and need to know more about A.I., and I invite you to sign up for the newsletter here. Below you’ll find a sampling of the type of material you can expect to find in Eye on A.I., which launches March 26. My colleague Jonathan Vanian, who follows enterprise technology for Fortune, will curate the newsletter. We hope you enjoy it. Maybe the White House will subscribe. (I also highly recommend “Finding New Cures in Old Drugs,” a feature in the issue of Fortune about two companies that are deploying A.I. to ‘map’ the complicated pathways through which neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s ravage the body.) Subscribe to Eye On A.I. |