Welcome to the April 14, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Trump Signals New Tariffs on Chips, Calling Exclusions Temporary
• AI Industry to Congress: 'We Need Energy'
• China-Linked Online Operation Focuses on Canada PM Carney
• U.S. Prepares to Challenge Meta’s Social Media Dominance
• Safeguarding Sensitive AI Training Data
• Baby Born via Robotic Sperm Injection System
• NSF Expands Access to Advanced Cloud Computing for Scientific Research
• NIH Blocks Researchers in China, Russia from Multiple Databases
• AI Boom to Fuel Surge in Datacenter Energy Needs, IEA Says
• 3D Streaming Gets Leaner by Seeing Only What Matters
• AI-powered Device Assesses Tuna Fat Content
• New System for the Early Detection of Autism

Trump Signals New Tariffs on Chips, Calling Exclusions Temporary

U.S. President Trump signaled on Sunday that he would pursue new tariffs on computer chips, two days after his administration excluded a variety of electronics from recently applied tariffs. On Friday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a rule that spared high-tech imports such as computers, smartphones, modems, and flash drives from reciprocal tariffs, including those on China. But on Sunday, the administration framed the reprieve as temporary, while the government prepares more targeted import taxes on key technologies.
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AI Industry to Congress: 'We Need Energy'

During a U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last week, AI leaders told lawmakers that more energy is needed if the U.S. hopes to win the AI race. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (pictured) of the Special Competitive Studies Project think tank said environmental considerations should not get in the way of winning the AI race, arguing that AI will solve the climate crisis once the U.S. beats China in developing superintelligence.
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China-Linked Online Operation Focuses on Canada PM Carney

A Chinese government-linked online information operation focused on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been traced to the popular WeChat news account Youli-Youmian, according to Canada's Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force. The Youli-Youmian account has been linked to the Chinese Communist Party's central political and legal affairs commission. The security task force said the information operation aimed to influence Chinese communities in Canada and shape perceptions about Carney.
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U.S. Prepares to Challenge Meta’s Social Media Dominance

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia today will begin considering a monopoly case involving Meta that hinges on the question of whether the company broke the law by acquiring startup competitors. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission argues Meta broke the law by acquiring competitors to maintain its monopoly in social networking, in a case it launched under the first Trump administration. Meta maintains it faces ample competition, and that regulators approved the acquisitions at the time.
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Safeguarding Sensitive AI Training Data

A framework developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers to balance AI model performance and data security has been improved so it can privatize essentially any algorithm without requiring access to its inner workings. The PAC Privacy framework estimates the amount of noise that must be added to an algorithm to achieve the targeted privacy level using only the output variances. The updated algorithm estimates anisotropic noise, so less overall noise is needed to reach the same level of privacy.
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Baby Born via Robotic Sperm Injection System

Researchers at Conceivable Life Sciences developed an AI-powered platform to automate an intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) system used to inject sperm cells into mature eggs, resulting in the birth of a healthy baby boy to a 40-year-old woman. The system uses lasers to immobilize and guide sperm cells into the egg, outperforming the manual process in terms of accuracy.
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NSF Expands Access to Advanced Cloud Computing for Scientific Research

A $20-million grant awarded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) will be used to expand the NSF CloudBank initiative, which provides access to commercial cloud computing services to accelerate science and engineering research. The CloudBank 2.0 initiative is led by the University of California, San Diego's Supercomputer Center and Information Technology Services Division, with University of California, Berkeley's College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, and the University of Washington's eScience Institute as partners.
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NIH Blocks Researchers in China, Russia from Multiple Databases

Effective April 4, researchers at institutions in China, Russia and other "countries of concern" have been blocked from accessing numerous controlled-access data repositories (CADRs) maintained by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The affected CADRs contain data on cancer, Alzheimer's disease, mental health disorders, substance abuse, adolescent brain development, and other topics. The ban reportedly stems from a February 2024 executive order signed by former U.S. President Joe Biden to prevent the targeted countries from accessing large amounts of Americans’ health and genomics data.
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AI Boom to Fuel Surge in Datacenter Energy Needs, IEA Says

A report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts energy demand for AI-optimized datacenters will quadruple by 2030, with such datacenters making up almost half of U.S. electricity demand growth over that span. While a wide range of energy sources will be used to meet growing electrical demand by datacenters, most attention is being given to renewables and natural gas, due to their cost-competitiveness and availability in key markets.
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3D Streaming Gets Leaner by Seeing Only What Matters

New York University researchers have devised a method for predicting visible content in immersive 3D environments that maintains visual quality while reducing bandwidth requirements. Current approaches predict where a user will look and calculate content visibility, while the new approach directly predicts content visibility by dividing the 3D space into "cells," each of which serves as a node in a graph network. Transformer-based graph neural networks are used to determine spatial relationships between neighboring cells, as recurrent neural networks analyze the evolution in visibility patterns over time.
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AI-powered Device Assesses Tuna Fat Content

An ultrasonic inspection device developed by Fujitsu and researchers at Japan’s Tokai University uses AI to determine the fat content of frozen albacore tuna, which plays an important role in determining its market value. The device uses ultrasonic waves to analyze the internal structure of frozen tuna; it can complete an assessment that would normally take a minute in as little as 12 seconds.
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New System for the Early Detection of Autism

A system developed by researchers at Spain's Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) uses AI and VR to detect Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in early childhood. The system projects a simulated environment on the wall or large-format screen and integrates the child's image into the scene, using a camera to capture their movements while performing multiple tasks. UPV's Mariano Alcañiz said VR allows them to "study more genuine reactions" than traditional ASD detection methods.
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