Welcome to the April 25, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• ACM Names Cordelia Schmid 2025-2026 Athena Lecturer
• New Mexico Wants to Be the Heart of Quantum Computing
• China Has an Army of Robots on Its Side in the Tariff War
• FBI Says Cybercrime Costs Surpassed $16 Billion in 2024
• You Could Be Paid Not to Use Google for Searches
• South Korea Says DeepSeek Transferred User Data to U.S., China Without Consent
• Robot See, Robot Do
• The Patent Powerhouses of 2024
• NSF Cuts Funding on Misinfo/Disinfo Research
• Periodic Table of Machine Learning Could Fuel AI Discovery
• Scientists Speed Groundwork Essential for Quantum Computing
• Israel to Roll Out AI-Driven Tutoring at National Level
• Fujitsu, Riken Develop 256-Qubit Quantum Computer

ACM Names Cordelia Schmid 2025-2026 Athena Lecturer

Cordelia Schmid, research director at Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, has been named the 2025-2026 ACM Athena Lecturer. Schmid is recognized for outstanding contributions to computer vision in image retrieval, object recognition, and video understanding. Her work has helped computers understand, perceive, and interact with the visual world.
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New Mexico Wants to Be the Heart of Quantum Computing

New Mexico, hoping to become a center for quantum computing, has established a coalition of organizations that includes the governor's office, the U.S. Department of Defense, and local universities. The state's Quantum Moonshot program is aimed at developing quantum technologies with civilian and military applications. Additionally, the budget for the state's Economic Development Department earmarked $10 million for a quantum studio and $10 million for quantum infrastructure.
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China Has an Army of Robots on Its Side in the Tariff War

China's army of factory robots gives it an advantage in the trade war, helping it hold down the prices of many exports. According to the International Federation of Robotics, China ranks third behind South Korea and Singapore for the most factory robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers. Robots are becoming more affordable for China's thousands of workshops, and in the biggest factories, AI is helping to automate certain quality control tasks currently performed by humans.
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FBI Says Cybercrime Costs Surpassed $16 Billion in 2024

The Internet Crime Complaint Center of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said global cybercrime costs topped $16 billion in 2024, up a third from the prior year. Low-tech, tech support, and romance scams accounted for much of the losses, according to an FBI report based on almost 860,000 complaints, most from the U.S. The FBI noted that its calculations were incomplete, especially regarding ransomware.
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You Could Be Paid Not to Use Google for Searches

An experiment by U.S. academic researchers found that most people use Google for Web searches simply because they have not given other options a chance. The researchers recruited close to 2,500 paid participants to use Bing instead of Google for two weeks, and around 22% opted to continue using the Microsoft search engine after that. A group of state and federal officials suing Google over its alleged monopoly in search asked a judge to require the tech giant to fund a consumer information campaign about Web search alternatives to Google.
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South Korea Says DeepSeek Transferred User Data to U.S., China Without Consent

South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Chinese AI startup DeepSeek collected personal information from local users and transferred it to China and the U.S. without their permission. The PIPC released the findings of its privacy and security review of DeepSeek on Thursday. DeepSeek removed its chatbot application from South Korean app stores in February at the recommendation of the watchdog.
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Robot See, Robot Do

An AI-powered robotic framework developed by Cornell University researchers could pave the way for faster development and deployment of robotic systems by enabling robots to learn how to perform various tasks after watching a single how-to video. Using the Retrieval for Hybrid Imitation under Mismatched Execution (RHyME) framework, the researchers said, a robot can perform a task it has seen just once by combing its memory of videos and gaining inspiration from similar actions.
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The Patent Powerhouses of 2024

IEEE Spectrum's annual ranking of U.S. patenting powerhouses in 2024 features mostly Big Tech companies in the top 10. Based on 1790 Analytics' Pipeline Power metric, Amazon has the most patent power despite ranking 20th for the number of patents, mainly because its patents are cited more frequently by other patents. Samsung was granted the greatest number of U.S. patents last year, more than 9,000, more than twice the number of second-ranked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
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NSF Cuts Funding on Misinfo/Disinfo Research

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is terminating awards and funding opportunities related to research on misinformation and disinformation, among other topics. “NSF will not support research with the goal of combating ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’ that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the U.S. in a manner that advances a preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate,” the agency said.
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Periodic Table of Machine Learning Could Fuel AI Discovery

A periodic table developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers shows the connections among more than 20 classical machine learning algorithms. The information contrastive learning (I-Con) framework is based on a unifying equation underlying these algorithms, which identifies how the algorithms locate connections between real data points and internally approximates those connections.
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Scientists Speed Groundwork Essential for Quantum Computing

An algorithm developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory reduces the prep work associated with packaging data for quantum computing. The Picasso algorithm uses graph coloring to sort terms into as few groupings as possible. Said researcher Bo Peng, “Our algorithm is a tool for efficient hybrid computing, where we use classical computation to prepare quantum data for quantum computing.”
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Israel to Roll Out AI-Driven Tutoring at National Level

A partnership between Israeli K-12 textbook publisher Center for Educational Technology and AI platform eSelf will give every student in Israel access to personal AI tutors. The interactive avatars, whose appearance and personality can be customized, will help students understand materials, practice questions, and study for exams. The avatars will adapt to the strengths and challenges of each student and refine lessons as needed.
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Fujitsu, Riken Develop 256-Qubit Quantum Computer

Japanese tech company Fujitsu and government-backed research institute Riken have developed a superconducting quantum computer with 256 qubits, surpassing its 64-qubit predecessor. The computer, which will go online in June, is designed to release internal heat efficiently and cool its integrated circuits to near absolute zero.
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