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When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), America is still on top. A major reason for that? America is quite good at recruiting AI students from around the world and retaining them after they graduate from school. But if certain plans proposed by the White House come to fruition, then that could all change very quickly.

Americas increasingly convoluted and unwelcoming immigration system has put the countrys front-runner status in jeopardy, according to a landmark report from Georgetown Universitys Center for Security and Technology (CSET). And, if the Trump administration moves forward with its plan to rescind the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, then Americas. leadership position in AI will become even more vulnerable.

Rescinding OPT, which allows thousands of international students to work in the United States after graduation, notably undermines President Donald Trumps own plan to protect Americas AI advantage. More than two hundred thousand people are brought into the American workforce each year through the OPT program. Roughly two-thirds of them hold the sorely-needed advanced graduate and Ph.D. degrees that AI relies on.

If theyre gone, then Americas workforce has a problem. After all, domestic interest in these fields remains woefully insufficient to meet the spike in employer demand for AI workers.

These kinds of labor shortages cant be taken lightly, given the beneficial impact AI has on American lives. AI is improving a vast and diverse range of industries including healthcare, entertainment, auto manufacturing, social media, finance, and many, many more, Matthew Feeney, the Cato Institutes Director of Emerging Technologies, told me. In fact, the OPT program helps ameliorate talent gaps that may otherwise see that crucial progress grind to a halt.

Right now, OPT offers graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) the chance to work in the United States for up to three years after graduation. Theres no limit to the number of people who can participate in the program, and, while working, many of these folks hope to nab an H-1B visa, which can give them an additional six years of U.S. employment. Firms can also sponsor their H-1B workers for green cards, making it one of the few viable ways that foreign students can gain permanent residency.

But the H-1B visa is subject to strict numerical limits. In fact, for every year since 2015, the number of H-1B applications the U.S. government received was more than double that of the eighty-five thousand visas available. The executive branch has dealt with this excess in applications by awarding visas through a lottery system. Since an applicant may not get an H-1B visa on their first try, the OPT program allows them to re-apply for a second and third year while they maintain their authorization to work in the United States.

As such, the OPT program is treated as a waiting room of sorts for immigrant hopefuls. An applicant may not get an H-1B visa on their first try, but OPT allows STEM graduates, including those in AI-related fields, to keep working in the United States as they reapply the next year and, if theyre still unlucky, the year after.

By the end of August, that could all come to a crashing halt. The Trump administration is slated to curtail the programeven possibly dismantling it altogether.

Even if Trump chooses not to do so, the program still faces challenges in court. In Washington Alliance of Technology Workers v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, et. al, a union of U.S. tech workers have argued that OPT harms Americans by forcing them to compete with foreigners for the same employment opportunities.

Extensive research on the program, however, shows that this simply isnt the case. According to a study by Jeremy Neufeld of the Niskanen Center, for every ten OPT workers in a given locality, American wages increase by an average of at least $2and five patents get added to that area. OPT recipients are highly educated and motivated by the desire to prove themselves, says Neufeld. They even make the people around them and the teams theyre on more productive, increasing innovation and raising the earnings of similarly educated natives.

The OPT program is under fire from both the executive and legislative branches, so its up to Congress to make certain that America continues to be an attractive place for AI graduates to build their futures. For starters, lawmakers could consider codifying OPT into law, so that the programs fate no longer rests on executive discretion. Congress should also examine solutions such as extending the H-1B cap exemptions that many nonprofit and governmental organizations already enjoyand ending green card restrictions that would keep some applicants waiting in line for over one hundred years.

The OPT program has been one of the many Band-Aids holding together an immigration system that hasnt been updated since the early 1990s before the internet became the world economys major driver. The Trump administration is moving to eliminate this crucial but imperfect fix. But Congress can use this opportunity to make lasting changesreforms that recognize Americas desperate need to increase and keep the AI talent Trump said he wanted.

Sam Peak is a Tech and Innovation Fellow for Young Voices and a policy associate at Americans for Prosperity. The views expressed in this column dont necessarily reflect those of the organizations with which the author is affiliated.

