Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) aims to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, but she just alienated Silicon Valley when she proposed to break up tech companies that generate more than $25 billion in online revenue. Her rationale is that companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google have become too big and too powerful, squashing small businesses and innovation, and more focused on their financial well-being than “the broader interests of the American people.” Read more

According to a recent note to investors written by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is known for frequently having inside information on Apple’s product plans, Apple could begin mass production of its augmented reality headset by the end of 2019 and unveil it as early as mid-2020 — although he admitted the timeline is optimistic. In May 2018, however, Loup Ventures founder Gene Munster predicted we wouldn’t see the Apple AR headset until late 2021. Kuo stated his belief that Apple’s first AR device will only be a display, with the iPhone performing all the rendering, data connection and GPS. Read more

Facebook AI Research, the Lorraine Research Laboratory in Computer Science and its Applications (LORIA), and University College London recently conducted a study to determine if AI can navigate a fantasy text-based game, dubbed “LIGHT.” To examine the AI agents’ comprehension of the virtual world, the study investigated the so-called grounding dialogue, comprised of mutual knowledge, beliefs and assumptions allowing communication between two people. The large-scale, crowdsourced “LIGHT” environment allows AI and humans to interact. Read more

Congress introduced the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act yesterday, in an effort to position legislative power behind securing connected devices. Defense Intelligence Agency director Lieutenant General Robert Ashley told lawmakers last year that IoT devices are considered one of the “most important emerging cyberthreats” to national security. Without a national standard for IoT security, we need to rely on steps taken by individual companies. The legislation, which was first introduced in 2017, would require security standards for IoT devices used by the federal government. Read more

The French government introduced a three percent tax on the revenue of technology companies such as Google and Amazon that offer e-commerce or targeted advertising in France. Experts estimate that the tax could reap “billions of dollars” from Silicon Valley companies. The tax is also likely to come up as a topic of conversation in U.S. and European talks, convened by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), about corporate taxes in the digital age. Europe is pushing to tax Silicon Valley companies on profits made there. Read more