Apple enters AI era and EU adds EV tariffs

Hi, this is Yifan from Silicon Valley, your #techAsia host this week. Like many tech reporters, it has been a crazy busy few weeks for me as every major player in the space, from OpenAI to Google, unveiled their latest AI developments.

And this week is Apple’s time to shine. At its annual developer conference, WWDC, the iPhone maker finally gave us a sneak peek of how it intends to leverage generative AI. By teaming up with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Apple promised its next-generation devices will be more like an intelligent personal assistant that can help with everything from rewriting emails to editing photos.

The long-awaited unveiling of its AI strategy pushed Apple’s stock price to an all-time high and many are cheering Apple Intelligence as the catalyst for AI to be truly adopted by the masses.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I can’t wait to see how the AI-enhanced iPhone will make my life easier. But on the other hand, I can’t help but wonder what this means for the environment. While we all hope AI can change the planet for the better, the additional computational needs of AI have led to drastic increases in energy and water usage and carbon emissions.

As AI models get larger and more people adopt the rapidly developing technology in their daily life, can we avert a climate crisis while harnessing the power of artificial intelligence?

The other ‘AI’

In arguably one of the cleverest marketing campaigns this year, Apple named its AI strategy “Apple Intelligence,” billing it as a personal intelligence system for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Apple Intelligence features new AI-powered functions, such as more intuitive interactions with the voice assistant Siri, rewriting emails and texts, one-click photo editing and text-to-emoji generation. For requests that Siri can’t handle, ChatGPT steps in to fill the gap. The iPhone giant said it is also working on integrating other AI models to their devices, Nikkei Asia’s Yifan Yu reports.

While most users won’t be able to see how intelligent Apple Intelligence actually is until this fall, the announcement seemed to have pleased investors. Apple briefly surpassed Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company on Wednesday.

Tangled Lines

A series of data leaks from a $20bn internet company formed by Japan’s SoftBank and South Korea’s Naver has strained relations between the two countries, highlighting how government concerns over digital security can curb technology groups’ international ambitions, write David Keohane, Kana Inagaki, Christian Davies and Song Jung-a for the Financial Times.

Japan and South Korea have been at loggerheads since Line Yahoo suffered network breaches that were blamed on insecure systems at Seoul-based Naver, its joint owner.

Officials in Tokyo have used national and economic security grounds to argue that Naver should now cut its 50 per cent stake in A Holdings, the holding company for Line and Yahoo Japan, according to people familiar with the matter. But this would give the other joint owner, SoftBank, the chance to seize control.

The row spilled over into top-level talks between the two countries’ leaders last month, threatening to overshadow a recent thaw in relations.

Power hungry, thirsty and dirty

In science fiction films and novels, artificial intelligence has long been portrayed as a malevolent superintelligence bent on destroying humanity. But it turns out AI doesn’t have to be evil to eliminate humans.

The environmental cost of AI has been at the bottom of most governments’ and users’ priority lists, behind concerns like copyright infringement, job displacement, and out-of-control killer robots. But training and deploying exponentially larger AI models has created massive energy and water needs, as well as growing emissions and electronic waste, threatening to accelerate wildfires, floods, extreme weather and all of the dangers that come with climate change, writes Nikkei Asia’s Yifan Yu.

The main culprits behind AI’s insatiable and still-growing energy consumption are data centres, the “central brains” used to power countries’ digital needs. Between 2022 and 2026, the total electricity consumption of the world’s data centres is projected to double to more than 1,000 terawatt-hours, roughly equivalent to the entire annual consumption of Japan, according to an estimate by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Correction or discrimination?

Following the US decision to slap imports of Chinese electric vehicles with tariffs of more than 100 per cent, the European Commission announced on Wednesday that it will impose additional duties of up to 38 per cent on Chinese EVs after an investigation determined producers in China were benefiting from “unfair subsidies” throughout their supply chains, from lithium refining to transportation of the final products.

But in a sign that European Union members may struggle to find unity in their approach to China, Hungary released a statement afterward saying it “does not agree with punitive tariffs, as protectionism is not a solution,” and calling the decision “highly discriminatory”, Nikkei’s Rhyannon Bartlett-Imadegawa and Catherine De Beaurepaire report.

Instead of one flat rate, different companies will face different tariffs. BYD electric cars face import duties of 17.4 per cent, while those from Geely Holding would be subject to 20 per cent and state-owned SAIC Motor’s models would be hit with 38.1 per cent, the European Commission said in a statement. These are on top of the 10 per cent tariffs the EU already imposes on Chinese EV imports.

Suggested reads

1. From China to Singapore, Asia’s AI policy ‘gaps’ pose headaches for business (Nikkei Asia)

2. The Chinese quant fund-turned-AI pioneer (FT)

3. Panasonic seeks design ideas from China to boost appliance unit (Nikkei Asia)

4. China accounts for half of Japan’s chipmaking equipment exports (Nikkei Asia)

5. US senator urges UK to investigate Shein’s labour practices ahead of IPO (FT)

6. World’s top crab stick machine maker extends reach to medical tech (Nikkei Asia)

7. Billionaires Sunil Mittal and Mukesh Ambani take on Elon Musk in India’s internet space race (FT)

8. US tech sector pressures Chinese venture capital to divest (FT)

9. Nissan turns to low-cost samarium-iron motor magnet for EV future (Nikkei Asia)

10. Arm can help SoftBank hand off the activists (FT)

#techAsia is co-ordinated by Nikkei Asia’s Katherine Creel in Tokyo, with assistance from the FT tech desk in London.

Sign up here at Nikkei Asia to receive #techAsia each week. The editorial team can be reached at techasia@nex.nikkei.co.jp.