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Trump Policy Tactics that Target Foreigners Put America's Artificial Intelligence at Risk - The National Interest Online

As a psychologist, Tom Gruber is in awe of Facebook. As a computer scientist and citizen of the earth, it scares the crap out of him.

Facebook runs experiments on human behavior that psychologists can only dream about, Gruber says. The trials are done on millions of people, a sample size that's impossible in academia. Dozens of times a day, Mark Zuckerberg tweaks his artificial intelligence to see what will keep his 2.5 billion subscribers scrolling through Facebook, and to make them confuse advertising with news so they click on the ads, Gruber says.

"They have the world's largest psychology experiment at their disposal every single day," Gruber says. "They can do experiments that science can't do, at scale."

Gruber, who speaks at TechfestNW this April, is hardly a bomb-thrower. He is a pioneer in artificial intelligence and the co-inventor of Siri, the digital assistant on the iPhone that uses AI and speech recognition to answer billions of questions each year.

Since selling Siri to Apple in 2010, though, Gruber has become one of a small group of technologists who have grown wary of the AI they helped create. He plans to talk about the dangerand promiseof artificial intelligence at TechfestNW.

Facebook and YouTube have more than 2 billion users each, making them as big as the world's two biggest religions, Christianity and Islam, Gruber says.

"And I would add that even the people who pray to Mecca five times a day, only do it five times a day," Gruber says. "Our millennials check their phones 150 times a day."

Gruber has deep roots in techdom. He earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and psychology from Loyola University in New Orleans, got his Ph.D. in computer and information science from the University of Massachusetts, then did research at Stanford University for five years.

Siri grew out of a Stanford spinoff called SRI International. Gruber consulted at SRI in 2007, and, soon after, he and two others, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, spun off newer digital-assistant technology that went beyond the DARPA work. They named the new company Siri, which means "beautiful woman who leads you to victory."

Siri is actually a collection of powerful neural networks: mathematical formulas running on computers that analyze huge amounts of data and learn the patterns within them. Turn a neural net loose on a million samples of spoken language, and it will start to recognize words and their meaning. No longer do programmers have to tell computers what to do, logic step by logic step.

Steve Jobs persuaded Gruber and his partners to sell to Apple in 2010 for some $200 million, according to Wired magazine.

Gruber retired from Apple in 2018 and founded Humanistic AI, a firm that helps companies use machine intelligence to collaborate with humans, not replaceor terrorizethem.

Unlike some AI doomsayers, including Tesla inventor Elon Musk and podcasting neuroscientist Sam Harris, Gruber thinks AI can be tamed. Right now, it's a science experiment gone wrong. Frankenstein never meant for his monster to become a killer, and Zuckerberg, he says, never intended Facebook to set us at each other's throats, over politics or anything else.

"My argument is that this is an unintended consequence," Gruber says. "We'll give them a pass on being evil geniuses. Maybe some of them are. But let's assume good intentions."

When it comes to Zuckerberg, assuming good intentions is controversial. In July, Facebook agreed to pay a record $5 billion fine to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission that it abused users' personal information.

So call Gruber an optimist. He thinks the same algorithms that prey on our bad habits can be used to encourage good ones.

Tech companies make excuses for why they can't police their networks, and most involve money. So far, humans are better at sorting lies from truth, and hate from news. That means you have to hire a lot of humans, which is anathema to the tech monopolies. Gruber says they need to suck it up.

"It's like when the auto industry said, 'Air bags are going to put us out of business, so don't impose this onerous thing on us,'" Gruber says. "It's all bullshit."

And there's more. Why not run all these vast experiments on human behavior to improve human life, instead of wrecking it? Why not use AI to change the habits that lead to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and suicide?

"We have weak theories about what makes people tick, and what to do to help them do better things," Gruber says. "But AI has shown that if you want to get 2 billion people addicted to something that's not good for them, you can do it."

AI doesn't know if it's operating for good or evil, Gruber says. Someday it may, but for now, it's up to humans to direct it.

So far, we've been crappy shepherds.

GO: TechfestNW is at Portland State University's Viking Pavilion, 930 SW Hall St., techfestnw.com. Thursday-Friday, April 2-3. Visit the website for tickets.

