Welcome to the May 6, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Drones Changed Myanmar Civil War, Linked Rebels to the World
• Fei-Fei Li Building 'Spatial Intelligence' Startup
• AI Lobbying Frenzy in Washington Dominated by Big Tech
• Quantum Computing Breakthroughs Draw Investments
• Politicians Use Social Media to 'Buy' Votes
• Agricultural IoT System Sends Power Through Soil
• Facial Recognition Tech Transforms Campus Protests
• 6G Antenna Could Lead to High-Speed Communications
• Hacker Free-for-All in Fight for Routers
• AI Helps Automate Gruesome Jobs
• Beijing Tightens Grip on China Social Media Giants
• Industry, STEMM Leaders Convene for White House Summit

Drones Changed Myanmar Civil War, Linked Rebels to the World

Rebel drone units have managed to turn the tables on the military in Myanmar. Drone pilots in Myanmar describe turning to groups on chat apps to download 3D printing blueprints for fixed-wing drones. They also gain insight there on how to hack through the default software on commercial drones that could give away their locations. The drone pilots also post videos taken from drones on social media to boost morale and help raise money.
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Fei-Fei Li Building 'Spatial Intelligence' Startup

The "godmother of AI," ACM Fellow Fei-Fei Li, is building a startup that uses human-like processing of visual data to make AI capable of advanced reasoning, according to multiple sources. In describing the startup, one source pointed to a talk Li gave at the TED conference in Vancouver last month, in which she spoke about algorithms that could plausibly extrapolate what images and text would look like in 3D environments and act upon those predictions, using "spatial intelligence."
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AI Lobbying Frenzy in Washington Dominated by Big Tech

A report from nonprofit OpenSecrets revealed an almost threefold increase in the number of organizations lobbying the U.S. government on AI from 158 in 2022 to 451 in 2023. Among the 334 organizations that lobbied on AI for the first time last year were startups like OpenAI, big corporations like Visa and GSK, industry trade associations, and numerous civil society organizations. Meanwhile, OpenSecrets found that Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft each spent more than $10 million on lobbying.
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Quantum Computing Breakthroughs Draw Investments

Recent developments in quantum computing are drawing investments in hopes of practical application of the technology after years of dashed hopes. A series of research breakthroughs has brought major advances in quantum bit error correction years earlier than most expected. “Over the past year, we’ve seen a large amount of progress in the industry,” said Steve Brierley, head of Riverlane, a U.K. quantum start-up. “It increasingly seems less like a science problem and much more like an engineering problem.”
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Politicians Use Social Media to 'Buy' Votes

A study of political advertisements on social media by researchers at Germany's Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich found that German political parties could sway an individual voter with just €4 ($4.31) of advertising spend. The researchers looked at more than 21,000 advertisements posted on Facebook and Instagram during Germany's 2021 federal elections. Using a statistical model, they determined that a candidate's votes rose 2.1% for every 200,000 times their advertisements were seen.
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Agricultural IoT System Sends Power Through Soil

Tennessee Technological University researchers have developed an agricultural Internet of Things (IoT) system that transmits electrical power through the soil (TTS) to operate remote sensors and long-range, low-power LoRa radios. In a test on a two-acre plot, the system was powered with a mobile solar panel array requiring only about 0.1 kWh per day, which would cost just over a penny per day at retail rates.
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Facial Recognition Tech Transforms Campus Protests

College campus protesters are using keffiyehs, facemasks, and other means to evade identification from facial technology tools employed by law enforcement. Student protestors at colleges including Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Los Angeles, in the past have demanded schools refrain from using facial recognition on campus. On the other hand, police called in to dismantle protest camps across the U.S. increasingly are turning to the technology to identify law breakers.
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6G Antenna Could Lead to High-Speed Communications

Researchers at the U.K.'s University of Glasgow developed a dynamic metasurface antenna (DMA) that is the first to work with a 6G signal. It uses beamforming to direct the 6G signal to the target device with precision in just nanoseconds. The prototype DMA lowered energy consumption and data collisions by 88% and 24%, respectively, compared to omnidirectional antennas.
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Hacker Free-for-All in Fight for Routers

Hackers are surreptitiously coexisting inside compromised routers as they use the devices to disguise attacks motivated both by financial gain and state-backed espionage, according to researchers at U.S.-Japanese cybersecurity software company Trend Micro. In some cases the co-existence is peaceful, with financially motivated hackers providing spies access to already compromised routers in exchange for a fee. In other cases, state-backed hackers take control of devices previously hacked by the cybercrime groups.
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AI Helps Automate Gruesome Jobs

U.S. meat processors increasingly are automating the processing of animal carcasses using recent advancements in AI, machine learning, and computer vision. Robots debone chicken more efficiently than the average worker, but it is has been more difficult to automate pork and beef butchery, given the size of the animals. Said Cargill's Hans Kabat, "You have to have sensors … on robots to be able to sense where things need to get done and then to actually move the product."
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Beijing Tightens Grip on China Social Media Giants

Stricter Chinese government rules on the country's Internet companies went into effect on May 1, requiring "network operators" to monitor information shared by users and to take action if sensitive information is posted. The rules detail how firms like Tencent, ByteDance, and Weibo must remove posts, save records, and report to authorities. The updated rules also expand the definition of sensitive information to include "work secrets," although uncertainty remains as to what constitutes a state secret.
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Industry, STEMM Leaders Convene for White House Summit

During the 2024 White House Summit on STEMM Equity and Excellence on May 1, leaders from numerous industries discussed their strategies to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM). The summit also saw the release of "STEMM Equity and Excellence 2050: A National Strategy for Progress and Prosperity," with the goal of reaching parity in the U.S. STEMM workforce by 2050.
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