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The Father of Siri Has Grown Wary of the Artificial Intelligence He Helped Create - Willamette Week

Digital agency space150 created a deepfake version ofTravis Scottnamed Travisbott,a machine that hasproduced and released the new song Jack Park Canny Dope Man,composed throughartificial intelligence.

Theentirely AI-generated song features lyrics and melodies modeled afterScotts music.While the lyrics are absolutely nonsensical, the auto-tuned melodies and backing instrumentals do bearan uncanny resemblance to his sound.

The song was achieved byfeeding Scotts entire discographyinto a text generator modelover atwo week period. In turn, the model was able to mimic the cadence and rhyme schemes that were native and re-occurring in hismusic.

The track comes complete with Scotts signature its lit and straight-up ad-libs, with lines that sometimes feel as if they were penned by La Flame himself: I got all my old bitches mad by the bars /Thinkin at the Grammys, in the family, I got stars /Try to put in the plane, but the blame be on the cars.

Speaking on the incredible feat, Ned Lampert, executive creative director at space150, told AdWeek,We were sort of fascinated with like, What if we tried to make a songlike an actual good songby using AI and basically creative directing AI?And so we chose Travis Scott just because he is just such a unique artist and he has a unique sound and everything sort of has an aesthetic to it, both audibly and visually.

Watch the unsettling video for Jack Park Canny Dope Man below.

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This Travis Scott Song Was Created By Artificial Intelligence - Highsnobiety

Regulatory News:

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200212005609/en/

OSE Immunotherapeutics (Paris:OSE) (ISIN: FR0012127173; Mnmo: OSE), today announced a new collaboration agreement with deep technology innovative start-up MAbSilico, located in Tours, France, to use artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions for therapeutic antibody drug development.

OSE Immunotherapeutics plans to incorporate innovative problem-solving solutions like AI for the development of new monoclonal antibodies. MAbSilico solutions have already been tested and validated by OSE Immunotherapeutics and will be used for six antibody programs, including novel bispecific antibodies. AI and numerical simulation can guide therapeutic antibody discovery, help reduce the risk of failure and accelerate the pre-clinical development process of these drug candidates before clinical tests.

Nicolas Poirier, Chief Scientific Officer of OSE Immunotherapeutics, stated: "We are delighted with this collaboration, we constantly strive to introduce innovative technologies to develop first-in-class products in immuno-oncology and autoimmune diseases. Due to the devastating nature of these diseases, our development strategies need to be accelerated and artificial intelligence solutions for drug discovery offered by MAbSilico can be a great asset to achieve this goal."

While all MAbSilicos commercialized solutions are included in this three-year agreement, OSE Immunotherapeutics also gains early access to MAbSilicos SaaS (Software as a Service) and technologies in development including those for the conception of therapeutic antibodies optimized for bioproduction. OSE provides internal data to MAbSilico in order to feed their algorithms in development and deliver new technology faster.

Vincent Puard, Chief Executive Officer of MAbSilico, stated: "It is a pleasure to start this collaboration with one of the top French Biotech. This partnership demonstrates the need to fasten new AI-based solutions for antibody drug discovery. We believe that with the trust and collaboration of OSE, we will accelerate the release of our software and new technologies."

ABOUT OSE ImmunotherapeuticsOSE Immunotherapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing and partnering therapies to control the immune system for immuno-oncology and autoimmune diseases. The company has a diversified first-in-class clinical portfolio consisting of several scientific and technological platforms including neoepitopes and agonist or antagonist monoclonal antibodies, all ideally positioned to fight cancer and autoimmune diseases. The most advanced therapeutic-candidate Tedopi, is a proprietary combination of 10 neo-epitopes aimed at stimulating T-lymphocytes and is currently in Phase 3 development in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in patients in failure after checkpoint inhibitor treatment (anti PD-1 and anti PD-L1) and in Phase 2 testing in pancreatic cancer in combination with checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo. BI 765063 (OSE-172) (anti-SIRPa monoclonal antibody) is under a license and collaboration agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim; this checkpoint inhibitor is currently under Phase 1 clinical trial in advanced solid tumors. BiCKI is a bispecific fusion protein platform built on the key backbone component anti-PD-1 (OSE-279) and targeting innovative targets. FR104 (an anti-CD28 mAb) has successfully completed Phase 1 testing and has potential to treat autoimmune diseases. OSE-127 (monoclonal antibody targeting the CD127 receptor, the alpha chain of the interleukin-7 receptor) is partnered with Servier under an option agreement up to the completion of a Phase 2 clinical trial planned in autoimmune bowel diseases; in parallel, Servier plans a development in the Sjgren syndrome. The Phase 1 clinical phase of OSE-127 is completed and has shown positive results; planned Phase 2 studies in ulcerative colitis and Sjgrens syndrome to start in 2020.For more information: https://ose-immuno.com/en/ Click and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn

About MAbSilicoMAbSilico is a deeptech company, founded in September 2017, which implements computational solutions for the development of therapeutic antibodies, bio-drugs used in an increasing number of pathologies, including oncology.MAbSilicos objective is to propose a software suite that creates a formal approach of antibody development, reducing the risks of failure and the duration of pre-clinical steps, as well as strengthening intellectual protection. Conventional approaches for the discovery and pre-clinical development take two to three years, MAbSilico technologies allow shrinking this time to a few weeks.The technology developed by MAbSilico is the result of more than twenty years of French scientific research, in laboratories affiliated to INRA and CNRS. It is based on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and has partly been funded by the Loire-Valley Region and the MAbImprove Labex. MAbSilico tools have been the subjects of more than ten scientific publications and are covered by an international patent.The MAbSilico team consists in five persons, including three co-founders and co-inventors of the methods. It is located on the INRA Loire-Valley site.Since 2018, MAbSilico has been commercializing its tools in France, Europe and USA, with more than 20 clients: academics, startups and biotechs.MAbSilico is looking forward to extend its commercial effort in Europe and to hire ten persons in Tours for positions in software development, data science, bioinformatics, biology and business development. The implementation of our solutions will be made in close link with our clients to best meet their needs.More information at http://www.mabsilico.com Click and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn

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Forward-looking statementsThis press release contains express or implied information and statements that might be deemed forward-looking information and statements in respect of OSE Immunotherapeutics. They do not constitute historical facts. These information and statements include financial projections that are based upon certain assumptions and assessments made by OSE Immunotherapeutics management in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends, current economic and industry conditions, expected future developments and other factors they believe to be appropriate.These forward-looking statements include statements typically using conditional and containing verbs such as "expect", "anticipate", "believe", "target", "plan", or "estimate", their declensions and conjugations and words of similar import. Although the OSE Immunotherapeutics management believes that the forward-looking statements and information are reasonable, the OSE Immunotherapeutics shareholders and other investors are cautioned that the completion of such expectations is by nature subject to various risks, known or not, and uncertainties which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of OSE Immunotherapeutics. These risks could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed in or implied or projected by the forward-looking statements. These risks include those discussed or identified in the public filings made by OSE Immunotherapeutics with the AMF. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. This press release includes only summary information and should be read with the OSE Immunotherapeutics Reference Document filed with the AMF on 26 April 2019, including the annual financial report for the fiscal year 2018, available on the OSE Immunotherapeutics website. Other than as required by applicable law, OSE Immunotherapeutics issues this press release at the date hereof and does not undertake any obligation to update or revise the forward-looking information or statements.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200212005609/en/

Contacts

OSE Immunotherapeutics Sylvie DtrySylvie.detry@ose-immuno.com +33 153 198 757

French Media: FP2COM Florence Portejoiefportejoie@fp2com.fr +33 607 768 283

U.S. Media: LifeSci Public Relations Darren Opland, Ph.D.darren@lifescipublicrelations.com +1 646 627 8387

U.S. and European Investors Chris Maggoschris@lifesciadvisors.com +41 79 367 6254

MAbSilico Vincent Puardvincent.puard@mabsilico.com

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OSE Immunotherapeutics Announces Artificial Intelligence Antibody Drug Development Collaboration with MAbSilico - Yahoo Finance